Sermon on Luke 10:38-42

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

I’ve seen the story of Jesus visiting Mary and Martha used like a personality test: are you a Mary or a Martha? This is usually in a women’s devotional.

I’ve seen the characters pitted against each other: silly Martha was too busy doing chores to pay attention to Jesus. She should have been a Godly woman like Mary.

I’m pretty tired of it.

Maybe if there were more stories about women in the Gospels, especially women whose names are actually used, we wouldn’t be so desperate to use these two characters to exemplify women specifically.

When there’s a story about Peter, James, and John, I see the traits that I resonate with in the characters, regardless of gender. So why are Mary and Martha used as a typology for women?

Christians of all genders are called to service and to learning.

So, let’s let these two followers of Jesus be what he treats them as: disciples.

I also sometimes hear this story framed as service versus learning, as if when Jesus told Martha that Mary chose the better part, he was saying that all of his disciples should choose learning over service. But that doesn’t line up with much of the content of the Gospel of Luke, the book of Acts, which is by the same author, or much of the content of the whole Bible.

The Gospel of Luke focuses a lot on service and working for justice. We discussed the Parable of the Good Samaritan last week, which Jesus toldright before this story. That parable uses an example of service to emphasize that everyone is our neighbor, even and especially those we kind of wish weren’t. Throughout the Gospel of Luke, we see themes of service and acting out our faith in the world and not just paying lip service to God.

In the book of Acts, the follow-up to the Gospel of Luke, the twelve apostles were getting overwhelmed by the needs of the growing number of Jesus followers. They decided to appoint seven folks who would serve the physical needs of the community so the apostles could focus on prayer and other spiritual matters. This is where we and many other denominations get the position of “deacon,” which comes from the Greek word for servant. Service is an important part of what it means to follow Jesus or the apostles wouldn’t have bothered dedicating people specifically for that form of ministry. Both Luke and Acts are particularly concerned with service and addressing people’s physical needs. Martha is an early example of faithful Christian service.

Jesus didn’t discourage Martha’s service in this story. He accepted her hospitality. There’s no Lazarus or any other man mentioned in this story, so we can assume Martha was the head of this household.

So, there would have been certain expectations of her as the host. Hospitality was a huge deal in the Middle East in the first century and before. Look at the lengths Abraham and his household went to in our first reading to show hospitality to the three divine messengers.

Abraham isn’t scolded for showing hospitality, and neither is Martha. Her hospitality is a good thing—how any of us would want to treat Jesus if he were to show up at our door.

If Martha was resentful of her sister for not helping her provide that hospitality, it’s understandable. Making Jesus referee their disagreement isn’t a good look, but it’s a very human reaction to feeling overwhelmed and overworked. Martha’s hospitality wasn’t the problem.Her attempted interference with Mary’s discipleship was the problem.

Mary sat at Jesus’ feet, where students sat to learn from their rabbis. Jesus didn’t make a fuss that she was a woman; she was a disciple. He even encouraged her discipleship by the end of the story.

Jesus accepted and encouraged both Mary and Martha’s discipleship. When he said Mary chose the better part, he wasn’t setting study above service. He was inviting Martha to let study fuel her service. Right then, she was overwhelmed by what she had to do, and Jesus was reminding her of why she served: it was a sign of her love for him.

Discipleship isn’t about choosing learning or service. Most followers of Jesus do both, and that’s good. Learning can help ground our service in love for God and service can ground our learning in love for our neighbor. It’s a cycle of action and reflection that helps us love God and our neighbor with our whole selves.

That cycle’s going to look different for each of us, and it’ll probably take a lifetime to find what works best for us.

Our cycle of action and reflection may look different depending on our season of life. If we’re students, we may not have time to serve. If we’re parents of young children or caregivers for other family members, we may be doing a lot of serving and not have a lot of time for quiet contemplation. That’s okay—it doesn’t have to be an even split. But long-term, it’s helpful to pay attention to what God is calling you to and what nourishes your soul.

The communities we’re a part of affect our action and reflection too. Being a part of a smaller faith community like this one has its benefits and challenges. You can pretty quickly get to know the majority of the people here, which is wonderful. You can easily get plugged into whatever ministry you’re interested in or start something new. If you have ideas or questions, talk to me.

