The First United Methodist Church of Napa, CA
March 21, 2010
The 5^th Sunday in Lent

Scripture Readings:

Hebrew Scriptures – Isaiah 43: 16-21¹

¹⁶Thus says the Lord, who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters, ¹⁷who brings out chariot and horse, army and warrior; they lie down, they cannot rise, they are extinguished, quenched like a wick: ¹⁸Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. ¹⁹I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. ²⁰The wild animals will honor me, the jackals and the ostriches; for I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people, ²¹the people whom I formed for myself so that they might declare my praise.

Gospel Lesson – Luke 10: 38-42²

³⁸Now as they went on their way, he entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. ³⁹She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying. ⁴⁰But 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.” ⁴¹But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; ⁴²there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”

“Listen, Think, and Speak!”³

Woman in the house, nurtured to be meek,
leave your second place: listen, think, and speak!
Come and join the song, women, children, men.
Jesus makes us free to live again!

So goes today’s verse of our Lenten Theme Hymn this morning, “Woman in the Night.”⁴ Both of these women, though – Mary and Martha – teach us something of the nature of hospitality and virtue. Women were to be seen and not heard from in the male-dominated culture of Jesus’ day. As we might be able to see in that compelling gaze captured in the photograph on our bulletin cover⁵, though, these women transfix us with their intelligence and deep desire to be seen…and heard.

Luke tells us simply that “Martha welcomed him into her home.”⁶ Jesus’ ministry had this kind of an effect on people – it created person-to-person social structures that broke down barriers of long standing in that culture. His pattern, always, was to find a person who would receive him, and then stay with that person while teaching and engaging the people in the neighborhood in fascinating conversations.⁷ If he didn't find a home that was open to him, any person hungry enough for spiritual nourishment that would offer him a measure of hospitality, Jesus would just move on to the next town. He didn't fund a block of hotel rooms in each town along the way, either (like some modern day evangelist might); instead he simply waited for an invitation and then engaged people in pointedly personal dialogues as he made his way about the countryside going from village to village.

It makes sense for us to assume that Jesus’ friendship with Lazarus started all of this – that Lazarus had introduced Jesus to his sisters Martha and Mary.⁸ But notice who issues the invitation in our reading for today: Martha. She invites Jesus to stay in her home – and it is spoken of as “her home.” She isn't just keeping house for her brother (who probably lives nearby in Bethany); it’s her house – which means that she is one extraordinary woman. Since we don't hear about any husband, she may have been a widow – a tough way to live in that day and age. It wouldn't surprise me if her sister, Mary, lived with her as well, but then we aren't told.

Over the years preachers have given us the impression that Mary is the spiritual one, while Martha is not.⁹ But simply by virtue of Martha's invitation to Jesus, it shows that she, too, is open to spiritual things. She, too, longs to be a disciple, and wants to honor Jesus by inviting him into her home. Martha's name in Hebrew, by the way, has come to mean “lady” or “mistress” (of the house).¹⁰ What’s more, Luke’s Jesus saying that “Mary has chosen the better part”¹¹ has all too often been interpreted as to mean that there’s some kind of hierarchical divide between the contemplative life and the life of service – our life out there in the “secular” world. But I want to suggest that that kind of reading of the Gospel has done great damage over the years in its assumption that the two are meant to be separate – what’s more, that busy people who live and work out there in the “secular” world can’t really be spiritual; and that “spiritual” people can’t live in this world or love this world.

It’s fitting, then, that we should be celebrating a baptism today; because in that sacrament we celebrate a corresponding orientation: toward God, of course (which means we all ought to be mystical and contemplative lovers of the sacred), but also toward the world – which means we Christians have got to love and care enough for the world that we actively serve it by making it the good and blessed place that it was created to begin with.¹²

So, I propose a different reading of this fascinating encounter between Jesus and two very different women. By our own standards, there was nothing at all wrong with Mary spending time with Jesus, attentively listening to him; she was just compensating for Martha’s busyness. But in fact, by the cultural standards of Jesus’ day, both Jesus and Mary violated a social norm. In their society and culture, her place was never meant to be with the men. She was supposed to serve them! But to socialize and fraternize with them? No. As we’ve seen in all of our scripture readings referenced in our Lenten Theme Hymn, that kind of behavior was outrageous – at best. So we know that Mary would not have been there if it were not for Jesus who invited her to be part of this intimate company of men.

