Martha, Martha, you are busy with many things.
If we know anything about Martha Keucher, we know that our Martha was a Martha. A doer, a server, involved in everything.
The Pi Beta Phi
The American Association of University Women
The Order of the Easter Star,
The King’s Daughters
The Richmond Choral Society
The Nobel Maritime Collection
And here at Christ Church
The choir
The altar guild
The Episcopal Church Women
Serendipity
A willing worker at every fund raiser and fair
And a charter member of the knitting group, but more on that later.
Martha was a Martha. But unlike the Biblical Martha not unhappy or resentful with many things she did.
She carried lightly the curse of being competent.
She was the treasurer or the valued member of every group because
She did what she said she would do,
When she said she would do it.
As a person who spends a great deal of time recruiting and cajoling volunteers I can attest
To how invaluable such a person is;
And how we take advantage of them because we know they will do things right.
If our Martha was unlike the Biblical Martha in her enthusiastic embrace of many things, she was like the Biblical Martha in that she was a woman of great faith.
The Biblical Martha’s complaint about her sister Mary is well-known. But less well known is Martha’s great declaration of faith in the Gospel of John. Upon the death of her brother Lazarus, while delicate Mary wept in the house, sturdy Martha made the great declaration of faith She said to Jesus: “’I know that [my brother] will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.’” Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?’ She said to him, ‘Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.’”
Our Martha shared the faith of the Biblical Martha. As a woman of real faith she modeled her life on the Good Shepherd. In today’s Gospel lesson we hear Jesus the Good Shepherd say “’I know my own and my own know me … I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them.”
Everyone belonged to Martha’s fold
She had the gift of welcoming and hospitality
She had the gift of making you feel special
She had the gift of making you feel like you were the best you could be.
I experienced this little miracle from the first day I met Martha
We arrived on Staten Island too late to unload the moving van
My wife and I,
A rambunctious and untrainable beagle,
And a rambunctious and only slightly more trainable 9 year-old.
We stayed 2 nights in Martha’s beautiful home.
By the end of the first evening Martha convinced me that I was brilliant.
The only way a person could be so open, so caring and so genuinely interested in others by dying daily to self.
When she was young her father taught her these words from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem Evangeline:
“patience, abnegation of self, devotion to others”
And that was the watchword of her life.
And we remember that Jesus said “’The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.’”
Not just once
But every day.
As I mentioned earlier, Martha, as I’m sure you all know, was a knitter.
She knit beautiful, complicated items for her family and friends.
She knit for the Seaman’s Church Institute.
And she knit for the neo-natal unit at Richmond University Medial Center.
Martha, and this is not surprise, was a careful knitter, a bit of a perfectionist.
When she would discover an error, ever many rows down,
She would patiently unravel all the work she had done, correct the mistake, and go on.
What do you expect from someone who loved, loved to untangle, tangled balls of yarn?
I am reminded of the epithet that Benjamin Franklin wrote for himself:
(Jerry’s head may explode for my mentioning Benjamin Franklin at Martha’s funeral, but bear with me.)
The body of
B. Franklin, Printer
(Like the Cover of an Old Book
Its Contents torn Out
And Stript of its Lettering and Gilding)
Lies Here, Food for Worms.
But the Work shall not be Lost;
For it will (as he Believ'd) Appear once More
In a New and More Elegant Edition
Revised and Corrected
By the Author.
I like to think of Martha as a beautiful, knit blanket, maybe the
incredible Tree of Life that she knit a few years ago.B. Franklin, Printer
(Like the Cover of an Old Book
Its Contents torn Out
And Stript of its Lettering and Gilding)
Lies Here, Food for Worms.
But the Work shall not be Lost;
For it will (as he Believ'd) Appear once More
In a New and More Elegant Edition
Revised and Corrected
By the Author.
That blanket is now in God’s hands and whatever imperfections and tears have accumulated over 90 years
The early death of her beloved husband, Werner
The illnesses and hospitalizations of the recent years
A dropped stitch here
A purl when there should have been a knit.
All the hurts and bruises have been carefully unraveled and lovingly repaired, just as she would do it.
Martha, Martha, you, too, have chosen the good part and it shall not be taken from you.
Amen
