Dear Sisters, dear brethren, on Thursday last I referred to the rare but significant occurrence of repeated calling of names in the Old Testament. It was the reading of Moses’s encounter with God in the Burning Bush which was the occasion for this reflection. There God spoke to Moses directly for the first of many times in the Book of Exodus: ‘Moses, Moses!’ and Moses replied, ‘Here I am’. The same thing happens in the Book of Samuel when the boy Samuel, - who is to be the man chosen by God to anoint the first two kings of Israel, Saul and David, - hears the voice of God calling to him in the nighttime in the Temple: ‘Samuel, Samuel!’ to which Samuel replies, as instructed by his master Eli the priest, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.’ The same thing occurs in the lives of the great patriarchs Abraham and Jacob; they too are addressed by God in this significant way. Each time, it is the prelude not just to an important message, but to something even more: a life-changing encounter with God in person.
Nor is this only something which happens in the Old Testament. For we have just heard one of the few, but for that reason very significant, occurrences of this double call of someone’s name by our Lord in person. As it happens, all of them are told by St Luke, either in the Gospels or in the Acts of the Apostles. This is the first in order of time, to Martha of Bethany, of which more in a moment. But also we should bear in mind that our Lord would later on also address Peter in the same way at the Last Supper: ‘Simon, Simon.’ We heard this last Palm Sunday in the Passion according to St Luke. It is a vitally important moment both of reassurance and of apostolic commission when Jesus says to Peter: ‘Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.’ You see how important this is? It is a prophecy both of Peter’s fall by the threefold denial of Christ, and of his role beyond that fall when he will recover, repent and then become the one who will confirm the faith of the other apostles as their leader on earth after Christ has ascended into heaven.
The third and final such double naming is of Saul, at the very moment when he will cease to be Saul and will instead become Paul, which takes place in the Acts of the Apostles. As Saul is about to enter Damascus with a warrant from the Chief Priests in Jerusalem, for the arrest and return for trial in Jerusalem of every Christian taking refuge there, he is blinded by a sudden brilliant light the force of which throws him to the ground. He hears a voice calling him: ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?’ This event is so central not just to Saul’s life but to the entire narrative of the Acts, that it is recounted not just once but three times in different places in the Acts, twice being narrated by Paul in person, each time including the double call: ‘Saul, Saul!’ It was the one and only meeting we know of between Jesus, now risen and ascended and sitting at God’s right hand, and Saul the former Pharisee. From that one meeting would come Saul’s conversion from persecutor to believer and Apostle, and all his wonderful preaching, his letters and his joyful offering of his life in martyrdom in Rome which we celebrated just two weeks ago.
This brings us back, then, to Bethany. We know from St John’s Gospel that Jesus is a frequent guest at the house of Martha, Mary and Lazarus. Yet Luke narrates today’s Gospel story to us as though this was almost the first time that Jesus ever stayed there: ‘Jesus entered a village. And a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house.’ It is not impossible that this was indeed one of the earlier times when Jesus stayed at Bethany. If that is so, then it would certainly go some way to explain how it came to be that Jesus would from this time on become a firm friend of not only Mary but Martha too. Still, it seems that they already knew each other. Martha would hardly be likely to address Jesus in the way she does if she hardly knew Him at all.
We know this little story so well because it is quite contrary to everything we would expect. It is nothing like what we should consider ‘fair’. Surely Mary is right out of order! She has left all the preparation for the meal to Martha while she sits quietly at our Lord’s feet and enjoys listening to His words! So it is quite shocking when Martha appeals for Jesus’s assistance in getting her back into the kitchen where she should be sharing the hard work with her sister, and instead hears these words: ‘Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken from her.’
What is our Lord saying here? There are two important points. First, he addresses Martha’s own state of mind: ‘you are anxious and troubled about many things.’ The ‘many things’ represent a dissipation of her powers of concentration and of her judgement of what is really important. She is being driven from one thing to another and cannot stop to consider what truly matters. Consider the words that the priest prays at Mass immediately after the Our Father that: ‘by the help of your mercy, we may be safe from all distress…’ Anxiety, trouble and distress are not states of mind that God wants us to fall into. Martha is distressed and troubled. This is not what God wants. What God wants is what Jesus calls ‘the one thing necessary’. What is that?
Sometimes people report Jesus as going on to say: ‘Mary has chosen the better part’, but no. Jesus actually say that Mary has ‘chosen the good portion’. What is this good portion? It is a scriptural phrase, found in, among other places, the psalms. Do you remember the line: ‘the Lord is my portion and cup’ from psalm 15? The word ‘portion’ can also be translated ‘inheritance’. This portion is one which is inherited. It is what someone can gain for themselves when they reject all other options for life. In this way a person can attain for him or herself a certain inheritance from God that would otherwise not come to them automatically. So the psalmist says in ps 15 that ‘the Lord is my chosen portion and my cup. You hold my lot. The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places. Indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.’ What are these ‘lines’? They are the length of cord which were used in biblical times to mark out the boundaries of a piece of land, an inheritance.
This is what Mary has chosen. To sit at the Lord’s feet and listen to Him is to be granted a portion of the Lord Himself. But of course, this will not be the end. For Mary will be put to the test when she must act on what she has heard. However far she may have the good portion, this does not remove from her the responsibility of putting into effect out Lord’s teaching.
And Martha, too, will benefit from this exchange in a truly wonderful way when, some time later, he brother Lazarus dies. It will once again be Martha who calls to the Lord: ‘if you had been here my brother would not have died, yet even now I know that God will grant you whatever you ask of Him.’ And when Jesus promises that Lazarus will rise again, she replies that she knows that he will rise again on the last day. Then when Jesus goes on to declare: ‘I am the resurrection and the life, whoever believes in me will never die…do you believe this?’, she makes a wonderful declaration of faith: ‘Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of the living God, the One who was to come into this world.’ This proves that Martha’s faith was at least equal to Mary’s. She had in the end found her own ‘good portion’. That portion is offered to all who will sit at Christ’s feet and who will put His teaching into action, having faith in Him. May our lot, our inheritance, be with Mary and Martha and the saints in heaven. Amen.
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