Sunday, July 20, 2025
/Proper 11
Genesis 18: 1-10a; Psalm 15; Colossians 1:15-28, Luke 10: 38-42
The Rev. James M.L. Grace
In the Name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. AMEN
I am going to break the fourth wall or pull back the curtain and invite you into the space between my ears – my mind specifically when I am confronted with a problem. We are going to look under the hood of Jimmy’s brain today. Let me specify the kind of problem I am talking about – this would be a big personal problem, not a St. Andrew’s problem, a Jimmy problem – a problem that is like the Gordian knot – there is no easy solution.
Are you ready for the journey? Buckle up – inside my head can be kind of a weird place. Here is what happens in my mind when I am trying to navigate a huge problem.
First, my ego is triggered. My ego demands a solution, and it will work around the clock, wearing itself (and me) out, trying to find one. My ego is that proverbial hammer trying to hammer the square peg into the round hole. No matter how hard my ego hammers away at the square peg, it does not move a centimeter into the round hole.
Second, I utilize sublimation which means that I translate my impulse for resolution into socially acceptable actions. Basically, what that means is that I use work to distract myself from the big problem. This is a fear-based reaction, of course, because my mind is afraid of the big problem where no easy solution is evident.
Finally, my mind engages in perfectionism - an old favorite coping strategy for when I am under duress. Perfectionism is a well-worn neural pathway in my mind, more like a a freeway than pathway, because of how much traffic traverses on it. “Perhaps if I am perfect enough, the answer to the real big problem will materialize.”
These three actions my brain employs are simple cognitive distortions that perhaps served me well as a child and young adult, but no longer serve me as an adult. My brain does not know that yet, and so, under duress, my brain still becomes Martha. It becomes distracted by many things, it defaults to completing tasks not because things need to be done but because I am in desperate need to feel in control of something. None of my brain’s Martha-like problem solving tendencies are effective. None of them work. The Persian poet Hafiz once wrote, “Now that all your worry and fretting proved such an unlucrative business, why not find a better job?”
While I have squandered many hours following the mental pattern just identified, I am learning a new way – let’s call it the way of Mary. Jesus says that “there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.” Well, what is the one thing?
The one thing is to just be.
Several weeks ago I attended a men’s retreat in Minnesota and we began our days with a thirty-minute silent meditation. One day, the meditation leader gave us instructions about breathing. When we took in a breath, we were to breathe in whatever was personally discomforting for each of us. We were instructed to literally breathe in grief and pain. To breathe in whatever that unsolvable problem was for each of us.
When we released our breath, we were instructed to breathe out , but to hold onto the pain, the discomfort, the problems in our lungs and in our hearts. And when we breathed again, we were told to breathe in more pain, breathe more grief, breathe in more discomfort, and hold it. Do you have any idea what a blessing it is to do that for thirty minutes? To get that close to everything that is upsetting you and to hold it inside and just feel it?
In those thirty minutes I went on a spiritual journey with my discomfort and it brought me to God. I learned to be less Martha, and more Mary. I learned, again, that the best thing for me to do when confronted with a really big problem, whether that is in my personal life or at St. Andrew’s – is to do the one thing: just be.
One of my favorite quotes is “don’t just do something. Sit there.” Brilliant. That is what Mary understood, and what Martha, sadly, missed.
It is easy to stand here in a pulpit and say all we need to do is do nothing. I know that is not practical for any of us. But – I would challenge every one of us to self-inventory our busyness and our daily tasks. How much of what we do every day is driven by fear versus faith? How much of our busyness is about our need to look important, our need to be in control, or our need to pretend we are God? To what extent have we all made idols out of our distractions?
There is need of only one thing. Choose the better part. It will never be taken from you. AMEN.