ONE OF THE THINGS which I value the most about Christianity is how down to Earth it is among those whose condition renders them the least among us. Jesus, the central figure of Christianity is from the lowest class of laborers in the Roman and wider classical Mediterranean world. He doesn't rise higher as in an Horatio Alger story, if anything he sinks lower in that he becomes a vagabond preacher of an order that actively opposes the higher and mightier and even the more reputable and is never far from a condition of destitution. What Terry Eagleton called "a scandal to actuaries and a stumbling block to real estate agents." His close followers are reduced to picking heads of grain and eating them while passing by a field, often worrying about how they were going to feed themselves and those who followed Jesus. Often relying on the hospitality of, sometimes, less than reputable people who have a fixed address.
Mary McClone's always worth while comments on the readings of the day are especially good and insightful, I'm going to risk going over a large part of it.
Why do we have such bitter disagreements about the Eucharist, over who should celebrate and who can receive? Are we betraying Christ? Perhaps. If it's any comfort, this is nothing new. St. Paul himself warned the Corinthians that their eucharistic celebrations did them more harm than good and that discrimination at the Communion table gave them membership in the company of those who crucified Christ (1 Corinthians 11:17-33).
She, of course, is commenting on things like the Archbishop of San Francisco publicly humiliating Nancy Pelosi by barring her from receiving communion in his realm. The common practice among the princes of the church who are largely political hacks in the United States. That it is a male in a rampantly misogynistic hierarchy banning the most highly positioned Woman in the history of the United States government from the common meal is certainly relevant to any accurate understanding of what's going on and what it means. And that is relevant to today's readings as Mary McClone masterfully connects.
Notice, in light of what follows, in today's hierarchy, it's a male bishop refusing bread to a woman. Bread probably made by women.
The Martha and Mary story we hear today has been variously interpreted as a sign of women's discipleship, an affirmation of the value of the contemplative over the active life, as a critique of excessive busyness in the ministry, and — just about anything else you want to suggest.
Those who designed our lectionary placed this story in dialogue with that of Abraham, Sarah and their visitors. In that story, the Lord appeared to Abraham in the guise of three men. Abraham, the welcoming host, could hardly have gone further overboard in ordering their meal. The three measures of flour Sarah kneaded added up to about 60 pounds — before adding water. The steer, of course, was heavier — around 1,200 or 1,300 pounds. With those quantities, we might imagine that Abraham dug a swimming pool where they could bathe their feet!
Obviously, this story highlights Abraham's hospitality. . .
It is certainly provocative to interpret the story as God taking the form of three persons though I think given the text, that's not an outlandish conclusion to be drawn to. That such a reading could be taken as supporting a trinitarian conception of God is what it is and, I don't think beyond the pale.
The key importance of hospitality in what is called the history of salvation, the act that sets the creation of the People central to the entire book is something that affluent and even blue collar people, today, might not get as well as those who live in destitution or close to it. The implication that God might need our hospitality is interesting to think about - any consideration of God impinging on human society certainly is done through human agency, acts which cannot be unrelated to faith, another provocation from a different emphasis.
Our lectionary relegates the rest of the story, Sarah's astounded and delighted laughter at the visitor's outlandish promise that she would bear a son, to be heard every other year on a Saturday.
Those who put together lectionaries seem to have a habit of marginalizing the central part that Women play in the key elements of religion. The fact that the Gospels show Jesus commissioning Mary of Magdala to preach to the men has been similarly relegated to a little noticed weekday in the cycle in the United States. Which is relevant to consider in McClone's commentary.
With the legend of Abraham as a background and the good Samaritan as its immediate Gospel predecessor, we hear of Jesus' visit to Martha and Mary. These sisters appear here and in John 12 as Jesus' friends and disciples.
As Luke tells the story, Martha appears to be the head of the household, the one who welcomed Jesus into their home. Then, as she goes about working, Mary sits in the position of a disciple at Jesus' feet.
Both Martha and Mary were stepping outside a woman's traditional role. In a home where there is no mention of a man — Luke mentions neither brother nor husband — Martha acts as the hostess, an alternative version of the hospitable Abraham. Then, while Martha works like Sarah, Mary takes the Abrahamic role of accompanying and listening to Jesus.
Martha asked Jesus to intervene because the work (daikoneo) was left to her while Mary took in Jesus' word (logos).
This story is unique to the Gospel of Luke. Its closest parallel in the New Testament comes from Acts 6, where we hear that as the number of disciples grew, the community chose seven "deacons," to do table service, freeing the apostolic leaders to preach the word.
Understanding the connection that Luke makes between the two incidents, we realize that he may be describing Martha's service as akin to that of a deacon. The community needed some to serve as hosts at the table doing diakoneo, leaving others free to be itinerant preachers of the word (logos).
As we listen to this story, we should realize that although our translation says that Mary chose the "better," Luke quoted Jesus as saying, "Mary has chosen the good part." After the story of the good Samaritan, it would seem unthinkable to suggest that preaching or studying the word takes absolute priority over direct service.
That tension between listening to Jesus and feeding Jesus is worth considering more seriously than it usually is by white-collar (so to speak) professionals of the type that liturgists and such who write up lectionaries and preach sermons and write rules are apt to consider them. I think it's certain that the fact that until very recently none and even now very few of those who do that are Women is relevant. And in the Catholic church, with the controversy over whether or not Women are going to be restored to the office of Deacon, this is also a subtext to the critique.
I will interject that the other day someone told me of an ex-husband who revived a fifty-four year old story about his then young wife, who was also a working college student and a new mother at the time, not keeping their apartment clean and getting into trouble with the land lord for having a messy place, it occurred to no one to ask him why he didn't do some of the housework. Certainly not then and not today in how I was told about it.
We should notice that in this story, both Martha and Mary step out of women's traditional roles. Martha's service is described as literally diaconal; she was serving like Jesus served. (See Luke 22:26-27.) Mary was sitting at the feet of her rabbi, a physical position and communal role traditionally restricted to men.
Perhaps the deepest conflict reflected here is not the difference between the sisters but the consternation of a community trying to adjust as Christian women assumed previously restricted roles of religious leadership.
To some extent I think you can extend that certainly important meaning behind the story to the general downgrading of what is considered menial labor, such as doing normal everyday things like what Sarah and Martha did which is not valued as highly as mental activity by so many. Mary McClone points out that given the story's relationship to Jesus's parable of The Good Samaritan and the productive noticing the original meaning of the Greek being that Mary had taken the "good part" and not the "better part" and the "Good Samaritan" being good because of his physically expressing his love of a stranger, and relating that to the lectionary reading of Abraham's hospitality (his wife doing the labor of cooking) provides some very good things for consideration. I'll point out that to conventional Christianity, what Sarah and Martha were doing was feeding God, giving God what God needed (to put it in human terms, which is all we can do or understand) to get on with creation.
Update: I've decided I should include the next paragraph of the commentary, in case some don't read the entire thing at the link because it is so important, especially in light of the Communion wars the US Catholic Conference of Bishops is waging against Democratic politicians and others.
In reality, almost any time that Jesus was a guest or shared a meal, conflict came to the table. He consistently stretched accepted limits. Jesus scandalized many of his contemporaries because he ignored rules that restricted anyone's full participation in God's reign. According to Jesus, that reign resembles a banquet as lavish as the spread Abraham offered his guests and remains open to anyone who desires it, no matter their social or religious status.
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