Luke 10:38-42

What makes you feel distracted?
What distracts you from being your true self?

Facundo Cabral, Argentine singer, songwriter, and philosopher (1937-2011), once wrote about distraction and depression. Here is an excerpt:

You are not depressed; you are distracted. You believe that you have lost something, which is impossible, because everything that you have was given to you.  You did not make a single hair of your head so you can not own anything.  In addition, life does not subtract things, it liberates you from them. It makes you lighter so that you can fly higher and reach the fullness. From cradle to grave, it is a school, and that is why those predicaments that you call problems are lessons, indeed.

Liberate yourself from the tremendous burden of guilt, responsibility, and vanity, and be ready to live each moment deeply, as it should be.

Love till you become the beloved, and even more! Love till you become the love itself!

This NT Gospel story is about distraction and about choosing a better way.
Here’s how it goes:

Martha extends cultural hospitality to Jesus.
Mary sits and listens to Jesus’ teachings.
Martha completes the obligatory tasks of hospitality.
Martha complains that Mary has neglected said tasks.
Martha asks Jesus to tell Mary to help her.
Jesus responds that Mary has chosen the better activity.

This story follows the parable of the Samaritan. This is a parallel tale.
Samaritan story: a dying man on the side of the road, but the obligation to help is not there for priest & Levite. They walk on by. The Samaritan is not obligated either, but chooses to help out of compassion.
Mary/Martha story: Jesus comes to their home. Martha feels obligated, according to the customs of society, to offer food and drink to Jesus. She considers that to be the most important thing. Mary shows hospitality to Jesus also, but not out of obligation. She sits at his feet and listens. Martha’s anxiety over getting the hospitality thing out of the way leads her to possibly resent Mary’s sitting.

Don’t be fooled, though. This is not Martha vs. Mary. Jesus does not rebuke Martha, remember. He simply states that Mary has chosen the better thing, just as compassion is better than obligatory service in the Samaritan story. Mary chooses to love and to show hospitality, but in a way that society did not require. Martha’s hospitality was fine, but it didn’t go the extra step. This is why Martha felt anxiety and was distracted. Or maybe Martha was anxious because she couldn’t find Pokémon? 

Also, compare Mary to the Samaritan—both heroes in these stories.

The Samaritan was obviously an unexpected hero who fulfilled the law by acting with compassion. Mary, a female, was an unexpected hero by not filling the typical role for a woman and instead acting out of genuine love and desire to learn; she became a student/disciple.

The thing is, Martha is fine, too, until she lets her anxiety get the best of her. When she calls out Mary, she has stopped being hospitable. Now it’s all about her.

Jesus visits her house, not to praise her for what she does or how well she does it, but instead, Jesus comes to tell Mary and Martha that they are both valued for who they are as children of God.

This is the better thing—to listen to that voice, to embrace your value as a person; to not measure your deeds or to compare yourself to others. When we do that, we get distracted.

My take: we can do a lot of things. We can fill schedules and calendars. We can appear busy. And yet, if life is just about completing those tasks, where will we find love, compassion, and peace? Will our actions just be another thing to check off of a list, will we start to resent others who don’t “work” as hard as we do? Will we ever stop to just sit and listen, which to me, is checking in with ourselves? This kind of life can be depressing and empty.

At the same time, though, it’s not just about sitting and listening. The listening helps us to hear a good word about who we are as human beings—that we are loved and our worth is not measured by what we do or don’t do. After listening, though, we find strength to live, to do good things in the world. Look, this planet we live on is wrought with heavy and sad things—plenty with which to distract us and make us feel more anxiety and worry. 

And yet, we can stop to sit and listen. We are capable of that. Sometimes stopping and listening means that you stop talking and actually listen to another person’s point of view or their story without planning how you will respond. Maybe you’ll just listen. Or you may sit for a moment, take a break from your schedule and live a few moments that are unplanned. Or perhaps you need to hear the kind and compassionate voice in the midst of all the heavy and hateful voices. The kind voice says that life matters most above all things, and so anyone’s life in danger is your life in danger. And that is motivation to show love to people at all times; that is motivation to show love to yourself.

So may you find moments to sit and listen in a world that doesn’t seem to encourage that better activity. May you listen to others. May you embrace your whole self, realizing that your value is not measurable by the number of things you complete in a day, a week, or a lifetime. May you not compare yourself to others. May you listen to and embrace compassion, and then may you show it to others.