Luke 10:38-42
Lauren J. McFeaters
July 3, 2016

As we travel this summer with Jesus, we meet two sisters at odds: Martha being upset she’s left alone in the kitchen, Mary freely spending her time at Jesus feet.

Martha is entirely focused on hospitality.

Mary is entirely focused on welcome.

But before we move forward, before we take one more step; one more glimpse – here’s the thing we don’t want to do – we don’t want to make this scripture a caricature, a cartoon, with an obsessive Martha up to her eyeballs in soapsuds and a virtuous Mary curled up in front of the fire and Jesus all the while giving a scriptural warrant for dishes piling up in the sink.

We may be tempted to draw a cartoon bubble over Martha’s head that reads, “Help! I can’t take this anymore!” Or a bubble over Mary’s head screaming, “Miss Bossy Pants is at it again!” Or a haloed and illuminated bubble over Jesus’ head proclaiming, “Chill, Martha, chill. Breathe! I am your non-anxious presence.”

Fred Craddock says if we criticize Martha too harshly, she may abandon serving all together, and if we praise 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 for our spiritual discernment. And if we were to ask Jesus, “Should we be Marys or Marthas? Should we be Marthas or Marys?” his answer would probably be, “Yes.”(1)

I was raised by Marthas, that is, I was raised by women for whom hospitality is an art form. They were all born in the South – Pickens, Mississippi, Savannah, Georgia, Lexington, Mississippi.

There was my grandmother, Josie Mae, and her sisters, my Aunt Willie Hines, Aunt Amy Lee, and Aunt Elene. There was my own mother, Joanne, my Auntie Corinne, my Cousin Bobbie. The next generation is Linda Lee, Lauren Joanne, and Susan Jane.

Southern women are great Marthas and proud of it. Having been raised by them, I know that dinner in a Southern kitchen is a wonder to behold. I say dinner because that’s at noontime when everyone comes in from the fields to take a break and enjoy the central meal of the day.

Those whose Southern hospitality is refined to an art never sit. They hover. They mysteriously glide around the table – as if on ice skates. Plates never go empty. Guests are continually asked if they need anything:

• Susie, you need more black-eyed peas, honey?
• Artie, you want some Taba’co with those mustard greens?
• Bobbie, looks like you’re runnin’ low on rhubbarb sauce.
• Jo, my love, please pass those butter beans.
• Linda Lee, darlin’, more sweet tea?
• Cora, let’s mosey that succotash down the table.

In fact, many times the Southern hostess will continue to cook all through the meal: the okra needs to be re-strained and served mid-way; corn must always be served straight out of the pot; dumplings require a last, oh-so-gentle fold-over before being ladled into the yellow Pyrex bowl; a cast-iron skillet of corn bread is delivered straight from the oven.

And somehow the prayer before the meal is timed so perfectly that the food doesn’t skip a beat.

I have never in all my life been able to time a meal in all of its glory like my grandmother and great-aunts. Their greens are still steaming as the limas are cooling. The biscuits are evenly brown even though there’s one oven stoked by a wood fire. The succotash is folded over and blended by threes. My new Maytag “Gemini Double Oven with Gas Range” has nothing on them. Nothing.

And when does the hostess eat? This is one of the great mysteries of the South. The hostess keeps working, scurrying around the table, stopping mid-stride only to wipe the steam from her glasses with a pristine apron. She gives herself totally to serving.(2) And we are all grateful.

But when you welcome Jesus to your house for a summer meal, things get upsetting. At Martha’s house Jesus has no need (as of yet) for collard greens and a relish tray. What he does need, and it’s a deep need, is for both Mary and Martha’s conversation and friendship.

And that moves us to the heart of the Mary and Martha story. Tom Long puts it like this: There is nothing wrong with Martha’s fixing the food. This is the way people show love and welcome, hospitality and care. In fact there is something absolutely essential about showing one’s love of God and neighbor by stirring the applesauce and canning the crab apples, by organizing the snacks and crafts before VBS, by spackling a ceiling for Appalachian Service Project, and by mixing and baking a meatloaf at Loaves and Fishes.

