Sunday February 19th 2023 : Transfiguration Sunday
Musings: The Passing of Time (Note merging introduction to Exodus reading)
Time has slipped by since I last stood in front of this congregation. People have come and gone, you have known bereavement and joy, health and sickness, pandemic, lockdowns, change, as have I. We could draw a timeline of the past three and a half years since I left St Ninians and mark off the events for this congregation, not least the movement around the buildings and now back here in the church, but also in your own personal lives. I for one have become a grandmother of two delightful little boys in Australia. Such a timeline would be Chronos time.
There’s another kind of time – Kairos time – or deep time. Something that Robert Macfarlane conveys so well in his book, Underland. He writes that deep time goes below the surface – in his case, literally as he explores various underground locations from a burial ground in Somerset, UK; to the catacombs in Paris, to under the ice in Finland and various other sites in between – sites where eras and epochs put human time in perspective and where he feels deeply the interconnection of life on this constantly evolving and changing planet. When viewed in deep time, that which appears inert, becomes vibrant. Our ‘flat perspective’ deepens. I highly recommend.
If each of us were to draw a ‘deep time’ timeline for ourselves these past three and a half years would be multi layered – a timeline of the spirit if you like. These years have marked each of us in different ways often unseen but nevertheless present. I am sure this is true for the congregation as a whole as well.
The narratives of what the Christian Church calls Transfiguration Sunday revolve around mountain top experiences rather than experiences under land. Callie Plunket-Brewton notes “Mountains are the site of divine revelation throughout the ancient world, even as far away as Greece and Japan”. Maurice Andrew notes mountain experience narratives centering around Maori prophets. (Rua Kenana – Maungapohatu; Te Maiharoa Lake Ohau etc) Those of you who have tramped and climbed mountains will have your own experiences both pragmatic and of awe and wonder.
Today’s reading from Exodus narrates Moses’ reception of the Torah on Mt Sinai. There are a number of narratives centred round Mt Sinai in previous chapters – the descriptions suggest volcanic activity – the exact location is disputed because of this…but the main point is that there is a biblical tradition of ‘meeting with God’ at Mt Sinai and Chapter 24 links various elements of the Sinai revelation into a whole.
There are two biblically symbolic numbers of chronos time used in the reading this morning. Moses waits on the mountain – on the seventh day he hears God’s voice. Then later he is up there for forty days and forty nights. Fr Laurence Freeman suggests 40 days and nights is the phrase for ‘as long as it takes’. There is a slowing down of time when it comes to encounters with mystery. Chronos time becomes irrelevant – this is a Kairos time narrative.
It’s in the depth of our hearts and spirits that we encounter Kairos time – deep time – and just like the almost ageless quality of life underground as Robert Macfarlane explores it – there is a deepening of perspective that happens in such encounters which this Exodus narrative hints at even as it narrates chronos time.
Reading: Exodus 24:12-18 (there will be a reader)
The Lord said to Moses, “Come up to me on the mountain, and wait there; and I will give you the tablets of stone, with the law and the commandment which I have written for their instruction.” So Moses set out with his assistant Joshua, and Moses went up into the mountain of God. To the elders he had said, “Wait here for us until we come to you again; for Aaron and Hur are with you; whoever has a dispute may go to them.
Then Moses went up on the mountain and the cloud covered the mountain. The glory of the Lord settled on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it for six days; on the seventh day he called to Moses out of the cloud. Now the appearance of the Lord was like a devouring fire on the top of the mountain in the sight of the people of Israel. Moses entered the cloud and went up on the mountain. Moses was on the mountain forty days and forty nights. (NRSV)
Reading: Luke 10: 38-42
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 called Mary, who sat at the Lord’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 so many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her. (NRSV)
Reflection:
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our spirits be acceptable in thy sight – O God our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
We read or listen to scripture for all sorts of reasons but primarily to hear the Word – the Word of God. At the heart of the encounter between us and the text is an encounter with mystery but also with what Christian discipleship might look like, especially in the gospels.
It sounds straightforward and many insist it is. What you read is what you get. But I have been trained and believe strongly that scripture opens up when we understand some of the process behind how it got to the form in which we read it. Reading or listening to scripture is a balance between background knowledge and openness to mystery.
This Mary and Martha narrative is a well known one. The temptation with well-known passages is to let them slide past because we know what’s going to happen. Everybody knows that Mary gets the tick of approval whilst Martha is left to do all the work. I’ve always been suspicious of people who’ve pitted sister against sister but haven’t quite known how to find my way through that.
