Archives: Luke 10:38-42

Siblings: Fighting With Them, Fighting For Them

Everyone loves a good dose of sibling rivalry.

Mary and Martha are among the most famous sibling rivals in the Bible, and Christians for generations have wondered what to do with them.

Many of us identify more strongly with one or the other of them, and then feel slightly guilty about it.

Team Martha feels like she gets a raw deal, being gently corrected by Jesus when she complains about Mary not helping her. “Where’s the love for Martha?” we ask. “Marthas make the world go around, especially at church!”

Others of us know we’re Mary. We love being spiritual and contemplative, thinking deep thoughts and feeling very religious, but sometimes we’re hard to be found when it’s time to get down to real work. Oops.

As often as I’ve wrestled with this text and its clear call away from busywork and into the peace of God’s presence, I heard it differently this time as I thought about it in the context of the whole Bible.

And what I realized is the Bible is all about sibling relationships, and most of those relationships are troubled at best.

Continue reading

The Gifts of Martha and Mary

Today we’re embarking on a unique phase of our worship life together. Today we begin our transition work in earnest.

I have four Sundays left in this pulpit, and my preaching task is as follows: to say goodbye, to tell you how much I love you and thank you for our time together, and to equip you for your transition time in any way I can.

We’re going to tackle those in reverse order over the next few weeks, using our lectionary scriptures to guide us in those tasks.

So let’s talk about Mary and Martha and what we can learn from them, not just for our everyday lives, but specifically for this unique season of transition St. Thomas and St. Luke’s are entering right now.

To do that, let’s start by talking about what clergy transition is like for a parish.

Transition is all kinds of things.

It’s exciting as the priest and parish look forward to the novelty of change.

It’s anxiety-producing as we face an unknown future and wonder how to tackle life without each other’s steady presence and familiar patterns.

It’s awkward as we try to decide what to say to each other—how much truth-telling is helpful and how much is just self-indulgent and divisive?

It’s full of grief as we say goodbye.

It’s simply full of emotion as we rehearse old grievances and old joys.

We give thanks for everything we’ve accomplished together and the ways in which we were so well-matched, and we mourn the goals we didn’t achieve and the ways we couldn’t fulfill each other.

It’s a holy mess, to my way of thinking, a sacred disaster, an exhausting miracle and a blessed train wreck.

It can bring out the worst in us if we’re not careful, but it will bring out the best in us if we allow it. Continue reading