Monthly Archives: July 2025

The Call to Contemplation

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The brief story of Jesus visiting Martha and Mary, when Martha serves Jesus and Mary sits at his feet, listening to him, (Lk. 10: 38-42) has been interpreted as contrasting the active and contemplative lives since the early church. The contrast between Martha being so frantically active and Mary so still a listener firmly calls for attention. In any case, the relationship between activity and contemplation is one with which Christians have struggled since the Early Church. Although the Desert monastics embraced an ardent contemplative lifestyle, there are stories about the need for Martha, such as the amusing story of a visitor to a monastery who said he would not help with the work because he had, like Mary, chosen the better part, but was upset when he wasn’t called to dinner.

On the face of it, though, the contrast of action and contemplation doesn’t seem to be an issue for Luke or the other Gospel writers, which raises the question of whether or not the use of this story for evaluating the relationship between action and contemplation might be a bit anachronistic, even if congruent to the story. So I thought about what the story might have met to Luke–-but came up empty. I couldn’t think of any other meaning than the traditional one, which raises the question of whether it is so anachronistic after all.

First, I reflected on the pace of each of the four Gospels. Mark, considered the earliest, is very fast paced, breathlessly narrating the healing miracles and overwhelming the reader (or listener) with the power of Jesus’ ministry. Matthew and Luke slow the pace considerably, mainly by including long episodes of Jesus’ teaching, teachings that require reflection to begin taking them in. Although Luke’s pace is roughly the same as Matthew’s, it is instructive that he stresses more the times Jesus went off alone to pray, suggesting that Jesus had to balance his active life with contemplation. John, most likely the latest Gospel, is much the most contemplative Gospel as it unfolds at a very slow pace and suggests deeper meanings to the events in the narration. Such a progression suggests a growing awareness of those who developed the Gospel traditions of the need to contemplate the meaning of Jesus’ life that culminated in the shocks of the crucifixion and Resurrection, as well as absorbing the teachings which seem to have puzzled Jesus’ closest followers at the time. So, the traditional interpretation of this brief story doesn’t seem anachronistic after all.

When we look at the opening chapter of the Epistle to the Colossians, we encounter profoundly contemplative insights on the part of Paul, or whoever else might have written the epistle. (I favor Pauline authorship, but if somebody else shared the same contemplative insights as Paul demonstrated in his undoubted epistles, that attests all the more to the contemplative development of the early church.) Paul connects Jesus, whom he encountered on the Road to Damascus, to the Creator of the world, (Col. 1: 15–17) perhaps sensing the same creative activity on the part of God in Genesis as in the re-creation Paul experienced when Jesus called him out. This same Jesus is also the head of the Church, (Col. 1: 18) the specific group of humans who have responded to Jesus as Paul has. All this convinces Paul that the fullness of God dwells within Jesus. (Col. 1: 19) Most important, Paul realizes that Jesus’ reconciliation with him, who had formerly been hostile to Jesus, is part of a general reconciliation Jesus has made with all people, a reconciliation made not through the military, political, and cultural force of the Pax Romana, but the Peace of Christ who suffered at the hands of the Roman Empire. (Col. 1: 20) The very persecution Paul engaged in was flipped to a reconciliation by the suffering of Jesus. In this dense passage, we see the fruits of profound contemplation, a sitting at the feet of Jesus in quiet prayer. This gives us all the more reason to believe that Luke, probably writing two or three decades later than Paul, was passing on a caution traced back to Jesus that the action required by charity, such as in the Parable of the Good Samaritan that directly precedes this story of Mary and Martha, and the need to proclaim the Kingdom of God, be grounded in quiet contemplation of what the Kingdom ix really about.

