This Sunday our Hebrew Scripture and Gospel both contain stories of guests coming for dinner. In the first, Abraham welcomes three strangers. He runs from his hospitality tent to greet them, for in the empty desert where he lived, good conversation was hard to come by. In the Gospel, Martha welcomes the iterant preacher Jesus — who probably had a bunch of hungry apostles with him. In both, good meals were prepared. But Jesus reprimands Martha when she asks him to tell Mary, her sister, to help get the meal on the table. Poor Martha has gotten a bad name because Jesus says, “Mary has chosen the better part” (sitting at the Lord’s feet and listening to him), “and it will not be taken from her.” I wonder what happened after that? Did Mary rethink things and get up to help Martha? Notice that in the Hebrew Scripture, Abraham ordered his wife to make bread, but he himself also helped round up the food and serve the visitors their meal. The main message of both these stories is about welcoming. Tents and houses are private spaces. Privacy has become exaggerated in current Western society. Privacy fences and alarm systems and neighborhood watches and gated communities are symptoms that strangers are seen as suspects rather than as potential guests. Recent polarizing politics has further separated us into like-minded camps. Eating with people we do not know well breaks down cultural and personal boundaries. So does attentive listening to alternate viewpoints and experiences of “strangers.” Both Martha and Mary were welcoming Jesus, but in their different ways, one by feeding people, the other by listening. Catholic parishes gather strangers together each Sunday for a Eucharist meal. But what about the listening that Mary did? How can parishes help parishioners be welcoming to each other, to listen attentively to one another? Good questions these readings raise.
— Blog entry by Sister Mary Garascia
The post July 20, 16th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Martha: a Sunday Scriptures blog first appeared on Sisters of the Precious Blood.