By The Rev. Mark A. Michael, Interim Rector

“Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.” St. Luke 14:27

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Last Sunday after the 8:00 service, Ralph Tildon came up to me and told me that my sermon had reminded him of a movie. “We’re No Angels,” was based on the passage about welcoming the stranger that I had taken as my text. I don’t expect you’ve ever heard of the movie either, as it never broke number 8 in the box office listing when it came out in 1989. But it was a slow Sunday evening, so Allison and I watched it together.

The movie tells the story of two bumbling convicts who escaped from a prison and were taken into a monastery, after being mistaken for famous Biblical scholars. The convicts are played by Sean Penn and Robert DeNiro, and for me it was worth the cost of the rental to see Robert DeNiro trotting around in an old fashioned priest’s cassock and biretta. The plot plays out as you would expect when two semi-illiterate, chain-smoking cons try to pose as holy men in the midst of a massive manhunt.

The climax of the film comes when Father Brown, aka Jim the convict, is spontaneously invited to give the sermon at the monastery’s annual festival. Jim is Sean Penn’s character, a relatively kind hearted fellow who looks about fourteen. By this point in the movie, you know to wince when he opens his mouth, but you’re also on his side.

Jim starts off the sermon by cribbing lines from a gun advertisement he’s slipped between the pages of his prayer book. He talks about how people live in fear, how they need a helper, how so many of the things we depend on really don’t do much good for us. As the background music swells, Jim’s remarks build up to this statement.

God good? I don’t know. All I know is something might give you comfort. And maybe you deserve it. If it comforts you to believe in God, you do it, that’s Your business…you want to go believe in something, well that’s not so bad.

And then Jim steps back from the microphone, and the priests behind him smile, and the people applaud. Not the finest oratory, we’re meant to think, but you know, the old boy has made a point.

He’s made, in fact, the one point about religion that’s supposed to bind all of us Americans together: “If it comforts you to believe in God, you do it, that’s your business.” Religious practices and feelings, whatever they might be, we assume, have a purpose, a recognizable social good—they help people get through things. Life is tough, and it’s nice to have God on your side.

A large crowd was following Jesus, most of them probably just looking for a little comfort. Jesus was a deeply compassionate and generous person, whose presence brought joy to so many of those He encountered. He spoke with wisdom and authority. Just before this, he had called out a leader of the Pharisees for his hypocrisy and spoke of the generous welcome God was extending to those so often scorned or ignored. Jesus also had real power. He healed people of diseases they had suffered from birth. He cast out demons and raised the dead.

But this day He wasn’t doing any miracles, and He was much more interested in challenging than comforting this curious crowd. He asks them to think about what they really want from him, what they really want out of life.

The line that probably sticks out for us is this one: “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.” Now, in Jesus’ language there weren’t comparative adjectives, so hate here probably means “love less,” as in the clarifying phrase Jesus used in another place in the Gospels, “He who loves father or mother more than me cannot be my disciple.[1]”

So Jesus is not saying that you should hate your mother or your spouse, but He does mean that you shouldn’t put them first in your life. You should not seek in them for the meaning, the joy, the hope that compels you. Similarly, He is probably not requiring you give away all your possessions, though some have served Him by doing this in every age, and the Church’s witness has always been stronger for it. So, maybe not giving them all away, but not clinging to them for your security, your sense of dignity.

Jesus asks the crowd to tally up the things they put first in their life. A man who builds a tower wants to be sure he has enough to finish it. A king wants to make sure his army is strong enough to face the opponent before he sets out into battle. Ask yourself, He’s saying—is your bank balance really enough to give you what you need out of life? Your job, your set of hobbies, your friendships, the love in your family—will they provide you with enough to get by when you must give account for your life; on that day when, as He put it in another parable, “your soul is required of you?[2]”

Part of what Jesus is saying here is something that spiritual people have always said—you can’t take it with you, all good things come to an end. Detachment from worldly things will help you find the meaning you’ve been seeking. You’re a spiritual being, seek a spiritual foundation for your life. There’s nothing particularly original about this, though it certainly needs to be said. The wise men of the Old Testament said as much, and there are echoes of this in the teachings of most of the world’s religions.