While we don’t know, exactly, what his words to her were, we do know that what he was saying had a compelling and liberating effect on Mary. She took her place at the table as an equal to “the good old boys” – as she, too, assumed the role of a religious disciple. Like the woman of last week, who anointed Jesus’ feet,¹³ Mary’s action was incredibly bold because women in her society and in her religious tradition were usually denied the right to religious instruction that men enjoyed. In a very real sense, then, Jesus liberates her from her socially defined status of inferiority and marginalization – again (Glen Beck!) it is about social justice!¹⁴ When Jesus invited Mary to cross that threshold represented by the dominion of men over women, Jesus invited her to claim justice for herself. The irony here is that it was Jesus, the guest, who was the one who offered both Martha, the hostess, and Mary, her sister, a far more radical hospitality by inviting them to his table fellowship of intimate friends. How might you and I even begin to do that here?

Just as significant, then, by coming to Jesus not only was Mary’s life transformed, but so too was the world around her. By placing herself among the men, where her presence as an equal wasn’t welcome, at that table fellowship in an obscure village, an earthquake of social transformation happened – an unbelievable political, cultural, and religious upheaval happened! Like so many of these encounters, Jesus criticizes and brings judgment against any political assembly, social fellowship, or worship gathering that discriminates and does not practice the kind of radical hospitality that he’s come to embody – a radical hospitality that welcomed anybody, regardless of his or her position in society. In his recounting of this story, Luke is telling us that if a community is to claim itself to be Christian, it’s got to overturn racial, cultural, sexual, political and class elitism. As Paul noted in his writing decades earlier, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”¹⁵

So now Martha: of course she was upset, because Jesus, far from being the gracious guest, did more than just “rearrange the furniture!” In fact, what Jesus did was to turn the whole social and religious system upside down – by calling into question the deeply held values and practices of his own society and the religious tradition that not only blocked access to justice, but to God. Luke simply has Martha represent the voice of the status quo, the voice of society and religious tradition that resists ethical change. And she wasn’t the only one who was upset that her sister has stepped out of her role. She might have been concerned about how the men would react, because they stood to lose their status. As the hostess just trying to keep everybody happy, it’s no wonder that she was upset! Martha wanted Jesus to reverse what he’d allowed, but he refused. Mary had chosen justice for herself and that would not be taken away from her.

As we ponder this little drama and its subversive message, I suggest that the Gospel story is about far more than women and women’s rights. Instead, Luke tells us that in our encounter with Jesus, as we too might sit at his feet listening to his earth-shaking ideas and dining with him around a table at which no one is excluded, there is a costly demand being made on us by this rabbi. It is that we enter places in our own culture and society – in our own church – and work to transform all of those relationships that would marginalize anybody.

The life of Christian discipleship is meant to be risky, because it compels us to proclaim a radical hospitality in places and in the faces of those we know will resist it – sometimes violently. What might be even more uncomfortable for us to realize, it would mean that if we find that we, ourselves, are benefiting from our positions of privilege – because of our wealth, our race, our status, our gender, or our sexual orientation – the Gospel challenges us to give it up, to give up that privilege in the same way that Jesus was asking the men to give up their privilege and to make room for a woman. It’s fascinating, because by just sitting at the feet of Jesus, we’re required to transform our relationships with the people around us, so that not only is justice done, but that prejudice of any sort is done away with.

  Romano Guardini, in his book, The Lord, has a reflection on this story of Mary and Martha, and about Jesus’ comment that Mary has chosen the “better part” – Guardini writes:

Christianity has always placed the life struggling for inner truth and ultimate love above that intent on exterior action, even the most courageous and excellent.  It has always valued silence more highly than words, purity of intent more than success, the magnanimity of love more than the effect of labor.  Naturally, both must exist; where there is but one, the tension between inner and outer existence is destroyed, and life must deteriorate.  If the leaves are taken from the tree, its roots do not save it from suffocation.  Both are part of life, but the inner part is the decisive one…. This is not always self-understood.  Again and again the man of action feels Martha’s complaint on his lips: Isn’t the inner life really pious indolence, religious luxury? Doesn’t need press in on us from all sides?  Mustn’t the battle be continued until it is won?  Doesn’t God’s kingdom need above all selfless labor? Certainly, and the contemplative life does not always preclude the question.  Often enough the danger Martha senses has become reality.  Much pride, laziness, [and] self-indulgence have masqueraded as [“the better part”]; much unnaturalness thus attempted to justify itself.  And [yet] still Jesus’ word about the better portion holds.¹⁶

I suspect that many of us will be uncomfortable with Guardini’s defense of this traditional interpretation.  It seems an invitation to a kind of religious mysticism requiring us to totally deny ourselves and withdraw from the world.¹⁷ Many monastic communities took that direction.

