Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:05] Speaker B: This is Sundays with Bishop Ken. Thanks for sharing some quiet time with the Lord today. We welcome guest reader Brenda Piazza.
Brenda is a parishioner of St. Catherine of Siena Parish in Menden, New York, where she joyfully serves in a variety of ministries.
Brenda also shares her gifts with us each liturgical season, narrating our little book's reflections.
Here is today's Gospel and homily.
[00:00:40] Speaker A: A reading from the Holy Gospel According to Luke Jesus entered a village where a woman whose name was Martha welcomed him.
She had a sister named Mary who sat beside the Lord at his feet, listening to him speak.
Martha, burdened with much serving, came to him and said, lord, do you not care that my sister has left me by myself to do the serving?
Tell her to help me.
The Lord said to her in reply, martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things.
There is need of only one thing.
Mary has chosen the better part, and it will not be taken from her.
The Gospel of the Lord it's interesting.
Most people, when they hear this gospel passage, feel sympathetic toward Martha.
They find it easy to put themselves in her shoes.
She's got too much to do.
Nobody is helping and nobody cares.
They've all had that feeling many times.
The first thing to say about Martha in this passage is she is doing something very, very good.
She was serving others.
Listen to what Jesus says at another place in Luke's Gospel is at the Last Supper, and the disciples had just been arguing about who was the greatest.
Jesus says, let the greatest among you be as the youngest and the leaders as the servant.
For who is greater, the one seated at table or the one who serves?
Is it not the one seated at table?
I am among you as one who serves.
Luke, chapter 22, verses 26 and 27.
Jesus describes Himself as the one who does exactly what Martha is doing.
I'd say it's a pretty good indication that Martha was doing something very, very good.
If we need any more indication of this, the Greek word Luke uses to describe her activity is diaconia, which in Latin is ministre, from which we get the word ministry.
Martha was ministering.
Now let's look at what her sister Mary was doing.
It's not as though she were in the living room knitting or reading.
She was seated at the Lord's feet.
In her culture, this was the posture of a disciple.
Luke clearly pictures her as a disciple of the Lord, and she was listening to him speak. She was listening to the word of the Lord.
Listen to what Jesus said earlier in Luke, chapter 8, verse 15.
He had described the Word of God as the seed that falls on different kinds of soil.
He explains the parable to the disciples, saying, but as for the seed that fell on rich soil, they are the ones who, when they have heard the Word, embrace it with a generous and good heart and bear fruit through perseverance.
I'd say it's a pretty good indication Mary was doing something very, very good.
So we have two women in this Gospel who are doing something very, very good.
What is Jesus teaching us?
Jesus is teaching that service and the Word of God have to go together.
One without, the other will not do.
The true disciple is one who hears the Word of God and lets it bear fruit in their lives.
Listening to the Word of God, truly listening to it and taking it in like seed in good soil produces good fruit.
Our actions need to be infused, enlivened, and directed by the Word of God.
This means the Word has a certain priority.
We need to be fed by the Word so it shapes our actions.
The opposite would be to do the actions first and then go to the Scripture and try to justify them. Or worse, to act and not even bother with Scripture.
We just know we're right.
I can give you an example.
I've been involved in some social justice issues related to war or welfare reform, things like that, and there are some people who are part of it too, and they act in a mean way.
I sometimes have the impression they're not there so much to help the poor, but because they hate the government and want to venture, they act as though Jesus never said, love your enemies.
Good works that bypass the Word of God are not good works.
Good works have to be infused through and through by the Word of God.
I'm not sent into my life each day to do my thing.
I'm sent to do God's work, to let God's Word be the source of everything I do.
Jesus didn't say Martha wasn't doing this. He was simply saying the Word has to come first.
Jesus was also teaching us that it can be hard to take time to listen to the Word of God and ponder it as it was for Martha. In this situation, it's hard to take time to sit quietly and open ourselves to what God speaks to us in silence.
Think about your own life.
Keep in mind you too are disciples of the Lord.
You became disciples in baptism, were sealed in confirmation, and your call is deepened at every Eucharist.
Think of all the things you have to do almost every day and the problems you address.
Should you take some quiet time every day to speak with the Lord and listen to the Lord speak to you.
This gospel is very clear.
We can't bear good fruit unless we receive the seed, which is the Word of God.
No matter how much we've got to do in a given day, we've got to take time. So the Lord's Word infuses, enlivens, directs what we do.
The hardest bridge to cross is not from thinking about something than deciding to do it.
The hardest bridge to cross is deciding to do it and then doing it.
We can decide that taking time to listen to the Lord's Word is something we're going to do.
But somehow things get in the way.
Good things get in the way.
There's a clue to this when we look at the literal translation of the phrase that describes what Martha was doing.
Literally, it reads, Martha was distracted about much serving.
The word distracted comes from two words to pull and away from.
You can bet Martha wanted to sit and listen to the Lord. But she was pulled away from it.
And she was pulled away from it by something good.
That's the problem.
It's not that we're too lazy to take time to be fed by God's Word every day.
It's usually because we've got too much to do.
We all really would like to do what Mary was doing.
What pulls us away from it?
Think about it.
What distracts us from taking time every day to be fed by God's Word?
[00:09:22] Speaker B: Thanks for joining us today.
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[00:10:22] Speaker A: Sa.
