“The Learning Curve”

August 1, 2010

Luke 10:38-42

A couple of weeks ago the director of the Voices of Soul choir stopped by at the church. This University of Iowa gospel choir rehearses here on Thursday evening during the academic year. The director came to pick up his drum set that was stored up off of our balcony.

He is also the minister at a church Cedar Rapids, where he grew up. As we packed up the snare drum and the tom-tom and those wonderful Zildjian cymbals, we talked about our work and our congregations and our lives.

When I said that I came here after serving a church in Connecticut, he replied, “Well, there’s about a three-year learning curve in Iowa.”

So I’m thinking, I must be right up to speed then, as I started my ministry here on August 1, 2007—exactly three years ago.

In three years’ time we have accomplished a lot together. We have built on the solid foundation of our past. We’ve reached out in new ways to the University and our neighborhood here in Iowa City. And we’ve grown both in adult membership and in the number of children running around among us. We’re constantly finding out that there’s more we need to do and more we can do here on this vibrant and visible corner.

I thank you and give thanks to God for our common ministry and mission.

As you know, among our many other activities this year, we are focusing on the Gospel of Luke. We held a public reading of the entire gospel one afternoon in January. I’ve been encouraging each of you to read Luke’s gospel on your own sometime this year. And I’m focusing on Luke’s message in my preaching, especially in these summer months.

So, let me say it again: these are good days to open your Bible to this third gospel and read it if you haven’t done so already. It’s a good time to get up to speed with Luke.

This morning we heard the story of Jesus’ visit to the home of Martha, and the ensuing disturbance between Martha and her sister Mary, a story that is unique to Luke’s gospel. If you were here two weeks ago, you might remember that I called your attention to the back cover of the bulletin, that began, “You may or may not hear a sermon about Mary and Martha today…”

Not here, I told you. Not that day. The story of Mary and Martha was the gospel text in the lectionary for July 18. I had struggled with it for some time, trying to understand it that it might make some sense for our lives today. But the “learning curve” was too steep for me. I was especially troubled by the way in which this story seems to ask us to side with one sister against the other.

“Lord, do you not care…” Martha asks.

“Martha, Martha,” Jesus chides. Your sister “has chosen the better part.”

I wasn’t really prepared to jump into this family feud.

Recognizing my limits, I skipped ahead to the beginning of chapter 11 of Luke and spent the last two Sundays preaching about Jesus’ teachings on prayer. From what I’ve heard, that was a good decision, since many found some help and inspiration in those sermons.

The back cover of the July 18 bulletin, perhaps sensing that other UCC clergy would skip the story of Mary and Martha, included a synopsis of a sermon on that story by the Rev. Peter Gomes, the Minister in the Memorial Church at Harvard University.

Now, Peter was my professor of preaching when I was at Harvard Divinity School. More recently—much more recently—he taught Ellisa Johnk and Nathan Willard, two members of this congregation who are graduates of Harvard Divinity School. Two generations of people associated with this congregation have struggled with Peter—and he with us—as we began to preach—a process with a learning curve far longer than three years. And he’s influenced the thinking of many members of this congregation who have expressed their deep appreciation for Peter’s books, especially The Scandalous Gospel of a few years ago.

I didn’t really want to let the Rev. Dr. Gomes have the last word on Mary and Martha, but I wasn’t sure what to make of that story. Then something happened here that sent me away from Jesus praying “in a certain place” back to the “certain village” in which Martha welcomed him into her home.

A week and a half ago a delegation of religious leaders and teachers from Yemen visited Iowa City and spent a couple of hours here at our church in conversation with local religious leaders about the possibilities of interfaith dialogue and cooperation. We sat around tables in Rockwood Hall, representatives from local Christian, Muslim, and Jewish congregations talking together with our Yemeni visitors. The occasion was filled with grace and hope.

And there was plenty of food—coffee and tea, fruit, nuts, humus, and pita—although none of the customary Congregational Church donut holes! The first comments as several of our guests spoke were words of thanks for the food and hospitality. I, too, was grateful to Cynthia Kemp and Barb Hanson for preparing the refreshments. Their work provided a welcome to strangers and made everyone comfortable. Their work facilitated conversation around a topic that is fraught with danger. Their work was just what you might expect from members of this congregation.

Their service, in short, was a ministry.

