Steve, Mike and Jenn talk good Samaritan, Mary and Martha
Video Transcript
good morning friends i’m mike trautmanfrom first presbyterian church infergusonjoined by my wonderful colleaguessteve lankford who’s honorably retiredinarlington texas and uh steve you havepower you goodwe have power we were without power forabout 48 hoursbut we are enjoying a warm home andthanking god for itthanks for asking goodand then uh by my wonderful colleaguethe reverend jennifer long who’s pastorof emmanuel in corning new yorkand jen you got bad weather coming yourway soor is it already there uh you know whatyou never knowcorning’s in a valley so maybe we’ll getit maybe it’ll pass us bywell i’m glad that both of you are safeand warm and uhtoday we’re going to look at the twogreat stories and hopefully we can dojustice to themone is the good samaritan and the otherone is mary and martha so steveyou’re going to start us out lukechapter 10beginning at verse 25 from the newrevised standard translationjust then a lawyer stood up to testjesusteacher he said what must i do toinherit eternal lifejesus said to him so what is written inthe law what do you read therethe lawyer answered you shall love thelord your god with all your heart withall your soul with all your strengthwith all your mindand your neighbor as yourself jesus saidto him you have given the right answerdo this and you will liveand so i will continue to story fromeugene peterson’s the messagelooking for a loophole the lawyer asksand just how would you define neighborjesus answered by telling a story therewas once a man traveling from jerusalemto jerichoon the way he was attacked by robbersthey took his clothesbeat them up and went off leaving himhalf deadluckily a priest was on his way down thesame roadbut when he saw him he angled across tothe other sidethen a levite religious man showed up healso avoided the injured mana samaritan traveling the road came onhimwhen he saw the man’s condition hisheart went out to himhe gave him first aid disinfecting andbandaging his woundsthen he lifted him up to his donkey ledhim to the endand made him comfortable in the morninghe took out two silver coins and gavethem to the innkeeper sayingtake good care of him and if it costsany moreput it on my bill i will pay you on myway backwhat do you think which to the threebecame a neighbor to the man attacked byrobbersthe one who treated him kindly thereligious scholar respondedjesus said go and do the samei’m continuing in the nrsvnow they went on their way he entered acertain villagewhere a woman named martha welcomed himinto her home she had a sister namedmarywho sat at the lord’s feet and listenedto what he was sayingbut martha was distracted by her manytasksso she came to him and asked lorddo you not care that my sister has leftme do all the work by myselfthen tell her to help me but the lordanswered hermartha martha you are worried anddistracted by many thingsthere is need only of one thingmary has chosen the better part whichwill not be taken away from heryeah readingnothing like just a short reading aboutso i’m really interested um thatthese two are together i mean i knowabout the two of you i’ve preached onboth of these textsbut i’ve never read them together in asingle worship serviceum or attempted to figure out how howthey are connectedum each isso rich and so powerful in itselfthat putting them together has is goingto be a challengeso what is your thinking jen umi think um one i’ve been thinking aboutthis ideathat um that i read or heard someplaceelse that luke pairs stories together sothat maybe there’s been something that’sbeen missedfor quite some time um but i was alsothinking abouthow both of these stories have beenlooked ati think very often um i meanthe good samaritan the story of the goodsamaritan umi’ve done as preaching i’ve done asacting out i’ve done is acting out withyouth groups and confirmation classesum and always umyou have the this kind of set of thereis thegood samaritan and then there’s allthese people we thought might be goodbut they really suckand then you’ve got the story of maryand marthai know you giggle at me but that’s youknow i mean it’s kind of basic but kindof truethen you’ve got the story of mary andmartha and that that is very oftenlookedat as you’ve got one sister who’s goodand one sister who sucks i mean thatthose two thingslive there and i i really don’t thinkthat for jesus it is ever so simpleor so black and white um i thought formein particular the idea of people walkingby on the other side of the roadreally speaks to a time of cobit i meanlike i’m walking byon the other side of the grocery aisleand i want the grocery aisle to be wideenough for me to walk on the other sideotherwise i’m waiting till you leavegrocery aisle so i thought gosh howwould that play out during time ofpandemicwould the samaritan still have been sowillingbut i’ve also tried to think aboutinstead of looking for who is the heroand who is the villain in the storywhat does it mean to look at these asthough there are no heroesor villains um is jesus are jesus’swords i mean i think it’s really easyto say mary’s chosen the better partthat’s very much good in bad languageum but i really think what jesus pointswhat what the story points outabout martha is not that her choice ofwhat she is doing is badit’s that it distracts her fromsomething elsethe connection i see between the twois the one thing concepthe’s the lawyer begins by saying whatmustwhat is the one thing i must do to enterinherit eternal life he doesn’t use theword one thingwhat must i do which ishe answers his own question love thelord your godyour neighbor as yourself that’s the onethingthe story of the samaritan is what doesthat look likeand then marth mary and martha’s storycomes back to say yeah that is theimportant thing it is the one thingfor me the thing that i like about themary martha thing and the onewith its emphasis on the one thing isnormally not seenum what is it that martha was distractedfromwell the text says that mary was sittingat the feet of jesus listeningso martha was distracted from hearingthe teachings of jesusand the phrase to sit at the feet of isa technical termused to in reference to a disciple somary was serving was living in adisciples roleacting out a disciples position whichwas not acceptable for a womanyet she chose not to follow the socialtradition and culturewhich martha embodied but she did theone thingshe lived as a disciplethat’s the one thing a disciple thatwould love god by loving neighborso for me this idea of no heroes andvillains in both stories or less aboutum looking at why somebody was or wasn’trightand more about um how does a mary andmarthahow do they both live in me when am idistracted and when ami not um and in terms of thethe samaritan on the road to jericho andthinking