pay attention

The four evangelists, each with a story to tell about Jesus, each with a particular audience (Luke's audience is Theophilus, who seems to have engaged Luke to write), each has heard different stories, and with different details, and each arranges the stories in order that seems to him most logical and best to convey his overall proclamation; and one of the things I most enjoy in Bible study, including with our group in the Adult Sunday School class, is exploring various differences among the gospels and their evangelists. 

Just so this morning. We probably most often think of Mary and Martha in connection with Lazarus, and with Jesus being anointed with oil, but those things happen differently in each gospel. In this morning's gospel story, Mary and Martha are not living just outside Jerusalem, and there is no brother Lazarus, and Jesus has just set out on his long walk from Galilee to Jerusalem (Luke 9:51). And there is no anointing Jesus with ointment or Judas Iscariot scathingly denouncing the waste. It's just Jesus on his way, hospitably invited to "take tea" with the nice ladies. And as with every story, there's a lesson to be drawn out of it. This morning, many congregations will hear their preacher wrestle with it yet one more time again, striving to make it new and different somehow from what she/he preached about it three years ago, though the fact is, they don't remember what she/he said three years ago when this story was last read; and I suppose it doesn't really matter very much anyway, because in the story Jesus makes his own point, that what he has come to show and tell is more important than anything else, so stop whatever you are doing and pay attention to the good news. 

And what is the good news? Maybe this is where each sermon preached in church this morning can be different, in what we see, perceive, realize, understand Jesus to have been and be all about. To me, it's love God and love neighbor, where neighbor has been specifically identified by Jesus, and we are supposed to get it in last week's gospel story: neighbor is the one, or group, or class, or nationality, or party, whom we most despise.

That's pretty tough. I can't do it, but I'm working on being conscious of it. You probably are too.

T

Luke 10:38-42

As Jesus and his disciples went on their way, Jesus entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to what he was saying. But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, "Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me." But the Lord answered her, "Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her."