Rev. George Miller
March 9, 2025
Luke 10:25-42
One great lesson Eden Seminary imparted
upon us students is the concept of “Reading From Below.”
Reading from below means to immerse
yourself within a story so that you start to notice the people who are there
but not mentioned or given the primary focus.
In doing so, when reading from below,
you discover the nuisances, intricacies, and possibilities that Scripture has.
Today’s reading is a wealth of reading
from below moments.
We have Jesus interacting with the
community. The disciples are there. As we learned in Ch. 8, there are also the
vivacious, audacious women who are benefactors and co-ministers-
This Mary Magdelene, this Joanna, this
Susanna, and many others.
With the women and disciples present, they
get to hear Jesus share a story with a lawyer.
The characters in this tale include a traveler,
bandits, a priest, a Levite, a Samaritan.
But there’s another character- the
innkeeper.
After the Samaritan shows compassion to
the traveler, he takes him to an inn and says “Take care of him. I’ll pay you back when I return.”
Most times we put a spotlight on the
Samaritan, but the innkeeper deserves admiration as well. He may have a bigger role in this story than
we realize.
Traveling was much different back then,
especially if you were Jewish. Hospitality
was most important. Offering family a
place to stay, welcoming people into your home, was an honor to do.
Inns were often used by travelers and foreigners
who had no family connection.
Inns were looked down upon as places of
ill refute where gambling, drinking, hooking up, spending time with sex workers
were assumed to take place.
Innkeepers may be foreigners, immigrants,
non-Jews. They could be seen as
dishonest, untrustworthy, just as likely to steal as a roadside bandit.
Amidst the women, disciples and lawyer,
Jesus tells a tale in which the Priest and Levite do not show compassion-
It’s the Samaritan who does and takes a chance
in believing the innkeeper will care for the man.
…and it is the innkeeper who takes the
chance that the Samaritan will come back and pay what he owes.
We see no act of trust from the priest or
Levite, but we see worlds of trust between the Samaritan and innkeeper.
This is reading from below.
Jesus’ story does not highlight the
religious leaders, but the 2 individuals in which not one but perhaps two were
Gentile foreigners.
Nor does this story celebrate the safety
of a sanctuary or a religious institution doing the right thing- but an inn, a
place of vice and ill-repute, with real people doing real things.
Once again- bam!- another strike of the
hammer into the hands and feet of Jesus.
Then, we have the story about the M&M
Sisters. I call them that because I
refuse to put one woman before the other.
For how many centuries has this story been
misunderstood, how many times have preachers and teachers gotten this wrong?
How many Bibles mistold and mistranslated
this tale?
After talking with the Lawyer, Jesus makes
his way to visit the M&M sisters.
This is where reading from below gets to
be fun.
Verse 38 tells us something so important-
“Martha welcomes him into HER home.”
Martha welcomes Jesus into her
home. Not her father’s home, not her
brother’s home, not her husband’s home, not her uncle’s home, not her son’s
home- HER HOME.
Which tells us that Martha is someone to
respect, a person of power, a BOSS.
As Mary takes the radical stance of a
student by sitting at the feet of Jesus (note the embodiment language), we’re
told that Martha is distracted by her “many tasks.”
Scripture says “her many tasks.” Nowhere, not once, is there any mention of
where Martha is or exactly what she is doing.
Nowhere, not at any moment, are we told if
Martha is in the kitchen making dinner, or by a washtub doing laundry, or in
the main room with a broom sweeping up the dust.
We are simply told Martha was distracted
by her many tasks- so WHO decided to put Martha in the kitchen or assume she
was doing housework?
Who assumed that if Martha is busy, it must
be cooking, cleaning, or laundry?
The word that is used in Greek for “tasks”
is “diakonia,” the word we get “diaconate” from.
Diakonia usually means work related to the
church, tasks that offer hope and healing.
Throughout the New Testament “diakonia” is
used to refer to what the disciples are doing.
Diakonia means things like helping the
sick, feeding the hungry, serving Communion.
But for some reason, when “diakonia” is
used to refer to Martha, people assume she’s cooking a banquet for 13 men.
No.
If there is just 1 lesson I’d love for
everyone here to learn is that nowhere in the original Greek scripture does it
ever mention that Martha is in the kitchen.
Martha could be the brains behind Jesus’
entire ministry. She could be working on
Stewardship. She could be acting as a treasurer, she could be paying bills, she
could be heading up Public Relations.
And guess what- because this is her
home, and she is doing many tasks, she could be doing all these
things AND making a fabulously delicious dinner as well.
But Martha is in no ways a harried June
Cleaver with pearls and a martini waiting for her man to come home…
…Reading from Below.
What a wonderful way to engage with
scripture.
As we continue to take this Lenten journey
with Jesus towards Jerusalem, let us continue to seek out and wonder who else
is present in the scriptures that we are not being told of.
How
does their story offer greater impact to the story of Christ and of God’s
Creation?
The more we ask, the more we discover, and
the more our faith and our love grows.
Amen.
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