With our strong work ethic, though, those of us living in the United States have always been just a bit suspicious of contemplation.  We call it “day-dreaming.” All too often, we have valued religion primarily for its practical usefulness.  As a pastor I often encounter parents, like Michael and Melissa this morning, who return to the home or practices of their faith because they want to instill their children with the same “values” that they remember from their own childhood.  I actually suspect that many of these parents are motivated by something far deeper than this, but they just don’t seem to have the language to express it. 

Frankly, I recommend that each of us works for a life in which contemplation and action are in balance – never mind Jesus’ words here about the “better part.”  It’s a sign of just how much I live in a Martha-world that it took me scrambling late into my week just to get this sermon put together. Work has been unrelenting lately, and I’ve found myself skipping or rushing through those early morning spiritual disciplines that are so very important to me. We are all trying to put on a good face, but listen to the news and there is an unspoken and yet all-too-pervasive fear: if I fail to prove my worth, the axe could fall my way.  How many of us, over the years, have often been coming home too exhausted to do much more than kiss our kids’ foreheads good night, finish up whatever work we brought home with us, maybe we enjoy a brief conversation with our spouse, but then we drop into bed exhausted?

It would be nice to say that Lent offers us an alternative to this, but I’m not sure it always does.  Throughout “Holy Week” alone many of us feel obligated to attend the worship services simply because so much work has gone into them! The difficult truth is that sometimes Lent becomes less an opportunity for deep spiritual reflection and growth and more about just another set of events to schedule into our already busy lives.  Too late, every year, I only think about making the suggestion that we should celebrate Lent by canceling all of it and simply opening up the church for 24 hours a day for people to drop in for silent prayer.  I wonder who might actually take me up on that idea – next year?

Whether we acknowledge it or not, we are starved for contemplation, the way that our ancestors in the wilderness were often starved for food.  We complain that we can’t feel the presence of God, but our lives are so filled with noise and busyness that Jesus could be sitting right next to us this morning whispering directly into our ear, and we wouldn’t be able to hear Him.  

Let me offer the comments of another theologian – Kathleen Corley, of the Westar Institute (aka the “Jesus Seminar”):

… Jesus does encourage Mary, who is seated at his feet.  However, although such a position does indicate that Mary is receiving instruction, her posture reflects a more conservative, matronly role, and she remains silent throughout the scene.  The more radical stance would have been to invite Mary to recline with him like an equal on a banquet couch…  In these Lukan stories Jesus does not appear radical in his relationships with women; it is the women who are bold, not Jesus.¹⁸

Luke may be a great storyteller. But the stories that he tells aren’t meant to entertain us; instead they’re meant to empower us and to transform us by inviting us to re-imagine our world. He does this by inviting us to live life to the fullest, to love wastefully, and to be all that we can be.

As I took time to “sit at the feet of Jesus” this week, and listen, this kind of transformation was expressed (at least for me) in a poem entitled “White Flowers”¹⁹ – by my favorite poet of the moment, Mary Oliver:

Last night
in the fields
I lay down in the darkness
to think about death,
but instead I fell asleep,
as if in a vast and sloping room
filled with those white flowers
that open all summer,
sticky and untidy,
in the warm fields.
When I woke
the morning light was just slipping
in front of the stars,
and I was covered
with blossoms.
I don’t know
how it happened—
I don’t know
if my body went diving down
under the sugary vines
in some sleep-sharpened affinity
with the depths, or whether
that green energy
rose like a wave
and curled over me, claiming me
in its husky arms.
I pushed them away, but I didn’t rise.
Never in my life had I felt so plush,
or so slippery,
or so resplendently empty.
Never in my life
had I felt myself so near
that porous line
where my own body was done with
and the roots and the stems and the flowers
began.

May it happen to you, as it did for Mary,…and maybe, just maybe, Martha too.

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