It’s that other thing that Jesus said that would have given his listeners pause—not hating your mother, but carrying a cross. We think of the cross as a religious symbol, but to people of Jesus time it was an obscene horror. Death by crucifixion was the great unmentionable subject of the ancient world. Though we know it was very common, it’s almost completely absent from contemporary literature. Even after a Christian emperor outlawed crucifixion, it was centuries before someone could bring themselves to create a picture of Jesus suffering on a cross.[3] It was an almost unbelievably gruesome method of execution, reserved for slaves and rebels. Jews believed that the crucified were cursed by God, and Romans, by law, could not be subjected to it.

But of course, Jesus couldn’t stop talking about crucifixion. In fact, he was headed to Jerusalem to be crucified, as He seems to be telling anyone who would listen. And here he is, describing the kind of life he is holding out to His followers, the good life He was sent to reveal to them, as a crucifixion: “Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.” You must come and die with me—hate your own life–and only then will you be free.

What Jesus is doing here is calling the whole way we ordinarily think about religion into question. If all we really needed was a little more spiritual insight, a little more health, a little comfort to perk us up when we’re down—well there’d be no need for anyone to be crucified. After all, God had sent wise men before and prophets who healed. But the problem goes deeper than that. As Stephen Westerholm has written in speaking of Jesus’ crucifixion, “so catastrophic a remedy demands a catastrophic predicament.[4]”

Jesus doesn’t say it here directly, but the truth is that we’re not doing nearly as well as we often assume. We are in fact, under the power of sin. The idea that we really control our lives is an unfortunate illusion, as our constant inability to control our desires shows us again and again. Death stands before us, ridiculing all our aspirations and projects. A deep and unbridgeable divide separates us from the God who loves us, but whose unflinching justice demands that we make answer for our sin. “There is never just one transgression,” says the wise preacher John Ames in Marilynne Robinson’s novel Gilead, “There is a wound in the flesh of human life that scars when it heals and often enough seems never to heal at all.[5]” Count it up, Jesus is saying. How do you reckon yourself on that day when the books are opened and all stands revealed? Can you possibly measure up?

None of us can measure up. That’s why don’t just need a comforter, we need a Redeemer. We need one who will lay down His life in our place, and then come back from death to bind us to Himself forever. We don’t just need wisdom or strength, we need conversion, baptism—to be put to death, the old man cast behind us, and to be reborn by God’s grace to an entirely new way of life. We need Jesus as the master of our life, the One whose guidance we seek in all things, the One on whose grace we depend. Saint Paul described it perfectly, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.[6]”

Maybe a little comfort was all you really wanted from Jesus today, an assurance that the Big Guy would give you some help in that life you think you control. But what Jesus offers is the healing and renewal of your soul that you really need. But that’s the life that comes through taking up the cross, through surrendering control. Only then can we be open to receive the boundless joy and peace which Jesus shares.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

[1] Matt. 10:37.

[2] Lk. 12:20. C.f. Green, Joel. Luke. New International Commentary on the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997, 565.

[3] Rutledge, Fleming. The Crucifixion. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 82.

[4] qtd.in Rutledge, 200.

[5] qtd. in Rutledge, 195.

[6] Gal. 2:20.

By The Rev. Mark A. Michael, Interim Rector

“Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.” Hebrews 13:2

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Frank[1] drank his coffee strong and black, and he liked bacon hot from the pan. He was indifferent when it came to fried eggs and couldn’t quite see the point of buttered toast.

I learned the menu well for Frank’s annual visit when I was the rector in Cooperstown, New York. In Cooperstown, we had what we called “the August people,” who head out from New York and Boston to escape the late summer heat beside our shimmering lake. Frank was one of them, coming every year for a day or two when August turns into September. Unlike those other August people, who spent the night between the fine linen sheets of the Otesaga Hotel, Frank bedded down on the couch in Saint Agnes Chapel.

