But the Lord answered her, "Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things;  there is need of only one thing. (Luke 10:42)

One job I’ll be laying when I retire in October is that of Union rep. For pretty much the whole of my teaching career I’ve been involved in one way or another with talking to Head Teachers on behalf of staff members. One of the issues that came up again and again was workload. One of the most frustrating things about that was trying to convince people that excessive workload got in the way of some of the things managements claimed to want such as promoting ‘reflective teaching’. So I get to the end of a lesson and reflect on it. What went well? What went badly? What could I… No! I’ve got another class coming in. Later. Then there’s another class. Then I’ve got forty minutes for lunch then another class. At last. Some time to… No! I’ve got that marking to do. Then I’ve got a departmental meeting after school. Busy busy busy.

So you never get a moment to just sit and think about what you’re doing, how you teach, how you could improve. I think you can see how this relates to our Gospel story this morning. Jesus has dropped in on Martha and Mary and, I assume their brother Lazarus. I don’t imagine the customs of the time would have looked kindly on an unmarried man spending the night under the roof of two unmarried women. Maybe he’s out at work. Martha’s slaving away in the kitchen banging pots and pans about before dashing upstairs to make sure the guest room is ready. Busy busy busy.

Meanwhile her sister Mary is sitting at Jesus’s feet listening to him and possibly missing all Martha’s frantic gestures to come and help her. At last, exasperated, Martha asks Jesus to get Mary to come and lend a hand but Jesus instead says, “Martha, you’re so busy. You don’t need to be doing all that. Just come and listen, like Mary.” 

The choice of other readings in the lectionary suggest I should link this with our Old Testament reading from Genesis where Abraham invites God into his tent in the form of three passing strangers at the oaks of Mamre. I will. Not just yet. For a moment I want to focus on how busy Martha is, how distracted she is. It’s a funny thing, we have so many labour-saving devices in our houses these days: washing machines, dishwashers, hoovers that mean we don’t have to hoik the carpets out into the garden and beat them. Yet still it’s easy to be busy all the time. We have computers in all the rooms at school now that mean I don’t have to manually enter register details and marks and stuff. Yet still it’s easy to be busy all the time. Busy busy busy.

And so, maybe, not have the time to reflect. To reflect on the call of Christ to sit at his feet and listen to his teachings; to listen to them, reflect on them, think about them. To ask what they are saying to us in our time and place. To ask, along with the lawyer I talked about last week at St Mungo, “Who is my neighbour?” Who is the person in my life right now who needs my help and support? Who are the people in need that folk are walking past? To reflect on Christ’s teaching on loving one’s enemy and ask, “Is there someone I feel anger toward, hostility toward, maybe even hatred? And do I need to let go of that?”

In a world as full of distractions as this one it’s easy not to make time to reflect on questions like that. To not think about what our faith means to us; what the teachings of Christ mean for us. It’s harder now than, perhaps, it has ever been. When I was a kid there were two channels on the television and the idea that I would hold a computer in the palm of my hand was pure Star Trek. Today there are more TV channels than you can shake a stick at - sure there’s sport on all of them but that’s not the point - and social media that thrills you with a rush of dopamine with every like. It’s so easy these days to be busy, busy, busy.

Too busy to listen for Christ. To listen for him among the poor and the so easily forgotten and fall prey to politicians who tell us that no one s poor. No one is hungry. They are just feckless and lazy. Now go back to your distractions. Too busy to listen for Christ among the refugees and fall prey to politicians who would drive them from our shores with an idle shrug of ‘not our problem’. Now go back to your distractions. Too busy to listen for the Christ who calls us to love one another, regardless of race, class, status , colour, language or culture as brothers and sisters in Christ; as children of one Father.

We are not meant to be busy all the time. Whether folk like it or not we have a spiritual dimension to our nature as human beings; a dimension through which God, by whatever name we call him, calls us; calls us to listen for him and to grow and be more than we have been. It’s a dimension to our nature that has always been there as evidenced in rock carvings thousands of years old and in that the oldest building we have ever uncovered was not a palace but a temple.

There is a voice that calls to us as human beings. A voice that calls us to grow and be more than we have been. A voice that says forget all the distractions and come and listen. That is the voice of God.  It is the voice of the God who was welcomed into the tent of Abraham at the oaks of Mamre and who, in a way, came into our tent; into humanity’s tent.

Who came into this world in the life of a human being; a human being who knows all our temptations and all our weaknesses because he shared them; a human being who knows all our distractions and our need to be busy all the time. A human being who knows our workload. But also a human being in whom God lived and breathed and taught.

Taught us who we really are. That we are children of God, made in the image of God. That we are forgiven all the rotten things we have done if we just accept that we need forgiveness. That we are meant to love our neighbour as we love ourselves and that every time we do that we show the world a little of what the Kingdom of Heaven is like. That we are meant to love our enemies and that every time we do that we show the world a little of what the Kingdom of Heaven is like. That we are meant to forgive those who hurt us and that every time we do we show the world a little of what the Kingdom of Heaven is like.

In Christ God came under our roof, into our world, to offer the hope that one day we will all gather to share an eternal life. A life when we will look back on the lives we’ve led and see what difference we made by loving our neighbours, by loving our enemies and by forgiving those who hurt us. In Christ God came under our roof, into our world and said “Listen”.

Father, may we never be so busy with the ways of the world that we don’t listen; that we don’t listen for your voice speaking to our lives

Preached at Dalton Parish Church