What a joy it is to be back with you at Redeemer today. And how wonderful to be here with the story of Mary and Martha, two powerful women who were close to Jesus. We meet them again in the Gospel of John, where Martha declares Jesus to be the Messiah. There we meet the same pair: Martha tells Jesus what’s on her mind, and rants at him for not saving her brother Lazarus, while Mary comes running and is seemingly more deferential to him. I love Martha’s familiarity with Jesus, her willingness to tell him what’s up. She reminds me of Teresa of Avila, who loved God and founded dozens of convents. She could still tell God during hard times, “If this is how you treat your friends, no wonder you have so few of them!”
Yes, I love Martha. I also love Mary. I love her desire to know and listen like the men, her willingness to defy convention and sit with Jesus instead of serving in the kitchen.
What I don’t love is the way these two wonderful women get pitted against one another in the Church. We hear that this story is about the contemplative life versus the active one. Monks and nuns love that version. Or we hear that it’s about knowing how much is enough. That fits with our culture’s obsession with more, and speaks nicely to it. But there’s much more going on here.
Mary and Martha are stand-ins for a fight between groups of men in the early Church. As the Church grew, people started to organize for physical needs as well as spiritual ones. As the dispute grew, the twelve apostles said, “It’s not right for us to neglect our study to wait on tables. But someone has to. So let’s appoint some people to do this work.” The result was the first deacons. The word, deacon, comes from the Greek word for service. It is the word for what Martha is doing.
But Luke couldn’t tell us a story about Jesus coming to a home where a man served. The man of the house would be expected to be with Jesus. The women would be in the kitchen. So in Luke’s telling, the deacon’s role falls to a woman.
Martha is doing important work. She’s doing work that later people are ordained for, caring for the physical needs of the community.
So the problem is not that Martha is thinking about dinner. Someone has to! The problem is not that her dinner is too elaborate, as some people say - though this comes closer to the core.
The problem is how and why Martha is doing her work.
The question is how and why we do our work.
Hospitality is the number one priority in pre-modern cultures, and still in poorer areas. Hospitality may be the difference between safety and death, or between comfort and hunger. Without the promise of hospitality, people could never leave their homes for more than a day.
And welcoming others is, in those cultures, both an obligation and an honor. Even if it means changing all our plans and killing calves and laying out a feast, it’s expected.
In this case, Jesus is traveling with a group. It would have been quite an enterprise to feed all those people, and quite an honor. Imagine - the Teacher is staying with us!
But I imagine that it’s easy to let that go to your head. It’s easy to think that you have to measure up, to be the best host ever, to show off. The neighbors will want to know the menu - you have to keep up appearances.
If that is in our head, then our hospitality is really not about our guests at all. It’s about us. If my welcome of you is so focused on impressing you that I never listen to you, I’m not welcoming you at all. You’re my target, not my guest.
And it’s clear that this happens for Martha. Jesus becomes first a target, and then a tool.
Part of hospitality is easing people’s burdens. This means giving them water to wash and to drink, and food to eat, but it also means giving them a place to relax and lay down their problems.
But Martha has broken the code. She has violated hospitality by drawing Jesus into her dispute with her sister. She’s got her plans for the meal, and Mary has let her down. So she tries to get Jesus to intervene.
In contemporary psychology, this is known as triangling. “Tell my wife to give me the car!” “Would you ask Jimmy if he likes me?” “Let me tell you what’s wrong with my boss, or my partner, or my lover, or my parents, or my children.” And Jesus does what priests and other counselors are advised to do - he refuses to get in between them.
I wonder what’s up between Martha and Mary. What’s going on that Martha can’t talk to Mary directly? What’s going on that Mary would leave her sister alone in the kitchen and go listen to Jesus talk about love and compassion and service?
I suspect it has to do with Martha’s inability to see who has come into her house.
The one who eats with outcasts and sinners has come. The one who has no place to lay his head has come. Surely he does not need to be impressed. He needs to be enjoyed.
I don’t know about you, but I can get into that Martha place. As I write this sermon, I have to choose: do I want to leave you aware of my brilliant insight, or do I want you to see God among us?
Well, both, really.
But Jesus shows me how to choose.
Grace and peace have entered the house.
A simple meal, some talk, some listening, are all that’s needed.
Everything else is ego.
Jesus is here.
Listen.
No comments:
Post a Comment