About Calvary

Education

Events

Fellowship

Links 

Music

People

Sermons

Service

Worship

Home

The Rev. Christopher Brdlik
July 18, 2010 --- The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost

If you have been to an event in our Parish Hall recently or if you have a child in our Sunday School, you probably have met Martha, the parish cat.  Martha is rather small, mostly black, except for a white blaze around her neck that looks like a clerical collar — pretty appropriate for a parish cat.  Her story is this: Martha was born in the barn at Laurie Matarazzo’s farm and came to live at Calvary about three years ago, through the urgings of Cimi Petrela, our sexton, and Lillian Cochran, then junior warden, and through the generosity of Dr. John Hatch, a parishioner who is a vet.   

Now I am not a cat person, though I live with several cats and a wife and daughter who are cat persons.  But the idea at the time was that Martha the cat would help scare away the chipmunks and little critters that had a habit of sneaking around the door of the parish kitchen.  This is how she got her name.  (I think my suggestion was Jezebel.)  But she was named Martha because she was supposed to help out around the kitchen, like the Martha in today’s gospel reading (Luke 10: 38-42).  You all know the story — it’s one of the most familiar in the Bible.  Martha complained that her sister, Mary, wasn’t helping out with the kitchen chores in entertaining their guest, Jesus, who was visiting their home.  Martha was the practical sort — Mary, according to many sermons about her, seemed more — well, spiritual.  As it has turned out at Calvary Church, Martha the cat behaves more like Mary than the sister in the story.  Martha the cat doesn’t confine herself to the kitchen, but wanders the whole Parish House meeting people, greeting our guests and staff and members.  She has definitely chosen “the better part,” as Jesus called it, for she likes to sit at people’s feet.  She once made a timely entrance, strutting into the end of a memorial service for a woman who was known to love cats.  How she timed that, no one knows.  So Martha is a cat with personality up-front, not confined to behind the scenes in the kitchen. 

The Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor is an author and Episcopal priest, formerly pastor of a little church in the mountains of rural Georgia; to Barbara Brown Taylor (An Altar in the World) I owe some insight into the interpretation of Martha and Mary in the Biblical story.  This was not just a simple story of how Jesus navigated a family spat between two siblings who resented each other.  Barbara Brown Taylor says, “Martha was an introvert. She found chopping potatoes far less exhausting than talking to people, and besides, she could hear everything they were saying without having to come up with something to say herself.”  Rev. Brown Taylor, writing from personal experience, goes on to say, “It can be difficult to be an introvert in the Church, especially if you happen to be the pastor.  Liking to be alone … and quiet can be construed as aloofness.  There is so much emphasis on community in most congregations that anyone who does not participate risks being labeled a loner.”  Now Brown Taylor was drawing off the psychology of Carl Gustav Jung in making the distinction between introversion and extroversion.  Jung, the Swiss psychoanalyst, said it isn’t that introverts are anti-social or misanthropic, as they are sometimes criticized for.  Jung said introverts draw personal strength by being alone, which they then spend on their interactions with other people.  Extroverts draw strength or energy from other people, which they then spend on being alone. 

Jung’s definitions put me in mind of the thought of another 20th century Mitteleuropean thinker, Martin Buber, an Austrian philosopher, who wrote about human interactions from a more theological perspective than a psychological one.  Buber said human existence is defined by our encounters with other human beings.  In fact, he said existence is encounter.  But human beings have different ways, perhaps different choices, about how they encounter others.  The most effective encounter, the most holistic, the “best” way, according to Buber, is the “I-Thou” encounter.  “I” approach another person as a “Thou,” not an “It,” meeting another human being ready for dialogue, with mutuality, and respect.  “I” approach others with the respect I would show God, so that human-to-human encounters parallel what human-to-God encounters ought to be: I to Thou.  This is love in its purest form, said Buber, not analyzed or categorized but simply offered and experienced. The “I-Thou” encounter contrasts with the “I-It” encounter, in which the other person is objectified, as if one intends to use the other, as an object, detached of respect. The encounter of an I to It is a monologue, not a dialogue.  There is no mutuality, and, of course, no love.  Buber’s great insight was that I-It encounters minimize even the I, the personal subject, as well as the It, the object; because we ourselves as less complete as authentic human beings if we do not respect the dignity of other persons. 

It’s interesting to note that as an example of a true I-Thou interaction, Martin Buber, a theologian, said they were like human encounters with cats.  Cats insist on respect.  They want you to know they are your equal.  You cannot patronize or objectify a cat, and get away with it for very long.  Cats require an I-Thou relationship with their human beings.  So it is with Martha, the parish cat, who has outgrown her original utilitarian relationship with us, in charge of defending the kitchen from chipmunks, and has become a cat who likes to sit at human feet., an I-Thou cat.   

But these definitions and insights from Jung and Buber teach about Jesus and Mary and Martha, too.  For notice the respect Jesus showed to Martha, the resentful sister, not minimizing her role as perfect hostess.  Lord knows, we always need someone to take care of the practical realities. But he gently prompted her to see life, to see existence, through the perspective of her sister Mary.  Jesus had an I-Thou encounter with the introverted Martha, and respectfully pointed out that Mary’s way commanded respect, too.  Jesus nudged Martha toward an I-Thou relationship with Mary, too.  

Those of us who understand that parish churches could not function without both Marthas and Marys — that we need both the introverts and the extroverts — those of us who understand this appreciate each other by encountering and treating others as “Thou” not “It”: with respect, with dignity, with mutuality, fostering dialogue and exchange, enjoying one another’s company, just as we enjoy our relationship with Martha, or any friendly cat.  This is what Jesus called choosing the better part.  I say encouraging authentic respectful encounters between human beings is what makes parish churches strong.

© copyright 2010, Christopher Brdlik

Back to Sermons