PENTECOST PROPER 11, YEAR C: July 22, 2007

A woman sits in the reception room of a psychotherapist, awaiting her first appointment. She is obviously nervous. She fingers the buttons on her dowdy dress, self-consciously touches her hair, and nervously flips through a magazine that she doesn’t read. Every few minutes she glances around, fearful that she will see someone she knows. She is somewhere between thirty-five and forty-five years old and the one word that best describes her is “plain.”

Finally, the inner door opens and the therapist invites her into his office and directs her to a comfortable chair. The therapist asks the patient, whose name is Martha, what brings her there. Martha replies that something happened last week that so upset her, so unnerved her that she had to talk to someone. And, like all good therapists, he replies, “Tell me about it.”

Martha begins her story. “Last week a friend came to visit. He was on a journey to the city, an important journey, and one that could turn out to be very dangerous He was tired and worried and anxious about the days to come and I wanted more than anything else to make him welcome. I cleaned the house all morning, went to the market and bought fresh vegetables and fruit, and paid a fortune for a leg of lamb at the butcher shop. I made the dough for fresh bread and set it out to rise and I chilled the wine and got out the good china. I really wanted him to be welcome.”

“He arrived late in the afternoon and I greeted him and made him comfortable on a pile of cushions. My brother, Lazarus, was out of town on business, so it was just me and my younger sister, Mary. We chatted for awhile and then, I went into the kitchen to prepare the meal. I rubbed the lamb with olive oil and inserted slivers of garlic in little slits in the meat, and I trimmed the asparagus, and I thought, surely Mary would come in and help. By this time it was getting hot from the oven, and I had to do so much and I guess I started to slam things around. I looked into the den and my sister was sitting at my friend’s feet like some star-struck teenager! It seemed like the harder I worked, the madder I got. Finally, I stormed into the den and…and…I just lost it. I screamed that he obviously didn’t’ care a thing about me! And I demanded that he make Mary come in and help me. And there I stood, flour all over my dress, my hair down in my face, sweating like a day laborer, screeching like a banshee. And my friend looked at me and laughed. He laughed! And then he said, ‘Martha, Martha, you’re way too uptight. You worry about too many things, so much so that you’re terribly distracted. You might even learn something from your sister.’ And I was so embarrassed and humiliated. Doctor, I don’t want to be like that. I need some help.”

The therapist made some notes and then he asked, “What would happen if, one day, you set out some fruit and a loaf of bread and told your brother and sister to eat what they wanted, that you were taking the afternoon off to watch the sunset?” Martha laughed and said, “They would think I had lost my mind. Besides, I always fix a good dinner.” The therapist smiled and said, “I bet everyone knows you as a great cook and a meticulous housekeeper.” Martha blushed and acknowledged that was true.

The therapist then asks a question. “Martha, is it possible that you have crossed over a line, an invisible line, that separates who you are from what you do? Is it possible that you are Martha the Housekeeper, as opposed to Martha, who happens to keep house? Is it possible that you have confused being with doing?”

Isn’t that what happens to a lot of us? Helen teaches a third grade class. She loves her kids, spend hours making lesson plans, meets with parents, goes to all the meetings, and, after a few years, she is Helen the Teacher. She is what she does. I have a clergy friend in another denomination where everything centers on the sermon. Each week he frets and worries over his sermon, fearful that it won’t be good enough and that would mean that he is not good enough. A lot of us cross over that line between being and doing and see ourselves in terms of what we do. A lot of mothers are about to find that out. They have raised a child for the last eighteen years. They have done the laundry, prepared the meals, driven the carpools, and waited up late at night worrying whether their baby has sense enough to find his or her way home. They have become Super Mom. Now, that child is about to leave for college. And one morning Super Mom will wake up and not know what to do with herself and wonder who she is.

And when things don’t go well, it’s someone else’s fault. Martha tells her guest that it is Mary’s fault that she is upset. “Make her come help me!” When you lose your identity you have to blame someone.

The therapist says to Martha, “Is it possible that your guest was saying to you, ‘I don’t really care about a big meal. I just want to be with you.’ Is it possible that he cares deeply for you, Martha, and not for what you do? Is it possible that, in his eyes, you are lovely and priceless, just as you are? Is that possible?”

And somewhere, deep in Martha’s memory, she remembers those long-forgotten words, “Martha, you are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever.”

And the therapist says, “Our time is up. I’ll see you next week.”

Amen.