First Lutheran Church, Detroit Lakes, MN
Pentecost 6/July 21, 2019
Genesis 18:1-10a and Luke 10:38-42
In the name of Jesus.
Amen.
This morning--appropriately enough!-- as we celebrate
the 102nd birthday of this congregation we also celebrate the baptismal
re-birth-day
of one of our children, Boden Brooks Tommerdahl.
One of the great gifts of having infants in our
congregation is that all of us “mature adults” are reminded of how we were once
helpless babies, utterly dependent upon the tender care of others.
But this is true not only for infants.
All of us—whatever our age—we all depend on one
another. We all live off the kindness
of relatives, neighbors, and even strangers.
That notion is woven through the scripture readings from
Luke 10 that we’ve been pondering these last few Sundays…
Two weeks ago we saw Jesus sending 70 disciples to fan
out across the countryside and declare to all with ears to hear that God’s
reign is happening now. Those roving
ambassadors were to travel light and keep on the move—relying purely on the
kindness of others along the way.
Then last week, we witnessed the victim of a brutal mugging
brought back from the brink of death thanks to the kindness of a stranger who
noticed, stopped, and helped him in his time of need.
It’s
about hospitality—the hospitality that meets us again this
morning, in the home of Mary and Martha.
And we’re not just talking about a surface-level, “Miss
Manners” brand of hospitality, either.
We’re talking about the profound, dependable hospitality that was such a
staple of daily life in the ancient world.
In a world without cell phones, convenience stores,
budget motels, ATMs or highway rest-areas, travelers in the ancient world counted
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.
Hospitality centuries ago was about more than
politeness and comfort….hospitality in the ancient world…was a matter of life
or death!
In our First Reading from Genesis 18 we see such
hospitality on full display. Three
strangers arrive at the tent of Abraham and Sarah right when the sun was
highest in the sky, right when the heat of the day made life unbearable!
…which is why Abraham immediately offered his
unexpected guests a place to sit in the shade, along with “a little water…[and] a little bread.”
But when the strangers are out of earshot, Abraham orders
up a feast for them—with fresh, abundant bread…a tender veal calf roasted on a
spit….and a generous bowl of fresh curds and milk.
(Makes
me think Abraham must have had some Scandinavian Lutheran blood in him--to
promise so little but deliver so much!)
But such was the nature of hospitality in the world of
Abraham and Jesus.
And then here in our gospel lesson from Luke 10 Jesus
shows up in the home that Martha shared with her sister Mary…a home in which Martha
was taking her cues from Abraham and Sarah—offering lavish hospitality worthy
of a guest like Jesus.
But Martha seemed to have no use for Mary…who instead
of helping chose to sit starry-eyed at Jesus’ feet, hanging on his every word.
Mary’s apparent “uselessness” made Martha do a slow
burn while she served. It annoyed her—
the burden of all that hospitality falling disproportionately on Marsha’s
shoulders--to the point that she finally blurted out: "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, both 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
mostest”: “Martha, Martha, you are worried
and distracted by many things…”
New Testament scholar Elisabeth Johnson says that the
Greek word translated as distracted here
“has the connotation of being pulled or dragged in different directions.”[1]
…which is to say that in her intense focus on hospitality
Martha had completely lost her focus!
Life, especially the busy-ness of life, does that to you and me as well: 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” often fall
woefully short.
But that was not Mary’s problem here. And contrary to what Martha assumed, Mary was being hospitable--her hospitality
consisting 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
herein, my dear friends, we encounter a word made to order for us, living in
this time and place.
We know how to pull off that surface-level brand of hospitality. We decorate the table, prepare the food, pour
up the drinks, create the ambience—with as much panache as our budgets and
schedules will allow.
But what about the deeper brand of hospitality, the
Mary-like attentiveness to the other person, the guest?
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?”[2]
The author of that article, a neuro-scientist,
suggested that with our over-focusing on “virtual relationships” using 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.
Just so, 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 a wondrous encounter with the greatest
Person in our lives.
And we might miss the most amazing 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 with
Mary--that we have in Jesus the 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 and I forgive you” to us again and again and again.
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 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, and soul-restoring
relationships--moments, spaces, opportunities through which Jesus shows up
among us.
It is here that Jesus still meets us and others, in
the holy space God opens up between us where there is room for Jesus, room for
you, and room for me….to be deeply attentive to one another and thus to have
our lives restored once again.
This amazing reality—that our God is constantly
showing up among us, in his Word, in Holy Baptism, in the Lord’s Supper, and in
the eyes of others whom we meet—including the strangers we encounter….
This amazing reality has so many, varied implications
for how we live our lives in the world—Monday through Saturday—including how we
think about even touchy subjects like welcoming immigrants and receiving
refugees.
My friends, these contemporary hot-button issues must
not be side-stepped or written off as “politics” and nothing more!
For truly these are profound faith issues, as well! After all, it is OUR Lord Jesus who in Matthew
chapter 25 declares: “I
was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to
drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me
clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited
me.” (Matthew 25:35-36)
Listen to one of those phrases again: “I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” An even more accurate translation of the
original Greek text is: “I was a foreigner (xenos!) and you took me in.”
This isn’t some 21st century political hack
speaking. This is our Lord Jesus talking
directly to us--the same Jesus who regularly meets us in unexpected ways, even
in the faces of strangers.
In the name
of Jesus. Amen.
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