The Rev. Clare Fischer-Davies
St. Martin's Episcopal Church
July 22, 2007
Proper 11 C
How many ways can you ruin a party?
Ruining the party isn't, of course, Martha's goal - I expect she prides herself on her housekeeping and her ability to make guests feel welcome at any time of the day or night. But perhaps, deep down, she doesn't mind if the party's ruined because she's angry enough not to care. She's angry enough to interrupt Jesus as he teaches in her own house - a great honor! - and to demand that he scold her lazy sister until Mary gets up to help.
The traditional reading of this passage isn't about ruining a party, it isn't about housekeeping and hospitality at all. Traditionally, this passage is understood to be about the contemplative life - if a person chooses to forsake the concerns and rewards of the world, and instead - gives their life to the worship and adoration and contemplation of God, then, like Mary, that person has chosen the better part. The story was told for centuries by those men and woman who chose to enter the monastic life, and it was told by the monasteries and convents themselves as a way to encourage new vocations.
But I've never been entirely satisfied with that interpretation. Look at where Luke places this story. It comes right after the parable of the Good Samaritan - which is a story about active ministry, about taking risks and going out of the way to assist others. The last words Jesus tells his audience is "Go - and do likewise."
So I think - to completely understand the story of the Good Samaritan and then the much smaller, more homely tale of Mary and Martha, the two have to be told together. Read together, they suggest a balance between work and prayer, between ministry and contemplation. I don't think Jesus, by rebuking Martha, is telling Mary to get herself to a nunnery. I think Jesus is saying, "Martha - quit ruining the party."
There ARE lots of ways to ruin a party - and being the frantic, stressed, resentful host is only one. I have relatives who ruin parties by commenting how much everyone else is eating and drinking, and making sure that we know how little food and drink they are consuming themselves. I have seen parties ruined by emotional explosions that would have been more appropriate in a therapist's office. Parties get ruined when either host or guest, forgets what a party, what the sacred art of hospitality is all about.
Almost the first thing I experienced when I visited St, Martin's, back in the winter of 2005, was the warmth of the welcome and the enthusiasm of this parish's hospitality. My last experience of the Episcopal Church in New England was in New Hampshire, where parsimony was understood to be a virtue and a stranger entering the post office or convenience store made the whole place fall silent. So I was thoroughly and pleasantly surprised to discover that members of this parish had the gift of hospitality, and understood how important it is to welcome people in a concrete and in a generous way.
I love St. Martin's gift of hospitality, and I think it's one of this congregation's strongest spiritual assets - but I don't think we always see it that way. I think we tend to just dismiss it - "Oh, we're St. Martin's - we like parties." We don't value our tradition and gift of hospitality as part of our discipleship, part of our call to seek and serve Christ in others. Because hospitality comes so naturally to this congregation, it makes us want to dismiss it - to just say, "Pshaw. Anyone can do it. I just threw a few things together. No big deal."
But hospitality IS a big deal. It is a sacred and solemn responsibility that is rooted in the customs of the ancient Near East. Take a look again at the Abraham story this morning. Abraham, and all his household, are themselves on a journey.
A few chapters back, God called Abraham and Sarah to leave their home and go out into the wilderness toward a new home that God had promised to give them - a home in a new land, rich with possibility and prospects. And part of that promise, too - is that Abraham will become the father of a great nation, which is hard for him to believe since Sarah, his wife is now long past her childbearing years. It all sounds ridiculous, but Abraham and Sarah obey - pack up their belongings and set out on a journey of faith.
Abraham and Sarah become one of the thousands of nomads traveling the inhospitable desert landscape. In such a place, hospitality to strangers becomes part of the economics of survival. If a stranger approaches an encampment, the owner of the tent must offer food, water and shelter. And when that owner is traveling himself, only the hospitality of others can protect and sustain him.