about there are no heroes orvillains in this story but what can ilearn from itum you know again what the samaritan didwas absolutelyimportant to that’s man’s survival butwhere in my lifeum where in my where in any evenparticular dayhave i been um one of the others thatpassed by or on the other side of theroad when have i been the samaritan andare there ever times when those get heldtogetherum yeahso i think that’s really i think that’sreally interestingand so and very different and verydifferent ways to think about itrather than heroes and villains thenboth reflect something of our humancondition our human natureand how do we recognize both dimensionswithin usso that we can live out of the one thingboth of you have caused me to think in adifferent way about these passagesand so i’m just going off the top of myhead as i usually doand that’s always dangerous but what isee is that on the oneyou know the um the lawyerknows it he’s listened rightbut you know it’s the application thatkind of gets so messed upand for martha and mary mary’s listeningso that i think there’s times to listenand there’s times to actand how we play that off in our ownlivesthat there are times to listen becausejesus speaks all the timeyou know those who have ears to hear letthem hearso listening and acting somehow have adynamic here that i don’t quitehaven’t quite thought out but i’m i’mstruck by thatum and uh i like what you saythat there’s no uh heroes and villainsbecause as the story’s told at leastin the ancient world they would hearheroes and villainssamaritan you know i often have thepeopleat church just to make a point when iread a story like thisi’ll say now you’re going to play theancient jews who heard this story aroundjesusso when you hear the name samaritan iwant you to booyeah and then when you hear you knowpriestand uh levite i want you to cheerbecause that’s how you wouldno normally arrange the arguments hereand uh it’s the uh oh my gosh i’mso stealing that for sunday i’m sostealing that for sundayi won’t hear anything because it’ll bejust my talking head but i’m so stealingthat for sundayi like doing that i think because it ithelps us realize howyou know we have our heroes and villainseven though we don’t want to have themuh and i think you’re right jen thestory pushes us pastvillainization are being heroes andit invites us to talk about and look atourselvesuh and what are we gonna do when facedin such situations and what have we doneand uh what is jesus calling us to do inthat moment in that timewhich takes us back to the one thing iwas thinking it’s really kind ofinterestingum i i mean i can i think i hear threethree things coming um out of what we’resaying um no heroes or villainsthe one thing and listening and actingand those are kind of three differentdirections you could take a sermon thoseare three different directions you couldstudybut then i’m also really struck by um soone of the things i’ve been trying to dowith luke butdon’t always remember do is look at whatcomes before and afterlike what are the parentheses like whenwe talked about transfiguration wetalked about that jesus had talked abouthis death and sufferingon either side of the of the two pieceslike we heard thesecond part of his death and sufferingmaybe i didn’t talk about that that wasjust all in my headbut here um what comes beforeum is jesus rejoicing in the holy spiritand then um jesus praying so jesus isjoyful and he’s offering thanks and thenthe other sidepraying it’s the lord’s prayer so he’spraying and teachingand for me the idea of um the one thingbeing parentheses by joy and prayeror listening and acting beingparentheses by joy and prayeror there are no heroes and villains inthis scripture or in our livesparentheses by joy and prayer just givesit a particular and interesting settingfor meum what would it look like if i spenttime with that one thingby coming into it with joy and leadingout to it with prayerwhat would it look like to be thinkingabout those heroes andthat there are no heroes and villains bycoming into thatwith joy and going out of it with prayerum what would it looklike to think about the listening andacting in these stories and in my lifeif i come into it with joy and go out ofit with prayerso that that was just something else ithought i know how much there is whenyou put all of that togetherbut um i i think that is sometimessomething that gets missed in worshipbecause to to do the long story and toread all you knowlike let’s just do all of luke chapter10 this morning by the time i’m donereading chapter 10 everybody’s asleepnobody’s sticking around[Laughter]so what is within usthat likes to think in terms of heroesand villainsmy guess is none of us ever identifiedwith the villainuh you know what um i i don’t know iwill say thisif i am absolutely honest i’ve beendoing a little bit of binge watching ofa show called once upon a timeum which takes on disney disney storieswhich some of them harken back to fairytales fromlong long ago anyway all of thosestories are based on the idea of heroesandvillains and in there they’re doing somerewriting of thatum of what it means to be a villain ofwhat it meansto recognize that there’s heroes andvillainsin all of us um as opposed to just it’snot just that there are no heroes andvillainsum that i think the language once upon atime is using his light and darknesslives in each of usi’m reminded of how we like of ourtendency to go to judgewhich is a way of feeling better aboutourselves by feeling bycondemning something in othersby condemning them we can feel betterabout ourselvesthat’s heroes and villains it’s a partof our human naturewhich is a way of avoiding looking atourselvesand this both of these stories the onething call us to look at ourselves inrelationship to the one thingand like like uhthe lawyer we know the right answerthe question is doing the right answeris living it out loving a neighborwhat does that look likebut other than that there’s not a thingin these scriptures[Laughter]all right well here’s the thing is thati did not set a timer this timebut but i’m wondering if the quietnessmeans we’ve come to it to a naturalstopping pointwe have a natural stopping point everi’m going to go the three of us run outof something to sayoh my do we have one thing more we wantto sayi have one thing more i’d like to sayor maybe it’s time to stop and listenah they have joyand go out in prayer there you gowell played all right prayer stevethat’s all youall right let’s pray togetherand for the the gift of these twobeautiful storiesthat have our full so full of truthand of our humanness we give you thankshelp us to listenand help us to doas we seek to live out of the one thingof being your followersloving you by loving others in the nameof christamen amen amen the peace of christpeace peace friends
