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Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
Sometimes, our deepest repair begins with the courage to start chipping away at the walls that separate us from what we dream for ourselves. Now, today, we continue the first of our two summer series called Inside Out. And in this series, we explore themes that are close to home, whether this home is literal or metaphorical. In their book, The Home of God, theologians Miroslav Vols and Ryan MacKanley Linz reflect that homes are more than specific kinds of places. They are vital processes among people and between people and things, meaning that home is always about relating, relating to oneself, to others, and the world around.
Speaker 1:In our reflection on home, Bobby kicked off the series meditating on the process and experience of rest. And I love the way Bobby unpacked Jesus' words in Matthew 11. Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Rest is about learning how to be fully human. Then last week, Scott talked about digesting and attending to our lives in this season, and he took up Ecclesiastes as our guide to that holy work of connecting with our interior self.
Speaker 1:And if you want some help with that, don't we all, make sure to check out the practice of summer examine that Scott so generously shared with us. Now, one of the things that I appreciate about this series is that it invites us to reflect on what makes an integrated life and how the spaces we find ourselves in, whether physical or conversational, can help us move towards such a life, however incrementally. Now this week, we talk about repair and how it often begins in the particulars of our shared life. But before we dive in, let us pray together. Loving God, as we take a deep breath and allow our bodies and our minds to settle in this space, we reach for gratitude.
Speaker 1:We're grateful for the ritual. We're grateful for the community, for all the grounding pieces of our lives, for the love we get to extend and share. And as we consider the work of repair today, We also think about the walls of flames and the peoples who've lost their homes. We pray for those battling the fires, for those grieving the damage, and those grappling with the uncertainty of how to even begin rebuilding their lives. Lord, have mercy.
Speaker 1:And as we engage with the ancient texts that carry a surprising power to touch us, We trust that an integrated life where we know rest and peace and relational repair is something that you desire for us too, And that in all of our stumbling toward wholeness, your gentle grace is always within reach. Amen. Alright. Today, we have repair and the story of Martha and Mary in Luke 10. And we will talk about what happens when you open your home, the work of diakonia, criticism and tenderness, and one thing needed.
Speaker 1:And if you're a Bulgarian, the word repair might hit a little close to home this summer with our extensive repair project of the feeder main. Maybe the emotions still ran high, and we shouldn't even go there. But for at least five weeks, our whole city felt like a home where communication skills got tested, where patience was practiced on end, and the common good was prioritized. And Calgary not only rose to the challenge, but also ended up hosting a record breaking stampede. We should be so proud.
Speaker 1:Well done, us. But as with any repair project, to be successful, there had to be a shift in us. And that shift had to be lived out in the specifics, in the particulars of our daily lives, through the daily acts of care, such as conserving water, adjusting our shower times, keeping our privilege and laundry in check. Because the particulars is often where repair begins. But the story we're looking at today has often been taken out of the realm of the particulars and flung into the abstract.
Speaker 1:If you have been around church for a while, you might be familiar with this kind of typology. A good, quiet Mary, fully devoted to listening to Jesus. And a loud, distracted Martha focused on worldly things like dinner. And if you're a woman, you might have strong feelings about this story. I know I do.
Speaker 1:Phrases like, we all could use a little more Mary and a little less Martha in our lives are not helpful. See me around dinnertime with my hangry toddler. I'm in Martha mode because it will help me survive. But today, I want us to look at the particulars of the story and wrestle it out of some of those prescriptive and normative interpretations, and also to recover some appreciation for both sisters and for the repair that can happen when we open our homes. So let's begin with that in Luke ten thirty eight.
Speaker 1:As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary who sat at the Lord's feet listening to what he said. Now a few notes to locate us in this text. First, this stay at Martha's house is part of what's called the travel narrative in Luke. It begins in Luke nine where Jesus predicts his death to his disciples and then sets out to Jerusalem where it will occur.
Speaker 1:And Luke dedicates 10 chapters to the teachings and the encounters that take place during this journey. Secondly, immediately before our story in chapter 10, we have the parable of the good Samaritan. A teacher of the law wants to test Jesus. The question is, how does one inherit eternal life? The answer is love God with all your heart, soul, and strength, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.
