July 22, 2001
© 2001 Grant M. Gallup
Book of Common Prayer lectionary:
Genesis 18:1-10a(10b-14) Sarah laughed to herself
Psalm 15 Domine, quis habitabit?
Colossians 1:21-29 In my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ's
afflictions
Luke 10:38-42 Mary has chosen the better part
Revised Common Lectionary (trial use:)
Amos 8:1-12 qayits and qets --Summer and Smoke-- Ripe Fruit and Ripe for a
Finale
Psalm 52 Quid gloriaris?
or
Genesis 18:1-10a Your wife Sarah shall have a son (In Revised pericope, she
doesn't laugh)
Psalm 15 Domine, quis habitabit?
Colossians 1:15-28 All things are held together in him (New English Bible)
Luke 10:38-42 as in BCP, above.
I no longer have a clerical collar. They are not so uncomfortable as neckties in the tropic heat, but hardly no one outside the Roman hierarchy wears one in Managua; like prelates, the clergy instead wear pectoral crosses to indicate their ordination, or a solemn demeanor and a benign smile. And no one but Mormon missionaries, rightist politicians and bank presidents wear neckties. When in the States, I might borrow a collar to spotlight myself at a coffee hour after mass. But in my thirty years of parish ministry in Chicago I was hardly ever without a collar--it would not have been safe in the beleagured inner city ghetto where I lived, the only white man for miles around. I told my friends that the only other white men who came into our slum neighborhood were landlords or bill collectors, pimps or drug peddlars, and I didn't want to be mistaken for any of the above.
Wearing a clerical collar is to every passerby an emblem of availability for counsel or for charity, a counsel of sobriety to the impious, a plea for a discount to the merchant or for amnesty from the traffic cop. It marks you as a public person and takes away your privacy, in exchange for dubious privileges. One Monday in July of 1983, my diary records that I went shopping at the A & P across the alley from the vicarage and as I was fondling a lamb shank at the meat counter, a very determined shopper whom I thought at first was a manic Shirley Chisholm came sailing up to me and parked her shopping cart cross wise in the aisle in front of mine, blocking my escape. She asked, in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear, and in a rapid fire delivery, "PREACHER! Whaddja preach about yesta day? Ya preached, dinja? I preached on Proverbs, myself, Book of Proverbs, Holiness to the Lard! What text didja preach on, Preacher?" Turning from the meat counter to the aisle, I replied in a timid voice that I had preached on the Parable of the Good Samaritan, ma'am. On the gospel lesson for yesterday. "What was your text, Preacher? What was your text?" I said that it was in the Gospel of St. Luke, around the tenth chapter. "What text in the chapter, Preacher? What text? I preached on Holiness to the Lard!" Well, I said I didn't choose any particular verse any more than any other, but I preached on the theme of the Parable, which was Who is my Neighbor? "Didja preach on sanctification and holiness?" No, I admitted, I don't believe I did. "Does your church believe in sanctification and holiness? What church is it? Where is it?" So I told her, it's just a few blocks away, and it's St. Andrew's Episcopal. "Methodist?" she asked. No, I said, not Methodist Episcopal--that's St. Steven's AME, our neighbor. Ours is just Episcopal, without the Methodist. "Oh, they like the Catholics, ain't they? I been in that church--on Hoyne next to Damen--they gambles in the basement there. Plays cards. Gambles."
No, I said, I don't think we had gambling, but we might play cards some times, or Bingo.
"Oh, No," she declared, "the Bible says Holiness to the Lard. Book of Acts."
Impatiently, I said, I think you are more interested in fussin' with me than hearing what I preached about yesterday. Excuse me, ma'am.
As I moved away, nudging her shopping cart out of the way, I heard her grumbling "Hmmph! Fussin'! Fussin' he says."
"Fussing" reminded me of Busy Martha, who at Bethany neglected the guests in the Sala to look after the Salad in the kitchen. Martha was trying to get up one of her fabulous meals, perhaps. I've done that, too, and neglected guests while I banged about in the kitchen, and sometimes the guests would call me "Busy Martha" and bid me come to sit with them and sip some wine and talk together. They had, after all, they said, come to be with me, and not with the buffet. They wanted me to give them some of the attention I was giving to the steaming of artichokes or the searing of the steaks. Martha, Martha, Mauricio, Mauricio, you are occupied with many courses, but only one course is necessary, and Mary has chosen the best of entreés. Attention. And attention is the most wonderful item in the art of hospitality. It was to Jesus a gourmet dish, as it is to any preacher. In the Black ghetto, it was widely known that when the preacher came to Sunday dinner, you served chicken--it was affectionately known therefore as "gospel bird." We all have a taste for hospitality, and training for it in countless church suppers and champagne shrubs. Real hospitality is giving attention, listening to people. It's a gospel bird. Hotels can't compete for hospitality. Bellhops and complimentary cocktails and mints on the pillow, Sassoon Shampoo in the bathroom, room service and vacuum maker coffee always at hand, a flaky croissant and lots of fussing, but unless there's someone to listen to you, it's not hospitality. Mary does that in our gospel today, and Jesus says it's a good thing. Not the only thing. But the best dish to serve up to a guest. And a treat to set before our God in our prayers--our attention to God's love.
