|
First
Reading
|
Psalm |
Epistle |
Gospel |
| Amos 8:1–12
|
Psalm 15 |
Colossians 1:15–28 |
Luke 10:38–42
|
Jesus is not like a pushy and ignorant shoe salesman with a one-size-fits-all philosophy, anxious just to make a sale. This is why it is dangerous to use the Bible simplistically as a great big answer book for all of our problems or a dictionary of solutions to the real dilemmas of others. It is easy to delude ourselves and pick out the so-called answer we want, rather than to take the effort and allow the struggle to suggest where the Gospel may be leading us and what others may be telling us.
In the Gospel passage from Luke read this morning, Mary and Martha are not caricatures, nor are they pitted against one another. In a wider context, both Mary and Martha are affirmed in their faith and given some good news that liberates them from a particular bondage. In Jesus' day it was quite unusual for a rabbi to allow a woman to become formally educated beyond a certain level. Rabbis conducted their advanced classes for men, as women stayed home and were assigned domestic chores. Jesus was different, in that women were among the closest disciples and were not denied access to his teaching. Therefore Mary is welcomed into Jesus’ circle of disciples and her choice is affirmed. The Good News cuts through barriers of social custom and tradition.
Martha, on the other hand, is not afraid to take an extraordinary initiative to invite a rabbi into her home, an invitation that only a very self-secure woman would issue. It seems that she is already liberated, as it were, from some of the tight constrictions of her culture, but she, like many self-assured and strong people, is captured by her own desire to be in charge, and her own purpose-driven busyness. If we were honest with ourselves, I suspect we would admit that most of Ithaca including ourselves, have a lot of the temperament of Martha inside us. We all know people who are too busy to attend to their own family, or their own health. Busyness becomes an excuse and often a tragic barrier for not setting priorities, and not paying attention. Incidentally in my spare time this past week, I was reading a book by Tim Russert entitled Wisdom of Our Fathers, Lessons and Letters from Daughters and Sons, and I would recommend it to both mothers and fathers. Jesus is not rebuking Martha, but inviting her to lay down some of her busyness, whether imposed from within or without, and let the Gospel refresh her.
It is obvious from reading the Gospels that Jesus enjoyed visiting Mary and Martha and considered their home a safe haven of hospitality. It was not a question of Jesus wanting Martha to be more like Mary. It was an invitation to let the Good News be Good News.
Last week, Jesus told an individual described as a lawyer but likely he was more a scholar who had a genuine interest in religious ethics and moral theology, to not let the love of discussion and debate serve as an excuse and barricade for holding back. There is a time to explore, weigh and select from all the options. Yet in the great commonwealth of God it is expected for everyone to act neighborly. Therefore options to select who is and who isn't one's neighbor are inappropriate. Jesus in one sense was trying to free this young scholar from the tight confines of the ivy tower that tends to like to quantify, qualify, dissect, and isolate.
For God, one size and even style never fits all. That is why whenever I read this particular Gospel passage, I cannot help but picture Jesus as a shoe salesman in a giant Payless Shoe Store, with boxes and boxes of shoes piled high and all over the place, methodically and patiently helping a customer find the right fit. For the Good News is that the Gospel never force-fits us into a narrow box that the world has nailed together.
And I offer this to you in the name of the Living God, Amen.
