First
Presbyterian Church of
Luke 10
“Maggie’s Slaves”
The Rev. Dr. Fred G. Garry
“Martha, Martha, you are fretting
and disturbed about many details; there is need of only one thing.”
Feeling justified by scripture is
not a very Reformed habit of mind.
Usually scripture is meant to convict, maybe affirm, but justify? Careful.
But on this one I just have to say
thank you to the lectionary that after months and months of mind numbing
details, most of which I put aside or put off or missed entirely, a group of
arcane scholars chose my theme passage as a kind of zinger. The chastising
Jesus offers is a kind of contempt for the fussing and fretting over the pieces
and parts of life that lack great significance, also known as details. I have to say, this is me. I am all over this; “don’t get caught up in
the details” should be on my business card.
This is my kind of passage. And
the cool thing is: I didn’t pick it. It
picked me as it were.
Now all gloating aside- well, almost
all, let’s go back a few steps. On
Monday John Sudduth came into my office and he had
one thing to say. He and Ken Reed drove
the Malawians to Plattsburg to their new host/coordinator Paul Heller. Paul is a pastor and a good friend. John came into my office and he said, “all I
can say is I hope Paul Heller has a Liz Bonisteel.” At this moment we did the manly pause and
stare and grunted in concurrence.
And sure enough when I relayed this
conversation to Paul Heller he confessed he was sans a “Liz” and that the
details were overwhelming him and swamping him.
He started down a list of things that needed to be taken care of and it
became readily apparent how much we both lived a kind of life above the fray
where disdain of details was permissible by ignorance and the extravagance of
others.
A few years ago I was waxing on
regarding some aspect of childrearing and even though my perspective was
juxtaposed to my wife’s that didn’t negate its legitimacy. It was something about Ethan and being a boy
and freedom and how important I considered something she didn’t
appreciate. She let this spin out for a
moment before she played the trump card.
“What is Ethan’s teacher’s name,” she asked? I searched my mind casting aside theological
dogmas and philosophical arguments and axioms and ended up saying, “I got
nothing.” Soon after Ethan got sick at
school and I was called from work to retrieve him. Arriving at the front desk feeling official
and responsible what do you suppose the first question was? What is his teacher’s name? Again, nothing. The secretary rolled her eyes as I became one
more example of the disconnected dad.
Some details may be more important
than others. When the choir was to
arrive on the 24th of June at JFK I was fortunate to have Bob Gorman
and Kathryn Ann Kolton agree to retrieve them. This was a huge help to me. Except, the choir didn’t
actually arrive on the 24th, but the 25th. Yes, the itinerary said the 24th
but I know better than that. I know that
on trans- continental flights the itinerary only shows departure dates not
arrival dates. Let’s just say it was an
awkward call, a series of long pauses before Bob said, "we will give up a
day." Sometimes a small detail can
mean the world.
Although it is not common in terms of
occurrence, patients going in for surgery have taken to marking their bodies
with pens writing words like “not this knee”.
In a field where just the slightest knick or cut or slip can change
someone’s life and health it seems impossible that a surgeon would replace the
wrong hip, but it is simply a detail. Left or right? I
thought I read “right”. Those wily details.
I know very well that my life is
sustained and kept aloft by a thousand details that are attended to without my
knowledge. Every year Kathy goes away on
mission trips or a visit with her mother.
All of sudden the house I love is replaced by the beast that seems to
ooze disorder and piles and heaps of stuff.
Animals, about which I grumble and complain all of sudden
become my charge and it is just . . . well . . . insane. On her most recent trip to
Sometimes I wish I wasn’t so
stereotypical, so pigeon holed. But I
am. After the choir goes home I know I
will rejoice in their accomplishments, in their moments of glory. There was a moment of glory when a deacon who
had a hand in the creation of the dorm in room twenty and was disgruntled that
the choir just didn’t stay there; it was a moment of glory when this deacon had
a change of heart. It was pure glory
when I was told, “I just didn’t understand that after all that effort to create
a dorm why the choir would go and stay in homes. But oh was I wrong. They are our children now. If they hadn’t stayed in our homes what we
would have missed that.”
When the choir goes home on Tuesday,
I will shed a tear knowing the irony that what they have seen here will be both
blessing and curse. The open fire in a poorly
ventilated hut to cook the evening meal will seem strange after the gas cook
tops and copper sauce pans. The bucket
of water carried from a stream on the top of a young girl’s head will now be
seen as an enormous burden compared to the faucet that flows with water that is
not precious in our eyes. But I have to
be honest, I will balance the weight of that irony with the knowledge that I
can sleep through the night and not awake two to three times in a panic as to
where they are and if they are alright.