Especially in Luke's gospel we see a lonely Jesus, hungry for human companionship. His ministry began with hunger in the wilderness, and God sent angels to keep him company and to minister to him. And how lonely he must have been in Nazareth, a few blocks from home, when he was rejected in the synagogue, after his first sermon since his seminary in the desert. How lonely he must have been in Capernaum, after the crowds pressed him for healings and for answers. Luke says he fled to a lonely place at dawn, to pray. He went to the hills to pray in solitude before he called disciples, and there were those lonely days when his family thought him insane, and tried to abort his public life. In the parable of the lost lone sheep, he talks about the shepherd paying attention to the one lost and alone. Jesus understood loneliness. He himself wanted to be paid attention to. And so did I that day in the A & P when the lady evangelist asked me what I preached about, but she did not listen for an answer. What I did not realize at the time was that she, too, wanted to be paid attention to. An almost inarticulate but eagerly talkative woman, anxious surely to share her calling as a preacher with the white and white-collared clergyman, she was eager most of all to be listened to, about her own wrestling with her texts, her own vision of Holiness to the Lord! But that day, thinking I was like Mary, choosing the better part, I turned out to be Martha, too busy to listen, too arrogant to think that a slightly demented autodidact ghetto lady preacher could merit my patience and my listening. I had a churchfull of artichokes to simmer, a sacristy sizzling with steaks and sermons..
Martha has ever since got a bad press. Rudyard Kipling, of all people, noticed the role reversal that history has made, the number it has done on the Marthas and the Marys of our acquaintance.
"The Sons of Mary seldom bother, for they have inherited the good part;
But the Sons of Martha favour their Mother of the careful soul
and the troubled heart.
And because she lost her temper once, and because she was rude to
the Lord her Guest,
Her Sons must wait upon Mary's Sons, world without end, reprieve, or rest.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Raise ye the stone or cleave the wood to make a path more fair or flat--
Lo, it is black already with blood some Son of Martha spilled for that!
Not as a ladder from earth to Heaven, not as a witness to any creed,
But simple service simply given to his own kind in their common need.
And the Sons of Mary smile and are blessed--they know the Angels
are on their side,
They know in them is the Grace confessed, and for them are the
Mercies multiplied.
They sit at the Feet--they hear the Word--they see how truly the
Promise runs.
They have cast the burden upon the Lord, and--the Lord He lays
it on Martha's sons.
Luke brackets this story of the Serving Sisters with the story of the Good
Samaritan. Why do you suppose this is true? Well, remember that the
lawyer had asked Jesus what was necessary to inherit eternal life, and had
himself known and could rehearse the correct answer. God surely wants to
be served by being listened to, to be loved by us with our hearts, minds,
and souls. God wants us to hear the Shema Israel, and to listen to the
Torah, the Prophets, the Wisdom and the Writings. God wants our
con-templation (our Temple practice). And we need to do it, for our
soul's good. God wants us to shut up and listen, but behold, the Pericope
is paired to, companioned with, and linked into the Parable of the nameless
Victim on the roadside, who cannot give us his ear, or sit in
contemplation. We must not think that Mary would leave the Jericho road
with the Priest and the Levite, to go with them to hear a sermon on
compassion, and spend time thinking about it. She would surely join Martha
and the Samaritan in the ministry of mercy. .The One Good Dish of loving
lives, of heartfelt attention to the mind of Jesus, and the words of his
mouth, is a balanced diet--balanced by the right proportion of Prayer and
Praxis, of Thought and Toil, of Waiting upon the Spirit and Waiting upon
the Neighbor. Abraham and Sarah, too, ran to the kitchen to get a meal on
the Table when the Eternal and Ever Blessed Trinity came to visit. First
things first. Then came the promise, that got a giggle from Sarah which
she had to stifle, and tried to hide. But God's promise in response to
hospitality is that in Abraham and Sarah all the nations of the earth shall
be blessed, and charged to righteousness and justice.
At bedtime, I picked up a volume of the Harvard Classics, blew the dust off it and opened it to the Journal of John Woolman. He was an 18th century American Quaker. It wasWoolman who began the movement of abolitionism amongst the Quakers, which eventually spilled over into the north American Churches. Today it is hard to find a Christian or a Jew who will try to justify slavery, beause some old Bible patriarchs and politicians owned slaves. John Woolman was an early listener to the inward voice, one of the first to catch a vision of the Light, and he beame an activisit against slavery. In his journey once, he stayed with Quakers who owned slaves. He wrote, "When I ate, drank and lodged free-cost with people who lived in ease on the hard labor of their slaves, I felt uneasy, and as my mind was inward to the Lord, I find this uneasiness return upon me. I express it as it hath appared to me, not once nor twice, but as a matter fixed on my mind."
That was true contemplation, for it issued in active abolitionism. So it is not a matter of choosing between contemplation and action. Jesus knew that nothing we could do for God would mean anything at all if he it had not issued from and grown out of our listening to God. Mary hath chosen the better part, where contemplation stirs the Spirit and sings "Be swift my soul to answer and be jubilant my feet." This is the first and great commandment, says the Prayer Book, "and the second is like unto it: you shall love your neighbor as yourelf." . Martha has got the inseparable second part of the Summary of Torah--the ministry of love and service, which also pays attention, not only to the numinous in the Temple or the neighbor at the Table, but also to the neighbor in the Ditch.
GRANT GALLUP
CASA AVE MARIA
MANAGUA, NICARAGUA C.A.
gallup@tmx.com.ni
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