Before I begin my homily, I want to make you aware of a convention I use to begin every Sunday and Holy Day homily that can trip people up. I begin my homily, following the custom of many christian preachers, by saying, “friends, peace be with you” Now, when I do that, I’m not looking for a response of “and with your spirit”. It’s just something I do to get started on what I believe to be the right food. Jesus calls us friends and so I call you friends. And I pray for peace so that my homily may make us at peace with God. In that vein, I say…
Friends
Peace be with you.
It’s been interesting to reflect on this gospel during a week where I moved halfway across the state of Iowa, from Bellevue to here to Cedar Rapids. Most of the time people reflect on this passage, they focus on the contrast between contemplative Mary versus laborious Martha. I’ve had many people, especially women, say that this is frustrating to them because preachers tend to imply that contemplation is superior to the active life of charity. Even though there is some merit to that argument, I’m not sure that is the lesson Jesus is hoping to teach these sisters and anyone else who was listening to the master teach.
Another problem is that we tend to associate this with teachings on hospitality, because that is the focus of the first reading when Abraham greets the three divine travelers. That means that the message most preachers are going to focus on is that, when people come to our house, we shouldn't spend so much time clearing and cooking, that we miss out on seeing the image of God within them. Again, that’s a good message but I’m not convinced that’s the message of this gospel. Jesus is in the home of a woman who is never identified as a relative and there is no husband or brother or father mentioned as also being present. This is significant because Jesus is breaking a bunch of middle eastern social norms that could have gotten him killed unless he knows Martha and Mary well enough that he is like a relative, such a close friend to them that he is like a brother. Maybe it’s just wishful thinking, but I prefer this understanding of his relationship with these two sisters.
So, if the point isn’t the pitfalls of working too hard when hospitality is called for or the predominance of the contemplative life over the more active, charitable life, what is the message of the gospel? All this week, I’ve been staring at plastic totes filled with clothes and books and nick nacks. I sit down to pray and I look around and think that I can say a Psalm and hang up those clothes or I can pray a rosary and unpack a box of books. I think the point is that, when we invite Jesus to our homes, we need to be ready to spend all our time with him. Prayer gets so easily cluttered up with other concerns, even if we haven’t just moved. We may intend to spend fifteen minutes in prayer and end up spending all that time thinking about a harsh conversation we had with a friend or coworker. We may put on Fr. Mike Schmitz’s Bible in a Year Podcast and have it playing in the background and scroll through Facebook or Twitter or other social media platforms and realize we didn’t hear a single passage Fr. Mike was reading. It’s way too easy to get distracted in prayer, to allow concerns about work or our house or our family to crowd out any thought of God, let alone actually having a conversation with our dearest friend Jesus. I think that’s the context of this passage. It’s important to set aside time in prayer. That’s one of the many reasons I’m very excited about being your pastor: you have a dedicated adoration chapel where people can go throughout the day to pray and know it will be quiet there and they will be left alone with the Lord. It’s okay, in that context, to pray for our coworkers and even talk to Jesus in our hearts about how we can work out our problems. But, when we invite Jesus into our homes and our lives, we need to put our focus on him. There’ll be time to clean the clutter afterward.
