Hospitality and Hope

Lectionary reflections for Pentecost 7 (C)

By Isaac Miller

Readings for Pentecost 7, Proper 11, Year C, July 18, 2004

Amos 8:1-12 or Genesis 18:1-10a

Psalm 52 or 15

Colossians 1:15-28

Luke 10:38-42

There are two helpful themes in the lessons for the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost. One is hospitality, clearly seen in the lesson from Hebrew scripture and more ambiguously in the gospel. The other is hope: the irony and perhaps absurdity of hope in Genesis, pointedly spoken to by Paul, and (perhaps) in Mary's response to Jesus' visit in the gospel.

As I read the biblical witness and the scene of our times – the call of God, the call of the Kingdom and the challenge of our times, is to live in hospitality. The whole of the biblical tradition calls us to the work of living in community that is open, hospitable to all. The concern for the widows and orphans that I recall as a child as an admonition to kindness, strikes me as an adult as a call for inclusion and justice for those on the margins of the social and economic system of the day. There is clearly something that goes beyond support for paternalism if we read the call to hospitality as a call to include rather than as the need to do something for “the less fortunate.”

There is a message in this about communities' openness to and inclusion of folk across the boundaries by which we divide and are divided. The Kingdom, the Reign of God is not true if it is composed of folk only like us. Hence, we have had to endure painful struggles with regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, and, most difficult, class.

Do we resist – in our understanding of the Kingdom about which Jesus spoke – the notion that “these people” are in a fundamental way not human?   (Remember the early reaction to AIDS, before it acquired its name: “Not to worry, it's only something that affects homosexual men from Haiti”?)

This is not just a question of what the church looks like as a gathered community, but of who is included (and excluded) in our image of what we are called to by God. We read stories, or more likely snippets of stories about war and the threat of famine and genocide in Africa. We catch glimpses of Palestinians' death, humiliation and victimization. We hear stories of trafficking in women from strange lands. We see images of those who are the least like us in “our own” land. The question is whether we see such people as folk who are a part of that community to which we are called by God in Christ. Do we see these folk as human, made in and longing for the fulfillment of God's image in themselves? Do we see such folk as people in whom our own God-likeness is in part fulfilled? Do we resist – in our understanding of the Kingdom about which Jesus spoke – the notion that “these people” are in a fundamental way not human?   (Remember the early reaction to AIDS, before it acquired its name: “Not to worry, it's only something that affects homosexual men from Haiti”?) Such queries speak to questions of justice and they speak to the extent to which justice is an issue for “them” or for us all.

The story of Jesus in the home of Mary and Martha has a note of uneasiness pervading it. The episode is placed in the course of Jesus journey to Jerusalem and Golgotha. This broader context is unsettling in itself, as most of us seek to bury Holy Week and Good Friday in the business of doing something (perhaps even for others) and the reign of things in our consumer capitalist existence. This “give me a break from the Crucifixion and other bad news” mindset is another part of what's responsible for our complacency in the face of suffering that only occasionally (unless its 9/11) peeks through the media gloss.

The second point of unease has to do with Martha's carping about being stuck with the work of hospitality. One gets the impression of a household that does not have the luxury of a servant to do the menial work. Remember, by the way, that this is one of the “safe houses” that Jesus' disciples have chosen for him, least he's ambushed and killed before reaching the place that stones the prophets. (I am reminded here of all the underpaid folk on whom the tourism and hospitality economies depend, all the folk on whom our vacation leisure depends this time of year.) Why can't she be quiet and unseen, so that Jesus can chill, like the hotel workers whose land of origin we have no idea of? Right on, Martha!

Finally, Jesus response seems cold and unsympathetic in the extreme, like at Cana when he says to Mary, his mother, “Woman, what have I to do with you?” There is something ingrained in us that says we are supposed to be, if we are religious people, nice. At some level I want to rewrite the text here and have Jesus say, “Come on Mary, I came to serve after all, let's help with the dishes.”

It is here – as with the announcement of a child born to Sarah – that hope enters in. I have no textual evidence here, but I choose to believe that Mary is drawn to the hope in Jesus, and she cannot tear herself away from hope for her own life and all life in him. We all have choices, and our choices are not confined to good versus bad. Sometimes it's a choice between that which is good and that which is better. Jesus is simply saying that he's better than chores, even chores in the cause of hospitality.

In this reading, Jesus words to Martha are not a put down, but a challenge to step beyond the tyranny of convention and domesticity to choose that which is better. The text rewriting here would have Martha say, “You're right, Jesus, You're more important than my good hostess home training, the dishes can wait!”

In this vein, for some reason I think of the trip by Esther Burgess and Mary Peabody to St. Augustine, Florida, in the mid-1960s. What were the wives of two Massachusetts Episcopal bishops (John Burgess and Malcolm Peabody) – “who ought to be pouring tea” and making their husbands' lives more comfortable – doing in the midst of a city, caught in hot, humid and potentially violent civil rights protests?   They have chosen the better part.

The church ought to be about the business of offering more and more “better part” alternatives to the convention of so many chores.

The Rev. Isaac Miller is rector of Church of the Advocate in Philadelphia, Penn. He attended the 2001 UN World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa, and is co-chair of Philadelphia Interfaith Action (PIA), an Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) network organization. The Church of the Advocate continues under his leadership to seek to maintain the legacy of ministry associated with Paul Washington, its longtime rector (1962-1987). “If you are in Philly, visit,” Isaac urges, and he may be reached by email at rmill7@aol.com .