Christ Church

One thing needful

Martha and Mary represent action and contemplation respectively and belong to a long and rich tradition about the forms of spiritual life. Following Plato and Aristotle, contemplation is the highest form of human activity, an inner activity of spiritual and intellectual reflection, but that is not at the expense of outward activity which belongs to our lives physically and with one another. There is, after all, something spiritual, intellectual, and ethical about our interactions with one another, even necessary. At issue is the interplay between action and contemplation; in short, between Martha and Mary.

I am often struck with the ‘counter-culture’ aspects of our School in such things as Chapel, especially with such things like the story of Mary and Martha. It challenges the assumptions and attitudes of our culture. That is an important feature of religious philosophy. There is no greater contrast than between ‘being distracted’ and ‘being collected.’ That is the challenge of the story of Mary and Martha which connects powerfully to the theme which we have been exploring in Chapel about our recognition of a need for an ethical principle that shapes and governs our lives and that is alive in us.

The story of Mary and Martha follows directly upon the parable of the Good Samaritan. That is intriguing and suggestive. Is the story of Mary and Martha the counter or the complement to the concluding injunction of the parable to “go and do thou likewise” towards those in need? We are, it seems, to act with compassion rather than indifference towards those who are suffering. That might seem to imply the priority of action over contemplation.

Jesus comes to the house of Martha and her sister Mary. Mary “sit[s] at Jesus’ feet listening to his word.” Martha, on the other hand, is said to be “distracted with much service”. Busy ‘r us, too, at King’s-Edgehill. The word ‘distracted’ here speaks directly to our contemporary culture. It is a culture of distraction. The word has to do with going from one thing to another in a kind of frenzy and with a loss of focus. It signals an inability to attend to anything. It is easy to get caught up in the busyness of life and miss out on life itself. In contrast to Martha’s distractedness there is Mary’s collectedness, sitting and listening to the words of Christ. Don’t just do something, sit there, listen and think! What could be more counter-culture than that in our busyness obsessed culture! We are almost afraid to sit and think. Yet, that is exactly what Chapel is about and necessarily so.  To be collected rather than distracted is good in itself and, paradoxically, in relation to all our other activities. The one informs the other because it is about paying attention to the primacy of an ethical principle alive in us.

Sitting and listening means that there is something greater and prior to our activities. It means that our activities really only have meaning when they are for an end, a purpose. In that sense, it is the one thing needful, unum necessarium. Martha complains to Jesus about her sister. Jesus responds gently but firmly. “Martha, Martha, thou art anxious and troubled about a multitude of things; one thing is needful; and Mary hath chosen the better part which shall not be taken from her.” We have had the word “anxious” before. It is a modern word used for the 16th century English word, “careful,” meaning being ‘full of cares.’ This is our busyness and our distraction. It marks a failure to attend to what matters most. It is too easy to get lost in the busyness of our lives. This is why contemplation is seen as primary and necessary in the great religious and philosophical traditions. Sitting and listening is a critical feature of any education worthy of the name.

Law is transformed into love, a love of ‘the true, the beautiful and the good,’ to put in Plato’s terms, for the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions. For Islam, Sufism especially emphasises the importance of devotion to Allah in a personal and intimate way. It has sometimes been seen in relation to the Hindu traditions of bhakti yoga, the yoga of devotion to the ethical principles of Sanatana Dharma (Hinduism). Classical Buddhism, too, seeks our detachment from everything through meditation. We noted that the fourth of the Ten Commandments about the Sabbath, while seeming to be particular to the Jewish story, nonetheless points to a universal need for a time of recollection, of contemplation, over and against work and busyness.

The idea of the primacy of contemplation is not at the expense of action. It is more a question of their interaction. In a way, the story of Mary and Martha bookends the beginning of the story of the parable of the Good Samaritan with the question about ‘how do you read the law?’ The answer was “the Summary of the Law,” the love of God and the love of neighbour. The two are inescapably bound together. We forget that our busyness often separates us from any kind of ethical relationship with one another. A time of sitting and listening holds out the possibilities of the redemption of our distracted, mindless busyness. Sitting and listening belong to our being collected rather than distracted even in our busy lives.

The twelfth century Cistercian monk, Aelred of Rievaulx, captures best the interplay of action and contemplation. “In this wretched and laborious life, brethren, Martha must of necessity be in our house; that is to say, our soul has to be concerned with bodily actions. As long as we need to eat and drink, we shall need to tame our flesh with watching, fasting, and work. This is Martha’s role. But in our souls there ought also to be Mary, that is, spiritual activity. For we should not always give ourselves to bodily efforts, but sometimes be still and see how lovely, how sweet the Lord is, sitting at the feet of Jesus and hearing his word. You should in no wise neglect Mary for Martha; or again, Martha for Mary. For, if you neglect Martha, who will feed Jesus? If you neglect Mary, what use is it for Jesus for come to your house, when you taste nothing of his sweetness?”

It conveys a counter-cultural truth about the contemplative activity which redeems all our distracted busyness. The busyness of Martha is brought into the collected restfulness of Mary, sitting and listening. It is the one thing needful.

(Rev’d) David Curry
Chaplain, English & ToK teacher
Chair of the Department of Religion and Philosophy