Frank, you see, was a hobo. I guess “transient” is the proper term, or “homeless person,” but hobo has more dignity to it, and that’s the one thing Frank had never lost. He was “king of the road,” planning his journeys to take in the best weather and the most interesting company. He still whistled and loved to tell stories and valued the freedom his way of life provided.

Saint Agnes Chapel had never been fitted with a lock, so we had hobos from time to time. By the time I came in to read Morning Prayer most were long gone, but Frank was a late riser and he joined in the prayers. The first time I asked if I could make him some breakfast, he politely refused, but eventually it became a routine. At first, Frank would eat his meal alone in the Chapel. But eventually, he trusted me enough to eat together at the picnic table on the Rectory porch.  Once you got him started, Frank was a fount of tales about the road, observations about society, slightly bizarre religious opinions.

Frank was wise to be wary of me, he’d been battered around enough by those in charge, but he came to trust me, I think. My hospitality grew from something offered up mostly because it was the right thing to do into a deeper kind of fellowship, a pleasure in each other’s company. We sometimes still fished around a bit to find an unaccustomed way of getting our point across. We each knew that we were reaching across a divide, and that’s never easy.

The last time I saw him, Frank came to the Rectory door, and I think he had something to tell me. But I was busy, not ready for a visitor. I don’t remember what it was now. Maybe I needed to pick up the children or finish a task around the house. There just wasn’t time to sit and chat. Did he need something, I asked, some food or some money for medicine again? Maybe we could talk in the morning, when things weren’t so pressing, I said.

Frank wasn’t in the Chapel the next morning, and I never saw him again. That conversation with him on the Rectory porch continues to haunt me. If some have entertained angels without knowing it, maybe some who were afraid or too busy have sent them packing? I saw Frank’s id card once—needed it for my records when I was covering his prescription. Interestingly, it didn’t say “Frank,” which didn’t surprise me that much. But it didn’t say “Gabriel, messenger of the Most High” either. But there was something odd about that encounter, and I wonder what I might have missed when I was too busy to welcome the stranger.

True Christian hospitality, hospitality shaped by the Gospel of Jesus Christ, is radical and costly. These words from Hebrews, and Jesus’ call in today’s Gospel to spread a banquet for “the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind” are certainly prompting us to be kind, to look out for the less fortunate, to value diversity. But if we think that’s all that’s meant by them, we’re letting ourselves off far too easily.

Fellowship that crossed rigid social barriers had a central role in Jesus’ ministry. In today’s Gospel reading Jesus was breaking bread at the house of a prominent Pharisee, but He was more famous as One who “welcomes sinners, and eats with them.[2]” Jesus message was good news for the lowly, who found themselves blessed and honored in His kingdom. His grace is the answer to the universal problems of sin and death. So every person, no matter his social standing, race or language, is a potential follower of Jesus, someone to whom the Gospel message is addressed. As St. Peter summarized on that day when the first Gentiles were converted, “”I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him… All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.[3]”

In the second part of today’s Gospel reading, Jesus urges His followers to use the meals they host as parables of this new kingdom, occasions where there was “no partiality” for those esteemed in the world. The guests gathered in the Pharisees’ dining room knew that religious people often looked down on the poor as morally inferior, and that “the crippled, the lame, and the blind” had been banned from the priesthood and the temple’s ceremonies by the Old Testament law. Jesus was poor, but you can bet there were no crippled, lame or blind guests sharing the Pharisee’s table that day. But it should be different at the tables spread by Jesus’s followers—in the dining room and at the Eucharistic Altar. There all should be welcome, especially those whom no one else will claim. The church is truest to its Lord when it dismantles the barriers that keep people apart and cultivates trust and love between people who are dramatically different from one another.