I belong to the World Community for Christian Meditation and am now a Benedictine Oblate associated with WCCM. Most oblates (lay people who have committed to following the Benedictine Rule in their own particular contexts) come from a Catholic background. I am aware that when this passage is read and talked about that they hear it differently to me. There seems to be a cultural difference operating.
So it was with great interest that I read Jennifer S. Wyant’s book Beyond Mary or Martha: Reclaiming Ancient Models of Discipleship in which she outlines the reception history of interpretations of Luke 10: 38-42. To my surprise I discovered that the gendered ‘hearing’ of this text that I carry with me is a post Reformation reading. Luther understood the sisters as representing the dichotomy between works and faith with the latter required for salvation. He rejected the monastic preference which had prevailed through the medieval centuries. Within the more conservative evangelical circles in the USA the expectations on women are to serve in the household and kitchen but with the underlying understanding that you should really want to be Mary, but hey we still need that cup of tea.
Wyant points out that commentaries on the Prodigal Son narrative aren’t gendered so why is this story? She argues that Mary and Martha need to be removed from the ‘women’s texts’ niche of both feminist and evangelical scholarship and put back in the general conversation of what this passage can teach us about Luke’s understanding of Christian discipleship.
Wyant outlines how 3C Origen whose understanding of the ultimate goal of reading scripture was to encounter Jesus, wrote five different readings of Luke 10: 38-42 with his Alexandrine audience in mind, including Judaism. His predominate reading offered the paradigm of balanced action contemplation which 4thC John Cassian adopted for his audience, monastic Western Christianity and Bernard of Clairvaux built on in the 12th C.
5th C, Augustine’s allegorical interpretation was aimed at a church in the dying days of Empire where the work of Martha was necessary work for the church on earth so that one day the church would enter the better part (Mary).
Encounter with text moves with the times.
So, what can we say as we encounter the text this morning in 2023? If in each age teachers interpret Mary and Martha for the issues in their own context, how do we do this today?
Within the Christian Meditation and Benedictine communities, I now belong to, both Fr Laurence Freeman and Kim Nataraja have provided readings and talks exploring the model of balanced action and contemplation. They and others have extended this to its application in contexts such as the war in the Ukraine and to Climate Change.
I find it helpful to take read this Mary Martha as a Kairos time narrative. A both /and narrative of contemplative action which can only be fulfilled by taking time to be still. We can hear the text as a reminder that Kairos time – deep time – is an essential element in service. When we take time to be still and silent and listen, we are less bound up in ego – less inclined to cause harm. When we think of good leadership it is usually those who are not bound up in their ego who are able to genuinely serve.
Service out of genuine humility is of a different quality to service of one’s ego. A genuine humility recognises we are interconnected with all life. A genuine humility recognises we live on a vibrant, ever changing and moving planet. A genuine humility recognises we are a rather frail species who have a limited life span both individually and perhaps as a whole. When we act from those perspectives – often only gained from Kairos time – from encounter with mystery – then we can truly serve in whatever way we are best suited …best created to do by the One who calls us forth.
When we consent to enter Kairos time, we allow ourselves to encounter mystery and let the light of love shine into the corners. Mary and Martha together make a whole – they’re a both/and story of a way of being in discipleship. Out of silence and stillness we can act in calm and solidarity with those whom Christ would have us serve. Out of silence and stillness we can point beyond our self to the light of Christ in the world despite the agony of events in chronos time.
Julian of Norwich’s familiar phrase, “All will be well, all manner of things will be well” might well include the additive ‘no matter what happens’. In the light of the devastation, displacement, agony of Cyclone Gabrielle it is an act of faith to join in worship. It is an act of faith to praise the God of creation. To acknowledge that nature is nature and yes, we have a role to play in how it impacts us, accepting that we cannot live out of a sense of entitlement that the planet will ‘behave’ in ways conducive to how we might wish to live on it. As we act in faith out of genuine humility in the face of all that is greater than us, we can say that yes, “all will be well, all manner of things will be well”. AMEN.
Rev Yonne Smith
Beyond Mary or Martha: Reclaiming Ancient Models of Discipleship by Jennifer S. Wyant
Atlanta: SBL Press, 2019. # 21 in the Emory Studies in Early Christianity.
IBN: 978-1-62837-259-5