Speaker 1:The follow-up question is, but who is my neighbor? And the answer is the parable of the good Samaritan. A Samaritan, someone who would typically be seen as excluded from God's grace, shows compassion to a suffering stranger, while those who are supposed to know God's heart for the suffering pass by on the other side. And with this parable, Jesus knocks down some serious boundaries around who's in and who's out of God's kingdom. And he also refrains the question from the detached, oh, who is my neighbor, to a very personal one, what kind of neighbor am I?
Speaker 1:So our and Mary story comes on the heels of this parable, putting the love of neighbor to test in a real family situation. But let's look at the sisters. Martha and Mary were well known figures in the tradition of the early church. The gospel of John describes both sisters and their brother Lazarus as friends whom Jesus loved. And Luke is the only gospel to tell this specific story about them.
Speaker 1:Marcy is the older sister, a house owner, and possibly one of the patrons of the budding Jesus movement. Luke tells us that some women actually accompanied Jesus and his disciples and supported them financially out of their own means. And Martha is a powerhouse. As soon as she learns that Jesus and the 12 are nearby, she opens her home to them. And the Greek verb used here means to welcome someone into your personal care.
Speaker 1:This invitation is an extension of her love. Now Mary, who remained silent through the whole story, does something here that speaks louder than words. She makes her way into the public room of the house, an officially male space now occupied by Jesus and the disciples, and she finds a seat. And with our modern sensibilities, we might not get the shocking effect of that action, but it is there. Because the phrase to sit at someone's feet meant to be a student of that person.
Speaker 1:And to sit at the feet of a rabbi like Jesus meant you wanted to be a rabbi yourself one day. And being a student of a rabbi was actually a big deal. It was not like taking a casual course for self improvement. It meant you committed your entire life to that specific rabbi and their teachings. It was a vocational choice.
Speaker 1:And Judaism, as far as we know, did not prohibit women from learning the Torah. But it was unheard of for a rabbi to have a female student. But in the safety of her sister's home, Mary decides to cross these social boundaries and to start claiming the life that has seemed out of reach. Leaving the women's part of the house, she sits herself down at the feet of Jesus. The teaching session is in progress.
Speaker 1:Heads turn, eyebrows rise, but Jesus does not blink an eye. Breaking boundaries is kind of his thing anyway. Right? Sometimes, our deepest repair begins with the courage to start chipping away at the walls that separate us from what we dream for ourselves. And the security of our belonging in a place or with the people around us can be enough of a nudge to do just that for us.
Speaker 1:And the Lord of the Rings, Gandalf, says, it is a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to. Well, it is no less dangerous business, Martha, and the rest of us here to open our homes to Jesus. There is no knowing what kind of repair project we will get caught up in. In the gospels, when Jesus is welcomed into homes, we see the message of the kingdom shared, food made and eaten, healing offered, and peace made possible.
Speaker 1:But there is a particular weightiness to that peace that Jesus brings. It is the kind of peace that gets worked into the fabric of our lives as we stumble away through conflict, through fear, anxiety, to love. But let's go back to Martha. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, Lord, don't you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself?
Speaker 1:Tell her to help me. To be distracted here means to be pulled away or pulled in all directions at once. But what exactly is pulling Martha in all directions? The NIV gives us two words, preparations and work. But it is actually one word in Greek, diakonia.
Speaker 1:And diakonia has a wide range of meaning from table service to ministry. Our English word deacon comes from it. And because this word is so central for interpreting the story, there's actually some debate about its meaning in this particular context. Some scholars say, here means to care for your guests through providing a meal. Others see it as indicating domestic chores and kitchen duties, something that women and slaves were expected to do.
Speaker 1:However, what's interesting is that diakonia is also how Jesus describes his own work. In Luke 22, during the last supper, Jesus refers to himself as diakonon, the one who came to serve. In the early church, described in Acts, we see that diakonia was an accepted technical term for church leadership, which included Eucharist and preaching. And by the time Luke wrote the gospel, the office of deacon was already well established. We hear it in Paul's writing about Phoebe, who was the deacon in Romans 16.
