Steve, Mike and Jenn talk good Samaritan, Mary and Martha
Video Transcript
good morning friends i’m mike trautman
from first presbyterian church in
ferguson
joined by my wonderful colleagues
steve lankford who’s honorably retired
in
arlington texas and uh steve you have
power you good
we have power we were without power for
about 48 hours
but we are enjoying a warm home and
thanking god for it
thanks for asking good
and then uh by my wonderful colleague
the reverend jennifer long who’s pastor
of emmanuel in corning new york
and jen you got bad weather coming your
way so
or is it already there uh you know what
you never know
corning’s in a valley so maybe we’ll get
it maybe it’ll pass us by
well i’m glad that both of you are safe
and warm and uh
today we’re going to look at the two
great stories and hopefully we can do
justice to them
one is the good samaritan and the other
one is mary and martha so steve
you’re going to start us out luke
chapter 10
beginning at verse 25 from the new
revised standard translation
just then a lawyer stood up to test
jesus
teacher he said what must i do to
inherit eternal life
jesus said to him so what is written in
the law what do you read there
the lawyer answered you shall love the
lord your god with all your heart with
all your soul with all your strength
with all your mind
and your neighbor as yourself jesus said
to him you have given the right answer
do this and you will live
and so i will continue to story from
eugene peterson’s the message
looking for a loophole the lawyer asks
and just how would you define neighbor
jesus answered by telling a story there
was once a man traveling from jerusalem
to jericho
on the way he was attacked by robbers
they took his clothes
beat them up and went off leaving him
half dead
luckily a priest was on his way down the
same road
but when he saw him he angled across to
the other side
then a levite religious man showed up he
also avoided the injured man
a samaritan traveling the road came on
him
when he saw the man’s condition his
heart went out to him
he gave him first aid disinfecting and
bandaging his wounds
then he lifted him up to his donkey led
him to the end
and made him comfortable in the morning
he took out two silver coins and gave
them to the innkeeper saying
take good care of him and if it costs
any more
put it on my bill i will pay you on my
way back
what do you think which to the three
became a neighbor to the man attacked by
robbers
the one who treated him kindly the
religious scholar responded
jesus said go and do the same
i’m continuing in the nrsv
now they went on their way he 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 do all the work by myself
then tell her to help me but the lord
answered her
martha martha you are worried and
distracted by many things
there is need only of one thing
mary has chosen the better part which
will not be taken away from her
yeah reading
nothing like just a short reading about
so i’m really interested um that
these two are together i mean i know
about the two of you i’ve preached on
both of these texts
but i’ve never read them together in a
single worship service
um or attempted to figure out how how
they are connected
um each is
so rich and so powerful in itself
that putting them together has is going
to be a challenge
so what is your thinking jen um
i think um one i’ve been thinking about
this idea
that um that i read or heard someplace
else that luke pairs stories together so
that maybe there’s been something that’s
been missed
for quite some time um but i was also
thinking about
how both of these stories have been
looked at
i think very often um i mean
the good samaritan the story of the good
samaritan um
i’ve done as preaching i’ve done as
acting out i’ve done is acting out with
youth groups and confirmation classes
um and always um
you have the this kind of set of there
is the
good samaritan and then there’s all
these people we thought might be good
but they really suck
and then you’ve got the story of mary
and martha
i know you giggle at me but that’s you
know i mean it’s kind of basic but kind
of true
then you’ve got the story of mary and
martha and that that is very often
looked
at as you’ve got one sister who’s good
and one sister who sucks i mean that
those two things
live there and i i really don’t think
that for jesus it is ever so simple
or so black and white um i thought for
me
in particular the idea of people walking
by on the other side of the road
really speaks to a time of cobit i mean
like i’m walking by
on the other side of the grocery aisle
and i want the grocery aisle to be wide
enough for me to walk on the other side
otherwise i’m waiting till you leave
grocery aisle so i thought gosh how
would that play out during time of
pandemic
would the samaritan still have been so
willing
but i’ve also tried to think about
instead of looking for who is the hero
and who is the villain in the story
what does it mean to look at these as
though there are no heroes
or villains um is jesus are jesus’s
words i mean i think it’s really easy
to say mary’s chosen the better part
that’s very much good in bad language
um but i really think what jesus points
what what the story points out
about martha is not that her choice of
what she is doing is bad
it’s that it distracts her from
something else
the connection i see between the two
is the one thing concept
he’s the lawyer begins by saying what
must
what is the one thing i must do to enter
inherit eternal life he doesn’t use the
word one thing
what must i do which is
he answers his own question love the
lord your god
your neighbor as yourself that’s the one
thing
the story of the samaritan is what does
that look like
and then marth mary and martha’s story
comes back to say yeah that is the
important thing it is the one thing
for me the thing that i like about the
mary martha thing and the one
with its emphasis on the one thing is
normally not seen
um what is it that martha was distracted
from
well the text says that mary was sitting
at the feet of jesus listening
so martha was distracted from hearing
the teachings of jesus
and the phrase to sit at the feet of is
a technical term
used to in reference to a disciple so
mary was serving was living in a
disciples role
acting out a disciples position which
was not acceptable for a woman
yet she chose not to follow the social
tradition and culture
which martha embodied but she did the
one thing
she lived as a disciple
that’s the one thing a disciple that
would love god by loving neighbor
so for me this idea of no heroes and
villains in both stories or less about
um looking at why somebody was or wasn’t
right
and more about um how does a mary and
martha
how do they both live in me when am i
distracted and when am
i not um and in terms of the
the samaritan on the road to jericho and
thinking about there are no heroes or
villains in this story but what can i
learn from it
um you know again what the samaritan did
