From the Pulpit:

 
                                                                                       Come Dance With Me
 

Years ago I used to walk around the track at Camp Mabry, that is, until I got so bored at making lap after lap past the old bombers and the sort of cheesy gazebo that I decided I vastly preferred walking on a treadmill while watching the Food Network or reruns of the Andy Griffith Show . I have to admit that there are times in my ministry when I feel as if I am making lap after lap around the lectionary, and when a story like today’s gospel comes up once again I sort of wish I could switch either the scenery or the channel.

The paradox is that this Lucan passage was the text for my senior sermon, which is probably, without much competition, the single most nerve-wracking experience  in a clergyperson’s life. Preaching in church is by and large a piece of cake compared to stepping up into the seminary chapel pulpit and receiving the icy glares  of theologians -- all your professors and fellow seminarians who have a homiletical bead on you and who listen with ears sharpened to call you to task on your exegesis and hermeneutic not to mention the style of your delivery. Some of them even are poised with pen and paper or a smartphone at hand to take notes.

The difference in church is that I have the sense that more often than not most of you are on my team, and that you come with some sort of sincere hunger, sort of like sitting down at a restaurant, whether it is a diner or has earned Michelin stars, and being pretty well assured that something on the menu is going to hit the spot, whether it is the veal piccata or the BLT . There is a grace in preaching to you that is difficult to find in a sea of seminarians. Well, I must have survived, and I must have survived  the four other times I have preached over the years on these two rather complicated sisters, but I have to say that I am still unsettled by this story for the very reason that it tends to set up opposition.

OK. What if I asked everybody to stand up…I won’t. I want all extroverts to move to this side of the room and all introverts over there. Now. 
If you like licorice, come to the front, and if you don’t, move to the back. I don’t think anybody is left in the middle on that one. Males here. 
Females there. Under forties sit down. Over forties stand up. You get the picture. And if you remember the sermon last week or if you remember 
the words of St. Paul In Christ there is no Jew nor Greek, no free nor slave, no male nor female. And our old hymn, In Christ there is no east or west, in him no south or north.

Sheep and goats notwithstanding, Jesus is emphatically not about dividing us into categories of who is acceptable and who is unacceptable. Everyone is invited to his feast, the leper and the rich young ruler, the Pharisee and the prostitute, the magi and the shepherd – that is exactly what got him killed by the ones who could not condone such thoughts -- and so I will go against any interpretation of this gospel story that says Jesus prefers Mary over Martha or contemplation over action.

It is invariably the Marthas who take issue with this story, who get their hackles raised, and for good reason. And I have been the Martha. I have been the one who says, “You know it is lovely to meditate and to be blissful, but, darn it, somebody has to teach Sunday School, somebody has to see that the service bulletin is proofed, somebody has to mow the grass. I hope the Marthas among us hear our gratitude for the work they do. Honestly, do you think Jesus would walk up this hill and tell the people who do these chores out of love for him that they are lesser disciples than the ones who read to their hearts content and chant with Hildegard of Bingen? Not a chance. So, I’m sorry if I upset anybody, but I don’t think that’s what it’s about. And I’m doubly sorry if it’s taken me twelve years to get to this conclusion.

I want to tell you about a summer afternoon about thirty-three years ago. It feels like day before yesterday, and my son Tyler was four years old. 
We were vacationing in Colorado and went to a late afternoon chamber music concert. It was casual, out on a lawn in sort of a natural amphitheater. The musicians were playing Ravel’s String Quartet in F Major, and there we were sitting on blankets in cut offs in the cool mountain air, when our towheaded little boy was so swept up by the music that he got up and danced, oblivious to everyone around him. He twirled and leapt and swooped  and spread his skinny little sun-tanned arms toward the deep blue sky as if he were lifted by a wind we could not see but could hear clearly as if the violins and viola and cello painted the music against the heavens. Obviously, I’ve never forgotten that day, the awe of the moment in which he forgot himself and was one with beauty.

I think that is what Luke means when he tells us this story the way he tells it. Do I think it happened? Yes. Of course I do. But every author shapes the truth  with his creative vision to enrich us, and I think Luke wants not so much  to rap the Martha of us on the knuckles but to invite us into the rapt attention of Mary, to let ourselves become so swept up  into the sheer joy of being in Jesus’ presence that we forget ourselves, to be so swept into the power of his love that we forget all our anxieties and preoccupations. There’s going to be plenty of time for us to sweep the floors and to wash the dishes and to arrange the spices in alphabetical order, but whenever Jesus is with us he wants us to be so present to him that we will rise up and dance to the divine music as if no one were watching and as if the moment would go on forever.

He wants us to be so present to his presence that we won’t stress over whether the table is set or the candles lighted or the roast getting just a little too done. I remember an old Dear Abby column in which she said that the most important thing about any dinner party was not what is on the table but who is in the chairs. And so our invitation for today is to join hands, Marthas and Marys, to listen, to listen deeply, to listen for the strains of silence and music, to let ourselves be lifted, to close our eyes, to touch the hands and brush the cheeks of our sisters and brothers and to be so present to the presence of our Christ that we are infinitely present in the moment of this blessing and to breathe a deep aaaaaah, which is nothing more nor less than a deep amen. 

Amen. Amen.