Speaker 1:A feminist theologian, Elizabeth Schuslef Fiorenza, argues that scholars project a contemporary bias into the early church movement when they say that the diaconia of women was restricted to the house and consisted in practical help to traveling male missionaries or in housework for community gatherings. The feminist liberation theologians like Fiorenza and such Jewish scholars as Amy Jill Levine invite us to see this narrative as functioning at two levels. On one level, it captures an episode from the lifetime of Jesus. But on another level, it is addressed to the post resurrection church in which women were involved in all levels of ministry. And if we take this framework and see the story as written with the early church community in mind, it can help us repair the picture of Martha in this scene.
Speaker 1:If she's the owner of the house, it might well mean that she is a house church leader. And, of course, that work will pull her in all directions. Her diakonia would include caring for people, providing food and shelter and guidance and spiritual care in addition to liturgy, Eucharist, and organizational leadership. It is understandable that she would ask for help. After all, it was Jesus who sent out his disciples in groups of two to share all that work.
Speaker 1:However, let's drop down from that historical perspective of the early church to the particular experience of both women in this moment. It is possible that Martha is fully overwhelmed with the hosting responsibilities and feels abandoned. But I am not sure if that alone justifies the way she interrupts the teaching session with a respectful yet defiant, Lord, don't you care? An Anglican priest, Tish Harrison Warren, writes that when we fight with people we love, what we are arguing about isn't really what we are arguing about. What we're actually arguing about is our fears, anxieties, identities, and hopes.
Speaker 1:So what if, in the confrontation, our personal and relational repair could begin by listening through and around and behind our words to our anxieties and our fears and our hopes and asking, what are they trying to protect here in this fight? I do not like the interpretations that give us a jealous Martha or a Martha who is competing with her sister for the time with Jesus or someone who wants to push her sister back into her place in the kitchen. The traditional polarization of the sisters and their spiritualities does not serve us well. It turns the people whom Jesus loved and who loved Jesus into a caricature of a family. So could it be that Martha breaks the social conventions around hosting and confronts Jesus, not because the dinner is delayed due to a flaky little sister, but because Martha is genuinely worried for her beloved Mary, The older sister, always the protector, is concerned about Mary's choices that she is witnessing.
Speaker 1:What is Mary doing? How is she going to make it in a world that has little room for women disciples, let alone women teachers? What will the social repercussions be for the family? And why is Jesus allowing this to happen instead of protecting Mary by sending her back where she is expected to be. He's the only one, after all, who she would listen to.
Speaker 1:But Jesus turns his attention to Martha. Martha, Martha, the Lord answered, you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her. And this is where things get complicated. Ancient scribes who copied the story from manuscript to manuscript to manuscript until it got to us left us with at least six discrepancies in these verses or what biblical scholars call textual variants.
Speaker 1:And those variants roughly give us two different readings, a longer reading and a shorter one. The NIV, which we just read, goes with the longer reading. And it moves from many things to few things and finally to only one. And this reading actually has contributed to the interpretations that give us a Martha with misplaced priorities. And a Jesus who chastises her because listening to him is more important than all those things she's worried about.
Speaker 1:The shorter reading, though, is increasingly considered to be the closest to the original, and it goes like this. Martha Martha, the Lord answered, you are anxious and troubled about many things. One thing is needed. Since the Greek manuscripts that we have do not contain the word only, this reading also drops it, which immediately relieves us, readers, from the pressure to arrive at one single correct meaning of what this only one thing could be. But even with the more correct reading identified, the text remains ambiguous.
Speaker 1:And this shows up in the history of its interpretation. So if you ever wondered what this story really means, you are in good company. Here's a quick tour. Origen, one of the first big biblical scholars of the early church, saw this story as distinguishing be between action and contemplation. New Christians and advanced Christians.
Speaker 1:For the fourth century monasticism, the quiet listening posture of Mary became the model of mystical life. Augustine leaned into allegory. Martha symbolized the life of this world and Mary of the world to come. And it was the sixteenth century Protestant Reformation with its juxtaposition of justification by works and justification by faith that also contributed to our contemporary polarization of the two sisters and the criticism of Martha. So for me, this diversity in interpretation is just another reminder that our theology is not static and that how we read the scriptures is never detached from the forces that shape our lives, the zeitgeist of our time, our culture, our language, our social location, the patriarchy, the love we receive or did not receive growing up in our homes, all of it influences how we see everything, including God and ourselves.
