Many of us may be familiar with the famous Russian icon which imagines Abraham’s three visitors as the three persons of the Trinity. Christians have long seen hints of the Trinity in this story, which highlights how God communicated directly with Abraham in a scene which simultaneously suggests both God’s closeness and his mysteriousness.
Meanwhile, Jewish tradition has frequently focused on Abraham’s openness to others as expressed in his generous, extravagant hospitality. Thus, Abraham is legendarily said to have kept his tent open on all sides, so he could see someone approaching even at a distance and thus rush to offer hospitality, as he does in this scene, offering first water for washing, then bread and meat for food.
Welcoming strangers was an important value in the ancient world. Likewise, we Americans have often – but not always, and certainly less and less so nowadays - imagined ourselves as a welcoming nation to the homeless, tempest-tossed, huddled masses yearning to breathe free, as is written on the Statue of Liberty which my immigrant grandparents got their first look at over 100 years ago.
Today’s liturgy pairs this familiar story of Abraham’s extravagant welcome with that of Jesus’ close friends Martha and Mary. We tend to imagine Jesus primarily as an itinerant preacher moving from place to place, but he obviously also visited friends, like Martha and Mary, who obviously had sufficient means to host him in their home. In all pre-fast-food societies, meals were an important bonding experience, as well as a source of needed rest and nutrition. There was no rest for Martha, however, who burdened with much serving, sems to have resented her sister, Mary’s sitting still, listening to Jesus speak. In any social group, some people eagerly step up to take responsibility, while some seem content to let others do the work. In seminary, we used to refer to the workers as “Marthas” and the shirkers as “Marys.”
As he so often does in the Gospels, however, Jesus here reverses our normal notions of what is important and valuable, saying, somewhat strangely, Mary has chosen the better part. Are we to assume that Jesus and his disciples weren’t all that hungry and didn’t care about dinner? I doubt that! I think that Jesus wanted and expected to be fed, and that he fully appreciated the work Martha was doing. But, while dinner was important, dinner isn’t everything.
Jesus warns Martha about being anxious and worried about many things – a lesson maybe even more important and timely to us in our workaholic society with its profit-oriented understanding of who and what counts as worthwhile, with its profit-oriented understanding of time well spent. Jesus surely appreciated Martha’s hospitality – as Abraham’s visitors did. But he, like Abraham’s visitors, was no ordinary guest, and this was no ordinary dinner party. Just as Abraham, after all his frenetic activity, had finally to settle down and wait under the tree to hear what his visitors had to say. So too Martha needed to calm down and learn to listen.
Modern-life – especially since the invention of the smart phone - is one big attention-grabbing machine, which weighs us down even more than Martha’s housekeeping burdened her. It is hard for us for find the time or the space to listen – to listen to one another, to listen to anyone at all, let alone listen to God. Much of what passes for pubic conversation today is just largely rival factions talking past one another, seldom if ever pausing enough to hear one another and try to listen and learn how the other side sees the world.
Both Abraham and Martha served their guests well, as we are all called to serve one another’s needs as well as we can – especially the poor, especially strangers, especially immigrants. But the ultimate prerequisite for a life well lived is learning to listen – listening to the poor, the strangers, and the immigrants, but also listening to one another, and above all learning to listen to God, who speaks to us in many and various ways and through many intermediaries as he did with Abraham and Martha and Mary and continues to do here and now with us in his Church.
Homily for the 16th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Saint Paul the Apostle Church, NY NY, July 20, 2025.
No comments:
Post a Comment