And these are not easy tasks. A significant part of Saint Paul’s pastoral work was spent trying to help Jews and Gentiles learn how to get along with each other. The Epistle of James sharply rebukes a congregation that shows partiality to the rich while giving the poor the cold shoulder.[4] Most every church nowadays has a slogan about everyone being welcome, but there are few where deep friendships are forged across the barriers of race, education, class, political affiliation. We may kneel side by side at the Altar rail, but how often do we sit across one another’s kitchen tables?

My ultimately failed experiment with being a host to Frank reveals part of why this is difficult. People who have been battered around by our society are reasonably wary of trusting those who have power, afraid that someone might take advantage of their vulnerability, or just look on them as tokens of their own generosity. On the other hand, when we’re used to presenting a carefully controlled image of polished success to the world, it can feel threatening to reveal the messiness of how it really is: a sink full of dishes, children bouncing off the walls, fear and pain just below the surface. Hospitality also requires patience, a willingness to listen and flexibility in the face of the unpredictable. Trust takes time, and so often in the lives we lead, time is in such short supply.

Here at Saint Timothy’s, this part of Jesus’s message is very important to you. Your mission statement says that you aspire to be a congregation “that treasures all people” and that here we “open our doors to everyone.” The last time the Diocese of Virginia did a survey of such things, you ranked as the most racially diverse Episcopal congregation in Fairfax County. I know that many of you have formed deep friendships across major social barriers.

But we still have room to grow. Over the last five years you have fostered the growth of a Spanish-speaking congregation, beginning by offering warm hospitality to an outside prayer group with no place to worship. When the question was posed quite directly a few years ago, you decided that we would be “one Saint Timothy’s,” a congregation active in worshipping in two languages and ministering to two different cultures.

That’s a good slogan, and structurally speaking, it remains true. But as a description of our relationships with each other, it remains largely an aspiration. A few of you come to the Saturday evening service even though your Spanish is pretty rusty, and you sit down at parish events to chat with our Latino parishioners even though conversation is difficult. I’m grateful for that, and I know our Spanish-speaking parishioners are as well. But I wish there was more of it.

Because I believe that God is holding out an important opportunity to all of us in this invitation to become “one Saint Timothy’s.” Our Epistle reminds us that the strangers we welcome often bring unexpected blessings. Three mysterious visitors came unbidden to Abram’s tent, and the great patriarch had time for them, and spread a feast. They announced that his prayers had been answered and that God would send Him a son, the heir of the promise.

When I shared breakfast with Frank, I always felt that it was Frank who was enriching my life. I brought the bacon and the eggs. He brought the wisdom and the memorable stories. When I worship with our Saturday evening congregation, I’m reminded that my Spanish vocabulary comes up short. But I’m also moved by the joy in their singing, their reverence before the Holy Sacrament, their excitement about sharing the faith. People are going door to door in Herndon with brochures about what God is doing at Saint Timothy’s, and those brochures are in Spanish, not English.

When you make space at your tables and in your hearts for strangers, sometimes you give God space to do something truly wonderful. When you take up the patient work of breaking down social barriers, unexpected renewal often follows. Or you can be in a hurry, with plenty of guests to serve already, thank you very much. And the hidden angels will be on their way, knocking at another door, where someone else might have faith enough to welcome them.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

[1] Not his real name.

[2] Luke 15:2.

[3] Acts 10:34-35,43.

[4] James 2:1-7.

By The Rev. Mark A. Michael, Interim Rector

“They were stoned to death, they were sawn in two, they were killed by the sword; they went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, persecuted, tormented—of whom the world was not worthy.” Hebrews 11:37-38

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

They stared out from the frescoes on the walls that faced toward the large baptismal font, their eyes determined, confident, serene. The bodies of the saints, wrapped in the vestments of archbishops and abbots, were static and grand, timeless like the figures in most Orthodox ikons. But there was something unusual in their faces—an unexpected wrinkle here, a drooping eyelid there. Was that the mark of a scar?