On the other hand, there are things that need to happen to keep the ministries of the church going, and it can sometimes be hard to find people with the right gifts and interests in a smaller community. And conversely, it can be challenging to step away from something if it’s not a good fit or you’re interested in trying something different if there’s not an immediate candidate to fill your shoes.

God provides, and sometimes much to our chagrin, God provides us. It can be hard to keep our service to a manageable level and also have time to just enjoy each other’s company and have contemplative and study time with God. We need to discern what’s essential in this community and what needs to be released or reformed to make sure we’re choosing whatever the better part is for us and our neighbors.

We can get distracted by many things—here at church, at home, at work. Our world moves so fast. There’s always something more to do, to achieve, to innovate, to manage, to perfect.

I realize I’m assuming most of us tend toward the service side of the service and learning cycle. I’m defining service not just as volunteering at church (though that certainly counts), but service to your family, friends, community, work, and any other action-oriented ministry. I see a lot of busy people in this congregation who are generous with their time here and elsewhere.

But maybe you feel a yearning for meaningful service that you haven’t been able to figure out how to fulfill. In that case, let’s have a conversation. You’re probably doing more than you realize, but God may be calling you to something new, and that’s exciting.

But whether your yearning is for service or study, let’s keep imagining together how we can meet each other’s needs in this community.

What’s essential? What needs to be reimagined to make time and space for something different?

We talked about Sabbath throughout last year, remembering in this bustling world that God made us good and invites us to rest and commune with God. It’s in the Ten Commandments—rest is to be a regular part of the rhythm of our lives as individuals and as a community.

How do we foster rhythms both of service and of study and contemplation that nurture this faith community and make this a place of healing for everyone?

We are the church that feeds people body and soul. Let’s sit at Jesus’ feet to fuel us to love and serve our neighbor.

Sermon on Luke 10:25-37

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

The Parable of the Good Samaritan is one of the most well-known. Many folks who aren’t generally familiar with the Bible would still recognize a story about a good-hearted person who helped someone who was injured. We even have Good Samaritan laws to protect people who help strangers in emergencies.

But this story has become so familiar that it’s lost a lot of its meaning. The word “Samaritan” has come to mean someone who helps a stranger, but that’s very different from what Jesus’ audience would have understood.

Jewish people in the first century thought of Samaritans as their enemies. Samaritans were descended from the Israelites who had been left behind when the Assyrians conquered Israel around 720 BCE and took many of the Israelites into captivity.

Over the generations, these left-behind Israelites married with other local people groups. They also came to believe that God was properly worshiped on Mount Gerizim instead of the Temple in Jerusalem. So, when the exiled Israelites returned home, they had issues with the lineage and theology of the Samaritans.

So by Jesus’ time, these two people groups had quite a few hundred years to build up bad feelings about each other. In the Gospel of John, we even get the parenthetical comment in the story of the Samaritan woman at the well that: “(Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.).” A “Good Samaritan” would have sounded like an oxymoron.

The Parable of the Good Samaritan was shocking to its first audience in a way that we just don’t have access to.

That’s significant for understanding that this parable wasn’t just about encouraging us to help strangers. Jesus told this parable in response to the law expert’s question about “who is my neighbor?”

If we take the narrator’s word that this religious leader was trying to test Jesus, it seems like his motive in asking “who is my neighbor” had to do with setting a boundary of who was he supposed to love and who he was off the hook for. Like he was expecting the answer to be: your neighbors are those literally next doorto you or within a mile of your house, and you don’t need to worry about anyone else. Sure, Jesus, I’m supposed to love my neighbor, but who am I justified in not loving?

And so Jesus tells this story about someone who was mugged and left for dead on the side of the road.

First a priest and then a Levite walk by and see the guy in desperate need of help. These would have been trusted and esteemed leaders in the community. They would have been seen as good guys, the people you’d expect to be helpful. Maybe like a mayor or a fire fighter or a school principal.

But they didn’t help. They ignored the man and passed him by. Incidentally, if you’ve ever heard the excuse that helping the man would have made the priest and the Levite unclean, and so that’s why they didn’t help, Jewish New Testament scholar Amy-Jill Levine disagrees with that interpretation. She says, “Neither [Jesus nor Luke] gives the priest or Levite an excuse. Nor would any excuse be acceptable.”

These two respected community leaders aren’t given justification by the text. They’re simply fallible human beings who don’t always do the right thing—just like all of us.

