A Sermon of The Rev. Dr. David A. Killian, Rector
All Saints Parish
Brookline, Massachusetts
Eighth Sunday after Pentecost
July 18, 2010
Scripture: 2 Kings 2:1-2,6-14; Galatians 5:1,13-25; Luke 9:51-62
I
When I read about Martha and Mary in today's Gospel passage I have to confess to you that I am more like Martha than Mary. I enjoy working, not just the work of ministry here at All Saints Parish. I also enjoy working in the garden, pulling weeds, watering the tomato plants, and pruning trees. I enjoy puttering around the house doing various "fix-it projects." I probably inherited this enjoyment for work from my parents and who got it from their parents, who were hard-working Wisconsin farmers.
I acknowledge my love of work and accept my condition. However, there are some drawbacks to this propensity to work. If we work too much, our lives can get out of balance. And, as we learn in today's Gospel passage, if we work at the wrong time, we can miss out on something very important. We can miss the opportunity of talking with Jesus and nourishing our relationship with him. This is what Mary understood and what Martha did not.
II
Many years ago, a friend had a key role in calling me to attend to the "Mary dimension" of my life at a time when I was almost "100% Martha." It was in 1974 and I was serving as a priest at the Paulist Center in down town Boston. I was deeply engaged in many ministries. We had five weekend worship services, three daily Masses, a meal for the homeless every Wednesday evening, weekly visits to Norfolk prison, church school for children, a group for those who were divorced, and many other activities. Most days we were open from 7:30 in the morning to 9:00 or 10:00 at night.
One day a friend who was part of our parish community said, "You know, it would be a great thing if you offered a course on spirituality and meditation." I said, "Sure." And then I asked him what he had in mind. He said that many people were hungering for a deeper spiritual relationship with God and that many people wanted to slow down their busy lives and learn how to meditate. I listened and I agreed that what he said made sense; but then weeks went by and my friend Hubert hadn't noticed anything happening, so he came to me again and said, "I think it would be a great thing if you offered a course on spirituality and meditation." At that point, I asked him if he could help and he said that he would be happy to give a talk on Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk and spiritual teacher. We then planned an eight-week course with four lectures on spirituality featuring Merton and other spiritual guides, followed by four practical sessions that would teach meditative practices of different traditions. We organized four field trips – one to a Buddhist monastery in Cambridge where we sat in meditation with the monks; one to a Yoga center where we joined in Yoga chants; and one to a Sufi center where we took part in a meditative Sufi dances. For the fourth field trip, forty of us carpooled to St. Joseph's Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts. There we met Abbot Thomas Keating, who taught us a Christian form of meditation known as centering prayer.
He began by telling us a story of a baby bear who asked his mother, "Mother, what is air?" The bear's mother answered, "O you silly bear. Don't you know what air is? Air is all around you. You need it to survive. You couldn't live a second without air. Put you head in this bucket of water for a while and then you will know what air is." Then Abbot Keating told us about a baby fish who asked its mother, "Mother, what is water?" The mother fish replied, "O you silly fish, don't you know what water is. It is all around you. You need water to live and move and survive. Jump out of this ocean and go up on land and you will know what water is." And then Abbot Keating said, there was a baby human who asked his mother, "Mother, where is God?" Well, his mother didn't say, "O you silly boy," but she could have. And she did say, "God is all around you. Without God you could not live and move and survive for a moment." Abbot Keating then told us of a way that we could interrupt our normal way of thinking so we could get beyond concepts and words and in the silence experience the presence of God. He taught us centering prayer that day – and invited me to come back for a 10-day intensive centering prayer instruction a few weeks later. That is when I began to start attending to the Mary in my life.
Martha and Mary symbolize two aspects of our lives. Martha is our active dimension – the worker bee in us that likes to be involved in activity – and this is good. We need to be Marthas on occasion. Mary is our contemplative or mystical dimension, when we sit at the feet of Jesus, when we, as it were, put our heads outside of the normal air or water of our environment. In this dimension, we get in touch with our true identity as spiritual beings. We realize that we are more than just worker bees. We are more than any earthly category by which other people define us. We realize then our royal dignity. We are God's own children. We have an immortal destiny – and even now we can get a glimpse of it.
III
It's like the story that Anthony deMello tells of a disciple who fell asleep and dreamed that he had entered Paradise. To his astonishment he found his Master and the other disciples sitting there, absorbed in meditation. Is this the reward of Paradise? he cried. Why, this is exactly the sort of thing we did on earth! He heard a Voice exclaim, Fool! You think those meditators are in Paradise? It is just the opposite – Paradise is in the meditators.
When Mary sat at the foot of Jesus, she was in that moment already in paradise. That is the invitation that Jesus also extends to us. Come apart for a while. Slow down. Sit. Be quiet. Experience me and experience paradise.
Amen.