A Sabbatical Reflection from Vince
Vince reflects on the Biblical story of Martha and Mary in Luke 10, as he shares some stories from his Sabbatical. (Art: Mary and Martha, by He Qi, 2014)
SPEAKER NOTES
A Sabbatical Reflection
Reading
Today, I’d like to begin with our reading from the Bible this weekend.
A Reading from The Gospel according to Luke… ==scripture==
38 As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. 39 She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. 40 But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”
41 “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, 42 but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”
It’s an excellent story, memorable, with that contrast between Martha and Mary, and a somewhat unexpected conclusion, where Jesus validates Mary. ==scripture off==
I have heard before interpretations of this passage that take Martha and Mary as personality types, and that can feel helpful.
But the interpretation I want to take today is not that Martha and Mary can shine light on individual personality traits, but that they can shine light on entire societal ways of being.
We’ll come back to that in a bit.
The Monk at tea
One highlight of my sabbatical these past two months was that I got to take a Solitary retreat ==picture==
- Two nights at St. Gregory’s Monastery in Three Rivers, Michigan, about three hours from Chicago.
- It was not a silent retreat, but it was very quiet and totally-removed from urban life, and the five monks who live there are Benedictine, which means they follow a very ordered schedule to life everyday, and have services for fixed-hour prayer seven times a day, where they pray for the world. ==Picture off==
- It’s a mix of praying the Psalms from the Bible, call and response liturgies, and then things like readings and communion.
- And they’re chanted in that sort of half-melodic way (“Through him, with him, in him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit…”)
- It can be hard to find the cadence, but once you do (it took me a few services), it slows you down to really engage the prayers and it was really wonderful for me.
- When you arrive as a guest, they say you’re expected at Mass (which is at 8:30am) and Vespers (which is at 5p), but welcome at all services. The first of the seven is at 4am, so, yeah, I didn’t go to any of those. But I went to many of the others.
- And then there are meal times, all with their own order around when to be quiet, when to sit, etc, and a 4 o’clock tea time when monks and guests can mix it up in conversation
- There were 3 other guests, who had all been there before and helped orient me, and one of the monks is the guestmaster who also helped me out, so I wasn’t lost.
- But outside of those very ordered times that affect the guests, while the monks are going about their daily jobs keeping up the grounds and buildings, guests can do whatever they want.
- I spent a ton of time in their fantastic library, and read for like 12 hours straight.
- I took a nap.
- I walked around their grounds and saw a family of deer.
- I felt strange when, midday on Saturday, I realized no child had asked me to make them a snack for over 24 hours.
Anyway, one story worth telling from my time at St. Gregory’s was 4 o’clock tea time my second day there, when the other guests and I were joined by one of the monks: Br. Abraham. (alas, as a Benedictine monk, he had no sons, so there is no joke to make here about Fr. Abraham…)
It was my first time to interact with him, so I introduced myself:
- I’m Vince, I’m a pastor in Chicago and I’m on sabbatical.
- And then I said, with kind of a wink and a smile, I’m retreating from the madness of the city for a bit, so that I can…
- and then I kind of faltered, because I wanted to sound clever and knowing, but I hadn’t actually thought of anything to say...
- and so I just finished awkwardly repeating myself, “so that I can get away from the madness”
- And then, not missing a beat, Br. Abraham, also with a wink and a smile, cheerfully says “No, it’s so that you can love the city all the more upon your return”.
And, even though it was a correction, I didn’t feel an ounce of judgment or condescension from him. Something about his smile and voice and affect.
- He wasn’t mean. He wasn’t dismissive. He was encouraging.
- “Yes.” I smiled, “Thank you. That’s exactly it.”
I’ve thought a lot about that correction since. On the terms of the interpretation I’d like to take to our reading today, Br. Abraham might have said, “so that you can love all the more Martha,” — who I think can represent the Modern city, my cultural home base — always tireless and at work, attending to many preparations, worried and upset about many things.
I love that Jesus is so gentle with Martha (“Martha, Martha”) — acknowledging her (which is what she seems to be angry about not getting from her sister), not admonishing her. And yet also acknowledging Mary, refusing to agree with Martha’s hierarchy of worth.
What so endeared me to Br. Abraham was the way he embodied Jesus in this same way. His balance of confidence and non-judgmentalism as he corrected me demonstrated to me he saw no hierarchy of worth between us.
He communicated feeling neither higher nor lower than me, the city dweller. We just had different calls in life. His to follow God’s call in a context that looks more often like Mary. Mine in a context that looks more often like Martha.
In our reading, Jesus says Mary has chosen what is better, but that doesn’t mean Martha is worthless. It just means Martha is prone to a hierarchy with herself on top, to validate all her hyperactivity.
This is why we modern city folk, we Marthas, need the example of our sister, the Marys of the world: to pull us, if only for brief healing moments, out of what Sociologist Hartmut Rosa calls the frenetic standstill.