So Abraham goes out to welcome these mysterious three men - who sometimes seem to be angels sent by God and sometimes God's own self - and offers them a cool place to rest, water to wash their travel-stained feet, and plenty of food and drink. And the mysterious visitors speak to Abraham's generosity and welcome by making concrete God's vague promise of fathering a great nation. Sarah will have a son.
Hospitality continues as a vital, foundational theme through the rest of our Scriptures. Once you know to look for it, then you see it everywhere. In Sodom and Gomorrah, the great sin isn't who's having sex with whom, but rather that the Sodomites want to assault and abuse the guests in Lot's house - a terrible violation of the rules of hospitality. After the exodus from Egypt, God is a host for the wandering Israelites - God gives them manna to eat and water from the rock to drink. In Psalm 23, God is praised as the One who "spreads a table before me in the presence of my enemies." Banquets and great celebrations appear again and again as metaphors for what it will be like when all of God's purposes are accomplished.
Jesus feeds a multitude with five loaves of bread and two fish. Jesus turns water into wine at a wedding in Cana. And Jesus himself, so often the guest at other's tables, so often at parties in the New Testament - is the host at a solemn Passover meal in an upper room in Jerusalem. "Every time you eat this bread and drink this wine," he says, "You do it in remembrance of me."
So hospitality has a long and sacred history, and embracing the art of hospitality is one way to satisfy our longing to welcome strangers into our congregation. I do think we take our hospitality for granted because it comes easily to us, and most of us think anything worthwhile and holy has to come hard.
But God asks us, not always to do the hardest thing, but often to do what comes most easily - to be good stewards - good users and exploiters of the gifts we have. There is kindness and generosity here, an ability to work skillfully with food and wine and making the table look pretty, there is a genuine curiosity about others coupled with a liberal acceptance of who people are and where they've come from. Those are not gifts to be sneered at or lightly dismissed. They are rich and precious resources for a ministry of welcome and inclusion.
I even think hospitality is at the heart of how we care for our communion silver and linens and how we prepare the altar each week for worship. What is this but a table - where God, in a few minutes, will prepare a great banquet for us - a table spread with the food and drink of everlasting life. This is a table - where we receive the spiritual nourishment our hearts crave. What could be more wonderful than helping prepare that table for the banquet feast of all eternity?
There are lots of ways to ruin a party, and like I said, I have a couple of relatives who are especially gifted that way. I have wonderful memories of food and drink in my growing up years. When my father's parents came to visit us, they'd always bring delicatessen from Richmond - which couldn't be had in the Virginia mountains in those days - and I remember the pleasure of unpacking those odiferous little tubs of whitefish salad, lox and herring. Our dinners together were lavish, and we - even children - sat around the table for hours - the adults nursing schnapps while we showed off our latest accomplishments. My grandparents were themselves generous and gifted hosts - and our celebrations always revolved around a bountiful, beautifully set table.
When my grandmother turned 100 five years ago, one of my cousins and I were appointed to write some kind of appreciative and congratulatory address. He and I got together to talk about what that might include and he scoffed, "Well - all I can remember was that it was always all about the food." He is from that part of the family that doesn't eat.
I felt suddenly very sorry for him. Memories that for me are rich in images of abundance, and generosity, and affection and family bonds and pleasure and enjoyment - were for him limited only to "my family obsesses about food." Now that's one way to ruin a party.
Jesus doesn't let Martha ruin the party and St. Martin's, I don't think - could ruin a party if it tried. We are good hosts and I think we can build on that gift, a rich and rewarding ministry of hospitality and welcome that will truly tell those who come through our doors that we're glad to see them, just as they are - and that there is a place of them at God's table as well as in our congregational life.
I want to close with an old Irish poem - doodled in the margins of a hand-copied Gospel by some now anonymous, ancient monk:
"I would to have the King of heaven in my own house.
With vats of good cheer laid out for him.
I would like to have the three Marys, their fame is so great,
I would like people from every corner of heaven.
I would like them to be cheerful in their drinking.
I would like to have Jesus sitting there among them.
I would like a great lake of beer for the King of Kings. "
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