Martha is doing a good thing, a necessary thing, an act of service. But if we try to do this kind of service

• apart from the life-giving Word of the Gospel,
• apart from sitting at our Lord’s feet,
• apart from steeping ourselves in the Light of the Word,
• apart from conversation with God,

it will distract us and worry us, beat us down, and burn us out.(3)

Jean Vanier, the 2015 Templeton Prize winner, says it like this: I often hear of people committed to the church and social action who are burned out. Sometimes these people have been too generous; they have thrown themselves into activity which has finally destroyed them emotionally. They’ve not known how to relax and be refreshed.

Sometimes people in their over-activity are running from something. They may be too attached to their function, perhaps even finding all of their identity in it.

They’ve not yet learned how to live fully in God, to be freed to live, to discover the wisdom of the present moment, and to relax in body and in heart.(4)

Perhaps Martha has not yet discovered the wisdom of the present moment, nor learned to relax in body and heart. What Jesus wants for her when he says her name, not once, but twice — “Martha. Martha.” — is for her to find the better portion, not in the kitchen, but in him.

Martha’s hospitality is not a trifling. Her cooking was not trivial. Hospitality finally means that somebody has to snap the pole beans and stir the succotash. Someone has to arrive at church early on Sunday morning and put out the bottles of glue and scissors and construction paper. Busy work? Worry work? Absolutely not.(5)

But if we don’t stop and notice Jesus right there in our living rooms, or discover the wisdom of the present moment, or learn to relax in body and heart, then we’ll never hear our Lord beckon us to take a seat right here beside him at HIS table, for His meal, for His Supper.

For “this thing only” does he want for us:

• the better portion of Bread and Cup;
• the better portion of “Take and eat”;
• the better portion of “Do this in remembrance of me.”

That’s the portion that will never, ever be taken away.

Thanks be to the God of the pole bean and succotash.

(1) Fred B Craddock. Luke. Louisville: John Knox Press, 1990, 152.
(2) I am grateful for images and remembrances of Mary W. Anderson’s article, “Hospitality Theology.” The Christian Century (July 1, 1998).
(3) Thomas G. Long. Sermon: “Mary and Martha.” Proper 11, Luke 10:38-42. Day1, Alliance for Christian Media (Chicago, IL: July 2007).
(4) Jean Vanier. Community and Growth. Toronto: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1991, 177.
(5) Thomas G. Long. Sermon: “Mary and Martha.” Proper 11, Luke 10:38-42. Day1, Alliance for Christian Media (Chicago, IL: July 2007).

© 2016 Nassau Presbyterian Church
Contact the church to obtain reprint permission.

1 Kings 19:1-15a
Jacqueline Lapsley
June 19, 2016

At Labyrinth Bookstore, right down here on Nassau Street, there are these little books, only a few inches tall and wide, that hover by the cash register, promising enlightenment or amusement. Last winter, just a day or two before Christmas, when I was casting about a bit desperately for stocking stuffers, I fell prey to one such little book:  “Math in Minutes.”  “Math in Minutes: 200 Key Concepts Explained in an Instant.” “In an Instant” people!  Math revealed, in an instant. It seemed in that moment, standing at the Labyrinth counter, that it would be a mistake to NOT purchase Math in Minutes.  This would be a stocking-stuffer that would open the veil on the profound mysteries of math, mysteries that govern our world, but which remain largely veiled to me.

“Math in Minutes” is arranged by topic, but also increases in complexity as you go along.  So the first entry is on numbers.  It begins: “Numbers at their most elementary are just adjectives describing quantity.”  Excellent.  I am fully on board.  The entry on the number “1” is fine, and the next entry on “zero” is also okay, although, I began to feel a little uneasy when Math in Minutes explained that for a long time philosophers refused to acknowledge the existence of zero.  Did zero deserve the rudeness of not being acknowledged?

Things quickly ran off the rails from there:  the entries on trigonometric identities, tesselations, penrose tilings, were perplexing, to say nothing of differential calculus, linear combinations and transformations, and the ominous, “Monster Group.” The first sentence of the entry on “Null Spaces” goes like this: “Also known as the kernel of the matrix, the null space is the set of all vectors that are mapped to the zero vector by the action of the linear transformation.” Null spaces. The entry on “Null Spaces” was hitting a little … a little too close to home.

In the story I just read, Elijah’s fellow Israelites seem to be having a similar problem to the one I have with math.  Mathematics discloses profound truths about the invisible workings of the universe.  Likewise, ancient Israel’s traditions disclose profound truths about God’s desire for humanity to flourish in a complex world. Yet Elijah’s fellow Israelites seem to have forgotten, or perhaps never understood those traditions. How God desires a just and flourishing community, and how to work for it. God desires a convenantal relationship with humanity and with creation. The covenantal laws were designed to foster life—to make it possible for everyone to flourish in community, together.

But the people have abandoned that life-giving covenantal relationship and only Elijah is left to speak truth to power.  In the chapters leading up to this one, Elijah has been combating the corruption of Queen Jezebel and King Ahab’s unjust regime in Israel. Elijah has just had an encounter with King Ahab where Ahab essentially says to him, “Hey Elijah, why are you messing with the status quo?  Things are okay here—we don’t need your talk of God and justice.”  But worse than Ahab are Elijah’s fellow Israelites. They have become apathetic and fearful, and they too bow to the status quo. Elijah’s faithfulness—to God, to the covenant—has brought him nothing but isolation and exhaustion.  Jezebel is pursuing him to kill him, and indeed, he wants to die.

God has sent Elijah on this mission, so it has to annoy Elijah that God now asks him what he is doing there, out in the desert, simultaneously fleeing for his life and wanting to die at the same time. What is he DOING there? It is no wonder that Elijah vents: “I have been working my heart out for you, God. But your people are the worst—they’re afraid and unfaithful, and my life is in danger.”

In response, God does a “drive by” – offers Elijah a glimpse of the divine presence – just as God had offered to Moses long before in the same place. It was widely believed in the ancient Near East that God appears in storms, in the wind, in earthquakes, in fire—these were the places to perceive the power and presence of God. In fact, in the previous chapter when Elijah called upon God to take down those charlatans, the prophets of Baal, God WAS in the fire.  There God was in the fire and the prophets of Baal conjured only an empty silence.

But here, Elijah, famously, doesn’t get fire.  He doesn’t get an earthquake, or wind, or storms.  The glimpse of the divine he gets is “a sound of sheer silence,” as the New Revised Standard Version has it.  The King James Version has “a still, small voice.” This is one of those translation conundrum: A thin silence? A small silence? A soft silence?  The sound of silence? Thank you, Simon & Garfunkel.  The phrase slips away from us… How to convey the paradox of it?  One scholar (Duhm) calls it a “vibrant silence.” “A vibrant silence.” It is not silence as the absence of sound.  It is the vibrant silence saturated with the full presence of God.  “Elijah heard the vibrant silence.”

Last week I was at the car dealer waiting for my car to be repaired. I found myself in a nice waiting room—free WiFi, decent coffee, okay bagels.  But the first thing I noticed were the two televisions, from which a stream of nonsense—vacuous words and hollow laughter—emitted from the mouths of conventionally attractive people. I thought at that moment of the whales, and other sea life.  We have taken our own noise-filled world, and replicated it, so that the whales are also forced to live in a home as insufferably loud as our own.

The noise we encounter in daily life is auditory, but it is also visual noise, and even olfactory noise. Bus riders in S. Korea now have advertising literally squirted up their noses—the synthetic smell of Dunkin Donuts coffee is released into the ventilation system of the bus just before it arrives at, you guessed it, Dunkin Donuts.

In his latest book, The World Beyond Your Head, Matthew Crawford points out that the world has become so noisy that we pay extra for the commodity of silence. When you pay for a “Business class” lounge in an airport you get snacks and Wifi, sure, but the main thing you get is quiet. A respite from the endless blaring of CNN, or worse, Fox News, and the endless advertising. Silence of all kinds has become a luxury good—it is available to those who can afford it. How can we hear God in the silence when there is so little of it?

Elijah runs away from all the noise of his own culture.  He runs from the noise of his epic battle with the 450 prophets of Baal. Now you know THAT was loud.  The text says those prophets “cried aloud” and  “raved” ALL … DAY … LONG.  And that was just their twitter feed.  The ravings of the prophets of Baal are still with us.

Isn’t this why Elijah sticks his face in his jacket?  He is tired of dealing with the anxiety, the fear, the noise of not only his enemies, but of his own people?  He wants to block out the 24-hour news cycle of terrorism, sexual and racial violence, degradation of creation, and on and on. What is the silence of God, even a vibrant silence, in the face of so much noise?

“Elijah heard the vibrant silence.”  What does he hear in that God-filled silence?  Perhaps it is what all his fellow citizens have forgotten. Perhaps it is the message of the Scriptures, the life-giving divine Word that God gave to the people that they might flourish in the land. Perhaps what he heard in that vibrant silence was a deep reminder that God’s relationship with Elijah, with the people, with the world, is the ground of all life, of all flourishing life. Perhaps Elijah can hear in that vibrant silence the sound of all of us connecting with God, connecting with one another, and with the world around us.  That vibrant silence gets inside of him.

He steps to the edge of the cave. Again God asks: “What are you doing here, Elijah?”  It must annoy Elijah to be asked the same question as before. And then something surprising happens. Elijah says the exact same thing he did before:  “I have been working my heart out for you, God. But your people are the worst—they’re afraid and unfaithful, and my life is in danger.”  Wait, what? He heard the vibrant silence, and he says exactly the same thing?

It seems that nothing has really changed in his situation; Elijah still faces the same problems.  But he has the sound of vibrant silence within him.  The sound of a God-given vision of the common good. The sound and vision of a world in which all flourish.  And with that, he goes on his way to face the same situation he fled in the first place.

God tells Elijah what’s next on the to-do list.  He is to assemble a team of folks to help him in taking on Ahab and Jezebel and the powers that threaten the community. So despite the fact that he is still tired, still undone by the noise of his anxious people and his frightening enemies, Elijah gets on with his work. He gets on with the work of calling his community to a covenantal life of justice, of telling them what the Scriptures reveal about God and the world. The “vibrant silence” feeds him as surely as food; it gives him the strength to move on from the cave, to continue his task of calling his people to form and sustain a just society, to make a world in which all can flourish and thrive.

God meets Elijah in the desert not to offer simple solutions to the problems in front of him. The same god-awful mess awaits him, but the vibrancy of that silence strengthens him for the journey.

© 2016 Nassau Presbyterian Church
Contact the church to obtain reprint permission.

John 5:1-9
David A. Davis
May 1, 2016

“Grace alone, faith alone, scripture alone.” It’s a phrase, an affirmation, a sort of theological branding that runs deep in the Reformed Tradition of the Presbyterian Church. “Grace alone, faith alone, scripture alone.” As our denomination’s constitution puts it, and has put it for a very long, long time, “the Presbyterian Church (USA) upholds the affirmations of the Protestant Reformation. The focus of these affirmations is God’s grace in Jesus Christ as revealed in Scriptures. The Protestant watchwords — grace alone, faith alone, scripture alone — embody principles of understanding that continue to guide and motivate the people of God in the life of faith.” (F-2.04) “Grace alone, faith alone, scripture alone.” Not works, not the tradition, not even the church. “Grace alone, faith alone, scripture alone.” It ought to be right on the tip of the tongue. Sort of like “Walgreens: at the corner of happy and healthy,” or “Princeton University: in the nations service and the service to all nations” or “Nassau Church: on the edge of campus in the heart of town proclaiming the love of God.” “Grace alone, faith alone, scripture alone.” It sort of sums it up, right? It sums it pretty well… until it doesn’t. Because sometimes, it all stops at “grace alone.” Sometimes it’s nothing but grace.

In Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there was a pool. The pool was surrounded by five porticoes. These porticoes around the pool, they were filled with the blind, the lame, and the paralyzed. One man there among that crowd of human need, he had been suffering for 38 years. 38 years. Jesus saw him lying there. Jesus knew he had been there a long time; he had been there near the pool for a long time, he had been in that condition a long time. A long time and Jesus knew. “Do you want to be made well?” Jesus asked the sick many lying on the ground. “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps in front of me.” Jesus said to him, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.” Just like that the man was made well. He took up that mat and he began to walk.

After 38 years — 38 years — the man was now walking along with his mat under his arm. It was a Sabbath day. So the religious leaders confronted the newly well man about doing work, about carrying his mat. “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Take up your mat and walk.’” They wanted to know who that man was but the walking man didn’t know. It seems Jesus just sort of disappeared into the crowd. Sometime later in the temple Jesus came upon the man again. “See, you have been made well! Do not sin anymore, so that nothing worse happens to you.” The man went away and announced to those who wanted to know that it was Jesus who made him well.

Thirty-eight years. And Jesus tells him to keep out of trouble so nothing worse happens. Scholars try to make that provocative statement from Jesus a bit more palatable by suggesting that sin in John’s Gospel comes down to unbelief. So the last line from Jesus is less about blaming his 38-year ailment on sin and more about exhorting him to believe and know in his heart where his newfound wellness came from, where wellness comes from, where wellness will come from. Maybe that part from Jesus is much more ordinary, much simpler: “Look, I just made you well after 38 years. You don’t want go and mess this up. Okay?!”

It is so easy for the reader, for the interpreter, for the preacher, for you and me, to come to conclusions about the man. Just a quick check on things written about John 5 and the negative assumptions about him pile up pretty quickly. He was lazy. He didn’t try hard enough. He didn’t want to be made well. He blamed others. He didn’t even care enough to learn Jesus’ name. He wasn’t grateful enough. He threw Jesus under the bus for his Sabbath carrying. He ratted Jesus out and set the persecution in motion. One preacher didn’t hold back: “He’s a real bum, that’s who he is! He had no gratitude, no faith, no humility, no guts.” Ouch! Calm down, preacher! It was 38 years. Thirty-eight years the man was not well. Those religious leaders judged him for picking up his mat on the Sabbath and the rest of us just keep judging him for not saying thank you. Thirty-eight years! Instead of saying, “Hey, look at you, you’re walking!” they said, “Hey, why are carrying your mat?” You’d think you could get a little more of a pass after 38 years. Instead, us able-bodied, healthy, pew-sitting, mostly grateful, comfortable Christians expect him to be more respectful.

It’s a theological example of “respectability politics.” The term refers to the notion that an underprivileged class, or a minority group, or disenfranchised people, or an oppressed population will make better progress if they express their concerns or protest or act out in a manner respectful to the standards of those who have the power and the privilege and the majority. In the current issue of The Christian Century a letter to the editor in response to several thoughtful pieces on the Black Lives Matter movement is a perfect example. In questioning the tactics and methods of their protests, the letter writer asks, “Was the whole point to annoy allies in the white community?” In other words, couldn’t they all be more respectful. “Respectability politics.” Respectability miracles. That man now walking — where’s the gratitude, where’s the faith!

When you psychologize the man and superimpose an attitude on him, in him, when the focus becomes how that man disappoints any expectations about how healing, miracles, and transformation are supposed to happen, it’s far too easy to miss the disturbing scene unfolding there under those porticoes. Maybe it’s a hot spring of medicinal value or it’s some kind of a spiritualized ritual that rewards the first one in the pool when the water stirs. Regardless, something about it is not working. Judging from the numbers and from at least one man’s wait time, it’s not working. You just can’t gloss over the lack of compassion and assistance that the the able-bodied might offer to those trying to get to the pool. Or there is that ageless practice of gathering the blind and the lame in a dehumanizing way. That portico practice was some kind of systemized round-up of the broken. If you set aside your disappointment with the man made well for just a second, that scene by the pool is as unsettling. The NRSV labels the people strewn around as “many invalids.” But the King James says it was a “great multitude.” A great multitude! Like the great multitudes of crowds who gathered for the Sermon on the Plain in Luke. Or the great multitude from Galilee that followed Jesus in Mark. Or that great multitude in the Revelation to John, a great multitude that no one could number from every nation. It was a mass of human suffering there by the pool. It was an institutionalized gathering of human suffering there by the pool.

There is no indictment here of that man who was sick for 38 years. The Lord’s indictment is of humanity’s chronic inability to care for the least of these. Jesus didn’t carry him down to the water and wait for the waters to stir. Jesus told him to stand up and walk. The healing bucks the system. The healing flies in the face of Sabbath law and healing pools and that guttural human yearning to avoid the sick and the aging and the disabled and the dying and the broken. Yes, one man was transformed that day but the gospel of Jesus Christ sheds light on the bigger human predicament as well.

Around here at Nassau Church, you can’t hear 38 years, you can’t think 38 years without thinking of David Bryant. In the spring of 2013, through the work of Centurion Ministries, David was released after spending 38 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commitment. After about a year here with us in Princeton, living in the Robeson House at Witherspoon Street Church and working at Princeton Seminary, a judge reversed the decision to release David and he now sits back in prison in upstate New York. A few church folks have made the Saturday drive up to visit David. Thirty-eight, now 39, 40, 41. The gospel of Jesus Christ ought to shed light on the bigger predicament of broken systems and broken institutions and humanity’s chronic inability to care for the least of these. The next time someone suggests that maybe my preaching is too political, I’m going to tell them about David Bryant and the man healed after 38 years. I’m going to tell them about Jesus, David Bryant, and the man who stood up to walk after 38 years.

In the healing story just at the end of Chapter 4, a royal official comes to Jesus and begs him to come and heal his son who was dying. John records that the royal official believed the word Jesus spoke to him and started home knowing his boy would be healed. Jesus had him at hello. “He himself believed, along with his whole household.” That healing story oozes faith. John 9 records the long narrative of the healing of the man born blind. When we was grilled by the religious leaders about who healed him, his answers were legendary. “The man called Jesus put mud on my eyes. Then I washed, and now I see… What do you say about him? It was your eyes he opened… He is a prophet… I do not whether he is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see… Here is the astonishing thing! You do not know where the man comes from and yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners but God does listen to one who worships God and obeys God’s will. Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing!” Okay then! Testimony? Affirmation? Giving the shout out to Jesus. Check! One thing I know!

But here in John 5, under the porticoes, Jesus picked that guy. Jesus healed him. There amid that sea of humanity there must have been folks with more faith, more gratitude, more piety, more spiritual health. People who were more deserving. Someone who would have a better story to tell for the ages. But Jesus picked him. Jesus picked that guy. No faith. No gratitude. No shout out. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing but grace. And if you and I are honest about our sinful selves and our life in the world out there, the world in here, nothing irks you more… I better speak only for myself here… nothing irks me more than someone else getting something they don’t deserve.

Nothing irks me more, nothing saves me more than grace. Sometimes its nothing but grace. That amid this sea of humanity, this great multitude, Christ picks me. Jesus picks you.

© 2016 Nassau Presbyterian Church
Contact the church to obtain reprint permission.