postID: 6894; title: The Ninth Sunday After Pentecost
groupKey: secondary
groupKey: other
The Ninth Sunday After Pentecost
Almighty God, the fountain of all wisdom, who knowest our necessities before we ask and our ignorance in asking: Have compassion, we beseech thee, upon our infirmities, and those things which for our unworthiness we dare not, and for our blindness we cannot ask, mercifully give us for the worthiness of thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. (Proper 11)
Array
(
[date] => 2016-07-17 11:00:00
[scope] =>
[year] =>
[month] =>
[post_id] => 1272
[series_id] =>
[day_titles_only] =>
[exclusive] => 1
[return] => formatted
[formatted] =>
[show_date] =>
[show_meta] =>
[show_content] => 1
[admin] =>
[debug] => 1
[filter_types] => Array
(
[0] => primary
[1] => secondary
)
[type_labels] => Array
(
[primary] => Primary
[secondary] => Secondary
[other] => Other
)
[the_date] => 2016-07-17 11:00:00
)
1 post(s) found for dateStr : 2016-07-17postID: 6894 (The Ninth Sunday After Pentecost)
--- getDisplayDates ---
litdate post_id: 6894; date_type: variable; year: 2016
Variable date => check date_calculations.
=> check date_assignments.
=> NO date_assignments found for postID: 6894
displayDates for postID: 6894/year: 2016
Array
(
[0] => 2016-07-17
)
postPriority: 3primaryPost found for date: 2016-07-17 with ID: 6894 (The Ninth Sunday After Pentecost)
The Ninth Sunday After Pentecost
Array
(
[date] => 2016-07-17 11:00:00
[scope] =>
[year] =>
[month] =>
[post_id] => 1272
[series_id] =>
[day_titles_only] =>
[exclusive] => 1
[return] => simple
[formatted] =>
[show_date] =>
[show_meta] =>
[show_content] => 1
[admin] =>
[debug] => 1
[filter_types] => Array
(
[0] => primary
[1] => secondary
)
[type_labels] => Array
(
[primary] => Primary
[secondary] => Secondary
[other] => Other
)
[the_date] => 2016-07-17 11:00:00
)
1 post(s) found for dateStr : 2016-07-17postID: 6894 (The Ninth Sunday After Pentecost)
--- getDisplayDates ---
litdate post_id: 6894; date_type: variable; year: 2016
Variable date => check date_calculations.
=> check date_assignments.
=> NO date_assignments found for postID: 6894
displayDates for postID: 6894/year: 2016
Array
(
[0] => 2016-07-17
)
postPriority: 3primaryPost found for date: 2016-07-17 with ID: 6894 (The Ninth Sunday After Pentecost)
The reading_id [73488] is already in the array.
No update needed.
Scripture citation(s): Luke 10:38-42
A Sermon by
Fr. Daniels
on
Luke 10:38-42
✛
Showing Mercy, Abroad and at Home
Array
(
[0] => 60757
)
book: [Array
(
[0] => 60757
)
] (reading_id: 73488)bbook_id: 60757
The bbook_id [60757] is already in the array.
No update needed for sermon_bbooks.
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Our gospel reading today, from Luke, is the story about Martha and Mary, two sisters who welcome Jesus into their home.
But before we look at them, I’d like to remind us of our gospel reading from last week, which directly precedes this one in Luke chapter ten. Something that I had never realized until Father Spurlock pointed it out to me last week is that the story of Martha and Mary follows immediately after the parable of the Good Samaritan. It follows not only narratively, but thematically.
So to take us back very briefly: you may remember that the parable of the Good Samaritan is told by Jesus in response to a lawyer’s question: Who is my neighbor? The lawyer’s question is answered, sort of, after the parable concludes, when Jesus asks, And who was neighbor to the man? This is a subtle difference in emphasis, but an important one: to say “who is my neighbor? This person is my neighbor” is to identify another person’s role. But to ask “Who was neighbor to the man?” is slightly different; it makes the subject under discussion not the other person, but the questioner himself. And the answer was that the neighbor was “the one who showed mercy.” “Go and do likewise,” Jesus says. Go and be a neighbor showing mercy.
With this interaction concluded, Jesus and his disciples go on their way. They enter another town, a more receptive one apparently, and a woman named Martha welcomes him into her home. From one village, arguing with one hostile lawyer in a public setting, Jesus goes to another village, where he rests and relaxes with two adoring sisters, in the safety and intimacy of a private home. Unlike earlier, skeptical, villages, these two women are believers in Jesus. Unlike the great crowds that we have heard about before, now the multitudes recede into the background and the focus is only on the three of them: Jesus, Martha, and Mary. Quiet, domestic, hospitable, personal.
