9 Pentecost C/Ordinary 16/Proper 11 July 17, 2016
Luther Memorial Church Seattle, WA
The Rev. Julie G. Hutson
Genesis 18: 1-10a + Colossians 1: 15-28 + Luke 10: 38-42
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.
In his poignant work, Night, the late Elie Wiesel tells his heart wrenching story of a young Eliezer, as a Jewish teenager in Hungarian Transylvania during World War II. Eliezer eventually ends up being shipped to the death camps of Nazi Germany, where he reflects on the presence of God in the midst of the barbaric atrocities that surround him.
On one terrible day Eliezer and the rest of the prisoners are forced to witness the execution by hanging of two men and an innocent boy. Unable to bear what they were watching, a fellow prisoner, standing near Eliezer asks repeatedly “Where is God? Where is God?” Eliezer said that from somewhere deep within himself the answer rose up “Where is God? This is where —hanging here from those gallows.”
As horrible as this story is to read and imagine, we, too, bear witness to similarly hard to watch injustices and cruelties. The deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile have played out over and over on our screens in these weeks. The lifeless body of a Dallas police officer, lying next to his cruiser. Those being carried out of the Pulse nightclub in Orlando. Travelers at airports in Turkey and Brussels. People just going about their days, gathering and shopping and eating in Bangladesh, Iraq, Syria, and Paris. And just days ago, more innocent lives, more than eighty at last count, killed while celebrating Bastille Day in Nice.
We might also cry out “Where is God? Where is God?”
Of course, we all want God to be on our side….on the side of what we call right. On the side of those in pain and sorrow and agony. But for centuries, the taking of innocent lives has happened in the name of God….in the name of justice. Those of us in the Christian faith would do well to remember the Crusades, for example, before we begin to talk about how we should examine and detain every Muslim sister or brother.
The truth is that wanting God to be on our side is an old and often simple story. Mary and Martha are an archetype of this struggle. Martha, with her attention to the busy work of running a household and preparing for guests. Mary, sitting at the feet of Jesus, learning from him. Martha’s complaint about Mary’s unwillingness to help her.
For centuries, the Church has pitted these two sisters against one another. Mary’s halo fairly glows about her head while Martha comes off looking like some sort of shrew. We miss most of what this story really has to teach us, by wanting Jesus to be on one side or another. We are so busy assigning blame and assigning righteousness that we fail to notice some of the key details of this story. And we risk missing the real words of Jesus, both to Martha and to us.
For example, how many of us heard, in the very first verse of our Gospel reading, that Martha is a homeowner? The writer of Luke’s Gospel said that Jesus entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into HER home. Martha is not just there to do the cooking; Martha is the homeowner, she is the host. In Biblical times this would mean that providing hospitality was incumbent upon her, as the host. In the ancient world, extending hospitality to travelers is an absolute requirement. So, in this story Martha’s busy-ness is not designed as a critique of our busy-ness. All of us who identify with Martha can relax, at least on this point. We tend to make ourselves busy out of a misplaced expectation that to be busy is to be productive and to be productive is to be justified and somehow worthy. Martha, on the other hand is busy with the essential tasks of offering hospitality to Jesus. There is a difference.
How many of us realized, as we read and heard this story, that by placing Mary at the feet of Jesus, the writer of Luke’s Gospel is affirming that the study of Torah is open to women? Mary, a woman with little to no agency in this time, is deemed valuable and worthy of discipleship. She is worthy of learning and serving with Jesus.
This story has nothing to do with who is right and who is wrong. It has everything to do with our ability to accept one another in the same ways that Jesus accepts us.
The propensity of our culture to determine and name aloud right and wrong…in and out…worthy and unworthy…has manifested itself in overarching ways as racism, sexism, classism, xenophobia, and homophobia. It has become commonplace to judge and then publicly label those who are good and those who are bad….those who are right and those who are wrong.
Let me carefully offer a story as an example. Last Thursday night we held our first community meeting around the affordable housing for families that we are partnering with Compass Housing Alliance and Bellwether Housing to build. The community room at the Broadview Branch of the library was packed. And very quickly the judgment was clear: If they were poor, if they were homeless, they must be drug addicts, or sexual predators or at the very least people who will occupy every parking spot in the neighborhood. They are the unworthy who wish to move into the neighborhood of the worthy. There were also voices of hope, of support. But the loudest voices were the voices of judgment.
When the meeting ended, a young woman sat alone, weeping. Tears were coursing down her cheeks. I live in affordable housing, she said. I live in this neighborhood, too. And I was just called a drug dealer and a sexual predator and a criminal. And how could I take up their parking when I don’t even have a car? That young woman was the face of courage that night.
Beloved community….how has it come to be that we look at one another with such divisive polarity? And in this political climate, in this election year, it is certain to get worse. How has it come to be that we as a society can only value Mary or Martha when Jesus calls us to love them both? Mary and Martha….gay and straight and trans….black and white….first responder and ordinary citizen….male and female…..Muslim and Christian….Jew and Gentile….these are divisions that no longer matter in the kingdom of God. We must stop seeing this world in division and see it and name it and affirm it in unity.
So what is the better way that Jesus speaks of in the Gospel reading today?
The better way is to look to Jesus, who is the source of our hope and our strength. Last week, after I noted in the mid week update that we don’t possibly have enough candles to honor every victim in these days, one of you came to me and said that we don’t need them. That all we need is the Paschal candle. This candle that is traditionally lit during the 50 days of the Easter season and at baptisms and funerals to remind us of the presence of the resurrected Christ among us. But we light it today because in this world filled with the darkness of so much evil and hatred and judgment, only the light of Christ can shine enough love to change our hearts.
The better way is also reflected in courageous presence. It is the courage demonstrated by that young woman at our community meeting, who dared to be vulnerable in the face of an angry, entitled crowd. Who dared to say…this is who I am. We must learn to speak the truth with courage or perhaps with fear and trembling…but until we can speak love to hate….fear will continue to have its way in the world.
And finally, the better way is found in believing that we are who God sees us to be. That we are God’s beloved children….and that our neighbors, black and white, gay and straight, Muslim and Christian, Jew and Gentile, man and woman, rich and poor….our neighbors are who God sees them to be….beloved in the eyes of God.
Thanks be to God. Amen. [1]
[1] Portions of this sermon are largely informed by the writing of Karoline Lewis at www.workingpreacher.com and the blogger at provokingthegospel.