ON MEDITATION

Lk. 10:38-42. As they travelled, he (i.e. Jesus) entered a certain village; and a woman named Martha received him. ³⁹ She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the feet of the Lord listening to his discourse. ⁴⁰ Meanwhile Martha was overburdened with whole a lot of catering. She came and said, “Master, don’t you care that my sister has left me all alone to do the serving? Speak to her, tell her to give me a hand.” ⁴¹ But he answered, “Martha, Martha, you are worrying and worked up over many things. ⁴² But one thing only is needed: Mary has chosen the best portion, and it shall not be taken away from her.”

Lord, uphold me that I may uplift Thee.

I was one of those babies that talk long before they locomote. My parents, trying to get me moving, put me down at one end of a long rug, and my bricks at the other. Whereupon I pulled the rug to me, hand over hand, and so got my bricks to come to me. From which preference for expending mental rather than physical energy it might be predicted that I would not become an athlete. Left to myself, I am still physically lazy. The Marthas of this world are easy for me to satirize, as in Lewis’s sardonic epitaph “Erected by her seven brothers

In memory of Martha Clay:

Here lies one that lived for others.

Now she has peace. And so have they.” Not to mention his fictional Mrs. Fidget in The Four Loves, who exhausted her family making them help her do things for them that they didn’t want done, and of whom her pastor said on her passing that she was “now at rest. What’s quite certain is that her family are”.

Of course, ever since I started to sit at the Lord’s feet, hearing His word, as the older versions more literally put it, I have not been left to myself. I have been forced to become practical, as a matter of obedience. Among the Christians that I have admired most have been my College contemporaries studying medicine, whom I was tempted to envy, as I faced that I could never have done enough mathematics to learn enough science so as to emulate them. I have reverenced Holy Trinity saints such as the late Yvonne and Eileen: while I preached, they quietly read their Bibles daily, even twice daily, finding in their devotion to Christ the root of their devotion to us. So nowadays Martha in our passage has almost all my sympathy. Of course there was conflict. There she was, with at least 13 extra mouths to feed, plus perhaps sundry hangers-on. She knows, or thinks she knows, what is expected of her: not for nothing has Luke just recorded the parable of the Good Samaritan, with its categorical teaching that without practical work to meet basic visible human needs, our love for the invisible God is unreal. Of course the people must be fed, and as lavishly as I can do it. A man may think that it is loving to avoid creating trouble for others; Mother taught me that a good woman must spend herself taking trouble for others. Mary has no right to abdicate her natural role like that. And how is it that Jesus doesn’t notice all my trouble, and how my sister just sits around educating herself as though she was a male disciple?

Yet the Lord will not tell Mary off as her sister demands. He actually rebukes Martha, on the surface humorously, with a little culinary pun on a word for ‘dish’ and ‘portion’, but at a deeper level with teaching about real discipleship. What Mary has chosen has nothing to do with any temperamental clash between these sisters, so that it is better merely for her: it is better in principle. Martha, of the earth, earthy, has been too quick to assume what form her own discipleship should take, wrong to try to impose that form on Mary’s discipleship, and most wrong to try to instruct the Master about both. Even the zealous and energetic Martha, who has already fallen into censoriousness, must become a Mary, or she will eventually, whether it takes ten, twenty, fifty years of laboring for the bread that perishes, run out of steam, grow cynical and defeatist. Left to herself, Martha will not grow, and may well dry up and die like a plant without water. She must learn that people are not saved by the mere meeting of their physical needs, must be nourished by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. She must listen to the Lord before she prays, clear her mind of her assumptions about what He wants. She must accept that she cannot give to Jesus, or give for His sake, until she has first received from Him. No, this is not a matter of extroverted activist v. quiet contemplative, the diversity of gifts, or even of balanced Christian living. Mary has the root of the matter in her, Martha unreconstructed does not. No root, no fruit.

