There is need of only one thing!  Mary has chosen the better part, the impractical part, the holy part!  What will we choose, what will we decide?

Jesus has taught a lot of difficult things when it comes to being a Christian, even ultimately teaching that we must be prepared to sacrifice, even our lives, to follow him.

And yet, how many of us will ever be called upon to sacrifice our lives here in North America?  Probably not many – and so it remains a theoretical teaching.  But today we hear an everyday teaching, a teaching that affects every single one of us from young children to our oldest parishioners.  A teaching that sounds easy but in truth is very hard.

There is need of only one thing!

What is that one thing?  To choose to put God first, to give Him the time he needs to speak to us!  Jesus taught us this; do we really believe it?  And if we really say we believe it, then do we act it out?

We are a society of busy people – we are a society of Martha’s.  Our culture tells us we are to be occupied doing something at all times.  For many of us it is hard to sit still.  Have you ever attended a seminar and the speaker stands up at the beginning and says something like, “OK everybody, we want to get into the right frame of mind, so I want you to close your eyes, make you mind blank and take three long slow breaths!”

And what happens – what is our response?  Do you find yourself saying, “Oh no – not another one of these new age weirdohs – can’t we just get on with the speech – OK – pant-pant-pant – there I’ve breathed 3 times – let’s go! Go! Go!

Or can you use it as permission to relax, and find that receptive peace that allows a message to get deep down inside of us where it has power to make real changes.  We often don’t appreciate how important it is to just sit quietly in order to focus our attention properly.

But how many of us sympathize with Martha?  How many of us think Jesus got this one wrong?  How many of us, secretly perhaps, but in our heart of hearts think of Mary as being just a little bit irresponsible here; she seems to be a little bit of a silly dreamer type – even – if we chose to admit it, some of us might think she is a little bit lazy!

And this is a problem.  Because just like Martha, we are missing the point.  It is not that Martha is a bad person, just as most of us are not bad people.  We are not actively seeking evil. But we are just not seeking Jesus.  We are avoiding our meeting with him.

The story today reminds me a lot of how I feel when those awkward relatives drop by for a visit, the ones you can never think of anything to say to!  So suddenly, I’m very helpful in the kitchen, let me get the drinks, let me run downstairs to the freezer for more ice, or even better – let me run out to the store for that thing we forgot.  Here, I’ll do the dishes!  Then “Oh – are you going so soon?”  I just want to keep busy, because it keeps me away.

Just like Father Neil pointed out last week when he talked about the story of the good Samaritan, the priest and the levite weren’t evil, they were just so busy with things that they thought were important that they missed the most important thing to do after all.

Many of us are good people, well intentioned, but like Martha we are distracted by many things and we do not choose the better part.  Jesus doesn’t say Mary chose the good part and Martha chose the evil part – no!  He says Mary chose the “better” part.  For one thing to be better means the other must be good – you know good – then better.

So Jesus does not condemn Martha and he recognizes the good in what she is trying to do – but he warns her that it has reached a place where she has made the wrong choice.

We have lots of secular proverbs that we use in our society to justify our busy-ness, proverbs mind you, that are not found in scripture, such as “God helps those who help themselves!”, and other ones that try to encourage us to take the busy part, Martha’s part and not choose Mary’s part – the better part.  To put ourselves entirely in control and avoid that meeting with Jesus who will remind us who is really in charge.

Too many of our lives are about spending every moment with our earthly responsibilities and not leaving enough time for our spiritual responsibilities, the impractical ones, the holy ones. 

Even children have regular school, homework, soccer practice, music lessons, karate tournaments, heritage language school and I don’t think we’ll have time for mass this weekend.  Older kids have summer jobs, weekend jobs, band practice, Joey’s party, video raves, science tutoring and so on, no time for daily prayers.  As adults we have to get our kids to all these things, do our own job, do our overtime, get the house ready for company and on it goes, no time to lead a family rosary or spend some time with scripture or a good religious author – no time to come away from our responsibilities and just meet with Jesus.  Can we learn to accept that some of those other busy things just aren’t that important after all?

We sit here, even in church on Sunday, worrying if we’ve been blocked in the parking lot because we got to go somewhere else right away so that we can forget about what happened here as quickly as possible!  Even leave mass early because we’ve fulfilled the minimum requirement by staying until communion.

As a nation we have given up on Sunday, we have made it socially unacceptable to be open about our faith, we have done everything we can to avoid taking the better part.  But as the people of St. Mary’s parish, we can begin to change that back right now, one life at a time, one family at a time. 

We can begin to find the time for daily prayer, we can make sure there is enough time on Sunday to come to mass without the rush and even leave some time to talk about our faith with our families afterwards, to share with each other where each of us has met Jesus in our lives this week, where each of us had the chance to see and listen to him.

We can use the strength we gain from our special encounter with Jesus today in the Eucharist, when we receive him in communion – to take the time to put aside the many tasks and just be with him – trusting that he will help us see what we need to know.

Many people are out there in the world who need to learn this lesson and they don’t come to church to hear these words.  The only chance they will have to learn that there is a better part is by watching the way we live, the peace we have, the joy that spending time with Jesus will bring to us. 

This is true evangelization, not with words, but with how we live, not just in the good things you do, but in the way  we have the courage to break away from the pressures of our culture and just set aside time to do nothing but be with God!

Impractical, irresponsible, lazy – or is it really the better part - there is need of only one thing!  Which part will we choose!

 - Deacon Steve