Now as they went on their way, he entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying. But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, ‘Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.’ But the Lord answered her, ‘Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.’
- Luke 10:38-42
This is about the caustic waste of human worry.
Throughout my senior year at Sewanee in 1968, the news from Vietnam was increasingly disturbing to those of us who had taken cushy shelter in our 2-S draft deferrals. Every Memorial Day, I think of my father’s instruction to his sons that he expected us to serve a country that had been good to our family. And I think of Hamper McBee.
In March of 1968, I sat on a damp, moldy sofa in the backyard of the KA House with my fraternity brothers. An open fire pit burning hardwood scraps and Pepsi crates conspired with Pabst Blue Ribbon long-necks and George Dickel Bourbon to keep us warm. If Vietnam and the draft were not discussed; they were on everyone’s mind. War and its dark myths were silently feeding on the last remnants of our Sewanee innocence.
A local mountain man, Hamper McBee, often sat in on our KA “campfires.” Hamp was functionally illiterate; except he could quote by memory, the Bible and Robert Burns poetry for hours. He had little of material importance, as we saw it. He rode a mule into town and brought recycled bottles filled with Tennessee moonshine. Hamp would sing Scottish hymns and mountain whiskey songs. We traded art, religion, and “spirits.”
That afternoon Hamp recited Poor Mailie’s Elegy. When he finished,
Come, join the melancholious croon
O’ Robin’s reed!
His heart will never get aboon
His Mailie’s dead!
we sat silent. Abruptly, my friend, threw his empty bottle into the fire and yelled, “Jesus… life’s a damned RUT!”.
Hamp, stood bolt-upright. Without speaking, he pulled himself up onto his mule, that had been standing silently in the circle, as a peer. Hamp nudged the animal toward University Avenue. Calling over his shoulder, he said, “…you university boys is goine t’ hell if you think yer loff’s’ a rut?... I’ll tell you what a rut is. A rut’s nuthin’ but a coffin with the ends kicked out…!” Hamp disappeared into the March fog. Our circle of the privileged dead never saw Hamp again.
With the Savior at their table, Mary and Martha chose to sit on opposite sides of a rut. Jesus, as did his servant Hamp, calls us out on it. Jesus reminds us in Matthew’s Gospel that we cannot serve two masters. Either we can worry that the roux is not burned, that next year’s rent is not paid; or we can abide in peace with the Lord. Fear starts as a tiny rivulet of petty worry that finds its way into the crease that exists between mammon and a life in Jesus. The worry eats its way into our lives until a seemingly, un-bridgeable rut passes between the life of worry we have chosen and the peace of God that surpasses all human understanding. In the rut flows living death.
The lesson here is we can choose to cross the rut; or we can lay down in it. With a plank to bridge the darkness and an outstretched hand Jesus waits for us to reach to His abiding concern for us. He wants us to have the better part.
Musical Reflection - Nothing to Fear - The Porter's Gate
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