Details are not my strong suit. It’s fair, just for fun, to say that again:
details are not my strong suit. And even
though there were an enormous amount of details taken from me, lifted from my
hands, brought to fruition by people far more capable than I, there were still
a few left over. And over those that
remained I tripped and stumbled and apologized and paid extra and used words
like, “I never would have imagined.” And
the result was a firm conviction that I’ve got to get better at this.
As strange as it may sound, this
thrills me. I learned so much from the
plethora of my mistakes. I learned a
great deal about my assumptions, my preferences, and my weaknesses. And that is
gold.
Yet, and this is a strange truth,
the real affirmation about the Mary and Martha passage, for me, is not in the
dismissal of details. Truly if you read
this story as a kind of declaration that details are unimportant you have
misread the story. Mary and Martha are
not an opposition, but a compliment. One
is more important in terms of being essential, but one is not important by being
other. This is a subtle difference. Some things are great or beautiful by being
other. Truth is powerful by not being
false; mercy is tender by not being vengeful.
But joy is joy. Its presence is a
compliment, not a contradiction.
Martha had fallen under the
misguided belief that if you took care of everything then somehow joy would
emerge. She had lost sight of the one
thing. I’ve met so many people who have
convinced themselves that their being serious or angry or certain creates a
kind of stability and safety. And after
they are serious or angry or certain then there will be time for joy. Yet, joy doesn’t wait for our
foolishness.
I may have told you this story before
but it is worth repeating. There was a man who came by my office to interview
the new pastor. He was a very serious
evangelical and he needed to appraise the condition of my soul and the worth of
my faith. Having just spent four years
in seminary I was unfazed and I goaded him into a conversation about Paul. I told him how fascinated I was that Paul
only found joy once his life was ruined, how he only knew freedom once
imprisoned. This sort of development, I
knew, wouldn’t fit his very severe understanding of life and sure enough he
started to crack.
He had come to examine me if I knew
enough of the details of minutia about arcane and wooden theological arguments
to justify the title of pastor and I asked him if he had ever experienced
joy. I think I hit a nerve because
before he stormed away he shouted at me through clenched teeth, “I know what
joy is!”
We don’t know how or why or what,
but Martha had forgotten, had left aside the freedom and dexterity of joy- the
one thing. Something that had once been
vital had become wooden, a spirit that was once tender had become severe.
This week I had a long talk with our
organist Carl Bingle.
He and his wife Janna had simply given away weeks, months of their life,
so we could have a moment of pure joy here with Northern Choral. I was concerned that he knew that I knew what
that meant to me. As we talked he
detailed the hours spent in practice and preparation. The next day I received an email that was
meant to tell me that he wanted me to know how much it had all meant to
them. He said something I will take with
me for a great time. He talked of how it
had changed their lives and was a unique gift and then he wrote "I could
see how we are slaves to the notes, while the Malawians are slaves to the
spirit."
I think there is a little “Mary and
Martha” here. We are slaves to the
notes, to the details, to the precision that finds months of preparation gone
to waste because of one mistake. They
are slaves to the spirit in that there are no details, no schedules or need to
be precise. Tambuka
is still a language that lacks enough vocabulary to be truly serious. The emotion is not in the words, but in the
tone of voice. Worship in
And yet, yet, when I watched the
choir with Lorraine Revelle I heard them say, “we want learn to know the notes.” They were hungry for the details just as much
as we were hungry for some spontaneity.
There were moments where I lingered to peek at the many practices
The bottom line for me is that I
need to get to better. I made a point of
learning Ethan’s teacher’s name.
Although when he hits junior high I am out. Nine? Not a chance. Valuing the details is not something that has
come easy to me because I have lived a charmed life. It’s nothing more than that.
Yet, details or no details, if I
live without an abiding sense of joy then what good am I? Ten details attended to and then I am
happy? No. All the ducks in a row and the staff working
in the same direction and the session believing this church is an image of the
The man in the office so many years
ago had all the right beliefs and he was terribly committed to his faith, but
he forgot to put joy before everything.
Hebrews says, “it was for the joy set before
him that he endured the cross.” Never,
ever believe joy comes after you’re done.
If it’s not at the beginning it won’t be at the end. Joy is ever a compliment not a
contradiction. You can’t be a Mary or a
Martha, the story wasn’t meant to separate the serious from the frivolous. Martha had forgotten joy and Mary had not
forgotten. Don’t wait for joy today,
start now. Amen.