“ The only real question is whether you are keeping your eye on Jesus, no matter your personality.”
In the modern world, we can so easily live without a prayer. Life in this context reinforces an attitude that says,“ It all depends on me”: I exist as a resourceful agent acting on the world. As you and I go about our day-today lives in the twenty-first century, we are receiving a kind of catechism about what it is to be a human being. We can move around rapidly wherever we want and communicate instantly to whomever we want. We carry a supercomputer in our pocket much more powerful than the Apollo astronauts could have imagined. We make consumer choices constantly. The message in all of this, and in many other daily practices, is that we are immensely resourceful and capable.
No wonder we can go for hours and hours literally without a prayer, even when we seek to serve in Christ’ s name. We don’ t remember that we need God until life goes really sideways.
This attitude of“ agent resourcefulness” creates a serious danger for the Christian who would seek to serve Christ: engaging in all kinds of prayerless activism. We begin serving spiritual food we haven’ t tasted. In contrast, all the great classics of pastoral theology in church history speak with one voice: spiritual self-care is the first task of anyone who would seek to serve Christ. One’ s contemplation of Christ is the first thing. This is the one thing necessary. Out of this one thing flows a life of consecrated service.
Like the ordinary English words one and many, the Greek words in our passage in Luke are common, everyday words: Martha was distracted with“ many” things, but only“ one” thing was necessary. And yet. Christians in time past could not resist seeing something more going on here, something symbolic. Surely, to contemplate Jesus rightly is to see that he is the answer to this ancient problem of discerning the unity underlying a world of change.
Here, in Jesus Christ, is the Archimedean point of the universe. Here is the center of the turning wheel. As Dante wrote at the pinnacle of the Divine Comedy, the love of Christ is the“ Love that moves the sun and all the other stars.” Mary saw the“ one”; Martha saw the“ many things.” Martha somehow couldn’ t see the one right before her in whom all things hold together.
“ The only real question is whether you are keeping your eye on Jesus, no matter your personality.”
Mary could see the unity; Martha was lost in the multiplicity. Note that this is not simply philosophical. It is about love. Jesus Christ is the culmination of all our desires. All laborious activity is temporal; only love will last into eternity. Christ is the fulfillment of all our loves. What Mary had chosen would“ not be taken away,” said Jesus. In 1 Corinthians 13, it is clear that all sorts of gifts will pass away, but love will endure forever.
We might ask ourselves whether it is really
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