In Genesis, we have the incident when Abraham and Sarah welcome three men who turn out to be angels. (Gen. 18: 1–10) Although there is much activity, we don’t see the frantic movements of Martha, and certainly not a trace of the resentment on Martha’s part. Starting with the Early Church, there has been a tendency to interpret the angels as the Holy Trinity come to visit the patriarch and matriarch. That interpretation really is anachronistic, but Paul’s proclamation that “the mystery that has been hidden throughout the ages and generations but has now been revealed to his saints” (Col. 1: 26) suggests that some interpretations of scripture will transcend time. The well-known icon of the Trinity by Andrei Rublev, inspired by this scene, leads us into the deep contemplation, not only of the hospitality of Martha, Sarah, and Abraham, but also of the hospitality of Mary who invited Jesus deeply into her heart. Such a presence of God within us can never be taken away from us and will remain with us for all eternity.

On Being Migrant Citizens

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Migration is one of the major themes in the Bible. Abraham was called out of Ur of the Chaldees and Isaac and Jacob were constantly on the move. In Deuteronomy, Moses gives a retrospective account of their migration from Egypt to the Promised Land of Canaan that they are about to enter. In contradistinction to the Egyptians, Moses insists that the God who lead them out of Egypt demands good treatment to helpless people, especially the widow and the orphan, and the stranger, since they were strangers in Egypt. (Deut. 10: 19) Later, there we are migrations of the Jewish people at the hands of power politics that lead to the Babylonian Exile and the Return from Exile under the rule of Cyrus. With the prophets’ conviction that God was at the root of these movements, there is the suggestion that God, rather than any particular piece of land, is their true home. The author of Hebrews reviews all of the biblical migrations to teach us that, no matter how much we may think we feel “at home” in this world, this world is not our true homeland but that God has prepared a better homeland, “a heavenly one.” (Heb. 11: 16) Hardly surprising since the Son of Man had no place to lay his head. (Mt. 8: 20) If everybody’s true Homeland is a heavenly one, then there is no land on earth where anyone should be considered a stranger and treated the way the Egyptians, the Assyrians or the Babylonians treated the Jews. (Or the ways the Jews treated the Canaanites when they entered the Promised Land.) From these considerations, it follows that we should love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us, as Jesus teaches us in Matthew. (Mt. 5: 44) After all, if we are all aliens, then nobody is an alien, and there is no reason for anybody to be an enemy.

On Independence Day in the U.S., one may be prompted to use these reflections for guidance as to how our nation should conduct itself. That is, we should be welcoming to people seeking entry into our country, nurture the vulnerable, and do what we can to cultivate good relations with other countries. Bad governance by these guidelines would be to pursue a policy of enmity, either against people within the country or with other countries, or both. Usually the two go together, as the more enemies one finds, the more enemies one finds. Such governance is a disquieting escalation that will have no end until, like the serpent Ouroboros, we devour our own tail. After all, hatred of others tends to be rooted in hatred of self. Ouroboros is considered a symbol of infinity, but it is the infinity of the closed circle, and thus a vicious cycle. Such closed circles represent the policies of most sovereignties since the foundation of the world, with Egypt, Assyria,. Babylon, and Rome being biblical examples. It is the infinity of God, the maker of Heaven and Earth, who specifically commands the Israelites to open their circle, and with Jesus, this true infinity becomes a human being who breaks the circle we keep trying to close again. So it is that closed-circle rulers such as in Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Rome, and the Jewish leaders of Jerusalem crucify Jesus, only to have the Risen Victim open to us the way to an open system for all time, if and when we will have it.

With a political observance such as Independence Day, it is tempting to keep the focus on what the government should do, making ourselves armchair coaches with no responsibility–America’s favorite blood sport–but it is all the more important to realize that when political leaders show a need for enemies, they need for us to need enemies ourselves. When we put the matter this way, we begin to see how difficult these teachings are for ourselves. We ourselves tend to find excuses to consider some people to be aliens and others to be enemies. Life seems to lose its meaning without them. But if we have it in us to envision a country living by biblical principles, living as migrants wandering towards a heavenly homeland, then we need to open the closed system of enmity and open ourselves to the Holy Spirit who lovingly tears down these barriers. If we want a loving, peaceful country, we have to be peaceful, loving selves. That would be a cause for celebration.