This
is a year of connections. This year in
Ordinary Time I have asked you to look for the connections between the First
Lesson and the Gospel. As we’ve
discovered, there have been some weeks when this has been easier than others,
but the point has been to challenge you to listen more closely to the two
readings and listen for how they might possibly connect. I am hoping that you found the connection between
today’s readings relatively easy to make.
Our
first lesson is the story of the annunciation of Isaac. The Lord visits Abraham and Sarah and tells
them that they will have a child in their old age. Just as the births of John and Jesus were
divinely announced, so is the birth of Isaac.
But this is more than an annunciation story; this is a story of
hospitality, especially when linked with today’s gospel reading.
The
Lord comes to Abraham’s home and he welcomes his visitor(s) by asking them to
rest there awhile, and he then instructs Sarah and a servant to prepare a
feast. While they are busily baking and
bbq-ing, Abraham pretty much does nothing but stand by the visitors while they
eat. In short, Sarah labors in the
kitchen while Abraham stands idly by listening to them talk.
If
you were paying attention and made the connection, something very similar
happens in today’s gospel reading. The
Lord comes into Martha’s home. In this
similar story, Martha spends all her time performing a variety of domestic
tasks, while her sister spends her time doing nothing but listening to the
Lord.
The
connection between the two readings is unmistakable. The Lord visits a home, one person spends all
her time working and another person does nothing but listen. The connection between these two stories is
that they are both about hospitality.
They are about inviting people into our midst, providing food and
shelter for them and listening intently to what they have to say to us. Our brains might immediately go to deciding
whether we are Sarah/Martha or Abraham/Mary:
do we tend to work to make sure everything is taken care of, or do we
tend to ignore work and listen intently to our guest?
But
as I’ve said before, this Ordinary Time is about connections. Almost every week I’ve asked you to look for
those connections. What is it about the
first lesson and gospel reading that connects the two? I do this because I want you to come to
church expecting to have to think and be engaged. Worship involves our heart, body, mind and
soul, and to come to church without participating fully is disingenuous to both
God and yourself. So I ask you to fully
participate by paying attention to the readings and thinking about the
connections between them.
And
speaking of heart, body, mind and soul, I want to connect back to last
week. Last week you heard the story of
the Good Samaritan. In that story, a
lawyer asks Jesus to define who his neighbor is. This is what lawyers do – they try to
eliminate as much gray area as possible so everyone has clear
expectations. In response, Jesus tells
this story and commands him to go and do likewise.
Go
and love your neighbor as yourself. Go
and risk helping those in need. Go and
stand up for the oppressed, speak for the voiceless and use your resources for
the benefit of those who have no resources.
Do justice. Love kindness. Walk humbly.
Go and do likewise.
Just
before I left on vacation, I was up in Salem for a convocation deans and
presidents meeting with the Bishop. We
spent some time with last week’s gospel and what we heard in it. One of the things that struck me was the
lawyer’s response to Jesus’ question of how the lawyer interpreted the
law. He said, “Love the Lord your God
with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength and all your mind.”
I
told the group that I struggled to be four dimensional. It’s easy to do one or two things and think
we’ve got it. The challenge is to love
God and others in a four dimensional way.
The challenge is to love God and others so completely that the entirety
of our lives is a reflection of God’s love for every person; not just those whom
we deem acceptable.
And
this is why these connections I’m asking you to make are so important. This exercise allows us to connect various
readings together. It allows us to
expand our vision of what the Bible is and it allows us to look for
context. It challenges us to move beyond
simply knowing a few verses here and there and saying, “The Bible clearly says
X” about a particular topic.
Context
and connections are incredibly important, and we do harm to ourselves and the
Bible if we don’t pay attention to it.
It’s too easy for us to find one or two verses in the Bible that can be
used to defend our position. It’s much
more difficult to read the Bible in its entirety and listen for what it might
be telling us. And if you doubt that,
notice how people who say, “The Bible clearly says X” generally have a limited
focus, and limited verses, about a particular thing they see as sinful and are
trying to eradicate.
Context
and connections are incredibly important.
It’s too easy to take today’s lesson from Genesis and say, “See, the
Bible clearly says women are to be subservient to men,” or, “Women are clearly
meant to stay in the kitchen.” It’s too
easy to take today’s gospel and say, “See, Jesus clearly says people don’t need
to worry about housework,” or, “It’s obvious that Jesus wants people to spend
time listening rather than doing.” These
miss the points of the stories and they miss the overall context and
connections of the Bible.
The
best way for us to avoid being verse-focused and to become Bible-focused is to
continually look for context and connections.
Today we hear that hospitality is paramount. Today we hear that listening intently is
paramount. Last week we heard that loving
and caring for our neighbors is paramount.
Offer hospitality. Treat others
as you want to be treated. Go and do. Stay and listen.
The
more we look for context and connections and the more we try to be four
dimensional in our faith, the more we will hear God speaking to us and the less
time we will spend trying to make God into our own image.
Amen.
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