It was the work of deacons—a term we’ve adopted from the Greek word that means “servants.” Cynthia, of course, has been the chair of our Diaconate for almost three years now. If Barb hasn’t been a deacon, she certainly is a good model for one. And lest my words either embarrass them or seem to slight the many other women and men in this congregation who serve in similar ways, let me be clear that my point here is simply that hospitality, providing welcome, and feeding are important acts of faith.

This gets at why this story of Mary and Martha bothers me. It is different from my experience and I think different from our experience.

Cynthia and Barb served others—and they didn’t stand around complaining. They didn’t say that others should be helping. And this is what I’ve seen in so many people in this and other congregations.

Although Cynthia had to leave, Barb acted as both Martha and Mary, providing hospitality and listening to our guests.

It was Jesus who said that he came not to be served but to serve. The One who was welcomed into Martha’s house would one day follow her example and wash the feet of the disciples as an act of loving hospitality. Deacons and others are simply following in the way of Jesus.

So what’s going on here?

Why does Jesus seem so condescending toward Martha?

Why are we offered the false choice between Mary and Martha?

For over a quarter of a century, feminist biblical scholars have pointed out that the portrayal of women in Luke’s gospel is questionable at best, if not actually oppressive.

By the time Luke was written in the late first century, women were active leaders in many local house-church congregations. They were called deacons. They were called apostles. Among other activities, women served at the table, that is, they officiated at the celebration of the Lord’s Supper.

Unfortunately, not everyone liked it that way.

Luke gives us a story that silences and stops Martha, the deacon who serves at the table. We are not supposed to identify with her. Addressing an audience in the late first century, this gospel suggests that it is far better for women to sit quietly and listen, like Mary, rather than take active roles as leaders of congregations, like Martha.

That said, we can recognize in this story a strong affirmation of the right of women to theological education, the right to sit and listen to Jesus. And in this way the story helps to subvert Luke’s intent to undermine the leadership role of women.[i]

But look at Martha once again. She is not, as Peter Gomes suggests in his sermon, “in the business of anxiety and activity.” What we see here is not anxious activity but the purposeful action that is needed to welcome guests. We see a servant who provides for the servant Christ.

With a false dichotomy, this story asks us, unnecessarily, to take sides: action or silence, service or learning. Because of own gifts, temperament, and experience we might lean toward one end of the spectrum or the other. Both are important aspects of the Christian life.

When we look closer, we see a composite picture of model disciples—those who, as Jesus recommended, “hear the word of God and do it.”

Hearing and acting are both essential for the Christian life. As one person put it, “If we censure Martha too harshly, she may abandon serving altogether, and if we commend Mary too profusely, she may sit there forever. If we were to ask Jesus which example applies to us, his answer would probably be ‘Yes.’”[ii]

There is a time when we act and a time when we listen. That time varies for each one of us and the judgment of someone else’s behavior as too much of one or the other is not given to us.

I do agree with Peter Gomes when he says: “When Jesus comes to call, things aren’t at all the way they used to be, and neither should we be.”

Jesus protested against the rules and boundaries set by the culture in which he lived. He exposed the injustice of social barriers that categorize, restrict, and oppress various groups in any society.

To love God with all ones heart and our neighbor as ourselves means that we must often reject society’s rules—and even the rules of the church—in favor of the rules of the realm of God. The rules of God’s realm are just two—love God and love your neighbor. But these rules are so radically different from those of the world in which we live that we are invariably called to break the rules of the world around us and follow the example of Jesus.[iii]

We all have a learning curve that teaches us to act, to see, and to think in new ways.

In spite of centuries of tradition, the Spirit of God teaches us that, as the early Christians knew, a woman’s place is serving at the table, offering the bread of life and the cup of salvation to the faithful, as well as listening to and studying what Jesus says. And we rejoice the United Church of Christ has learned this.

In spite of centuries of tradition, the Spirit of God teaches us that gay men and lesbians are loved as much as the rest of God’s people and have a home in the church. And we rejoice that the United Church of Christ has learned this.

In spite of centuries of tradition, the Spirit of God teaches us that in Christ the barriers of race and ability and resources that so often separate us one from another have fallen. And we rejoice that the United Church of Christ has learned this.

In spite of centuries of tradition and our current political reality, we can talk with people whose faith is different from our own, who live in cultures different from ours. And we rejoice that the United Church of Christ—and our interfaith companions in Iowa City—have learned this.

Sometimes the learning curve can be sharp and challenging.

Sometimes the most important thing we can learn is that we have much more to learn.

But we can give thanks.

Things aren’t the way they used to be.

We aren’t the way we used to be.