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The stained glass windows a church has always tell an interesting story. Their original purpose was to convey the stories of Scripture to those who could not read. Yet the way these stories are depicted often differ and can sometimes help us see them in a new way.
Take our window here at St. Luke’s right behind our organ console. It’s titled “Jesus and the Women”, though it clearly is meant to illustrate two particular women: Mary and Martha. Here Mary, as in the story, sits at Jesus’ feet, clearly listening intently. Martha is standing over them mixing something in her bowl.
However, Martha’s response to her sister and Jesus is different in our window than in our Gospel lesson today. In our reading from Luke, Martha is upset because she is trying to get many things done and Mary isn’t helping. She even complains to Jesus about the lack of help from her sister. Yet Jesus points out that Mary has chosen the better part, to sit and to listen.
I like to think what this window illustrates is what happened after our Gospel today. Perhaps it is Martha’s reaction immediately after Jesus’ words to her, or it is a depiction of the next day, or it shows Jesus’ next visit. Here, Martha has a slight smile, if you look very closely, as she looks down, listening to Jesus like her sister. She still has the bowl in her hand and is clearly continuing to do her tasks. Now, though, she is taking the time to listen to what it is that Jesus has to offer.
Her listening is the “better part”, as Jesus puts it, because taking the time to hear and learn brings us closer to God. We all need this time for Christian Formation, and that’s whether we are 4 or 94. Whether you have been active in our learning together here, or whether you plan to catch up with the learning we have done in the past offered online, or whether you go out and find all the other myriad of resources you can, we all need to do something to continue our forming ourselves in Faith so that we can come closer in relationship with God throughout our lives. After all, as Amos points out in the end of our reading today, the worst punishment that can happen to us is to be separated from our Lord and God. All of us who have a close relationship with God know how important this connection is. All of us who have at one point in time felt separated from God know all the more how vital our relationship with the Lord is in our lives.
As our window depicts, developing that relationship doesn’t mean we give up the tasks that we are doing. Martha still has her mixing bowl in hand. Yet now there is not the same sense of urgency we see in the Gospel. Now the focus is less on what Martha thinks needs to be completed and is now on what tasks are actually important to accomplish. It means Martha has to reprioritize. It means Martha has to change her routine, even if ever so slightly.
One of the things I continue to learn at St. Luke’s is what all kinds of programs used to be accomplished here. It sounds like a fantastic time. Yet in all churches, there are cycles in ministry. People move away or pass on into the Resurrected Life. Children grow up, and new ones are born. Trends change in society, and interests change with them. At times we grow, and at times we shrink. These are patterns all churches follow. Some of these patterns have sadly been exacerbated by the Pandemic even.
Like our window’s depiction of Martha, we don’t have to hold on to the old ways of doing things. As the world around us changes, we too can shift, not to be like the world, but in order to meet the world where it is at as we declare the Good News of Jesus Christ. Maybe we can’t do everything that we used to, yet we can still take what we have learned and use it to build the next thing. Maybe that new thing is completely different from what we’ve done before. Maybe it is not.
Either way, our work is nothing if we don’t follow our window’s depiction of Martha and build ourselves up in our relationship with Christ Jesus. We are nothing if we don’t take the time to learn more about our Faith, to learn who we are as Christians. When we do that, we know why we’re mixing that bowl, or doing whatever task it is we perform for our Lord.
At times, like Martha, we may need to reprioritize, and that is okay. It can be the chance to find a better method of serving our Lord. It’s not that we leave our past behind; we just don’t mourn it. Instead we learn from it so that we can be stronger in our Faith and so we can better serve our Lord, no matter what direction that service takes us as we continue to go on our Faith journey together in the future.