March 2023. A sermon originally preached at Pacific School of Religion.
Hello. I am swimming in gratitude this morning. Filled to overflowing with joy, delight, and gratitude to be here with you today!
My name is Michelle Winter, and I am so honored to preach in Chapel this morning here at PSR.
The theme for Chapel today is Tending
To tend is to care for. We tend a wound; we tend to seedlings; when we tend, we incline ourselves toward The Other in a gentle way—a protective way. Tending is not the same as curing. We don’t knit the edges of a wound back together when we tend it. We don’t make the seedlings grow when we tend them. Instead, we lean in, we look and listen, we remove perceived impediments to growth, we clean wounds to reduce the harm caused, and we gently improve the conditions for health. We do this lovingly, with faith in the Life of The Other, hoping for flourishing,
Tending combines faith, hope, and love.
When we tend a seedling, we bring ourselves close to it so we can give it our attention—and without realizing it, we engage in reciprocal breathing. We inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide; the plant inhales carbon dioxide and exhales oxygen. For a few moments of attention, we share breath.
When we tend to a fellow human, we share the cadence of breath. Perhaps this is most evident in the way an overwhelmed child seeks out a trusted adult. The distressed child’s breathing is erratic, and when enfolded into the arms of a trusted adult, the child calms and the two begin to breathe as one. This act of entrainment releases hormones in the body that help us feel belonged.
Tending is an act of trust in the beautiful spirit of The Other. It is not a controlling movement, but a releasing movement.
I invite you to close your eyes for just a moment and remember what it feels like to be tended. Perhaps someone cared for you while you were sick, or someone encouraged you to follow a calling, or you felt safe leaning against the trunk of a favorite tree. What does it feel like to be tended?
Now we will wonder about that same question as we visit with a family in the New Testament. They are a group of siblings: Lazarus and his two sisters, Martha and Mary.
(here the reader for today read Luke 10:38-42 and John 11:20-22, 25-27)
You have probably heard this story many times. So much is going on here.
But…we read two stories that include these same sisters.
In the second story, Martha is full of faith. She answers Jesus with words that show that she loves him and knows him. In fact, her words to him are a good model for how to talk to God as a friend. In her time of deep hurt she goes to meet him, she tells him how she feels, she doesn’t try to hide it or say it in a way that sounds more polite, she just comes out and says what we all wonder when we are hurt, “Where have you been? I believe and trust in you…but where have you been Lord?” and then “I believe you are Christ the Son of God.”
That is an authentic relationship: she is open, honest, real. She is holding her grief and disappointment in front of God’s face with hope and faith.
So with this in mind, let’s look at the first story. Perhaps the story of Mary and Martha is not about 2 choices: to work or to sit. Sometimes we read this story as being about whether we should be busy or be still with God, but what if this story is about much more? What if this story can give us a key to tending to one another?
What do we know about Martha now that we have heard both stories? We know that she loves God, and we know that she loves her siblings. She is a good woman. In the first story, we find this woman who loves Jesus and opens her home to Him. She invites Him in, and then she loves Him in her way. What is her way? To do for him. Her way to show love is to cook and clean and serve.
And you know what? There is nothing wrong with that. In fact, it’s a beautiful way to love someone.
A few years ago, I broke my foot. I was just struggling to learn how to move in a cast when my sister in Arizona called to tell me that my father was in the hospital and she didn’t think he would live much longer. When my plane arrived, she picked me up and said, “I don’t know how we are going to get you back and forth from the house to the hospital every day, but we will figure something out so that you can have some time with him.” I told her, just take me to the hospital and leave me there. I will stay with him.” That’s what she did. During his last week of life, I slept in the chair next to his bed. I fed him, listened to him, talked to him, I held his hand, sang, prayed, and waited with him until he died.
After he died, I thought about what a gift my sister had given me. She took care of all the paperwork, the questions; she talked to the doctors and nurses, she made the phone calls and the legal decisions. I told her thank you. Thank you for letting me just sit with him while you did all that stuff that had to be done.
And she said, as soon as I took you to his room, I felt such relief knowing that you would never leave him until it was over. She said, I could never do what you do, being present and patient while waiting for someone to die. I’m good at the paperwork and the legal decisions. It’s what I do. You gave me a great gift by being willing to stay beside him.
By allowing each other to love in our own ways, we blessed each other, and we blessed my father.
I don’t think that Jesus was upset with Martha for the way she was showing love. I wonder if instead he was highlighting something else. Have you ever been like Martha, trying to do things for someone else, finish projects, fix problems for people, find solutions, and then
suddenly
somehow
the list of ways we are going to show love becomes a list of things to do…lots of things to do. When that happens to me …I admit that I become resentful at all I have to do. Why won’t anyone help me? Why do I have to do it all? How are all these things ending up on my list, and why does it seem that my list never gets any shorter?
In those times of stress, we look around for some way to make it stop, to relieve our own burdens by placing them on someone else. We look for someone to blame. In those moments we are tempted to devalue The Other.
What we see in Martha is a personality type—she values doing, working, cooking, cleaning. She thinks of those things as more important, or more valuable. But the fact that she is a doer is a character trait. It is valuable, but it is neither more nor less important than any other character trait. The gift my sister and I were able to give each other was the gift of seeing the other as different AND valuable. We don’t always succeed in this, but when we do, our relationship grows.
Martha wanted to show Jesus how much she loved Him by doing for him. Part of what she is suddenly feeling is panic at the possibility that she might fail. She has something to prove. She wants to show that she is valuable—worth his attention.
I imagine Christ’s voice is tender when he speaks to her. He says her name gently: Martha, Martha. And I hear him say my name, Michelle, Michelle. She is already valued, and in God’s economy, value is not comparative. She is free to love however she wants, but the important thing is to also allow her sister to love in her own way. In this story, the difference between the sisters is that Mary doesn’t require Martha to stop what she is doing and come and sit. She gives her sister the freedom to be herself. This is the “better part” -- the choice that Jesus commends: to stop trying so hard to control everything and everyone and to rest in the delightful difference of The Other.
A releasing movement.
And we need Martha. But her offering stopped being about tending to the needs of others when it became a controlling movement.
What would it have looked like for the people in that space to tend to one another? To breathe together? What if Martha had raised her head in frustration and noticed her sister sitting with Jesus? What if Martha had paused long enough to realize this was a unique opportunity for her sister? What if Martha, in that moment, had tended to what was growing in Mary? What if Martha had taken a deep breath, made peace with a less-than-perfect meal and pruned her menu? What if she had allowed herself to participate in the experience of breathing with the joy of companionship in that space?
We are designed to flourish when we connect with, and invest in, one another.
It takes more courage to love than to correct.
Love is inviting someone to come into my space as they are and trust that God is already part of their story in ways only He can see.
This is such an important part of the story of Martha and Mary. When Jesus tells Martha that Mary has chosen the better way, He is helping Martha to learn to let go of her fears around significance. It’s a releasing movement.
And Martha learned this lesson.
We know because we see her again, a person of deep faith and trust outside the tomb of her brother, believing that God has a plan and trusting even when she can’t understand.
What does it feel like to be tended?
Oh, beloved--It feels like being seen, being heard, being valued, and being allowed to grow into our dreams.
May we listen one another into existence
May we love one another into freedom
May we tend one another into flourishing