July 20, 2025 (Donna Boisen)
John in Revelation 22:17
After lunch one day, the Rector’s wife said, “Dear, I must to go to the store but I need you to promise me that while I am out you will NOT look under the bed.”
Well, as you can imagine, the Rector couldn’t help himself. He was puzzled and a bit shocked by what he found. Under the bed was an egg carton with 5 eggs in it and a shoebox with several thousand dollars. When his wife got home he confronted her.
“Darling, I couldn’t help myself, but please explain!”
“Well,” the wife explained, “every time you preach a lousy sermon I put an egg in the carton under the bed.”
The Rector thought, 5 lousy sermons in 20 years? That’s not bad at all! Then he asked, “But what about all that money in the shoebox?”
“Oh,” explained his wife, “Every time I collected a dozen, I sold them.”
During the Patio Sale yesterday Brooke told me that some years back when John preached the day after the sale his subject was “Saint Patio.” She said she couldn’t remember if he even used any scripture as a starting point. This morning we’ll begin by reading our lectionary gospel passage one more time:
“Now as they went on their way, he entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home.She had a sister named Mary, who sat at Jesus’s feet and listened to what he was saying. But Martha was distracted by her many tasks, so she came to him and asked, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her, then, to help me.”
But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things, but few things are needed–indeed only one. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”
The Very Reverand H.D.M. Spence wrote in 1909, “It is not enough to get all (or every little thing) right for the Lord; the first thing is to be right with and in the Lord.”[1]
Martha very much wanted to have everything just right for Jesus. Today we would even say, her heart was in the right place. After all, Martha was the one who actually invited Jesus over! Martha was the one who initiated the gathering that took place in their home. Martha was the one who held high her societal responsibility- her spiritual obligation as a devout Jew- to be a generous and gracious host. Martha did not shy away from the hard work of gathering and prepping and cooking and serving. I mean, isn’t this the very spirit of hospitality that fuels our efforts for the Patio Sale each year? Baking tasty treats for days, brewing fresh coffee, collecting our gently used trinkets and treasures to trade for money to give to the many charitable organizations that we support. All the while welcoming Allyn Day neighbors and friends…come in, come in, so happy to see you! You are welcome here! You are wanted here! We have been waiting expectantly for you! This morning mark’s our second anniversary at St Hugh, mine and Sean’s…and it was because of the Patio Sale! Greeted and gladdened by Connie and Vicki…we wandered through filling a box with this and that all the while filling our ears and our eyes with the love all around us…a Beloved Community that we knew we wanted to belong to. That, my dear St Hugh, is hospitality!
So where did Martha go wrong? Or rather, where did Mary – her sister who was not being mindful of her societal or familial obligations in the moment but rather simply sitting at the feet of their house guest and friend, Jesus, intently listening- where did Mary go right?
That Martha felt brave enough to voice her frustrations with her sister to Jesus is remarkable in itself! It shows a closeness between them…a confidence that forms in the deepest of friendships. And Jesus reveals the tenderness he feels for Martha when he responds first with her name not once, but twice, “Martha…Martha…”
So what was the one thing Martha missed in her devotion? In a scene where it seemed that Mary was doing, well, exactly nothing…what behavior was Mary exhibiting that Jesus encouraged Martha to follow? The answer is in the text: Mary was listening.
In 1980 Dan Rather, CBS television interviewer, asked Mother Teresa of Calcutta (now Saint Teresa) : “When you pray, what do you say to God?” Teresa: “I don’t say anything, I listen.” Rather: “Well okay … when God speaks to you, then, what does he say?” Teresa: “He doesn’t say anything. He listens. … And if you don’t understand that, I can’t explain it to you.”
One of my spiritual mothers is Sister Joan Chittister. Only she doesn’t know it yet. She doesn’t actually even know me. She is quite a famous Benedictine author, just one year younger than my own Mum. But through reading many of her books and e-mails and postings over the past 20 years the Lord has deepened my understanding and my prayer life and my devotion. I am so grateful for her gifting and her calling. In Wisdom Distilled from the Daily: Living the Rule of Saint Benedict Today Sister Joan writes: “Listening is a religious discipline of the first order that depends on respect and leads to conversion.”
Whether in marriage counseling or business communications we often see the four elements of active listening as 1.Hearing, 2. Attending, 3. Understanding, and 4. Responding. And these are good…but I really resonate with the Chinese character “Ting” which represents the verb “To Listen.” It is comprised of 6 parts: 1.ears, 2.eyes, 3.heart, 4.undivided attention, 5.respect (of the one speaking), and 6. mind/understanding. This seems to describe Mary’s posture well in this morning’s story. She was fully present to Christ in that moment. Jesus had her ears. He had her eyes. He had her heart and her mind and her undivided attention. And, as Sister Joan asserted, Jesus had Mary’s respect which truly led to her conversion. The text is not saying that bustling Martha did not believe…but, she reveals that we fool ourselves when we think we can truly listen and do laundry at the same time. Especially when it comes to listening to God. “Be still and know that I am God” the Psalmist resounds. And there is every reason to believe that Mary was listening in a posture of reverence and awe.
