Abraham and Sarah, Mary and Martha

Trinity 7: 22.07.07 – Genesis 18.1-10; Colossians 1.15-28; Luke 10.38-42 St. Mary’s: Revd. Canon Dr Alan Winton

A week ago, at the School Eucharist, the Governors of Welwyn St. Mary’s School gave the leavers a copy of the Bible as a gift to remember their time at the school: they seemed delighted, but I did wonder how they would get on with the task of reading it, so I suggested that they might decide not to start at page one and work dutifully through, but instead start somewhere a bit easier, like with Mark’s Gospel, where they would be on more familiar territory. I gather there were some flicking through trying to find Mark’s Gospel even as the service was ending and I am sure there are some who will make it all the way through one day. The prayer inscribed in the front of the Bible expresses the hope that it may prove to be a lamp to their feet and a light to their path, wherever they end up going.

How we should attempt to read the Bible is an important question, because it isn’t exactly an easy book to get to grips with. As some of you will know, the readings we use week by week in church aren’t simply chosen on the whim of the Rector or the person who happens to be preaching but they come from what is called the Revised Common Lectionary, which is a set of readings for every Sunday throughout the year, followed by many of the Christian denominations in this country, so there is a fair chance if you visit another church on holiday you will be hearing the same readings we are hearing at St. Mary’s. The idea of a lectionary is particularly intended to help us read as much of the Bible as possible, and not simply to keep returning to the bits we like or find congenial.

It runs on a three-year cycle, and each year we focus on one of the first three Gospels: this year we are working our way through Luke. John’s Gospel is used at key moments in each year of the cycle to supplement the other Gospels.  For the Old Testament reading each week there are two options. With one cycle of readings you can follow through a more continuous reading of a particular Old Testament book, while for the other cycle, the Old Testament reading is chosen in an attempt to reflect the theme of the Gospel. This meets with varying success, but you do often find that parts of the Gospels are written with an eye to some passage or tradition in the Old Testament, so where the compilers of the lectionary have been canny, you’ll often get a rather intriguing link between the Old Testament reading and the Gospel. And today is one such day because within the Welwyn Team we tend to follow the pattern of using linked readings rather than trying to read the Old Testament continuously.

But there are problems with the lectionary. One is that the compliers often cut off a reading at a point that makes no sense to us humble preachers: it’s like picking up a copy of the new Harry Potter, and just as you get to the point where you’re going to find out what finally happens to Harry you discover the last few pages have been ripped out. Today’s Old Testament reading is a case in point of a premature ending, as I hope to show in a moment.

Today’s readings from Genesis and Luke have quite a bit in common: they are both about hospitality shown to rather special guests.  Now the first one in Genesis concerns the occasion when three men visit Abraham. He welcomes them and shows great hospitality, although it has to be said that his hospitality involves issuing orders to his wife Sarah and to the servant who seem to do the real work. Our version of the story ends with the visitors asking about Abraham’s wife Sarah and predicting that she will give him a son. The bit we don’t get in the lectionary has Sarah overhearing this prediction so that verse 12 adds, “Sarah laughed to herself, saying, ‘After I have grown old, and my husband is old, shall I have pleasure?’ Perhaps the writers of the lectionary were trying to protect our sensibilities in omitting this part. Maybe talk of old people and pleasure is a bit too racy for the Church of England., perhaps they thought there would be a collective blush around the pews if such a verse were read aloud. How quaint and deluded they are.  It’s a shame that this final scene of the story is left off, because it is here that the resonance with our Gospel reading is most clear, because Sarah gets ticked off for laughing, in a manner not dissimilar to the mild rebuke given to Martha in the Gospel.
 
The story of Mary and Martha echoes some of the Genesis scene, but it has a different message. In short, Jesus visits the home of Mary and Martha, Mary spends her time listening to Jesus, while Martha is busy, and when Martha confronts Jesus about what she perceives as Mary’s reluctance to help, she is mildly rebuked.  Now do we really know what this story is trying to say to us? Is it saying that sitting and listening to Jesus is more important than feeding him? Is it saying that a concern with spiritual matters is more important than a concern with material things? I wonder. How might the story have unfolded if Mary had simply sat listening to Jesus and Martha had simply prepared the food, without Martha’s slightly irritated question to Jesus, how would the story have ended? I tend to think that Jesus would have been quite at peace about Mary sitting at his feet whilst Martha made the food.

Both were important and legitimate tasks. Jesus was not saying here that the practical is unimportant, indeed elsewhere he commends those who take practical steps to care for him, like the woman who bathed his feet at the house of Simon the Pharisee, and in the parable of the sheep and the goats, the mark of love for Jesus is the practical steps taken to feed, cloth and tend to the needs of his followers. What Jesus seems to object to in Martha’s behaviour is that she allows herself to be distracted from her task because she starts to look aside to see what Mary is doing: “Martha , you are worried and distracted by many things”. She doesn’t simply attend to her own task but makes a comparison and allows envy to overwhelm her. Both listening to Jesus and attending to the guests’ physical needs were important tasks, but Martha allowed herself to lose her focus and started to worry about what Mary was doing, and the beauty of her care for Jesus became lost.

I am not at all sure that there is a hierarchy of tasks in God’s kingdom, such that we can clearly define the higher spiritual roles and the less important practical tasks. On one level the person who makes the coffee on a Sunday morning is as important as the person who presides at the Lord’s table: both have important roles and both should exercise them with the same care and attention and love: is not God as present in the kitchen as he is present in the chancel?  We should learn to attend to the task we have been given in each moment and do it well, without worrying what someone else is up to.

Whilst there are many people who work tirelessly in this church, I sometimes worry that one of the problems with a large congregation like ours is the temptation to look across and see what someone else is doing. Perhaps we are tempted to feel that we don’t want to do more or give more than the person in the pew next to us. Or we are tempted to look around and in response to any request for help to feel that there must be someone else to whom this applies before me. What the story of Mary and Martha would teach us is that we should not worry about what the other person is doing or not doing, but instead we need to keep our eyes straight, we need to concern ourselves with what God is asking of each of us, not make comparisons, not be envious of what others are or are not doing. “There is need only of one thing” and in each moment we are to try to discover the one thing God requires of us, regardless of what he might be asking of our neighbour.

But it is good that we read the story of Abraham and Sarah alongside this. The danger we sometimes face is that we find our niche in the church, we do the thing we feel comfortable with, we give of our time or our money in a way that is manageable. We develop a view of ourselves that makes sense to us and feel content that we are doing our bit for God. And perhaps if the Rector or someone else comes along and asks us to do or give something different or something more we have a little inward chuckle, ‘O no, I couldn’t possibly do that, don’t ask me to change’.  And the men said to Abraham, God will give you a son through Sarah. And Sarah laughed because she knew she was too old.

Sarah had a picture of herself that was fixed and limited and finalised. But God had different plans for her, for with God nothing is impossible, and he delights in taking what is ordinary and making it special, he delights in taking what seems impossible and making it happen.

We should be at peace with the fact that there are different roles within the church; that what is important is not comparing ourselves to others, but doing the task that God has given us, and doing it faithfully and joyfully. But we should also never rest content, never believe that this is all that God might ask of us, never laugh inwardly when challenged to do more or to take on something new – God delights to stretch us and draw from us things we never knew we could do. Remember, and the sensitive souls among you better cover your ears now, God made it possible for an old woman like Sarah to experience pleasure once more: clearly, he is full of surprises. Amen.