July 20, 2025

My friend Chris was someone I grew up with. We were very, very close friends. And he's one of those oldest friends that I even go back in my mind and can't really remember a time that I didn't know him. We grew up in the church together.

Through our childhood years in the high school, even though we lived in two separate communities, we continued to cultivate and have a deep and lasting relationship. One of the things that I remember most distinctly about Chris was my ability to be a kind of non-confrontational, non-anxious presence in his life. He had some developmental and behavioral difficulties that would sometimes make it really difficult to be a kind of functioning, positive presence. And the adults in the room would just get frustrated and not exactly know what to do.

And so often, I was able to just sit with him, to be that presence for him until he was able to kind of reorganize and reorder himself and come back in a more gentle and kind of approachable way. I learned later on in life when I started training to be a psychotherapist that there's a descriptor for this, called active listening skills, and I'm sure many of you in your own professional capacities have encountered this principle, that you're present. You're present in an engaged way, where you're paying attention, and you're responding to the other person, not obsessed, not fixated on what your reply is going to be or what your next thought is or how you might turn the conversation to something you want.

Now, admittedly, inasmuch as those are skills that I have cultivated professionally over the years, I still find myself often coming up short. I can't tell you the number of times that those active listening skills have been challenged when Anna has just one more thing she wants to say before brushing teeth, or before getting pajamas on, or before finally winding down for the end of the night. But it's still, in the back of my mind, that place, that wellspring of generosity, of compassion, of presence, that I know is ultimately the place of real nourishment and connectivity.

And today, we have one of the classic examples of this presented to us in our gospel passage, where Jesus is with Mary and Martha. And this passage is really striking if we understand the fuller cultural context as well. Mary is not just sitting at the feet of Jesus listening to him. But she's actively upending or avoiding what would have been culturally appropriate.

Hospitality is such a deeply rooted part of Levantine society to this day, to this day, that the first and primary impulse would have been to do, would have been to prepare, would have been to serve, to do all of the things that Martha is doing. And it's not a fault of hers that what she is caught up in is this place of service. It's what she would have naturally been inclined to do. And Jesus, in his responsiveness, upends the expected narrative.

But there's a more important, I think more fundamental piece of this too. Hospitality, kindness, compassion, generosity, those are all elements and hallmarks of a good, and loving society. But what is the end of those things? What is the purpose of them? And ultimately, it's the purpose of relationship, the deepening and strengthening of relationship, of caring for one another that we might be in fuller and closer fellowship with one another. The Westminster Shorter Catechism talks about our first and chief end as humanity being people who glorify and worship God so that we might enjoy God forever. But what is worship and glorification about if it's not ultimately about relationship?

And I think that's where Jesus is really drawing our focus and our attention today. It is about that commitment to relationship. And I dare say, even though in some ways we don't have the same cultural conditionality around hospitality, we very much resonate with this same impulse. We as Americans are a people of action. So much of our history is rooted in this impulse to do. You know, they talk in some ways. Historians of Christianity in the United States, even larger kind of cultural historians of our society, talk about the deep impact and influence that the so-called Protestant work ethic has had on the American psyche. This idea that we are only as valuable as our output, that we are only as meaningful as what we do. It's that same kind of impulse towards action that a context or a culture of hospitality has, but shaped and formed in a little bit different way. It's all at the end about our work, what work we have done, and what we can show forth with that work.

And all of that. All of that is being uprooted and reordered and challenged in today's readings. I love this section from Colossians that St. Paul offers us. Because when he talks about who Jesus is, there is this image that I have in my mind of the iconography of the Eastern Orthodox tradition. Because we have this beautiful descriptor of these attributes of Christ and who he is in the fullness of his being. And there's this tradition in Orthodoxy of the icons, the icons, these images. Being not static representations of things in the Bible, but windows. That's actually where this language of iconography comes from. Icons as windows into the reality of what you are seeing. And so quite literally as you sit before the icon, you are seeing the truth of the kingdom made real before you. You are seeing the lived experience of the church in the present moment. But that is drawn out, that is made real, that is made present by our ability to be present, to be quiet, to be attentive, to listen.

And so much of the time, we as a gathered community talk about action. So many times I stand here before you at this pulpit calling us to action. But all of that, all of that in some fundamental way is secondary to relationship. Because what is our action devoid of the purpose for which we do the action? What is our ministry if there's nothing more than hospitality and kindness behind it? Who are we as a people? And what is our offering of new life to the world beyond the activities we are involved in? What is it that we are giving in the fullness of our being to those around us?

And it is, I would offer today, the relationship that we are granted and a joy and given in the presence of our Lord, of our God, who shapes and forms and sends us out. Because it's not sufficient just to dwell on the worship, the relationship, the depth of presence, even as that may be the focus today. Because ultimately, if we take the fullness of Jesus' teachings, action must necessarily be a part. Our responsiveness must necessarily be a part. But it is an integrated whole with this element of relationship.

And so today as we encounter this great story of Mary and Martha, I think it's so very easy for us to bifurcate the two. To say that Mary was in the right and Martha was in the wrong. In a sense, that's what Jesus is suggesting. But if we take the larger narrative of the Gospels as a whole, of Jesus' earthly ministry as a whole, of even St. Paul's teachings to us as a whole, and the whole of Holy Scripture. What we learn is that it's not that Martha was right or wrong. It was that she wasn't being present to the moment that was before her. That her impulse towards action was not misplaced as it was so much just a misappropriation of that energy. At the time that it was needed.

And so for us, in this present moment, in a world where things seem so chaotic and frenetic. And our impulse is to do something. In that moment of chaos. To do anything. To act. There are times, like this present moment where we are simply called to be present, to be quiet, to listen, to worship, and to hear what our depth of relationship with Christ is bringing out of us.

One of my favorite poets who I've quoted many times before from this pulpit is the Irish poet Seamus Heaney. And I want to offer this as an ending for us today. Because the other side of this too is that that place of presence is not always confined to the places where we expect it. And as much as I want to sit here and tell you all how important it is to be here in this place for this community and this style and form of worship today. Sometimes that place of deepest relationship comes in the spaces and places which also are unexpected.

One of Heaney's most famous poems is called When All the Others Were Away at Mass.

"When all the others were away at mass, I was all hers and we peeled potatoes. They broke the silence, let fall one by one like solder weeping from the soldering iron. Cold comforts set between us, things to share. gleaming in a bucket of clean water. And again let fall little pleasant splashes from each other's work would bring us to our senses. So while the parish priest at her bedside went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying, and some were responding and some were crying, I remembered her head bent towards my head. Her breath and mine are fluent dipping knives, never closer the whole rest of our lives."

Relationship is found in many places and spaces. And even within our own community, we have those experiences of finding that depth of relationship here and in places far from here.

But I want to invite us this morning to be attentive to those spaces and places of relationship. To be attentive to the moments of quiet. Quiet and silent and present contemplation. Where we can hear and be more attentive to the presence of God in our midst. And maybe too, to be attentive and present to the places where we are being God for each other. Being Christ for each other. Being the people of deep and lasting love. The attentiveness that we hear in God's presence through others in our lives and the spaces and places where we might be that presence for others.

And it all led us in the depth of that moment, that presence, that sense of deep listening, find evermore the wellspring and love of our relationship with God. That we might eventually go back out and do and be the things for this world that we are called to be. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.