Distracted

                                “Distracted”
                                Luke 10:38-42
                                Rev. David Hutchinson
                                Sunday, July 18, 2010

    Mary and Martha are sisters.
    That’s what we read in the gospel according to Luke.
    They’re sisters, and like many siblings – they’re also very different.
And YET, there’s a connection between them, despite how different they are.
        They are family.
    And Luke’s gospel seems to want us to get that point. The gospel according to Luke, which is where we find the reading for this morning, uses the word “sisters” to describe Mary and Martha.
The gospel of John, by contrast, does not.  John’s gospel doesn’t call them sisters as their story is told, even though it does contain a story similar to this one in Luke.  John describes Jesus in their house, but all John says is that “Martha served”. He doesn’t make any other comment about Martha. John doesn’t compare them. John doesn’t report that Jesus compared them, as Luke does.    John is mostly concerned with Mary, it seems.       
    But if we follow Luke,
the suggestion that emerges for me is,   that they need one another.
        Mary and Martha.
            So different…
            And so connected…
    The point is important - because it’s so easy to want to CHOOSE one or the other. The two are contrasted, and so I naturally find myself considering the pros and cons of one or the other as a spiritual role model, and then choosing the better one. 
    Luke even says, “Mary has chosen the good portion”, so even Luke seems to suggest that we choose the actions of Mary, over those of Martha. But… I find myself resisting that choice at first, because of the word “sisters”.
    Jesus contrasts these sisters and their actions.
    But Luke - seems to want to hold them together.
    It IS certainly easy to see the differences. So before we think any more about holding them together, let’s spend a minute on how they’re different.  The clearest way to describe their differences might be to say that Mary is a contemplative, and Martha is a doer. Mary chooses to sit at Jesus feet, while Martha tends to the things that need to be done. Martha does the household chores, while Mary studies and ponders and prays with Jesus.
    And - - so far the choice seems fairly balanced:
        Action - - versus contemplation.
            Either one might have its value… and its drawback…
    But then - we read in the text - that…
While Mary listened…
        Martha was troubled…
            Martha was - “distracted” and “troubled”. 
    These words TIP the reader in the direction of a clear choice for Mary.
        After all, who would choose to be distracted and troubled…?
    Oh….actually….lots of us….it seems….
    In June, the Colbert Repor(t) had a segment on - - what the internet is doing to our brains. The Colbert Report, is a 30minute show on cable TV channel 60. Stephen Colbert is a comedian and a political commentator rolled into one. He also comments on contemporary culture with sharp wit and insight.
Each show includes an interview which is often with an author of a recent book. On June 30, the book was called: The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains. It was written by Nicholas Carr, who also wrote an article called “Is the Internet Making Us Stupid?”, and who claims that the internet is affecting our attention span. According to Carr, our choice of the internet actually has a physiological effect on our brains that reduces attention span and makes us worse at contemplation. He said in the interview that the better we become at multi-tasking, the worse we become at: thinking deeply, focusing for longer periods of time, and contemplation. Instead we do a skimming type of thinking - that is the opposite of deep contemplation.
    In response, in typical Colbert style, Stephen Colbert dismissed that author by reaffirming his choice to be shallow. But - not without getting us thinking a little…about how we are loosing our ability to think deeply…! 
    SO are we actually choosing - - to be distracted?
    Are we ignoring Jesus advice…?
    Headphone Harold wore his headphones:
    through the night - and through the day.   
    He said, “I’d rather hear my music
    than the dumb things people say”.

    In the city’s honkin’ traffic
    He heard trumpets instead of trucks,
    down the quiet country back roads
    he heard drums…instead of ducks!

    Through the pattering springtime showers
    he heard guitars instead of rain.       AND…
    Down the track… of the railroad crossing…
    He heard trombones…….and NOT……the TRAIN.