And then, a third person walks by. Someone you don’t like. Someone who belongs to a group of people you don’t trust. Someone you’d expect to look the other way or maybe even give him a kick for an extra measure of meanness. People like him are bad news, selfish, violent, hateful, and whatever other stereotypes we humans like to pin on each other.

But wait! He does stop to help. That can’t be right! But he does, and not only does he give him first aid, but he takes him to an inn where he can be tended to further. He pays the innkeeper two full days’ wages and promises more so that this guy will be well taken care of. He goes to great effort and expense to care for this stranger who probably hated him.

So, who was a good neighbor? The esteemed community leaders who should have cared for their people? Or this guy who you probably wouldn’t want to see walking down a dark alley?

As with many of Jesus’ parables, this one is surprising. It turns our assumptions on their heads.

Jesus used this parable to break down any barriers in our minds about who might not be our neighbor. Jesus used this shocking story to show us that we owe compassion not just to the people immediately around us or who are like us or who might show gratitude for our good deeds, but we owe compassion to the people we hate, distrust, and have prejudices against.

We might not understand the conflict between Jewish people and Samaritans in the first century, but we can fill in the blanks for ourselves.

If you were mugged, who would it be hard to accept help from?

Who would it surprise you to receive generosity from?

The answer might be different for each of us, and I invite you to spend time this week answering this question: who are your Samaritans?

It’s uncomfortable work. We don’t like to imagine that we have prejudices or biases. We want to imagine that we are loving to all people. But I encourage you to sit with this question for long enough that you get beyond your initial inclination to say that no one is a Samaritan for you. Ask the Holy Spirit to show you who you would be surprised to receive generosity from.

Because beyond our rational minds, we all have those natural instincts to categorize people and look for threats—instincts that kept our ancestors safe in the wilderness. But these ancient survival skills don’t always serve us today. They can cut us off from our neighbors and make us see threats that aren’t there.

Maybe you’ve done enough work that you have truly overcome all your biases. But “who are your Samaritans?” is a question that has the potential to unsettle most of us if we really spend time with it.

We can’t change what we’re not aware of. Let this parable unsettle you. Let it regain some of its original shock value instead of being just a nice story about someone helping a stranger. Let God show you what it truly means to love your neighbor.

This isn’t about checking off enough boxes to get us into heaven.This isn’t about the law expert’s testing question to see what’s required to inherit eternal life.God already loves you, and you are part of the family of God forever.

Loving our neighbors—truly all of them—is about living the Beloved Community now. Jesus is inviting us into a way of life that treats every life as sacred, erases all our human hierarchies that keep us separated from each other, and fosters love, joy, and peace.

Feel God’s unending love for you and love God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind.

And let God’s love shine forth from you wherever you go and to everyone, everyone, everyone you meet.

That’s how earth becomes as it is in heaven.

Sermon on Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

There’s a quote attributed to Martin Luther that says, “To sing is to pray twice.”

We just sang “As We Gather at Your Table,” which is a lovely hymn, but if we’re paying attention, we might be alarmed by what we are “praying twice.”

Gathering at God’s table sounds great, and we do that each week. But we sometimes reserved Lutherans might be a little more hesitant to ask God to “turn our worship into witness,” “send us forth,” and “help us summon other guests to share that feast.”

But that’s exactly what Jesus was asking his disciples to do in our Gospel reading this week.

Jesus was getting more attention, and his group of followers was growing. It was time to get the word out faster and empower Jesus’ disciples to carry his message of God’s love themselves.

So, he sent 72 of his disciples out in pairs to go ahead of him into places he intended to visit. He warned them that they would be like lambs in the midst of wolves. They were not to bring anything with them. He gave them instructions for what to when (not if) a town didn’t welcome them. Yikes! Not exactly an assignment I would be eager to sign up for.

But when you look closer, what Jesus was asking them to do was pretty beautiful.After all, he was, as he said in Luke 4, here to “proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” He had come to tell the world about God’s Beloved Community. In our story today, he was giving his disciples hands-on experience in working with God to spread the Beloved Community wherever they went. His instructions show us some things about that Beloved Community:

Jesus sent them in pairs—they weren’t alone.Spreading God’s love involves working together with other people.

They weren’t supposed to bring anything with them. Their possessions would make them more independent—they could buy their own food and pay for lodging. Instead, they would be required to depend on others’ hospitality.There’s nothing like sharing food to make people feel closer to each other.

