"Dinner Party Dust Up" - Pentecost 6C

 

Saint Luke 10:38-42

Every once and awhile what we need most is a nice, quiet dinner party.  Something to take our minds off of all the chaos in the world – gun violence, partisan politics, divisions, inflation, recession, all those things that rumble around in our minds and cause no small measure of anxiety.  No commotion, no pandemonium, no visits from the paramedics, just a nice quiet party.

It can be an elegant feast with friends featuring fine linens, the best china, and a sumptuous entree with a perfect wine paring.  Or it can be just a relaxing time around a friend’s swimming pool with pizza and beer. 

Sometimes what we need is a party, a nice quiet party.

But all of us have experienced moments when the blissful gathering has come unglued because of something one of the participants did or said.

Like last fall when we were sitting enjoying pizza around a friend's pool in Palm Springs.  Some people there we had known for a long time while others we had just met at the resort at which we were staying. 

Things were going swimmingly (Pun intended!) when the conversation turned to “In-N-Out” burgers. Since these delicacies are only available in limited locations in California and the west but no further east than Colorado, they have become a required stop for many of us on any California vacation.

The hamburger patties are made in their own processing plants, never frozen, and delivered by their own trucks.  One can watch the French fries being cut in-house and, while I have never had one, it is my understanding that the shakes are second to none. 

Almost everybody gathered around the pool that night seemed to be in agreement that an “In-N-Out” burger was one of life’s true pleasures.

Everybody, that is, except one guy who said: “I would never eat at ‘In-N-Out.’  They put bible verses on their packaging.”

They do but only in very tiny print in hard-to-find places like the inner bottom rim of their cups and near the seams of the paper pouches the burgers are placed in and it is never the whole text it is only the biblical reference.  You have to look hard and risk spilling your drink on yourself or your friend or finish all of your fries in order to find them. 

As was noted by Snopes.com: “No overt explanation is given for the presence of the odd phrases or their meaning: they just quietly sit there, awaiting decipherment by those moved to do so.”1

On the soda cup is John 3:16. The milkshake cup has Proverbs 3:5, "Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding."2

All pretty benign stuff. Who could be put off by the notion that God loved the world? Apparently, the guy at the party could, and it was enough to make him vow that he would never eat there because of the hard-to-find fine print from Scripture.

It was at that point, out of the corner of my ear, I heard a voice, a sarcastic voice, bellow: “Not Scripture! Oh no, not Scripture!  Anything but Scripture!”  

As I looked around the room the faces had silent stares with blank expressions that resembled the statues on Easter Island.  Some mouths were, as the Irish would say, a’gob.

Then I looked over at Lowell whose head was in his hands and, because I watch a lot of British mysteries, I deduced that the person who had bellowed, “Not Scripture!  Oh no, not Scripture!  Anything but Scripture!” was me.

The party concluded and although I don’t remember the guy ever speaking to me again, I thought the expressions on the faces had to be the same as when Martha came storming in and said to Jesus. “Lord, don’t you mind that my sister has left me to do everything by myself? Tell her to get up and help me!”

We don’t know for sure just how many people Martha wound up serving.  Artists have mostly depicted this as an intimate little gathering with just Mary, Martha, Jesus, and perhaps Lazarus.  However, some scholars think that Martha may have made a open invitation and Jesus’ disciples came along with him.  It that was the case Martha was no longer just making dinner, she was catering a banquet.  Either way things are not going as she expected.

There was work to do and she was doing it.

It was only natural when she heard that Jesus was coming to town that she would invite him to come to her home for a meal, and she wanted it to be a special meal, too. She had been at it all day, putting out the fine china, pressing the linen tablecloth, polishing the silver. Since noon she had been simmering pots of stock on the stove, tasting them from time to time, making sure they were perfect. It was no small undertaking. {Especially if Jesus had actually brought all his disciples with him! If that was the case, she would have had} to put an extra leaf in the dining room table and set the table in the kitchen for those disciples whose names no one could ever remember. But in that last hour before dinner things began to get a little hectic. She had too many pots going on the stove at the same time and not nearly enough help. She thought about her sister, Mary, sitting in the living room at the master’s feet, with that big, goofy grin on her face. The more she thought about it the madder she got, until finally she just wiped her hands on her apron and marched in there.4

And it is here that, for many, myself included, this little dinner party really begins to fall apart. 

The commentaries on this passage can be divided by male scholars and female scholars.  The guys seem to find absolutely nothing wrong with what Mary is doing.  She is listening to Jesus.  In fact, she is even being a little radical by sitting at the feet of a well-respected rabbi which was a place usually reserved for men.  “Mary is doing what we all should be doing.” say the boy scholars.  “She is sitting quietly listening to Jesus.”

I love the way Sally, a character in the novel The Lincoln Highway, sums up this notion.

I am a good Christian. I believe in Jesus Christ… But I am not willing to believe that Jesus would turn his back on a woman who was taking care of a household. From a man’s point of view, the one thing needful is that you sit at his feet and listen to what he has to say, no matter how long it takes, or how often he’s said it before. By his figuring, you have plenty of time for sitting and listening because a meal is something that makes itself. Like manna, it falls from heaven. Any woman who’s gone to the trouble of baking an apple pie can tell you that’s how a man sees.5

Debi Thomas, a woman theologian, who grew up in a traditional South Asian community where “women’s work” carried less value than the men’s who “talked, studied, debated, relaxed, and feasted...wished that Jesus had done more.”