I asked the guide about them. They were, in fact, portraits, he said. Father Cyprian, the master iconographer, had known these men. He’d done the faces himself. The saints were leaders of his own time. Some had been his friends. Perhaps he’d served alongside some of them at the Divine Liturgy, or they’d sat in the shade to share a glass together on a summer’s afternoon, back before the awful civil war and the ransacking of the monasteries, back when mother Russia was a land of monks and holy men.

They were the modern martyrs, the guide said, they’d given their lives for the Gospel in that bloodiest of centuries, the twentieth. The Communists had sent them to glory with the machine gun and the hand-grenade. Father Cyprian had escaped, and along with the scattered remnants of several other religious houses, he’d helped to found this monastery, Holy Trinity, in the wilds of central New York State.

In the majestic church they would eventually build, topped with golden domes, the interior walls had all been covered with frescoes in the classic Russian style—scenes from the life of Christ, the Blessed Virgin and the apostles, ancient martyrs and the great holy helpers. Like so much else in the monastery, where some of the monks still converse in Russian, it was like a tiny piece of the old country planted afresh in this new world.

But the Monastery’s Baptistry was different. No church back in Russia could bear the images of these heroes, still counted as enemies of the state, their names erased from the pages of history. But the font is where new Christians are made. It’s where converts must weigh the full cost of discipleship before they pledge themselves to follow Jesus to the end. And Father Cyprian thought it was essential that they see just how much could be asked of them.

We are, all of us, “surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses,” as the author of Hebrews recalls in today’s Epistle. And Father Cyprian was summoning the greatest saints he had known to stand alongside them, those who had been conformed to Christ in His death.

The eleventh chapter of Hebrews is sometimes referred to as the Bible’s “hall of fame.” It lists great athletes of the faith, raised up by God to advance His kingdom generation after generation. Abel, Noah, Abraham, Moses, the conquering judges: the heroes of all those Old Testament Sunday School stories, they are all there. Some of those listed could easily be numbered among the winners in this world: those who “conquered kingdoms and administered justice…put foreign armies to flight.”

But almost without catching a breath, the author shifts his focus to a different kind of hero. “They were stoned to death,” he says of the faithful, “they were sawn in two, they were killed by the sword; they went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, persecuted, tormented.” And of them, he concludes, “the world was not worthy.” But in the eyes of God, it is otherwise. Those nameless and numberless saints are listed last, because in God’s eyes their witness is most precious.

Because in their deaths, they have become like Jesus. From the “destitute, persecuted, tormented,” the author turns directly to Him, “the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, disregarding its shame.” Jesus is the king of saints, the one whose glory is reflected in all the heroes. And He reveals His faith and fulfills His mission most clearly in suffering, losing His life out of love for God and the world.

We don’t know so much about the people for whom the Epistle to the Hebrews is written, but there are some clues in the letter. The author warns against forsaking the faith because it is hard. He says that God’s purpose can sometimes be revealed through suffering alongside Jesus. “You have not yet resisted to the point of blood,[1]” he announces at one point, but the suggestion is that this may still lay ahead for them.

The Epistle was written for people like the suffering Orthodox Christians of the Russian Civil War, like the Christians of today in Northern Nigeria, Egypt, Sudan and Syria, who live under constant threat from hostile regimes. It was written for people like the parishioners of Saint Etienne du Rouvray in France, whose priest was killed last month by Islamic terrorists, his throat slit at the Altar.

When the Islamic State beheaded 25 Coptic Christians on a beach in Libya last year, each one cried out “Jesus is Lord” before the sword’s stroke. It’s the cry of a hundred thousand saints, in generation after generation. As Jesus himself said, His last and greatest beatitude, “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.[2]”

Jesus assured His disciples that faithfulness to Him would bring the hostility of the world. “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth?,” he announced, “No, I tell you, but rather division!”

