16th Sunday Year C - Homily 2

Homily 2 - 2016

What was going on at Martha’s place? It seems you could cut the atmosphere with a knife! The sisters would not even talk to each other. Martha would not connect with her sister other than through their guest, Jesus? One of them certainly needed to be in the kitchen - the meal had to be prepared, and prepared well. But they could hardly leave Jesus alone for half an hour or so up in the front room by himself to twiddle his thumbs. Even ordinary hospitality demanded that one of them be there to entertain him. Why could they not have had a quick dialogue as Jesus arrived and agree together who would do what?

Why did Luke tell the story? And why did he include it immediately after last Sunday’s story about the Good Samaritan? I think that one story feeds off the other, clarifying and reinforcing each other.

Last week’s Gospel began with the scribe asking Jesus about the greatest commandment of the Jewish Law, and then his spot-on answer to his own question, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind”. He even added for good measure, “…and your neighbour as yourself”. But he then gave himself away by asking a second question, “And who is my neighbour?”, which, when you think about it, was a question about others, and introduced possibilities of “in-group/out-group”, “us/them”, of limitations and boundaries. Jesus tried to put him right by redefining the question. “Who proved himself a neighbour to the man in need?” This, when you think carefully about it, was a question not about others, but about himself, and about what kind of person he was.

It is important to look more deeply. Is the greatest commandment of the Law, “Love God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind” also about who we are and how and to whom we relate, about character and personal orientation? Equally interesting is the question that suggests itself by extension. Is “loving our neighbour” ultimately, also a matter of what kind of persons we are? Might the issue touch on what Jesus was driving at elsewhere when he called people to conversion? when he calls us to conversion?

To give Jesus a meal seemed a charitable thing to do. But might the sisters have given themselves away by their attitudes to each other? Had their previous encounters with Jesus led them yet to deep personal change, to conversion, to having become genuinely loving women, through and through, and not just to an obviously select person like Jesus? What we are dealing with is more than cosmetic change. This is deep, radical change - not just how much, but what kind. It is a question of becoming, of growing. It will permeate all relationships, profoundly changing lives.

For me this then raises the question, How do we change to the extent that we love God with “all” our heart, soul, strength and mind? Perhaps that is what Jesus was driving at when he referred to Mary’s “sitting down at his feet and listening to him” as “the better part”. Maybe because there precisely lies the way to change. Somehow we all need to school ourselves to notice what is going on inside ourselves. We need to become aware of our motivations, our assumptions, our fears and desires, our unnoticed addictions and compulsions, our prejudices and judgments, indeed, “the log in our own eye”. Until we do, we sail along blithely in ignorance. And sadly, we do not grow. 

We need regularly to be still, to reflect contemplatively on our lives. Like Mary, the mother of Jesus, we need to treasure experience and ponder it in our hearts. Like Mary, the sister of Martha, let us deliberately choose to sit at the feet of Jesus and listen to him – and wait to see what happens over time.