I wish Jesus had done more. I wish he’d rounded up his (male) disciples, ushered them into the kitchen, and directed them to bake the bread, fry the fish, and chop the vegetables. I wish he’d put each one of the boys to work, and then said, “Oh, in case you’re wondering: this domestic stuff isn’t a prelude to the sacred. This stuff is the sacred.”6

While I wish this was true too, I also have a frightening thought.  What if the disciples would have been no help at all in the kitchen?  What if they had burned the bread, rendered the fish unrecognizable, and sliced and diced the vegetables into a pulp a’la Ron Popiel?  What if all they did was get in Martha’s way and made her job ten times more difficult?

While I am at it.  Have you ever thought that maybe Mary is not helping because if she tried Mary would not be much help either?  Maybe Mary is one of those people who couldn’t boil an egg?  Maybe she couldn’t tell a cup from a carload?  Maybe if Mary was charged with preparing the meal, all they would have been eating Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwiches off of paper plates?

If we listen to Jesus, we might just discover what the real trouble in paradise was.

When Martha blasts him with: ““Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself?”7  He really doesn’t scold her but makes the astute observation that she is: “worried and upset about many things.”8

In the original text “worried and upset” isn’t even the half of it.  The unpronounceable Greek word used here literally means “to be pulled from all directions.”  

Martha has one eye on her guest and the other on the table.  She may have even been trying to listen to what Jesus is saying while at the same time listening for the tea kettle to whistle.  She may have been running herself ragged doing things to try and please Jesus while all she really wants to do, all he really wants her to do, is to spend time with him.

Admittedly, I come at this from a purely male perspective because I am a guy, but I’d like to think that after he calmed Martha’s anxiety about making everything perfect and assured her that it was already perfect, he took her by the hand and invited her to sit down too.  I think that, after the dust settled, they all sat together and had a fine meal with good conversation because Jesus loved and blessed them both.

A cheap, easy, characterization of these two wonderful women will invariably lead us down the wrong path.

“If we’re not careful, we’ll get a picture of Martha who always sits at the dinner table sideways, ready to leap into action every time somebody needs something from the stove. And Mary will be so lazy she doesn’t even stoop over to tie her shoes.”10

The wisdom of the late, great Dr. Fred B. Craddock is most helpful in understanding this little dinner party dust-up.

If we censure Martha too harshly, she may abandon serving altogether, and if we commend Mary too profusely, she may sit there forever.  There is a time to go and do; there is a time to listen and reflect.  Knowing which and when is a matter of spiritual discernment.  If we were to ask Jesus which example applies to us, {Martha} or Mary, the answer would probably be Yes.11

There will be times when you will act like Mary and there will be other times when you will be like Martha.  The secret is not to worry or stress out over whether one is better or worse.  The secret is to be open to the deepest desire of God’s heart and let God come to you no matter where you are with this promise that can even be found on the wrapper of your cheeseburger in a jam-packed California drive-thru restaurant. 

“Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.”12

I like that idea.  The idea of sitting down with the Lord for a burger, a shake, and an order of fries is very appealing to me.  

And where did I get that idea?  Its Revelation 3:20 in Scripture!  The promise is in Scripture.  Yes!  Really!  Scripture!

________________

1. Snopes Staff, “Fact Check: Do in-N-out Burger Food Containers Include Bible Verses?,” Snopes.com, December 7, 2019, https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/in-n-out/.

2. Michelle Gant, “Why Does in-N-out Print Bible Verses on Its Cups and Wrappers?” TODAY.com, October 9, 2019, https://www.today.com/food/why-does-n-out-print-bible-verses-its-cups-wrappers-t164235.

3. St. Luke 10:40. (PHILLIPS) [PHILLIPS=J. B. Phillips, The New Testament in Modern English. (Collins, 1973).

4. James Sommerille, “The Worst Church Member Ever,” A Sermon for Every Sunday, July 12, 2020, https://asermonforeverysunday.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/The-Worst-Church-Member-Ever.pdf.

5. Gregory M. Franzwa, The Lincoln Highway (Tucson, AZ: Patrice Press, 1995).

6. Debi Thomas, “Saint Luke 10:38-42,” A Sermon for Every Sunday, July 12, 2022, https://asermonforeverysunday.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Debie -Thomas-6th-Sunday-after-Pentecost-7-17-2022.pdf.

7. St. Luke 10:40. (NRSV) [NRSV=The New Revised Standard Version]

8. St. Luke 10:41. (NIV) [NIV=The New International Version]

9. Brian Stoffregen, “Luke 10.38-42 Proper 11 - Year C,” Exegetical Notes - Luke 10.38-42 (Crossmarks), accessed July 16, 2022, http://www.crossmarks.com/brian/luke10x38.htm.

10. Randy L. Hyde, "Sermon, Luke 10:38-42, It's All in the Timing," Sermon Writer, July 08, 2019, accessed July 20, 2019, https://www.sermonwriter.com/sermons/new-testament-luke-1038-42-i ts-all-in-the-timing-hyde/.

11. Fred Craddock, Interpretation: Luke (Louisville, Kentucky: John Knox Press, 1990), p. 152

12. Revelation 3:20. (NIV) [NIV=The New International Version]

Sermon preached at The Evangelical Church of St. Luke

17 July 2022

video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5EGZOFNCGM