    In this poem by Shel Silverstien, Harold makes a choice similar to many of us….
    Either we choose to be distracted…
    Or we just ARE distracted….and don’t do anything about it….
    Meanwhile Jesus points the distracted Martha to her sister…listening….
    What would it mean to listen…deeply…?
    What would it look like to make the choice for contemplation and prayer?
    Kathleen Norris made that kind of a choice when she wrote her book The Cloister Walk in 1996. As a married woman, from a Protestant background, she had little knowledge of religious orders and no sense of monasticism as a living tradition. But she was drawn to monastic life and chose to live for a time in a Benedictine monastery.
    She became a Benedictine “oblate” or associate, and writes this about her experience:
    “Once I became an oblate, I found that I’d gained an enormous family. Benedictines are everywhere, and like a good family, they keep interfering in what I like to pretend is my own life”.
    And so like the sisters, Mary and Martha, in our story from Luke, Norris finds that she really does have brothers - among the monks.        Family…
    She describes the effect of living among them, on her sense of time:
    “I had often heard Benedictines refer to their Liturgy of the Hours…as the “sanctification of time” but had not much idea of what this could mean until I’d attended the liturgies at St. John’s on a daily basis for months.
Gradually my perspective on time changed.
    In our culture, time can seem like the enemy, it chews us up and spits us out…But the monastic perspective welcomes time as a gift from God, and seeks to put it to good use…The Benedictines, more than any other people I know, insist that there is time in the day for prayer, work, study, and play. Liturgical time is essentially poetic time, oriented toward process rather than productivity, willing to wait attentively in stillness rather than always pushing to get the job done”.
As I read Norris,   I think of Mary, listening.
Choosing…
Despite the popularity of Norris’ book, and a growing attention to contemplative practices by Protestants in the past few decades, it’s still a stretch for some of us, to make a similar choice.
The jacket cover of a book published in 1964, called The Protestant Mystics, with an introduction by W.H. Auden states: “The flat statement by a distinguished Protestant philosopher that “there are no Protestant mystics” brought about this unusual anthology”. In the decades since then it has become a little less unusual. But no less countercultural.
There is something about a lot us that I think resists contemplation.
Especially - - - and here’s the thing - - - especially - - -
- - if there is any suggestion that it is more important than action!
    We want to take action.
    We want to do what needs to be done.   
    As in last week’s scripture reading about the so called “Good Samaritan”, we want to help out and tend to things, rather than sit and listen. We want to make a difference in the lives of others.
    Fred Craddock describes this comparison with the Good Samaritan story that comes JUST before the story of Mary and Martha. Luke seems to want us to compare them. And Craddock puts it this way: “Jesus had just met a man skilled in scripture (the lawyer in the Good Samaritan story) and Jesus offers him an example, a Samaritan. Then Jesus visits a woman so busy serving that she does not hear the word, and offers her an example, her sister. To the man Jesus said, “go and do”; to the woman Jesus said, “Sit and listen”. 
But so often we would rather do good,
than receive the grace that comes in listening. 
We’d rather help - - - than be helped.
And we’d rather do good than pray about it.
Paul Newman, the actor, whose salad dressing you may have bought, said something once that pushes this point:
    “I never thought I’d get into science”, he said,
    “…but being able to turn salad dressing into a school bus;
that’s the kind of chemistry that tickles the fancy”
    Newman seems to say that thinking about scientific things
is not as satisfying as doing something and helping people.
    In case you don’t know, the proceeds of the dressing were originally donated to medical research, education and the environment. Now, that’s the sorts of things that Protestants like us like to get involved in.  And I’m not saying there is anything wrong with that.
    But as I said at the beginning, I think that Luke pushes us to consider that idea that action and contemplation need one another.
Like the sisters Mary and Martha. 
    I think this is especially apparent than when facing the end of life.
    Normally we go about our lives doing lots of things. Helping. Working.
    We sometimes even choose distraction over contemplation.   
    But as we enter into the boarder-land at the end of our life or the life of someone we love, things change. And a different kind of balance emerges.
    Listen to the words of this poem about Mary and Martha by Gabriela Mistral,
and see if you don’t hear what I’m talking about:

They were born together, lived together,
ate together – Martha and Mary.
They closed the same door,
drank from the same well,
were watched by one thicket,
clothed by one light.

Martha’s cups and dishes clattered,
Her kettles bubbled…
She bustled to and fro…

But all grew hushed when her sister passed by…

One golden-eyed noon…
Without a word or sign, Mary passed on.

No more than a great silence…

When Martha grew old,
Oven and kitchen grew quiet,
The house gained its sleep,
The ladder lay supine;
Martha went to crouch
In Mary’s corner
Where with wonder and silence
Her mouth scarcely moved…

She asked to go to Mary
And toward her she went,
she went murmuring, “Mary!” – only that.

Now she WAS no longer…
    …and did not know it….