Speaker 1:Our theology is inevitably contextual, and it changes as we change and find new language for our experience of God. And so with Martha, I want to follow the lead of the medieval mystics and contemporary feminist theologians, for both of whom interpretation begins with experience, with listening to the voice of God in your life. And what I hear in Jesus' words to Martha is tenderness. He calls her name twice. Martha, Martha, I see you.
Speaker 1:You asked for Mary to be sent back as if this one thing will fix everything, but I see the worries that you do not name. They are many, and they speak of your deep love. Martha, you did not fail anyone. And I want to believe that in this particular moment, when Martha's anxiety is running the show and pulling her into pieces, She did not need Jesus' criticism. She needed his gentle voice to remind her that she should be gentle with herself too.
Speaker 1:Because when we are tender, we begin to release control. We begin to repair. Now, one other thing that contributes to the ongoing comparison of the sisters is that a lot of our translations say Mary chose what is better. And many scholars today think that it should actually be translated as good. Well then, choosing a good thing is not the same as choosing what is better.
Speaker 1:And if the text does not pit sisters against each other, then neither should we. Each sister is on her own journey of knowing God. Each path is sacred. Each path is good. And Mary's choice is an expression of her agency and her freedom.
Speaker 1:Jesus is not going to curb that. He respects Mary's freedom to seek the good that her heart longs for. And Jesus offers the same freedom to Martha. One needful thing that Jesus talks about can be Martha sitting down right next to Mary to support her. Or it can be Martha stopping in her tracks to realize that she too is allowed to listen to what her heart needs.
Speaker 1:Whatever happens next in the story remains off page. Now it's Martha's turn, and we don't get privy to that transformation. And perhaps for a good reason. What if the point of the story is not to establish a moral rule or a pattern for proper discipleship that elevates listening to Jesus over service or to compare two different types of spirituality? Maybe the point is to encourage us to pay attention to the desires of our hearts that often do not get voiced.
Speaker 1:What if the point is to listen to the worries behind our fights and what they can teach us? Or to focus on the good in the choices our children or friends or lovers make? What if the point is that God can meet us in the calm and in the turmoil, and we can trust that. I don't know what kind of repair projects are on your mind this summer. Perhaps a mix of home maintenance and soul maintenance.
Speaker 1:Right? Maybe, like Mary, you are considering a big decision that pushes against what is expected from you. Your one thing could be trusting that the repair it would bring to your sense of self is worth it. Maybe like Martha, you are learning to love through letting go of control, or you're learning to observe the deepest needs of your loved ones or even your own. Maybe your one good thing could be allowing yourself to make mistakes, to try things, and to practice practice gentleness.
Speaker 1:And maybe all our repair of our sense of who we are, of our imagination of the divine, of our parenting and our relations, of our experience of home and church, all that repair. Maybe it begins with the freedom to choose what is good for us right now and trusting that God is already there. Let us pray. Loving God, the earth is alive with your spirit, and nothing speaks of it quite like summer. So would you continue to bless us in our summer rhythms, in our rest and self reflection, in conversations that happen when we open our homes, in our decision making, in our hopes and our fears, in the work of repair that is happening in us.
Speaker 1:And may we trust that even in our anxious moments, we can still hear your gentle voice and extend the same grace, the same gentleness to ourselves as you extend to us. May your peace that surpasses all understanding guard our hearts and our minds today and always. Amen.
Speaker 2:Hey. Jeremy here, and thanks for listening to our podcast. If you're intrigued by the work that we're doing here at Commons, you can head to our website commons.church for more information. You can find us on all of the socials commonschurch. You can subscribe to our YouTube channel where we are posting content regularly for the community.
Speaker 2:You can also join our Discord server. Head to commons.churchdiscord for the invite, and there you will find the community having all kinds of conversations about how we can encourage each other to follow the way of Jesus. We would love to hear from you. Anyway, thanks for tuning in. Have a great week.
Speaker 2:We'll talk to you soon.