You are Holy and You are Wholly Loved

We sometimes think of parts of the whole being separate from the whole.

We see ourselves within the context of the adjectives used to describe ourselves.

We are blue collar and white collar as if those are two opposing groups bearing no relation to one another.

We are blue and we are red.

Pink is for girls, blue is for boys.

We are human, every other living thing is part of the animal kingdom.

We are above and they are below.

We are upstairs, we are downstairs.

We are separated within creation, a part of creation, and yet never truly of creation.

Where Paul says, “…just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body.” we sometimes see ourselves as exceptional, our separateness, our individuality away from the parts that make up who we are.

We tend to relish our individuality and we favor it so much, so much sometimes to the detriment of who we are as a people, as God’s people.

We find ourselves put out when we are not recognized for our singular accomplishments, our achievements.

We can rely sometimes on the number of home runs we hit rather than the number of wins by the team as an indicator of our success.

This is a very human trait.

We want to be recognized, we want to see ourselves as accomplished, we wish to be lauded and receive metaphorical scratches atop the head and behind the ears.

Our individuality matters and it can matter a great deal.

And it makes sense, because we do want the best captain to pilot the boat, the best hands to work the deck, the best engineers to keep it running.

Yet we can go too far: without the best engineers, the best captain will be adrift at sea when the engines fail.

We can sometimes mistake our expertise, our individual talents with being the reason for the success of the whole when it is the parts of the whole that keep the ship afloat.

And I started thinking about all of this last week at chapel when our bishop was preaching about creation care and how he talked about all of us being created in God’s image and God’s image is not just humanity, but all of creation.

We are all created in God’s image and God’s image is all of creation.

God is the captain, the engineer, the deckhand.

God is all of it.

It is not Deus ex machina but rather Deus est machina.

God is the machine and we are images of that machine.

God is not separating us, distinguishing us between workers and capital, mansion dwellers and ranch owners.

We do that, God does not.

And then there is Martha and Mary.

There’s good ole Mary sitting at the feet of Jesus, taking it all in, his words, his movements, his everything.

She is enthralled.

And I can picture the scene so clearly, perhaps Mary is sitting on a clay floor pounded down so no marks are left when one sits on it, hard enough to be swept, cleared of the desert earth that sometimes blows in through the open doors and windows along with the cooling evening breeze.

This is Martha’s house.

She keeps a clean house, she is proud to let guests in without having to apologize for the tunics strewn across the sofa, the dirty dishes leftover from breakfast.

There are no tunics strewn on the sofa; the dishes are done promptly after breakfast.

Martha is a good host and she works hard at being one.

She coordinates Jesus’ discussion, she ensures everything is organized and isn’t it interesting that we read this text and automatically think that her many tasks are related to setting out tea and sandwiches and not the tasks associated with hosting a dignitary, a friend, a revolutionary?

Now culturally, certainly food and drink is a major part of hospitality in a first century Palestinian household yet it is far more than providing shawarma and mint tea.

There is a level of organization needed to be a proper host, tasks that take one out of the confines of a kitchen.

Martha becomes frustrated.

She is doing all this work coordinating Jesus’ arrival and there is Mary just sitting there; at least that’s how it appears in Martha’s eyes.

And Martha complains, perhaps she walks in from a backroom into the front room, the scene of Mary just sitting there, it gets to her.

She’s steaming.

She’s a good host, she made sure everything is set before and during his arrival.

She is tired.

And Mary is sitting.

So Martha sternly says, “Jesus,” before it was an epithet, “tell this woman to help me.”

And Jesus, probably in his familiar and perhaps infuriating way to Martha, replies “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”

Did Jesus just tell Martha to chill?

Sometimes, when reading this passage in the right mood and with the right squint, I can hear Martha’s eyeroll from across the centuries.

We can read this as Martha being admonished, as being told that we need not have to work so hard to receive the word of God.

We just need to sit at the feet of God to receive the Word and understand salvation.

Or we can read this as two people, formed in the image of God, formed as an image of the totality of creation, serving two parts as part of the whole.

In Paul, we read that Jesus is the image of the invisible God, for in him all things were created.

And we too are created in the image of God.

God is both the taskmaster, the creator who out of nothing formed creation and the teacher who gave us the law.

Martha is frustrated, yes, but I do not think Jesus tells her work, her hospitality, her ministry as diakonos, is worthless, in fact, it is necessary.

I do think Jesus is warning Martha away from exhaustion and distraction, that her work is taking her away from her mission, that of being present to the Lord, the very Son of God.

There would be no place to stay, no visit to be had, no feet to sit by if it wasn’t for Martha’s work and hospitality.

And there would be no reason for such a visit if the Word was not listened to and given our undivided attention.

Both parts create a value, a necessity for the whole, the whole in this case being the sharing of Christ’s liberating message, a message that tells us to love each other as ourselves.

There would be no visit without love.

Love is creation and creation is love.

Martha distinguishes her own work from Mary’s, perhaps she wishes to be recognized ahead of what Mary is doing, perhaps that is cause for admonishment, but that does not mean Martha’s work is irrelevant or unnecessary.

When we look to separate the actions of Mary and Martha, we are creating a false separation, a false dichotomy of which is the preferred mode of being.

Perhaps there should be no preferred mode of work, but an acknowledgement that both are good, both are an expression of love and how best we are able to share that love.

What is good, what is a part of the whole, is Martha serving.

What is good, what is a part of the whole, is Mary listening.

And so we express God’s love by our very act of being, being who we are and who we are gifted to be.

We are given the gift to love; we love each other as God loves us.

The very essence of what we are worshiping, or rather if you prefer, who we are worshiping is love.

It is unchanging.

It is eternal.

No, love does not die, love does not change based on what role we play.

Love does not die because love simply is.

And it is because it is.

It is creation.

It is a conversation heard at the foot of Christ.

It is action taken to ensure that all are welcomed, all are rested, all are given a place to share in God’s word.

It is God.

And when we seek to make ourselves greater than the whole, longer lasting than the eternal, when we seek to be above and not within, then we are missing the better part.

That part is love.

The better part is love.

Try as we might, we cannot escape who we are, created in love, created in the image of the totality of creation.

As individuals we are loved as the whole.

We are created and wholly loved.

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