But the relationship wasn’t completely one-sided: the disciples were to cure anyone who was sick. I’m sure they also shared their stories of Jesus and how their lives had changed because of what he taught them and the miracles they had witnessed.

And whether the town accepted them or not, their visit was to be book-ended by a word of peace and a declaration that the Beloved Community had come near.

The Greek word for “peace” here, as well as “shalom” in Hebrew, doesn’t just mean an absence of conflict or war, just as health isn’t just an absence of illness and success isn’t just an absence of failure. Peace here is a holistic sense of wellbeing and restoration of community.

This holistic sense of peace is a defining characteristic of Beloved Community. Martin Luther King Jr., who made the term Beloved Community widespread, said that “peace is not merely the absence of some negative force—war, tensions, confusion but it is the presence of some positive force—justice, goodwill, the power of the kingdom of God.”

Jesus wasn’t sending his disciples out just to not get in fights, but to bring that expansive, holistic, positive peace wherever they went.

That sounds pretty good.

But it also sounds unattainable in today’s society.

Our country and much of the world are experiencing polarization and division.

Disagreements about issues get turned into name calling and even dehumanization of the other side.

There are terrible wars and conflicts around the world. My heart aches for all the people affected by violence near and far. And even where there isn’t outright war, there is often barely the “absence of a negative force,” let alone peace in a positive or holistic sense.

Even in our own families and neighborhoods, political discussions can quickly turn heated and aggressive. “Agreeing to disagree” often just turns to a tense silence.

I keep returning to the thought that it shouldn’t be like this. There shouldn’t be starvation and bombing and people afraid to leave their homes and governments who won’t listen to their people.

The hospitality and shalom sense of peace in our Gospel reading seem far away and maybe even impossible.

But even though God may not be calling us to set down our wallets, take off our shoes and wander from town to town (we might have a lot of dust to shake off our feet if we tried that), God is calling us to spread the Beloved Community wherever we go. That’s what being a follower of Jesus is about.

And we’re not alone in the effort. Just as Jesus sent his disciples out in pairs, we have the Holy Spirit within us, guiding and encouraging us, and we have each other. We are already part of a community of faith. We gather at God’s table each week to remember Who we belong to and to fortify us for the journey ahead—to be filled with God’s peace as we go about our daily lives. And though we’re not having communion this week because I’m sick, trust that God is present and building Beloved Community within and between us anyway. Enjoy some coffee and conversationafter the service and feel the Spirit moving.

As we go about our week, let’s be more open to the hospitality around us. It’s easier to hand someone something and go on our way instead of really having a conversation. Sometimes the real work of ministry feels the least productive.

In college, there was a group of students that served a hot meal in a park once a week for anyone who needed it. It really only required three or four people to serve the meal, but many more came and just sat down and talked with people. Getting to know people—learning people’s names, what they were passionate about, cracking jokes, and maybe if you built up enough trust, they would share their heartbreak with you, and you would share yours with them. The food was important, but it wasn’t the whole point.

Similarly, at my internship congregation, there was a grief support group of about 8-12 people. They met for an hour once a week, and then they went out to lunch afterwards. The formal setting of the support group was important, but I think at least as much healing happened over the meals afterwards. Friendships formed, the mood lightened, and people felt less alone.

The mutuality of these examples points to Jesus’ instructions in our Gospel reading. The Beloved Community isn’t about charity in the “we are giving to you” sense, but about hospitality and relationship. It’s the declaration of dependence that Pastor Jaz talked about last week. We’re dependent on the crucified and risen Christ and on each other.

If we’re only giving, we’re missing out on the relationships built by both giving and receiving. And if we’re only receiving, we’re losing out on agency and the joys of generosity. Ideally there’s both: Jesus’ disciples received hospitality and brought peace and healing—the reverse was true of those who housed them.

So as you go about your week, watch for opportunities for the mutuality of the Beloved Community—opportunities to share and be shared with, not just resources but also stories and conversation. Bring the peace, the shalom, of God with you wherever you go. If an acquaintance doesn’t welcome you, don’t wish fire down upon their heads but just dust yourself off and move on. Maybe that’s a connection for someone else to foster.

And always remember that you are not alone. You have the Holy Spirit with you always and the kinship of this community. Don’t be shy about sharing the love you’ve received with those around you. God knows, our world needs it. Peace be with you.