Distracted or Devoted or ….?

My home is messy. My task list is a mile long, and rather than make headway with it, I just seem to keep adding to it. The books I plan to read have filled a basket, a shelf under a little table and there are piles next to my bed … and that’s before you consider the e-books on the Kindle  app. The planner for the week is too full for comfort. I’m travelling next week and still have lots to organise if I am to maximise the time away. 

But it is the beginning of the month. And my planner says that I should take a half day mini-retreat this morning. I aim to do that most months. It was a busy weekend and this coming week is already looking quite full. I really don’t have time to take a mini-retreat. But, somewhat grudgingly, I sit down with my journal and Bible. 

Martha, Mary and Me

This past weekend, I attended a day conference for evangelical women in academia. One of the workshops, one I was committed to attending because the presenter is a friend, was on the topic ‘Martha, Mary and me’.  This was the fourth time in as many weeks that the story of Martha and Mary (Luke 10:38-42) has been brought to my attention. And now, for the fourth time in as many weeks, I shall blog on the topic.

Despite having spent plenty of time in this passage recently, there were new-to-me insights to be gleaned. Many, in fact. I am not going to reproduce all that my friend had to say in this blog post. Her insights will come as part of a book made up of the papers presented that day. But it got me thinking. 

Mary – a woman in a man’s world 

I’d never thought about the social implications in first century Israel of what Mary did. Her deliberate decision to sit at Jesus’ feet, leaving her sister to do the work of hosting, was actually quite shocking. Scholar N.T. Wright puts it this way:

“… obvious to any first-century reader, and to many readers in Turkey, the Middle East and many other parts of the world to this day would be the fact that Mary was sitting at Jesus’ feet within the male part of the house rather than being kept in the back rooms with the other women….”

“She is ‘sitting at his feet’; a phrase which doesn’t mean what it would mean today, the adoring student gazing up in admiration and love at the wonderful teacher. As is clear from the use of the phrase elsewhere in the NT (for instance, Paul with Gamaliel), to sit at the teacher’s feet is a way of saying you are being a student, picking up the teacher’s wisdom and learning; and in that very practical world you wouldn’t do this just for the sake of informing your own mind and heart, but in order to be a teacher, a rabbi, yourself.”

http://ntwrightpage.com/2016/07/12/womens-service-in-the-church-the-biblical-basis/ accessed 5 August 2019

Well, that changes the way I view this righteous rebel. And the application to women in academia today – the target group at the conference – is obvious. While I recognise that there are many valid reasons for men to far outnumber women in postgraduate theological study, I am personally encouraged to keep puddling away at my (very part-time) theological college student role. 

The difference, of course, is that nobody else is going to pick up the responsibility for domestic chores at home.

Distracted

Martha, as a dutiful first century Jewish woman and hostess, was distracted by all that had to be done.  I’m quite sympathetic to Martha, actually. This morning, as I surveyed my dirty kitchen and the piles of stuff on and under the living room table, I was distracted too. 

The Chinese Union Version translation of Luke’s description of Martha is even more descriptive. It says that her heart was 忙乱 (mángluàn), meaning ‘hurried and harried’ (verse 40). Jesus then says that she is 思虑烦扰 (sīlǜ fǎnrǎo), meaning that she wasn’t thinking straight (verse 41). If you look carefully, you will see that the Chinese characters contain a lot of hearts, represented by 心 and 忄. The character 烦, meaning ‘vexed’ contains the radical for a fire (火). If you type that character into a modern Chinese keyboard, it will suggest a red-faced emoji 😡. The final character, 扰, meaning ‘to agitate’, contains a radical for a hand 扌，suggesting action 👋. That’s what Martha was like that day. She was busy, busy, busy but her heart was all over the place.

Some would say that my generation is a distracted generation. Mobile phones, smart watches, devices which facilitate multi-tasking like never before … we are rarely disconnected from the myriad of things for which we have some responsibility. The very gadgets that were designed to make our lives easier often make us more distracted than ever. Our hearts are all over the place, and our hands are rarely still.

Devotion

Mary, on the other hand, sat and listened to Jesus. Yet this sitting and listening was not as passive as I had once thought. First, as mentioned earlier, Mary was defying social conventions as she sat at Jesus’ feet. And second, as our Lord Jesus pointed out, Mary had chosen to sit and listen (verse 42).  

In my current situation – working out of a home office in what was, this morning, a messy, dirty unit – it took a deliberate choice to ‘sit at Jesus’ feet’ rather than get on with all that was screaming out for attention. I know that it is even harder for friends and colleagues working in roles in which there is an expectation of high productivity and/or their presence at any and every meeting. 

Spending time in prayer and Bible study rather than making headway on the task list may be perceived as laziness, but it actually needs to be a deliberate choice for God’s people. Those whose roles are formally classed as ‘ministry’ and who influence others through their work have even more of a responsibility to keep spiritually sharp.

Spending time on social media or reading gardening magazines for leisure isn’t bad in and of itself but needs to be kept in check. Poor organisational skills are no excuse for missing important deadlines. But spending time in contemplative prayer and learning from our Master, even at the expense of some productivity, is a choice Jesus endorsed in Mary’s day. 

A walk

After taking time to prayerfully reflect on the story of Martha and Mary (yet again) this morning, I then finished my half-day retreat with a quick walk before tackling the task list this afternoon. As I returned home, I was struck by how small my unit looked compared to the broad blue sky across which grey and white clouds hung. My attention and energies were focused on such a very tiny area of God’s great creation. Why waste all that angst and emotional energy on a few disordered piles within that tiny unit. It’s all a question of perspective. 

I came home, put on some worshipful music, and slowly created some order. My unit is no longer messy, but it is still dirty. Next I sat at the computer and continued on in the same vein. I’ve only made a small dent in the task list, but it doesn’t seem to matter as much as it did just a few hours ago. 

May we each make that conscious choice, day after day, even moment by moment, to have a heart like Mary’s. Yes, we unavoidably live in a busy world, but that’s no excuse. May we defy social conventions of our day to be always available to everyone who ‘needs’ us. May we disconnect from time to time from our complicated networks of people to spend time connecting with Jesus.

Martha was never rebuked for her productivity. That wasn’t the issue. The issue was her heart. Mary had chosen the better way, and it would not be taken from her. May we, too, choose the better way … though ideally balancing that appropriately with our work.