Tuesday of the Twenty-seventh Week in Ordinary Time
As a Christian in the contemporary world, I often feel odd and at odds with my neighbors. For example, I believe in God - and not merely a god who gets envisioned as an amorphous love cloud in the sky - but the Trinity, and in Jesus Christ who is both (oddly) fully man and fully God. That belief is just not in keeping with contemporary, secular culture. I feel odd because I'm trying to do counter-cultural, seemingly unproductive things like pray, spend time in silence, be really hospitable. Yet, I'm also busy at work and busy at home, and it feels odd to try to be contemplative in a world where there are always demands made on me. Lately, too, I feel odd because, as a Christian, I just don't fit neatly into politicians' boxes of "Democrat" or "Republican" - I'm pro-life and pro-immigration; I'm pro-individual responsibility and also pro-distributive justice. In short, I'm odd.
The thing is, to be Christian in this world requires that each of us is, well, a little bit odd. Being Christian often doesn't mesh with dominant cultural trends. So I think today's scriptures ask us to focus on the oddities and implications of being Christian.
For example, Paul himself is odd (Galatians 1:13-24). Paul considered himself to be the most Jewish of them all, the one who followed the Jewish laws to the greatest degree possible. He was so Jewish that he spent a good deal of the first part of his life arguing against the small Jewish-Christian community that seemed so blasphemous to Jewish eyes (not least because Christians appeared to worship a man and not the one true God). So it is simply astounding, and odd, that he should end up being a stanch supporter of the very people he once persecuted. This is so odd, in fact, that Paul's conversion becomes the cause of many other peoples' conversions. There are people still today who have said to me that they wouldn't be convinced by the gospel except for the fact that Paul became a Christian, and the fact that he found it to be true convinces them.
God is glorified because of Paul's oddities.
In today's gospel reading (Luke 10:38-42), we encounter a different kind of oddity. Martha has invited Jesus to stay with her and her sister, and so like a good host, she is trying hard to get everything ready. But Martha is distracted by all her work; I can envision her starting to slam dishes around, and going back and forth trying to cook the best meal possible, because after all, she is the one (not Mary) who invited Jesus in, and she wants to be a good host. Jesus reprimands her, and praises Mary instead, the one who appears not to be practicing much hospitality at all. How odd.
But when we read the gospel that way, what’s the moral of the story? That we should never do any work? That we should never be hospitable? That doesn’t seem quite right either. Kids do have to be cared for, meals have to be cooked, bills have to be paid. Invited guests shouldn’t have to fend for themselves. It seems odd, indeed, that we should have to choose God or choose real life! This is one of the complaints non-Christians sometimes make against Christians, in fact, that they are too idealistic and not grounded enough.
Bible scholars who know Greek phrases well, though, suggest that where the scripture says that Mary has chosen the better part, Jesus is likely referring to a meal, maybe even to the meal that Martha is preparing. In the ancient near-Eastern world, the phrase "the better part" tends to refer to the “main course” of the meal – that is to say, the best that the hostess had to offer her guests. The side dishes – the green beans, the mashed potatoes and gravy – make sense only in relation to the main course. By themselves, they’re nice, but not a MEAL.
Jesus’ meal allusion makes sense: Martha is cooking a meal, but Jesus is saying: hey, Mary has chosen the main course, and it is ME. Jesus is the main course, the better part. The rest of your life is made up of the side dishes that only make sense because of Jesus.
There's the crux of it all. We may feel and look odd to others and even to ourselves. The hope, however, is that our lives make sense exactly because we are following Jesus, who is our main course.
- Jana M. Bennett