The division and hostility Jesus describes are not inevitable or accidental—a sort of generalization about what happens when people try to do good in cruel world. They flow directly from the kinds of claims that Jesus made about Himself and His mission. He did not only claim to speak the truth, He claimed to reveal God’s own mind and will. Jesus did not only offer advice about how to live, He claimed that the only way to God came by following after His footsteps. To pledge allegiance to Him was not just to find a fulfilling and meaningful approach to life, but to become a citizen of God’s true and final kingdom. Jesus doesn’t permit us to ride the fence on these matters. To choose Him is to reject all others.

When we are baptized, we promise to follow and obey Jesus as our Lord. If we are sincere about that commitment, and seriously consider it as we make choices each day about what we will do, we could well encounter this kind of hostility and division.   It’s not that Jesus is calling us to be troublemakers. Indeed, New Testament texts repeatedly urge believers to be at peace with their neighbors. But we have already made promises about what is first in our lives—not the market, or the state, or our overbearing mother or our boss—but Jesus Christ Himself, the Lord of heaven and earth.

For centuries now, it has been quite easy to make these promises and live pretty much like everyone else. In part, we’ve been surrounded by pretty mild sorts of unbelievers, at least in this country. But it’s also because we’ve been far too eager to compromise and prevaricate, to wrap the cross in the flag or to tie it up in a dollar bill.

Things may well change, perhaps in my lifetime, almost certainly in the lifetime of my sons. Cardinal George of Chicago said a few years ago that though he expected to die in his bed, his successor might well die in prison, and the archbishop after him a martyr in the public square. He was probably exaggerating, but only so much. Our social power may well continue to erode. No one will seek our votes. And a culture that has allowed us to stand with a foot in two worlds may well call us to make our choice.

If it comes to that for you, and I expect it will come in some form for most of us, may you look to the author and perfecter of our faith, and his company of brave and patient saints. Remain true to your promises, acclaim Jesus as Lord, and trust in God’s protection and deliverance. There is only one Lord. He is your master. Do not forsake Him.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

[1] Heb. 12:4.

[2] Matt. 5:12.

By The Rev. Mark A. Michael, Interim Rector

“The Lord answered her, ‘Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing.” St. Luke 10:41-42

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

As I was driving home on Tuesday evening, I was intrigued by the dark red car in front of me. The driver had obviously discovered my favorite shortcut to get around the lights on Baron Cameron, and he was pushing on at quite a clip. When I pulled up behind him at the stoplight, I took one glance at his vanity license plate and nodded to myself. It said IMNAHRY – the driver had taken out all the spaces and most of the vowels—rather appropriately—but it all fit.

IMNAHRY – some days I wonder if that’s not really the motto of Northern Virginia. The driver may just have been trying to keep people out of the left hand land – INAHRY, so you’d better get out of the way. Perhaps he liked to taunt policemen with speed guns. Maybe he was wearing his great list of responsibilities like a badge of honor, as we all sometimes do. “How are you?” “Very busy,” we sigh, as if so very much depended on us. Maybe the driver was just trying to be a comic, or a prophet, pointing out all the bustle and wondering what in the world it’s all worth.

My mind went back to a country song that’s almost 25 years old now, but whose words haven’t aged a bit.

“I’m in a hurry to get things done;” Alabama crooned. I rush and rush until life’s no fun. All I really gotta do is live and die. But I’m in a hurry and don’t know why.”

That’s the danger of being in a hurry, that somehow, as we rush from place to place, being so impressively productive, we lose track of why we’re about all of it in the first place.

Martha lived in a different time, when the general pace of life would have been slow enough to drive most of us crazy. But even then, there were surely some occasions that required masterful feats of organization and energy. She and her brother and sister were hosting Jesus and perhaps a large number of his disciples at their home.

Some commentators think it may also have been the season of the Feast of Tabernacles, when grand dinners were expected. There’s a genre of 17^th century Martha paintings that show her in the kitchen with an enormous spread of meat, fish and fowl needing to be skinned, plucked and seasoned.   The paintings are pure conjecture of course, artists’ excuses for pawning off kitchen still lives on pious buyers. But we might at least grant that Martha had good reason to be rushing about and more than a little peeved at her sister, who was sitting so attentively at the Master’s feet. The bread dough would not knead itself, and the vegetables simply had to be chopped now if they were to be soft enough to eat when the lamb came off the spit.

