There’s a running joke in my family about Great-Aunt Evie, God rest her soul. Apparently Aunt Evie loved hosting dinners and teatimes for family and friends, but was notorious for never sitting down long enough at the table for the meal to start. She’d be forever popping up to grab utensils or more dishes for her guests, who’d have to laugh and urge her to sit and just be. So whenever my mother would pop up from the table to retrieve something or check on something in the kitchen, especially if it was delaying the start of grace, one of us would laugh and call her Aunt Evie and she’d laugh too and sit back down. What we were asking my mother was to give us the most important thing - more important than the next dish or a clean fork - her attention and her presence. We wanted her to remember the purpose for the work of hosting: the being together.
Martha, it's important to note here, is the one who invited Jesus to her home in the first place. She had a reason for welcoming him in. But Martha lets herself get distracted by the work of hosting, and I don’t blame her. It sounds like she could indeed use more help. Then Martha’s distractions and worries cross a line into frustration. Frustration that turns into resentment directed at her sister and at Jesus himself for allowing it to happen. The work distracts her, then overwhelms her, then becomes not only the thing that gets in the way of her being with her guests - it becomes resentment that sours her relationships with them. The purpose of the work of hosting is forgotten. The love behind the welcome, buried.
“Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing.” Remember why you are doing all this in the first place.
There are so many aspects of life that involve so many extra tasks that pull us further away from the heart of its purpose. Many of our professions, but also parenting, grandparenting, homeownership, and most notoriously, church. Church is ironically particularly susceptible to the sort of busy work that distracts and worries us away from sitting at the feet of Jesus. From just being with God.
My first semester at seminary I signed up to be a student sacristan - one of the seminarians who would do the behind the scenes work of keeping the chapel running. Sort of like Altar Guild for a parish, plus making bulletins and worship planning. I loved the work and I was learning a ton, but I began to notice that I very rarely ever sat in the pews for a chapel service. There was always something to be done - wafers to fetch, candles to relight, doors to close. When I started the livestream project, there was even more.
My spiritual director is the one who started ringing the alarm bells for me as it all became too much, as I wondered aloud about why my spiritual life was shriveling up. Like a good spiritual director he asked me the hard questions - why was it so difficult for me to simply be present in the pews at the chapel? What was so attractive about feeling busy and important and needed? What was I afraid of if I just lay it all down and let myself remember to be? I was afraid of a lot of things - of not being needed, that others would do it wrong, that the whole operation would fall apart. But the truth was, I was falling apart. I was losing my way. I was forgetting the purpose of the work. I need to find a way to just worship, just be again in the presence of God. I needed to remember the why of it all.
There is need of only one thing.
Paul wrote, “If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.”
Don’t get me wrong, you do not need to love every aspect of what you do every day. God knows I don’t love all the minutiae of parenting or priesting for that matter. I doubt anyone does, and yet it still needs to be done. What Paul is saying, what Jesus is reminding Martha, is that we need enough that reminds us of the why of the work we do. Love can enable us to endure the most grueling jobs, the most annoying tasks, the grossest parts of caring for one another. But when we have lost the why, the purpose, when this work and its worries and burdens get in the way of loving others, when they build into resentment and crash inwards and outwards, then we have lost our way. Then it is time to return to the feet of Jesus, to listen and remember who we are.
Over the years, I’ve spoken to a lot of folks about why they go to church, why they give and volunteer. Again and again all sorts of people - from true believers to questioning seekers - will tell me that church is what they need to get them through the week. Something about what we do here reminds them of the why of all the rest of their lives. Something about the words we say here, the outreach work we give here, the prayers we pray here, restores their purpose. Something about just being here, in the presence of God, centers them back on love.
Do this in remembrance of me. Putting Jesus at the center of our lives makes all the work we do that springs from him, holy. It sanctifies our life with meaning. Even the ordinary bits, the stressful bits, the unglamorous nature of keeping our church and households and businesses running.
Over the years working in ministry, I have also encountered folks showing up on Sunday morning for the first time in a long time. Returning to church, sometimes after decades. When I get the chance to ask them, what made them come, what drew them here, it’s often something in their life, some challenge or change, that made them realize that the why of their life had begun to unravel, or no longer felt like enough. They came seeking a truer center of being, one that they had known once, or their parents had known, or their grandparents had known: Jesus Christ.
What is that thing or person or ritual or practice that recenters you to your purpose? What reminds you why?
Sitting in a church service for an hour each Sunday doesn’t have to be that for you - or the only thing you need. It could be something else. It could be sitting down at the end of a long day for a meal with the ones you love. It could be stepping back every so often to reflect on the impact of your labor. It could be kneeling at your bedside for evening prayer. It could be that sweet giggle of a one-year-old who’s just spotted your face in the mirror. It’s whatever brings meaning again to the necessary work of life when you feel yourself getting pulled away and pulled apart.
Whatever that is for you, do it and keep doing it until it doesn’t work anymore. Hold onto it, protect it. Make time for it.
If you’re realizing you don't have something like that right now, find it. Get a time to meet with me to figure out what it could be.
Or lay down that work. Your life, really living your life, depends on it.
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