But things have not changed quite as much as we might think. Instead, the same conflict over responsibilities and obligations is repeated. According to Martha, Mary had left her sister to take on all of the tasks of hospitality. Martha, Luke says, was “cumbered about much serving,” while Mary apparently did a lot of nothing. An important kind of nothing—sitting at Jesus’ feet and hearing what he had to say—but not a particularly helpful kind, practically speaking.
I imagine that it isn’t very hard for any of us to imagine this scene. The bustling about, the fluffing of pillows and pouring of tea, pushing the clutter into closets, checking to see if everything has been straightened up appropriately. As is sometimes said, one’s house is never as clean as it is five minutes before the guests arrive.
And all the while, Mary sits. Martha cooks; Martha cleans; Martha makes Jesus as comfortable as possible, honoring him with her service. And Mary sits.
“Who was neighbor to the man?” “The one who showed mercy.” A similar question is being asked in this story, implicitly this time. Who is being neighbor? Which of them is showing mercy? The one in the kitchen? Or the one in the living room?
We may be tempted to exalt one sister over the other. But perhaps it is the case that in one sense both were being neighbor to Jesus. Without the one you’d have no house—Luke says that it’s Martha’s house they go into—and you’d have no hospitality at all. Without the other, there wouldn’t be that beautiful personal intimacy with Jesus that we might say made Martha’s house a home.
When it comes to Jesus, the sisters are complementary. Even more than that, they make each other possible. Augustine wrote about them that “Martha has to set sail in order that Mary can remain quietly in port.” Martha’s actions make Mary’s reception possible; Mary’s listening makes Martha’s work meaningful. They need each other and the story needs both of them. Together, they enable Jesus to move out of the crowd and into the home, away from the antagonism of the lawyer and into the comfortable presence of friends.
They need each other. After all, while Jesus affirms that it is Mary who has chosen “that good part,” surely it is significant that it is a “part” or “portion” only that she has chosen, not the whole thing. To sit at the feet of Jesus and listen to his word—what could be a better part than that? In that situation, which portion of it would you want to have? Would you want to be the one slaving over the stove? Or the one sitting with Jesus? And yet it takes both.
Perhaps then we can see Martha’s actions not as somehow ignoring the personal relationship with Jesus in favor of busy work. Instead, Martha’s serving could be seen as a kind deed that she is doing not only for Jesus, but for her sister. Martha is making it possible for Mary to sit with Jesus, the “better part” of that interaction. It is a gift that Martha is giving Mary, at her own expense. Giving away the good portion.
Or, at least, it could have been a gift. It could have been a gift if Martha didn’t apparently resent giving it, complaining to Jesus about her sister and asking him to intervene. Insofar as there is a transgression on Martha’s part, perhaps it is not the serving, but the fact that she had the opportunity to show mercy not only to Jesus, but also to show mercy to her sister, by freely offering the gift of presence with Jesus, and, given that opportunity, she did not take it.
Luke doesn’t tell us much about Mary here, but certainly it’s possible that she had the fault that is the other side of this coin: perhaps she had a lack of appreciation for the gift she was being given. Maybe. It would help explain Martha’s resentment. Maybe one was a bad gift-giver; the other a bad gift-receiver. Maybe they are mutually dependent in more than one way. Mary’s ingratitude wouldn’t make Martha’s gift any easier to give, and Martha’s self-righteousness wouldn’t help Mary receive it. They need each other in order to “go and do likewise.”
So perhaps the question is not only which of them was a neighbor and showed mercy to Jesus, but which one was a neighbor and showed mercy to her sister. Martha and Mary illustrate for us that it is not only difficult to show mercy to the injured stranger on the road as in the Good Samaritan parable, but it can be just as difficult to do so within the context of one’s own immediate community. They illustrate that the household dynamics inside a private family home and can be just as fraught as a dangerous road from Jerusalem to Jericho, as in the parable.
In any quiet domestic sphere, there can be as many risks and injuries as there are on a dangerous highway, albeit of a different kind. The risk of giving and not being appreciated; the risk of receiving and not being grateful. To whom should I be neighbor? To whom should I show mercy? The Good Samaritan parable says that the neighbors cross lines of religion and nationality. Martha and Mary remind us that being neighbor to those inside the lines can be just as difficult.
Perhaps this is why the very next thing Luke tells us, after Jesus leaves Martha and Mary, is about him teaching the disciples the Lord’s Prayer. Our Father, who art in heaven, forgive us our sins, as we should forgive those who sin against us. We are taught to pray that we should forgive not only the strangers who don’t stop on the road, but the ones closer to home, whose cuts can be deep. And lead us not into the temptation of self-righteousness or ungenerous giving, but to the full pouring-out of love for enemies and strangers, friends and, yes, even family, even when it’s risky or unrewarded.
It can be a difficult thing to do on our own. It may even seem impossible. But we should never think that we don’t even have a prayer of accomplishing it because, Luke shows us, prayer is exactly what we do have.
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.