The Frenetic Standstill
==Image==
The constant pressing need to do more, faster, better, bigger —
Which, exhaustingly, doesn’t actually get us ahead, but at best just keeps us from falling behind. Rosa says this is the defining feature of the Modern world, THE thing that distinguishes our era in history from all eras prior to us — that you always have to be moving and accelerating, not to get ahead, but just to stabilize, just to survive and stay where you are —
The exploited working masses, we of the proverbial 99% who have to work for a living, know getting ahead is often an illusion; it’s not a frenetic progress; it’s a frenetic standstill.
==Image off==
And frenetic is exactly the word isn’t it? No one can opt out or take a break, because we’re always afraid of losing our place in line, we have to be hyper-vigilant, looking over our shoulders. Could I be doing more? Could I be doing this better? Faster? Bigger? More optimized? What are they doing over there? Are they judging me? Like I’m judging me? Like I’m judging them?
Rosa highlights the aggression that undergirds Modern life — the judgment, the competition, the fear of loss, the constant torment of coulds, the feeling of always teetering on burnout. All of this breeds an aggression in city folk like us.
It’s not any of our faults individually; it’s just part of the atmosphere we breathe.
We see the aggression in Martha’s stance toward her sister — passive aggression better — she eventually blows up: “Jesus, could you please tell her to help me already!”
We even see it in me, over tea with the monk, in my desire to want to sound clever, rather than vulnerable. There’s a hardened stance there, akin to aggression.
What I was so disarmed by in Br. Abraham, a Mary in the presence of me, a Martha, was that his existence seemed NOT fundamentally aggressive, NOT tormented by coulds, NOT looking over his shoulder. Obviously I’m not in his head so I could be totally wrong, but from what I could tell, he was completely comfortable in his skin and in my presence.
- He was not looking at me like “this guy’s a pastor in a bustling city; but I’m just here in this removed monastery; maybe I chose wrong my vocation, maybe I’m not fulfilling all I could in my cloistered life; could I be doing more? Could I have heard God wrong?”
- Nor was he looking at me like: “look at this hotshot city boy… he doesn’t know what true devotion to God is, like we do in this monastery, where we pray at 4am!”
He was at peace, and not in the least self-conscious, or defensive about his life’s call. Even in my presence, bringing the decidedly different energy of sister Martha, he was confident in his life, that looks more like Mary, at the feet of Jesus, ceaselessly praying, 7 times a day, for the world, including me, AND fully capable of enthusiastically blessing me in my life.
I LONG for that kind of non-aggressive stance toward others and myself. I wonder if you do too? To not be so quickly given to judgment of everyone and everything around me, and myself, not constantly stacking people up in hierarchies in my mind.
That sounds amazing to live with some freedom from those insidious habits that the Modern world keeps me stuck in. Is there hope for us Marthas of the world to live free from those?
Resonance
My Sociologist Crush Hartmut Rosa, who I’ve been mentioning (don’t you have Sociologist Crushes too?) — he believes there is.
Interestingly, though he is coming from a non-religious perspective as a sociologist, Rosa can’t help but use spiritual-sounding language when he tries to describe the types of experiences that can, if we remain open to them, rewire the ways we relate to the world, to other people, and to ourselves to not be so aggressive.
He talks about experiences of invocation, or Call and response — religious language, right?
- Experiences that are neither wholly something we bring about, in our genius or authenticity, nor wholly something done to us, as though we’re without freedom or purpose.
- Do you know this feeling?
- That person opened me up.
- That sunset called to me.
- That song moved me.
- A more hopeful than usual thought suddenly popped into my mind.
- A call, and then a response…
- I chose to be vulnerable.
- I stopped to be fully present.
- I listened.
- I acknowledged God’s Spirit, the one who calls.
These experiences have the potential to Transform us, says Rosa — there’s another spiritual word. Because they are not about keeping up, or fear of loss, or accumulation — the things that matter in the frenetic standstill. They’re about our being, not our having.
And such experiences are Uncontrollable — again, spiritual language: the way God’s spirit is described in the Bible is like “wind, that blows, now here, now there, but we know not from whence it came”. Such experiences are not something we optimize into existence, or perform the right magical prayer or ritual to unlock. They are relational and organic, not formulaic or mechanical.
==Book cover== Rosa’s term for these uncontrollable yet participatory call and response experiences that transform us is: Resonance — we ring at the same frequency of someone or something else. ==Book cover off==
And, though an experience of resonance does nothing to help us keep up in the frenetic standstill, something in us registers it as, in itself, good, beautiful, healing, valuable, meaningful.
Jesus’ call to Martha strikes me as a possibility for resonance. Even from her aggressive stance, Jesus kindly calls to her, and if Martha can respond, the event can beckon her past what is controllable by her incessant preparations, into what can transform her — what can rewire the way she relates to her world, her sister, herself, her Lord whom she wants to serve.
