I well remember the day when my early-adolescent daughter, Teresa, announced to me, "The kitchen is a trap women get caught in; I’ve decided the best way not to get caught is never to learn to cook!"

Teresa was convinced that, like Mary, she was "choosing the better part."

And so this Scripture has been used – a kind of Feminist Manifesto in which Jesus seems to stand up for women, liberate us from the bonds of our oppression to household tasks, and create a rationale for "breaking into" the here-to-fore male bastion!

Or so it would appear: "Mary has chosen the better part."

I’m amazed at how much attention has been paid to gender roles and tasks in this passage, particularly:

Indeed, I think the genders, the roles and the tasks distract us, becoming a focus of discussion, creating a smoke screen around the real issue.

I think the passage is about something else entirely!

"Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things," Jesus tells her.

"Carolyn, Carolyn, you are worried and distracted by many things," Jesus tells me.

I don’t think it’s about what Martha is doing, so much as about how Martha is doing it.

Martha has welcomed Jesus into her home, just as you and I have welcomed Jesus into our homes.

"Enter," we say, excited about the opportunity to engage the Holy.

And then we get distracted.

We leave Jesus in the other room, talking with someone else, perhaps, while we get busy.

We fuss, we worry, we figure out what we’re going to wear, and what we’re going to eat, so that later, when everything’s ready, when Sunday comes, when the kids get home from soccer practice, when we finish paying our bills or weeding our garden, we can relax and enjoy Jesus’ company, we can make a good impression, things will be just right...

And then somehow, in the midst of our busy-ness and distractions, we notice that, although we’ve invited Jesus in, he’s not with us, but set aside, put off until later, in the other room, perhaps, and we experience the loss – and maybe even the jealousy, as we notice another’s relationship with him.

We want what someone else has!

And Jesus gently deflects our concerns.

This isn’t about what one has, and we don’t; this is about how one engages one’s life situation.

This is about relationship to the holy, and sacred space.

It’s easy to think of sacred space as designated and apart: a church, for example, or a plot of "holy ground," as though "sacred" were a matter of geography.

Geography.

Task.

Gender.

All mask the underlying issue, the opportunity open to each of us.

I think sacred space is a matter of the way in which we engage our environment.

And, kitchen or church, car pool or office cubicle, we can each make the choice to create sacred space around us.

I’ve had two contrasting experiences of "sacred space" recently:

I’ve just returned from Rome. There, I, along with record-setting crowds of 47,000 people a day, visited the Sistine Chapel. Although I can say I was moved to see the artwork, the chapel itself felt more like a museum, at best, or, less charitably, like,\ a noisy cattle car with a painted ceiling. Between the jostling of bodies, the surreptitious flashing of cameras, and the multi-layers of conversation punctuated by cries of "Silencio!" the experience was anything but reverent! I felt rather like toothpaste, being squeezed through a tube as the crowds behind me forced me through and out the opposite end.

Chapel it may have been, but sacred space it was n – at least as I was able to engage it!

My second experience of "sacred space" has been shared with my grandson, Trey.

When I go to visit, he takes me by the hand, and we go to his "secret hide-out" behind his bed and against the wall. There, in his special place, we get out his "private box" and extract pens and paper, crayons and scissors and glue, and the two of us draw and talk in an intimate ritual; we participate in something holy.

This morning Jesus challenges Martha to peel away her worries and her distractions, and create sacred space.

"Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things," Jesus tells her.

The "better part" that Mary chooses can be in Martha’s kitchen, preparing a meal, as well as in the living room, engaged in conversation.

Jesus challenges us to make sacred space where we are.

It’s not about what we are doing, but about bringing ourselves fully into our living.

It’s about inviting Jesus to enter – and then recognizing that having Jesus enter shapes our daily living so that we are always on sacred ground, so that all our tasks are holy.

When we can let go of our worries and distractions, when we can bring our full attention, our whole selves, into our daily activities, no matter how ordinary or mundane, those activities lead us into another dimension, another way of being in the world.

We create "sacred space," and we participate in the holy.

Amen.