16th Sunday Year C - Homily 3

 Homily 3 - 2019

In last Sunday’s Gospel story of the Good Samaritan, Jesus was encouraging a lawyer to “get out of his head”, to go beyond thinking, talking, even preaching, about love, and instead to prioritise living it in practice. Through his story Jesus sought to indicate the universal outreach of the call to love. No one is to be excluded. Today’s incident with Jesus in the home of Martha invites us to look more closely at some other practicalities of loving.

“Martha welcomed Jesus into her house”. That was wonderful. She then showed him real down-to-earth hospitality by starting to prepare a meal for him. All this was very much love in practice. But before long another agenda came into play that led Martha eventually to behave in a fairly unfortunate way towards Jesus: She awkwardly asked him to intervene and to take sides in her domestic difference with her sister Mary. Rather than quietly approach her sister herself and ask her to help with the preparations, she criticised Jesus instead, “Lord, do you not care that my sister is leaving me to do the serving all by myself? Please tell her to help me.”

What had happened to replace warm hospitality with hostility? I think this is a good question, as it touches into how we experience much of modern living. People today feel busy, under pressure, and this sense of busyness contributes to the floating anger that poisons so much of modern life. Someone once unkindly commented, “People are spending money they cannot afford on things they do not need to look good in the eyes of people they do not particularly respect.” A recipe for resentment! Be that as it may, it is sad that so often hospitality turns into hostility.

Perhaps a solution lies in cultivating the habit of asking ourselves regularly why we are doing what we do. What starts off as an act of love can easily be undermined by other considerations or pressures. In Martha’s case, the real practicalities of her task “distracted” her. As Jesus said, “You worry and fret about so many things”. Perhaps, too, Mary’s non-involvement irked her. [It may not have been the first time!] She had let herself forget that the reason why she was doing all those “many” necessary things was because she really did love Jesus and wanted to please him. Had she not forgotten, she would not have finished up speaking rudely to him.

In the midst of an already busy life, can we cultivate the habit of taking time out to examine what we are doing, how we fill our days, and why we do what we do? The more we learn to ponder, the better hope we have to be in control of our lives. The early Greek philosopher Socrates is supposed to have said, “The unexamined life is not worth living”. Taking time to ponder could well belong to “the better part” that Mary chose and that Jesus commended. With practice we learn to make sense of the complexities of life.

What was going on, meanwhile, between Mary and Jesus as she sat at his feet listening? Luke doesn’t tell us. But one word that comes to my mind is “encounter” – not just any encounter, but the sort of encounter that stirs the heart, feels “right”, and touches into, perhaps, our deepest human longings. Genuine encounter puts us in touch with our innate human worth. That may have been Mary’s experience. It may also have been Jesus’ experience. Along with service [Martha’s strength], Mary’s deep personal engagement was also an act of love. There can be a time and a place for service and for intimacy. Together they can keep love personal and enriching. Indeed, for friendship to grow, there needs to be a time and a place for both.

There can be more to love than service – necessary as it is.