Fifth Sunday after Trinity
READING:
Luke 10: 38- end

Responding to A Holy Guest

Just imagine this scene for a moment. The narrow courtyard scented with bread just pulled from the oven, the low afternoon sun illuminates the floor, Martha’s sleeves rolled high while pots hiss and clatter; Mary, cross-legged in the doorway, eyes fixed on Jesus, oblivious to the rising steam and her sister’s rising temper.

If you listen closely you may even hear the huff of Martha’s breath before she finally bursts: “Lord, don’t you care…?” This sibling spat has echoed down the centuries because it is our own. It’s played out every time duty jostles against desire, every time our prayer list or prayer space collides with our to-do list, especially our church to do list..

Two Movements of One Dance

Luke, in the reading we’ve heard today, is sparing with details, yet the scene rings so true. Martha is doing what first-century hospitality, and every good heart, expects: feeding the guest. Mary is being what every disciple longs to be: utterly present in the presence of Christ. Jesus honours Mary’s posture, but he does not dishonour Martha’s work. He merely names what has crept into her service: merimnao ….in other words that her mind was pulled apart, anxious, divided. She was pulled in many directions. So the God of abundance had been replaced by the notion of scarcity: too little help, too little time, too little recognition.

Richard Rohr , a Franciscan friar from New Mexico, helps us avoid turning the sisters into competing mascots for activism and contemplation. “The goal,” he says, “is to become Martha…but only after we have sat like Mary.” Action that flows from contemplation is not frantic but free, not grudging but graceful. It is the difference between labouring for God and labouring with the God who is always there, always along side us. In that shift, the kitchen becomes as holy as the prayer rug; bread dough as sacramental as the broken bread of the Eucharist.

Incarnation in an Apron

Look again at Martha. Her instinct is profoundly incarnational: if God is truly among us, then God must be fed, sheltered, made comfortable. She embodies the conviction that the Gospel shows up in kitchens and community halls as much as in cathedrals. But incarnation without contemplation easily tips into self-importance. The meal becomes a mirror, reflecting our competence rather than God’s generosity. Martha’s trouble is not that she is busy; it is that her busyness has lost its centre. She is, to borrow another Rohr phrase, “a human doing who has forgotten she is first a human being.”

Mary, meanwhile, offers a living parable of abundance-in-stillness. She dares to believe there is enough time to sit; enough dignity to let the pots wait; enough grace to receive before she gives. In economic terms it looks wasteful; in Kingdom terms it is the very soil from which fruitful service will sprout. The “better part” is not a ranking of siblings but a reminder of sequence: presence, then practice; listening, then labour.

The Third Way

Our theology, what we believe about God, should resist the binary that our culture keeps selling us: either relentless output or irrelevant piety. In the life of our churches it is important that all we are and all we do centres on Christ . Some believe that a healthy church should live out 4 Cs—Commerce, Culture, Compassion, Congregation and depend on a fifth C at the centre: Christ. Only when Christ’s abundance is the deep aquifer beneath our activity can we sustain generous commerce, creative culture, courageous compassion, and prayerful congregation without burning out.

In our congregations the Mary–Martha tension often appears as programme overload on one hand and prayer-meeting fatigue on the other. What if we reframed every rota, budget line, and outreach scheme as Martha-work that must be immersed first in Mary-time?

A PCC meeting that begins with twenty silent minutes of Lectio Divina, a contemplative way of reading and reflecting on a short bible passage ; a foodbank team that pauses mid-shift to bless the canned tomatoes; a grant-writing session that opens by listening for God’s yearning for the neighbourhood. There are small but revolutionary acts of abundance.

Non-Dual Living: The Kitchen-Chapel

Rohr’s non-dual vision invites us to see that the kitchen is the chapel when awareness is whole. In non-dual space the boundaries blur: flour dust mingles with incense, spreadsheets with psalms, activism with adoration.

The question is not where we meet Jesus, but how we meet him…..distracted or devoted. Ironically, Mary’s stillness may demand more courage than Martha’s sweat, for it exposes our secret fear that unless we keep spinning plates, the world, or at least the parish, will topple . Contemplative prayer reveals the deeper truth: God is already in the room, inviting us to join the dance, not direct it.

Abundance in a Time-Starved Age

We often say we do not have time to pray because so much needs doing. Jesus gently replies that we may be doing so much because we have not first made time to pray.

Contemplation is not an escape from responsibility; it is the spaciousness that makes loving responsibility possible. Like soil left fallow, the soul that rests can yield a richer harvest.

Imagine Martha returning to the kitchen after pulling up a stool beside her sister. The menu might not change, but the flavour does: anxiety seasons the stew with bitterness; contemplation stirs in gratitude. The same hands chop, stir, and serve, yet they do so lightly, alive to the Guest who shares both table and toil.

I Wonder…

• I wonder where my service has become a complaint rather than a gift.
• I wonder what one small Mary-moment I might slip into tomorrow’s day .

So let’s remember : We are often not just busy—but divided pulled apart in too many directions . And Jesus invites us, not to abandon responsibility, but to re-centre our hearts.

A Closing Prayer

Holy Guest and Gentle Host,

draw us to your feet until
our hearts are quiet in your presence;

then send us to the sink,
the streets, the spreadsheets
not driven by need but carried by love.

May our listening deepen our labour,

and our labour return us to listening,

until every breath and every task

speaks one language:
your abundance.

Amen.