A Sermon Preached at St. Stephen’s on July 22, 2007, by the Rev. Cork Tarplee

            My sermon this morning is about Mary and Martha, and particularly about why Jesus would praise Mary for sitting around doing nothing while her poor sister worked her fingers to the bone.  To illustrate the Mary frame of mind, the best I can do is to repeat for you a poem by another Mary, distinguished American poet Mary Oliver.  It is called “The Summer Day:”

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Jesus’ praise of Mary is remarkable in a number of ways.  First, it is an affirmation that discipleship and religious studies were appropriate roles for a woman.  In an age and culture in which women were relegated to household work, Jesus instead praises a woman for discipleship and study.  Second, this praise of Mary directly confronts our cultural notion that what matters in this world is productivity.  But mostly, I think, Jesus’ praise of the Mary frame of mind is wonderful good news for anyone who gets caught up in performing up to expectation, to anyone driven to distraction by a need to win approval, anyone who for even a moment believes their value in this world is measured by what they accomplish.

Jesus speaks to the Martha in all of us: “Martha, dear Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things.” And indeed he’d find Martha today, as one woman pastor in Chicago put it, “working at a computer, checking her Blackberry or talking on her cell phone while driving and eating lunch.  She could be on a treadmill while making appointments for the next day.  She could be grading papers, her phone held between cheek and shoulder, checking in with family about coming home late.”  Sound familiar?

To all those over-driven moments in our lives in which we think it all depends on us, Jesus says, “Martha, dear Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; only one thing is needed.”  That one thing is trust in the power that created us—and demands only that we pay attention to the glory of the universe.

What is it YOU plan to do with your one wild and precious life?  AMEN