was absolutely
important to that’s man’s survival but
where in my life
um where in my where in any even
particular day
have i been um one of the others that
passed by or on the other side of the
road when have i been the samaritan and
are there ever times when those get held
together
um yeah
so i think that’s really i think that’s
really interesting
and so and very different and very
different ways to think about it
rather than heroes and villains then
both reflect something of our human
condition our human nature
and how do we recognize both dimensions
within us
so that we can live out of the one thing
both of you have caused me to think in a
different way about these passages
and so i’m just going off the top of my
head as i usually do
and that’s always dangerous but what i
see is that on the one
you know the um the lawyer
knows it he’s listened right
but you know it’s the application that
kind of gets so messed up
and for martha and mary mary’s listening
so that i think there’s times to listen
and there’s times to act
and how we play that off in our own
lives
that there are times to listen because
jesus speaks all the time
you know those who have ears to hear let
them hear
so listening and acting somehow have a
dynamic here that i don’t quite
haven’t quite thought out but i’m i’m
struck by that
um and uh i like what you say
that there’s no uh heroes and villains
because as the story’s told at least
in the ancient world they would hear
heroes and villains
samaritan you know i often have the
people
at church just to make a point when i
read a story like this
i’ll say now you’re going to play the
ancient jews who heard this story around
jesus
so when you hear the name samaritan i
want you to boo
yeah and then when you hear you know
priest
and uh levite i want you to cheer
because that’s how you would
no normally arrange the arguments here
and uh it’s the uh oh my gosh i’m
so stealing that for sunday i’m so
stealing that for sunday
i won’t hear anything because it’ll be
just my talking head but i’m so stealing
that for sunday
i like doing that i think because it it
helps us realize how
you know we have our heroes and villains
even though we don’t want to have them
uh and i think you’re right jen the
story pushes us past
villainization are being heroes and
it invites us to talk about and look at
ourselves
uh and what are we gonna do when faced
in such situations and what have we done
and uh what is jesus calling us to do in
that moment in that time
which takes us back to the one thing i
was thinking it’s really kind of
interesting
um i i mean i can i think i hear three
three things coming um out of what we’re
saying um no heroes or villains
the one thing and listening and acting
and those are kind of three different
directions you could take a sermon those
are three different directions you could
study
but then i’m also really struck by um so
one of the things i’ve been trying to do
with luke but
don’t always remember do is look at what
comes before and after
like what are the parentheses like when
we talked about transfiguration we
talked about that jesus had talked about
his death and suffering
on either side of the of the two pieces
like we heard the
second part of his death and suffering
maybe i didn’t talk about that that was
just all in my head
but here um what comes before
um is jesus rejoicing in the holy spirit
and then um jesus praying so jesus is
joyful and he’s offering thanks and then
the other side
praying it’s the lord’s prayer so he’s
praying and teaching
and for me the idea of um the one thing
being parentheses by joy and prayer
or listening and acting being
parentheses by joy and prayer
or there are no heroes and villains in
this scripture or in our lives
parentheses by joy and prayer just gives
it a particular and interesting setting
for me
um what would it look like if i spent
time with that one thing
by coming into it with joy and leading
out to it with prayer
what would it look like to be thinking
about those heroes and
that there are no heroes and villains by
coming into that
with joy and going out of it with prayer
um what would it look
like to think about the listening and
acting in these stories and in my life
if i come into it with joy and go out of
it with prayer
so that that was just something else i
thought i know how much there is when
you put all of that together
but um i i think that is sometimes
something that gets missed in worship
because to to do the long story and to
read all you know
like let’s just do all of luke chapter
10 this morning by the time i’m done
reading chapter 10 everybody’s asleep
nobody’s sticking around
[Laughter]
so what is within us
that likes to think in terms of heroes
and villains
my guess is none of us ever identified
with the villain
uh you know what um i i don’t know i
will say this
if i am absolutely honest i’ve been
doing a little bit of binge watching of
a show called once upon a time
um which takes on disney disney stories
which some of them harken back to fairy
tales from
long long ago anyway all of those
stories are based on the idea of heroes
and
villains and in there they’re doing some
rewriting of that
um of what it means to be a villain of
what it means
to recognize that there’s heroes and
villains
in all of us um as opposed to just it’s
not just that there are no heroes and
villains
um that i think the language once upon a
time is using his light and darkness
lives in each of us
i’m reminded of how we like of our
tendency to go to judge
which is a way of feeling better about
ourselves by feeling by
condemning something in others
by condemning them we can feel better
about ourselves
that’s heroes and villains it’s a part
of our human nature
which is a way of avoiding looking at
ourselves
and this both of these stories the one
thing call us to look at ourselves in
relationship to the one thing
and like like uh
the lawyer we know the right answer
the question is doing the right answer
is living it out loving a neighbor
what does that look like
but other than that there’s not a thing
in these scriptures
[Laughter]
all right well here’s the thing is that
i did not set a timer this time
but but i’m wondering if the quietness
means we’ve come to it to a natural
stopping point
we have a natural stopping point ever
i’m going to go the three of us run out
of something to say
oh my do we have one thing more we want
to say
i have one thing more i’d like to say
or maybe it’s time to stop and listen
ah they have joy
and go out in prayer there you go
well played all right prayer steve
that’s all you
all right let’s pray together
and for the the gift of these two
beautiful stories
that have our full so full of truth
and of our humanness we give you thanks
help us to listen
and help us to do
as we seek to live out of the one thing
of being your followers
loving you by loving others in the name
of christ
amen amen amen the peace of christ
peace peace friends