So we can’t control or manufacture resonance, but we can stay open to it. Maybe that's part of the purpose of church?
To help us stay open, listening for God’s call, ready to respond… to let that soften the aggressive stance the Modern world forms in us Marthas.
This is surprisingly hard, to prioritize such listening in the midst of the frenetic standstill.
- It’s risky to choose listening because it means we will likely fall behind in the frenetic standstill… the powers that be in the modern world will not reward you for listening, so you’re trusting that resonance really is worth it, that God’s Spirit really does call.
- If you’re less privileged in our society (maybe because of your skin color, or because you’re not a straight man, or because your family doesn’t have the generational wealth others might), then that risk may feel even greater, because the frenetic standstill might exploit you even worse if you don’t play its game every single moment. I’d love to stop to listen and respond to God, you think, but I don’t have that luxury!
- I want to acknowledge that fear. AND I want you to know that you are not alone! Others in this community have your back, and want a more human, more spiritually alive, less aggressive and fear driven experience of life for you.
- In the cruelty of a culture driven to a fearful stampede by the demands of the frenetic standstill, communities like this church are what pick people up when they are trampled!
Taking a sabbatical did not get me ahead. On the terms of the Modern World’s “keep up or fall behind” rules, I probably fell behind. But something in me can tell it was the right choice even so — I can hear Jesus saying “to take a Sabbatical is to have chosen better, and that won’t be taken from you.”
The two gentlemen
One last story from my time at St. Gregory’s
- I mentioned there were three other guests while I was there.
- One younger guy kept to himself pretty much the whole time, so I didn’t interact with him,
- But there were two gentlemen, I would guess mid 60s, who were very chatty
- Honestly, they were a little too chatty for my introverted goals that weekend.
- I’d pass them on the grounds, trying to go from the library to the guest house, because they were ALWAYS sitting together on the bench along that walk, and despite my best “looking straight ahead” demeanor, they’d inevitably be like:
- “Vince, hello! How are you liking it here? Amazing, isn’t it? You’ll be back again, I can tell! You’ve caught the bug. So good for your soul right?”
- Yeah, I think so…
- “I’m from up north in another Michigan town,” the more chatty of the two gentlemen said at one point, “but this is my second home,”
- “The two of us used to both live there and go to the same church, and we’d come here to St Gregory’s with a group of men twice a year, but now he lives in Florida…”
- Florida? Wow, I thought, that’s a long trip. I mean I like this place fine, but man, he must really like it here.
- Anyway, I just nodded along as I learned more random details about these two than I ever thought I would
- “You know I’m usually here in the spring and the fall,” he goes on…
- Oh? Is that right?
- “So it’s a little better for a walk, not so hot like this weekend, but it’s still a good idea. You should try it!”
- Yeah thanks.
- That’s how it went all weekend.
- Them being super chatty and sharing all sorts of random details about their lives
- And me being polite, but kind of secretly wanting to escape the conversations.
- So before lunch my last day, after which I was heading back to Chicago,
- I was sitting with them outside the communal dining room waiting for the bell to ring that would tell us to take our seats.
- And they were again very chatty asking how I felt as I was getting ready to leave,
- And I thought I should be a little more engaged this time, after all they’d been so friendly with me, and helped orient me to so much of the ordered parts of monastery life
- So I said a little more about why I definitely want to come back; and how I could see why this had become such a regular thing for them.
- And then the guy who now lives in Florida clarified, “well, actually since I moved to Florida, I haven’t come very regularly, but…”
- And then he started to get choked up, and said, “but my wife died four weeks ago, and I’ve just been kind of lost, and I called my friend here and said, maybe I should go to St. Gregory’s because I’ve always felt good there.”
- And suddenly, all of the random details I’d learned about these two fell into place.
- That’s why he’d come all the way from Florida.
- And the more chatty guy, who was usually there in the spring and fall — he changed his plans when his friend who lost his wife called him in need, so he could be at St. Gregory’s at the same time
- They were together on that bench I kept passing all weekend, because this man who had just lost his partner of 40 years didn’t want to be alone.
- And, as everything clicked into place in my mind, it registered for me that God was calling me, and now I could respond.
- And so I listened, attentively, lovingly. I made eye contact. Put a hand on his shoulder. I felt myself changed by the experience. We connected. I thanked him for the honor of being brought into his grief.
- That’s resonance. For that moment I rang at the same frequency as these two men. And something in me recognized: this is good, this is right, this is where life is.
- I would suggest that it’s a distinctly Christian form of resonance when the call has to do with suffering.
- In those moments of resonance, the God Jesus shows the world, who knows suffering, who is not lofty and removed from pain, but profoundly with the world in a deep solidarity, carrying our crosses with us — that God is, I believe, the one pointing us to that recognition within us: this is good, this is right, this is where life is.
Let me pray for us…