Pathways Summer Splash Worship Service
Camp Emmaus, Menahga, MN
July 23, 2016
Luke 10:38-42
In the name of Jesus.
Amen.
“Let
all who enter be received as Christ.”
Those words, from the Rule of St Benedict, adorn the welcome
sign that greets visitors to your sister camp, Shetek Lutheran Bible Camp near
Slayton, MN.
“Let
all who enter be received as Christ.”
This brief statement describes the primacy of
hospitality in all communities of faith, all the places where Christ’s faithful
people come together.
Receiving and offering hospitality is foundational in
the Way of Jesus Christ, because it takes seriously the fact that you and I are
always depending on the kindness and generosity of others.
This brief gospel lesson from Luke 10 focuses our
attention on such hospitality.
And we’re not just talking about a Miss Manner’s brand
of hospitality, either. We’re talking
about the deep, dependable hospitality that was such a staple of daily life in
the ancient world.
In a world without convenience stores, budget motels,
ATMs or highway rest-areas, ancient travelers staked their lives on the
hospitality of others along the road….in the awareness that next time, you the
host (today) might be a needy guest (tomorrow) in someone else’s home.
So here in Luke 10 Jesus shows up in the home that
Martha and her sister Mary shared, and it seems at first blush that Martha is
the one who offers lavish hospitality worthy of a guest like Jesus.
But Martha had a sister, and that sister, Mary, was of
no apparent use to Martha…choosing instead to loll at Jesus’ feet, hanging on his
every word.
Even though she tried to look past it, Martha was
doing a slow burn while she served. It ate
at her— the burden of all that hospitality falling disproportionately on
Marsha’s shoulders, to the point that she finally blurted out to Jesus: "Lord, do you not care that my sister
has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me."
As Martha dumped all that on her guest, she became
quite inhospitable, by drawing Jesus into an intra-family squabble and by
making her problem her guest’s problem--in fact accusing her guest in the
process: “Lord, do you not care….?”
But in fact, Jesus did care—he cared primarily about
what Martha was doing to herself, trying so hard to be the “hostess with
the mostesst”: “Martha, Martha, you are worried
and distracted by many things…”
New Testament scholar Elisabeth Johnson points out
that in the original language of this text, the word translated distracted “has the connotation of
being pulled or dragged in different directions.”
…which is to say that in her intense focus on hospitality
Martha had completely lost her focus.
Life, especially the busy-ness of life in the 21st century, does that to
us: we try so hard that we blow it, we
focus so intensely that we lose all focus.
In the process, our best efforts, even our attempts at “being
hospitable” fall woefully short.
But that was not Mary’s problem here. And contrary to what Martha assumed, Mary
had not neglected hospitality--because Mary’s hospitality consisted of her attention,
her focused listening to what Jesus their guest had to say.
Again, in the words of Elisabeth Johnson: “There
is no greater hospitality than listening to your guest. How much more so
when the guest is Jesus!”
And
this, my dear friends, is a word made to order for us, living in this time and
place.
We still, of course, pull off that surface-level, inch-deep
hospitality. We ready the setting,
prepare the food, pour up the drinks, create the ambience—we do that with as
much panache as our budgets and schedules will allow.
But what about the deeper hospitality, the Mary-like
laser-attentiveness to the other person, our guest? What about our capacity truly to attend to,
to listen to, to be fully and physically present with one another?
Several years ago a provocative article in the NY
Times asked: “can you remember the last time you were in a public space in America
and didn’t notice that half the people around you were bent over a digital
screen, thumbing a connection to somewhere else?”
That article, written by a neuro-scientist, suggested
that with our over-focusing on “virtual relationships” by means of all our hand-held
digital devices, we may inadvertently be stunting “our biological capacity to
connect with other people” face to face, skin on skin.
We may be missing—as Martha did—the “one thing
needful,” the “better part” that Mary lived for.
God could show up in our midst, garbed in flesh of our
flesh, bone of our bone, and we might be pulled or dragged in so many different
directions that we’d be oblivious to the greatest encounter with the greatest
Person in our lives.
And we might miss the most wondrous miracle of all—not
that a gentle soul like Mary would sit still for Jesus in her living room….but that
Jesus would sit still for Mary--that we have in Jesus a God who graciously
seeks us out, enters our space, continually pays deep attention to us, looks us
right in the eyes to speak his “I love you” to us again and again and again.
Dr. Andrew Root of Luther Seminary, contends that “relationships…in ministry are the place,
the very space created, to encounter the living Jesus.”
Let me say that again: “Relationships…are
the place, the very space created, to encounter the living Jesus.”
What happened so long ago in Mary and Martha’s home
still happens among us in the power of Jesus’ resurrection.
Jesus draws near to us. Jesus sits still with us.
And like a good host—Jesus brings all sorts of gifts
with him—clean water to wash away all our dirt, fresh bread with rich wine to restore
and reinvigorate us.
Jesus draws near to us and sits with us, fashioning soul-restoring
relationships
in the sacred space that God opens up between us.
And the one thing needful for us is to be there
and be aware in that sacred space where Jesus shows up among us.
One of the great gifts of outdoor ministries like
Pathways is that our camps and retreat centers open up sacred space in which we
meet Jesus Christ and encounter others as “little Christs” in our midst.
In a world that doesn’t always feel safe, a world that
makes our heads spin, a world filled with cacophony of endless noise and
distraction, a world that too often has us sitting side by side yet separated
by a thousand miles of digital space…
In a world that leaves us feeling the way Martha
was—distracted by many things, even good things like offering hospitality…
In this world as we know it….outdoor ministries like
Pathways beckon us to step back, to turn aside, to pay attention to what
matters most, to come into fresh awareness of God, God’s wondrous creation,
God’s diverse people and God’s transforming Word.
I believe we need to think of places like Camp Emmaus
and Camp Minnewakan as oases
in our 21st century wilderness….oases where we and those we care
about can tune out the distractions and tune into the heartbeat of the
universe, in the God we know best in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus
Christ.
This morning we pause to pay attention to this
reality…and to affirm and bless those who do so much to fill this sacred place
with rich relational space….where folks can meet Jesus Christ and encounter
those in whom we behold the face of God.
This Mary-like focus on the One who matters most—Jesus
and his Way—truly grounds us and energizes us for the Martha-like service this
world so desperately need.
Thank God for this outdoor ministry that we love and
share and support. In places like this Jesus
meets us and our fellow way-farers. God
opens up space between us where there is room for Jesus, room for you, and room
for me….to be deeply attentive to one another and God-with-us…and thus,
to have our lives restored again for service in God’s world.
In the name of Jesus.
Amen.
