Distracted
Genesis 18:1-15; Luke 10:38-42

July 22, 2007


“Marcia! Marcia! Marcia!” Isn’t that the frustrated refrain of The Brady Bunch TV series? I have managed never to have watched an episode, but the refrain has entered the language beyond its original viewers. Marcia Brady was one of those very nice people who always seemed to be heading in the wrong direction. Nothing bad, but always missing the point. Jesus, talking to his Martha, is often thought to be using the same inflection in his voice.

Martha gets it from every direction, but despite all the stereotypes in comparison with her sister Mary, she is not one to shake your head over. In John’s Gospel story about the death and raising from the dead of their brother Lazarus, it is Martha who knows what to do when it matters. Mary is so overwhelmed by grief that her brain is paralyzed until the last minute. Martha knew how to do the faith.

Martha is salvageable, but the story has suffered so much from oversimplification that both Martha and Mary are caricatured. Martha is too busy, Mary is too quiet; Martha’s work is devalued, Mary’s listening is praised. Action is pitted against contemplation and the church loses if either side wins. We hear nothing about the meal, only a sharp tense exchange among the trio. Did Jesus ever get fed after a verbal sparring match like this?

Hospitality is more the concern in the Bethany home. In the ancient world, hospitality was a sacred obligation which good people obeyed, whether they wanted to do so or not. The word goes back to medieval Latin and French to mean receiving a guest, a “hospiter.” How we get “hospital” today is one of those gradual developments of language. In the Greek-speaking world, however - in which language this story was related - the root of the word hospitality literally means “the love of strangers.”

They were bonafide strangers who approached the tents of Abraham and Sarah in the noon day heat, and they never become un-strange. We never hear where they were coming from, what nationality they bore, and their names are absent as well as any reason for their traveling in the middle of the wilderness at such an ungodly hour. Except perhaps the three guys were God, God Who Is Three in One, a God so immense that it takes three grown men to represent all God means to be.

It is never quite certain whether Abraham knew who his strange guests were, or whether he simply knew that this was the right time to be hospitable. It is almost a comical scene, especially in realistic time. The last time guests showed up unexpectedly at your place, how long did it take you to slaughter that calf you keep in the back yard and have it cooked up on the grill and ready to serve? I know some of you are good, but I think your timing was a little behind McDonald’s or Burger King. Don’t forget baking bread from scratch. Let’s face it, all this took hours and hours, during which time Abraham sat talking with them. This is hospitality, the love of strangers.

The conversation sounds quite real. Given all those hours, I tend to believe Abraham did mention his wife at least once, so when “they” ask, “Where is your wife Sarah?” - it is because the four men know something about Abraham and his family. “In the tent” is the terse reply - where women belong is the understood explanation - though Sarah does have her ear to the door, or to the canvas of the tent.

Seamlessly, the guest is no longer “they” but “the Lord.” “I am coming back to visit you next spring and Sarah will have given birth to a son.” That was a bomb. Or was it a wicked joke, for Sarah eavesdropping it certainly was one and made her laugh to herself. At 89 years old lots of things are funny.

Apparently, when you are in the vicinity of the Lord there is no “laughing to yourself” for the Lord shot back to Abraham, “Why is Sarah laughing?” citing her very thoughts. “Is anything too hard too hard for the Lord?” I am coming back at the right time next year and it will be so. Sarah had come out of the tent by this point, properly or not, complaining, “I did not laugh.” “But you did laugh!” is the end of the conversation. It is funny, after all.

How should you be properly hospitable to God when she just drops in? Abraham rushed about, busying himself in the preparations for a good meal, giving orders in an efficient manner, and then probably spent a good deal of time talking with his guests. When the food came, he just sat and watched them eat. That may be hospitable and giving honour to one’s guests in some cultures. Given that this was a solidly patriarchal society, Abraham kept Sarah in her place in the tent, but the three men really had journeyed all this way to talk about her and give the couple the incredibly good news. They lured her out of her tent as an equal partner in the conversation. They broke the rules and customs of that society is allowing and inviting a woman to participate as an equal with a man. Were the three angels rude to Abraham in his own tent, or was Abraham’s seclusion of his wife offensive to the Three in One, and where is hospitality here?

When Jesus dropped by, Martha kept up the Abraham tradition and bustled about getting all the elements of the meal together while sister Mary did nothing but listen to Jesus. Martha infamously has had enough and breaks the hospitality code of any society by attempting to get her guest Jesus to reprimand her sister. That outburst sometimes gets Martha nodding understanding, but seldom does she get any points. Something else is afoot here.

Bishop N. T. Wright of Durham is one of today’s best known New Testament scholars who always finds something intriguing to say regarding just about any Gospel passage. What he has to say about Mary and Martha is almost as much as a bomb as the visitors’ announcement to Sarah and Abraham.

It’s all a matter of where Mary is sitting doing her listening. The Biblical culture had not changed that much so in the first place Mary did not belong in the room talking with the men. Jesus most likely was not alone. His disciples were so omnipresent the narrator often just didn’t bother mentioning the fact. Mary is where Sarah wanted to be. She is taking the place of a man.

Mary is sitting at Jesus’ feet, which does not mean like a puppy lapping up every syllable from her master’s mouth. It is the language used then for being a disciple of a teacher. Jesus counters Martha that Mary has chosen the best portion and the word used could be a pun on the word for a dinner portion. Martha is preparing a meal, but Mary has already dug into the meal of words and the Word which never leaves one hungry again.

But more than that, by intruding upon the male domain and by becoming a student or disciple of Jesus, Mary has obviously one intention in mind. She thinks to herself that she wants to become a rabbi and Jesus, rather than being shocked by her impertinence, affirms that she is on the right path. My God, what would happen if everyone became a rabbi and loved the Word and wanted to serve God in this world? A rabbi was one of the elite, moreover, a person now endowed with power. What if every person could become a priest? What kind of power would a rabbi have then? If a dinner did indeed follow this unbelievable dialogue, the dinner conversation had to be unlike any other in that time and place. Hospitality loves strangers, but the three mysterious visitors and then Jesus made Sarah and Mary, in Paul’s later words to the Ephesians, “no longer strangers or sojourners but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.”

Is anything too hard, too wonderful for God? Jesus healed a lot of people, but as the Gospels move to their latter chapters, Jesus seemingly gives up healing for Lent. What he does is far more dangerous, altering far more the fabric of life and society anywhere. Jesus requires that hospitality include everyone, making strangers into guests, servants into fellow citizens, women and children into people. Faith is not a matter of religion privately observed in the sanctuary; it dares to change the way things are done, the way people subjugate weaker people, the way society is structured and declares there is a different priority, a different universe, a different kind of power. That is the better portion

Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan