Well, imagine that! Sisters not getting along. It is such a rare thing for siblings to disagree!
Siblings. So close, so much alike, yet so different, so much love but not enough room…
We all know about sisters and brothers, we either have them or have been around them.
I think about the horrible things my brother and I would do to each other growing up, usually me doing it to him, and now he is my favorite person in the whole world.
The Gospel According to Luke has this thing about siblings.
Last week we heard the parable of the Good Samaritan, Samaritans were siblings to the Jews, a different kind of Jew.
Their scripture was a little different, they read it differently, they worshiped differently, so much alike yet different.
They couldn’t stand each other, rivals for authentic Judaism, they did horrible things to each other, thus the irony of the parable that the example of faithful discipleship is a Samaritan of all people.
Then there is Luke’s other great parable, the prodigal son, with the resentful brother.
Then there is today, the short and simple story of Mary and Martha and their disagreement over how to welcome their guest, it turns out to be a very public spectacle, to all of history!
My great aunt passed away a couple of weeks ago, the last of her generation in my family. Her husband and my grandfather were brothers, the things they did to each other…and the trouble they got into, and how close their families became.
They had a sister, another great aunt, but she died in 1925, she was only seven.
We don’t even know how she died anymore, all we have is a photo of her standing by the grave of Buffalo Bill Cody and a journal entry with a cute story of when she had a bloody lip and she told her mother (my great grandmother) that her “lip was leaking”.
Her name was Mary Martha, Mary Martha Hardaway.
I have always loved that name and the story that it comes from: family, a public spectacle, Jesus over for supper, and the surprise that a woman who broke the rules and sat at Jesus’ feet became the example of discipleship, and the resentful sister who tries to take it away.
This story has been read many different ways over the millennia.
It has often been used to portray two different kinds of disciples, the prayerful ones and the active ones, the prayerful being the better and higher calling of the two, which is simply a very bad way to read the story, though it still has a great deal of momentum.
There is a great deal that this story of Mary and Martha teaches us, many angles of approach, the two primary lessons are the tendency toward resentment and trying to crush others sense of wonder and joy and the second is that God comes to us in the unexpected and that the greatest examples of faithfulness are surprising and discordant and ironic.
The story leaves us hanging.
It is a story about Jesus, but it is much like one of his parables.
There is an unspoken question at the end, will Martha get it? Will she catch on that she too can become a disciple of Jesus? Or will she cling to her indignation over her good for nothing sister and their domestic disagreement over how to properly welcome a guest?
Can her sister become the example of faith?
The vision of God in Luke’s Gospel is the God who meets us in the dark unpleasant stuff of life, catching us short, breaking our rules of the proper order of things, and that challenges us to move beyond resentment into thanksgiving and praise, finding God’s presence blazing in those who really, really annoy and enrage.
We are all faced with that question.
Our whole country is confronted with that question.
We have all become the proverbial resentful sibling in Luke’s Gospel, and our contempt poisons our souls and all those around us. The horrible things we do to each other, our lips are bloody, our lips are leaking.
Will we get over ourselves and find the glory of God ablaze in those whom we impugn?
The story of Mary Martha, my great aunt, was cut short, our family had to continue it for her.
The story of Mary and Martha is waiting for us to finish it.
What becomes of Martha? Our lives answer the question.
The cross of Christ holds all our scorn and ire.
It is the ironic and discordant heart of our salvation.
Will we let the Cross become resurrection?
Will the Good Friday of our fickle sibling resentments become the surprise of Easter morning?
Will Martha dance with Mary around the empty tomb?
Will we choose the better part?