What then does it mean to become a Mary? Two things, according to this passage. First of all, we must sit at Jesus’ feet. This means that we approach Him as Teacher and Lord, submit ourselves to Him as pupils, students, disciples. It involves self-abasement to the only proper authority. We are not to center ourselves on anyone else in this way. For females no man or woman however powerful or admirable must come between us and Jesus. Yes, He will eventually see to it that we take our men, or our sisters, more seriously than before, and become more like them in essential ways. But they are not Jesus, and do not have His rights over us. Secondly, we must be hearing His word. This too means that we submit ourselves and our ideas to correction and expansion, by the standard of the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. We shall as sentient human beings naturally meditate on something; to hear His word means to hear and internalise, not any old word, but His word. It is not sufficient to hear it filtered through the sieve of someone else’s mind and preaching, however good. The idea of higher education for women originated in the mid-Victorian era, and was fought, I’m sorry to say, by some pious people. It was said not only that our poor little minds would be overburdened by trying to learn such difficult subjects as Latin and Greek, but that the whole idea of making a university college for women was impious. Someone had forgotten that only in countries where the Protestant Reformation had taken root were women taught to read, and that was so that they might read the Bible for themselves, like their brothers.

So what are the practical steps we may take? We are not expected to read the Bible with any equipment that, by reason of education or intellectual gifts, we do not have. It is not possible in the skeptical modern world for you to know too much technical theology, but it certainly is possible to spend too long acquiring it. Most of us must read in translation: well, modern English-speakers have the privilege of reading or neglecting to read it in about fifteen excellent versions. First of all, make sure that you have a modern version, nothing too archaic. More than one doesn’t come amiss. I put the Eight-Translation New Testament into the Library long ago, so you may do some comparing. I start with the simplest method. Have a calendar which covers all the books (it’s a large library including the Old Testament), and try to follow it. Search the Scriptures is a very useful volume that helped me as a young woman to get the whole huge Christian system into some focus. I think that some of it if not all is in our Library. Cranmer’s lectionary in the BCP is fine in nearly all spots. It provides a schema for both morning and evening. This will ensure that though you may skip the odd reading you do not just revolve around six favourite passages. Our faith is so huge that our blind-spots may be huge as well. Do not start at Genesis all on your ownsome: you will sink without trace at or about Leviticus. The Scripture Union will give you both a schema and notes. Do this for several years.

Other methods are to read a book slowly with a commentary. Do not be troubled if you can’t tell whether this is devotional or academic study. As you go on, you won’t know or care about the difference. Take a great long book like Job or Romans, or a Gospel, and read it at one sitting, not stopping for the bits that you can’t fathom. As Mark Twain said, “It’s not the parts of the Bible that I don’t understand that bother me, it’s the parts I DO understand!” Or one can take just a few words, and meditate on them for an extended period. Or, after a lot of passage-based reading, pursue a large topic: mine in recent years have included the Uniqueness of Christ, Pain and Evil, Marriage and Chastity, the Ministry of Women. A large enough topic will lead back to all the rest, and to Christ.

Sometimes I have been so tired or ill that meditation has become an extra burden, a duty to be performed coldly, like cleaning one’s teeth; this is perhaps especially the occupational hazard of those who study the Bible professionally. We can avoid that if we remember that to meditate is a matter of nearness to one who loves us, a tapping into vital refreshment and sustenance. Late at night may be the best time. I am helped by remembering the saying of a favourite clergyman who used to be here in this city: he said that he had a lovely life, “I read the Bible and I talk to my friends!”

I have been meditating on Martha and Mary for decades. They have fought each other inside me all that time. Not in this world will there be anything but conflict between them, just as I shall never do enough praying, hear all the music, see all the art, read all the books. Can I ever do enough for the Lord, listen enough, serve enough? That I love, or aspire to, is all that I can do. I should infinitely prefer to be remembered for love than for intellect or learning. I think that all the saints, even those with complicated minds, are essentially simple souls. Like Brother Lawrence, skivvying away amongst the pots and pans, they know that they must cling at every moment to their lifeline. Perhaps nobody will give us a moment to ourselves, we are too tired to read, or our Bible is taken from us. Still we can meditate, on some remembered scrap.

Blessed Lord, who hast caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning; Grant that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that by patience and comfort of thy holy word, we may embrace, and ever hold fast, the blessed hope of everlasting life, which thou hast given us in our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.