Jesus knew Martha well and cared deeply for her. Perhaps he was pointing to a tendency in Martha’s character to be rather anxious and abrupt. We can certainly glimpse some of this in Saint John’s account of her conversation with Jesus in later days, after her brother’s death. Jesus doesn’t say that kitchen work is worthless or that sometimes we don’t need to make a plan and stick to it until everything is finished.

He’s saying something deeper about the nature of life in the kingdom of God, pointing to a crucial balance between contemplation and action, hearing God’s word and putting it to work. Martha’s action is useful, but Mary’s attentiveness to Him is essential. Jesus has quite a bit for us to do. But if we haven’t gotten to know him first, if we haven’t heard the Word that he means for us to put into action, well then we’re just “in a hurry and don’t know why.”

Chapter divisions in the Bible are pretty recent additions, drawn up by an English archbishop in the thirteenth century, and they are sometimes placed more helpfully than others. But this time, old Archbishop Langton got it right. This story at the home of Martha and Mary closes the 10^th Chapter of Saint Luke, which up until this point was one of the most action-focused passages in the whole of the Bible. The chapter began with Jesus sending out the seventy—to preach and heal in villages all along the way from Galilee to Jerusalem. This great moment of action is followed by the Parable of the Good Samaritan, with its emphasis on loving our neighbor, whoever he or she may be.

The chapter is packed with calls to action, and without the corrective of the Martha and Mary story, we would be looking at an invitation to exhaustion. There is always one more person we could tell about the good news of the kingdom. There’s always one more suffering soul who needs God’s healing. How can we ever rest when there is always one more person in need, another opportunity to love and serve around every corner? Without this command to sit at the feet of Jesus, to choose the good portion of receiving God’s word and growing closer to Him in prayer, we could be left thinking that the best disciple was simply the busiest one.

Putting the Christian message into action is honorable and important. This week I was reminded of so many good things that so many of you are doing here at Saint Timothy’s. The Gifts to Glorify the Lord Committee presented a final report to the vestry that reflected years of planning, hours upon hours of research and discussion, and the generosity of scores of donors as renovate this sanctuary to glorify God and to enhance the ways we worship together. This was Bible School week, and dozens of volunteers brought together all kinds of gifts to put on a wonderful week of learning and fun for children from our congregation and the wider community. The Rector Search Committee reported to the vestry about all the discussions they have hosted and all the planning work they are doing to prepare for the call of a new permanent priest. Today we commission our youth, who will work with young people from other churches in our region to repair the homes of people struggling in Dunganon, Virginia.

Lots of action—lots of wonderful things to be busy about. But without being anchored in a response to God’s Word, without the insight that comes from contemplation and reflection, stepping back to gain some perspective, each one of those massive undertakings could go badly awry.

When we take time to pray together and seek guidance from the Scriptures about what is really important, committee work can be life giving, revealing new gifts and coming to wise decisions. But without these things, it can be deadly, full of bickering, jostling for power, arrogant claims about who has the knowledge really necessary to make a decision. When service to those in need comes as a humble respond to God’s generosity, it strengthens both the giver and the recipient, drawing them closer to each other. Apart from this, it can easily become patronizing. Even work with children can sometimes get out of hand when we forget the reasons behind all the colorful decorations and cute projects. Any of you familiar with the cutthroat politics of some PTA executive committees and Little League boards will know exactly how harmful busyness can be when it loses its connection to what is truly important and meaningful.

We are not called to devote our lives to a set list of tasks on some kingdom agenda. Busyness is not next to godliness. God wants us to respond with love to His loving purposes, to do His will as we have discerned it through prayer and reflection on His Word. If we’re merely in a hurry, there’s a good chance we will miss the point. The one thing needful is to listen to Him, to abide in His Presence, to receive what He has to give us. The rest of it will come through His work in us.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.