Rabbi Heschel, the 20th century mystic who marched with Martin Luther King Jr wrote in God in Search of Man, that: “Awe is a way of being in rapport with the mystery of all reality…awe is the sense for the transcendence, for the reference everywhere to him who is beyond all things.” Sister Joan reminds that: “Wrapping ourselves up in the womb of religious ritual is no substitute for genuine spirituality. Spirituality is not an exercise in blind obedience, it is a commitment to divine reflection…When we start listening to the Word of God, to others around us, to those with wise hearts and tried souls, life changes from the dry and the independent to the compassionate and the meaningful. When we start listening to the Word of God, people have a right to expect something new of us.”
Well, easier said than done, isn’t it? I mean, Mary had an unfair advantage, didn’t she? She was sitting at the literal feet of Jesus! Staring into the literal eyes of eternal love! Listening with awe to the flesh and blood words of the Living Christ!
Take hope. We have the comforter! The Holy Spirit is here with us and in us, teaching us to listen. And over the past two thousand years many tools have been developed to help us let go of those myriad distractions and to-do lists that would pull us away from that one thing of holy listening.
Bishop Phil in Zim Zum session two “The Transformational Power of Story” recommends the practice of Lectio Divina, or Divine Reading as a way of truly listening to the Word. In this practice of deep listening we 1) Read the scriptural passage, then 2) Reflect or Meditate on the passage, 3) Respond in Prayer, and, 4) Rest in Contemplation allowing the Holy Spirit to deepen the meaning in those moments. His recommendation is to spend 15-20 minutes in this process with each passage. I will testify that, in the 30 years I have been using Lectio as a devotional tool, I have always found it deepens my understanding and my devotion.
Another way is communing with nature. Kevin and I were talking yesterday during the patio sale about the ways in which being out in nature truly deepens our awe of our Living God. Staring out into a roaring ocean, wandering through an old growth forest dripping with moss, gazing at a glittering dark sky. In this state of awe, we often find ourselves also in a state of deep listening. One of my oldest and closest friends, herself a Spiritual Director, is even now on the third day of a pilgrimage in Spain on the Way of St James – the Camino de Santiago. While visiting with she and her husband a few weeks ago at their beach cottage in Maine we joined in a practice day, walking 12 miles around the city of Portland. It was 90 degrees. Now that is devotion!
Another form of spiritual listening is Visio Divina, or Sacred Seeing, and is a practice I will be engaging in beginning tomorrow at a week-long Visual Arts Retreat in Seattle. Similar to Lectio Divina but, instead of beginning with the words of the text we begin with sacred images – paintings, sculptures, icons. This may feel foreign to us as we have grown up in a literate society. But you may recall from your art history classes- or for those of you blessed to travel in Europe- the many stained glass windows of the cathedrals? Though today we admire them for their sheer beauty, originally they were used for Visio Divina- as devotional tools for the poor, illiterate masses.
Another tool that has been instrumental in helping me become a better listener has been the Pie of Prayer, several parts of which we see reflected in our service this morning including Adoration, Praise, Thanksgiving, Confession, Oblation, Intercession, and Petition. I made this little set of prayer beads several years ago inspired by the Komboloi, or worry beads I saw the old men using when we visited Greece in the late 1990s. Though in modern Greece they are primarily a secular tool – in a way the equivalent of a fidget toy – they were originally created by Monks as a tool of devotion. I crafted mine around the pie of prayer – I begin and end with the Lord’s prayer, the Jesus prayer is every other bead and then between are scriptures that I pray to reflect each aspect of the pie of prayer.
“Donna, Donna,” the beads remind me, “you are worried and distracted by many things…”
There are many tools to help us learn to listen to what the Spirit is saying. Your homework this week is to find one that works for you. Listen to our Bishop’s Zim Zum video. Try your hand at Lectio or Visio Divina…or even create your own set of prayer beads. As we are reminded by the Apostle John in Revelation 22:17:
“The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come.’
And let everyone who hears say, ‘Come.’
And let everyone who is thirsty come.
Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift.”
AMEN
[1] H. D. M. Spence-Jones, ed., St. Luke, vol. 1, The Pulpit Commentary (London; New York: Funk & Wagnalls Company, 1909), 286.