Like most people I am a big fan of the Harry Potter stories by J.K. Rowling. One of the things Susan and I enjoy is reading to each other and we’ve staid up late many nights enjoying Ms. Rowling’s lively stories.
I even like the Harry Potter movies. As always the books are better, but the movies are alright. There is a scene in the first Harry Potter movie that I love that I don’t believe is actually in the book. Harry, Ron and Hermione once again narrowly escape from a dangerous adventure, and Hermione is very upset.
Hermione looks at Ron and Harry and says, “We have got to stop having these adventures before we get ourselves killed or even worse expelled!”
Ron then looks at Harry and says, “She has really got to sort out her priorities.”
Priorities.
There are worse things than being expelled.
There are worse things than getting killed.
The worst thing is to never have known what it means to be truly and fully alive in the first place. That is the great tragedy that we all share in to some extent, never knowing what it means to live. We all are born and die, but how often are we fully alive?
Jesus walks into town and is invited to supper.
Martha dutifully fulfills her role as a host and as a woman, and busily tries to keep her important visitors comfortable, refreshed, well fed.
But her sister, Mary, isn’t helping like she usually does, like she is supposed to do. Mary is sitting with the men at Jesus’ feet, sitting there like she was a disciple, hanging on every word.
Not only is Mary breaking the rules by not helping with the meal, she is breaking the rules by sitting with the men, at Jesus feet, listening like a disciple. Mary was being worse than rude and negligent, she was being perverse.
Martha needs some help to get her sister back in line and she expects Jesus to support her in getting Mary back in her proper role as a woman and as a host.
Imagine Martha’s shock when Jesus doesn’t do what she tells him and even encourages Mary to keep sitting there and listening.
“Martha, dear Martha, you’re fussing far too much and getting yourself worked up over nothing. One thing only is essential, and Mary has chosen it- it’s the main course, and won’t be taken from her.”
Now I come from a large extended and southern family. The importance of hospitality is a part that cultural foundation.
One of the things that I learned early on from them and from the women in Church and the neighborhood was that Jesus may be the Messiah and Savior and Lord but in this one instance he was wrong and Martha was right.
I learned early on that it may have been their prerogative to question the Son of God, but it was not mine to question them.
It was one of those things that I learned to quietly set aside and let God sort out come Judgment.
Now, years later, having lived with this story for awhile, I think the story of Mary and Martha isn’t really about hospitality.
It’s about priorities, sorting out our priorities.
It is no accident that we hear the story of Mary and Martha right after the parable of the Good Samaritan.
That was a lesson in what it means to love the neighbor.
The story of Mary and Martha is a lesson in what it means to love God, with heart and soul and mind and strength.
We are servants of the Word, attentive to the Word.
This is a lesson in the priority of sitting at Jesus feet and listening before anything else, hanging on every word, because this is where we see and hear for the first time what it means to be alive, fully and truly.
That means getting in trouble. We live in a world of competing priorities and loyalties. Being servants of the Word takes first place and that means conflict with all the shoulds, and woulds and oughts, and have-tos that fill our lives.
Mary broke the rules to hear and serve that Word.
Her priorities changed.
This is a lesson and example and challenge for all of us to have our priorities sorted out and to notice to whom we listen first before anyone else.
And that means change.
The Samaritan and Mary combined become the unlikely and unexpected example of what it means to be Jesus’ disciple: to love God and to love the neighbor. Those are the rules we play by. Those are the rules of the society of the Kingdom of God.
Those are the only two rules.
That is the society where we find the words on how to live, to be fully alive, in hearing and doing, doing and hearing, the love of God, the love of neighbor. They are what define the life of being a disciple of Jesus.
I hope we can set aside the age old debate over being a “Mary” or being a “Martha”. I hope we can rather take the lesson and apply it to the priorities that define us as people.
Are we attending to the Word? Is that a part of our lives? Is that where we draw our strength and direction and character?
Are we fully alive? Or are we just sort of alive?
The Gospel calls us to ask those hard questions.
The Gospel calls us, offers us the freedom to sort out our priorities and live.
This is where we begin, this is where we are born and live, at the feet of Jesus.
Church is the society where we try to learn and live out just what that means together.
We gather around the scriptures and we gather around the altar, year after year to slowly sort out just who God has made each of us to be.
A parishioner recently told me that their father-in-law is becoming more and more like him self every year. That is what the life of faith is like, the life we share together seated at the feet of Jesus, slowly becoming more and more like ourselves, the selves God made us to be, each one gloriously unique and difficult.
One of these days we’ll have things sorted out, Mary and Martha will get settled down again, Hermione will get things straight, even my relations and I will come to terms with Jesus’ strange sense of manners.
Until then I’ll just enjoy the company.