Psalm 15
Colosians 1.15-28
Luke 10.38-42
Luke’s
gospel has more than its share of memorable and beloved stories. Today’s lesson
– the story of Jesus’ visit to the home of Mary and Martha is among them. It is
a story that has launched a thousand metaphors and admonitions to overstressed
hostesses. During my years at seminary it was the initial inspiration for a
short-lived plan to publish a Bible cookbook. This large format, full-color
volume was to accompany each recipe with the Bible story that inspired it and a
beautiful color photograph of somewhere near where the story takes place. The
recipe for Mary and Martha’s Favorite Company Casserole (whose ingredients were
never actually specified) was to have a place in the main course section this
book. Along with it in the salad section would be the recipe for the Seven Wise
Maidens’ Red Wine Vinaigrette. In the baking section, readers would find that
culinary classic on a grand scale - Whole Grain Flatbread for five thousand.
The group of friends who dreamed up this volume thought it might be a way to
pay off our student loans. Twenty years
later I am resigned to the reality of sending that giant payment every month to
American Education Services because the book never got off the ground.
One of the commentators whose work I
read for background on this text noted that it is a foundational narrative of
Christian feminism. No doubt it is one of the texts that inspired the
expression “Jesus was a feminist.” It’s
really unlikely that he was in any
sense that we would recognize, but this story and that expression are good
examples of why it’s important to know how and why we use biblical text the way
we do.
Interpretations traditionally contrast
the roles of the two sisters: Martha is overwhelmed with the work of a
householder offering her guest a proper welcome. She complains to Jesus that
her sister isn’t helping. Mary sits at Jesus’ feet in a manner characteristic
of one learning from a master or teacher.
Jesus’ willingness to teach a woman, to encourage her to assume the
manner of a disciple rather than ordering her to join her sister in the kitchen
has been interpreted as his having a sense of respect for women and allowing
them a greater range of accepted behavior than other men of his time. Women,
rightfully challenging the limitations placed for centuries upon their
participation in the life of the church, found this interpretation to be
inspiring and empowering. Arguably the Bible should inspire and empower believers to live out the lives and
ministries to which God calls each of us. But the ability of this one text or
any text to give us a definitive understanding of who and how Jesus was as a
person and whether he was ahead of his time in the way he interacted with women
is very limited.
We are inclined to assume that Jesus
was enlightened as we understand that word. We want to believe that he was
perfectly kind and thoughtful. We imagine that he must have understood all
sides of every question and drawn conclusions that were always beyond reproach.
Church tradition that developed around the meaning of Jesus’ crucifixion and
resurrection characterizes him as being without sin and thus the perfect
offering to redeem the sins of all humanity. That is our tradition and we’re
more or less sticking to it, but we should understand it. The tradition of
Jesus’ sinlessness has led his followers, as we grow farther removed from the
culture in which the gospels were created, to attribute to him personality
characteristics and opinions that are judged favorably in our culture. Those
attributions are frequently the result of interpreting a biblical story beyond
the information that it actually provides about its characters.
There’s nothing terribly wrong with
that. Believers long before us have pulled and stretched sacred literature
beyond its original boundaries. There’s plenty of evidence to indicate that
biblical books were edited centuries after their original creation to take into
account important events that occurred later in time. This kind of use
demonstrates their importance over time and the respect they were accorded by
later generations. Generation after
generation of believers have allowed their imaginations to move beyond the
boundaries of biblical story in order to deepen and enrich their understanding
of it or to apply it to new situations. The cultural gulf that lies between us
and the creators of any biblical book is immense. I doubt that it was
particularly less so for believers five hundred or a thousand years ago. It is not surprising that we in the 21st
century who are not satisfied with interpreting the Bible literally have our
work cut out for us when we attempt to weave it into the fabric of our daily
lives.
One of the most profound distinctions
between Christians in the last five centuries is in how we understand the role
of the Bible in our faith, particularly how we understand it in relation to the
traditions of the church. Historically the Episcopal Church has understood
scripture and tradition in balance with each other and human reason. But there
are Episcopalians and Anglicans and other Christians who privilege scripture
beyond those other two elements of our faith. Wherever any individual believer
may fall on that continuum is the place to which God has led him or her at this
point in a long journey of faith.
What
I think is really important is that we don’t allow the complexity of the Bible
and its cultural distance from the world we live in to cause us to hold it at
arm’s length or to constrain it by oversimplification. One of my hopes for St. Mary’s over the next
few years is that our adult educational offerings will increase in depth and
frequency. The geography and culture of this parish are such that bringing
people in early on a Sunday morning or asking them to come to the church for a
mid-week class over an extended period of time may not be right. But I really
want to develop a greater range of learning opportunities for parishioners,
among them, the opportunity to study the Bible in greater depth.
For
some things that are very old and very precious, we demonstrate our
understanding of their value by observing them from afar, not touching them, not
using them. Happily, the Bible is not fragile in the way that art works and
artifacts are. We can touch it, use
it, dig deeply into it and understand it and in doing so show our love and
respect for it.
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