Going To Camp

by Rev. Lynne Hinton

Every year in June I direct a camp in Blowing Rock, NC for developmentally disabled adults. Since moving to New Mexico, I have at times thought that it’s just too expensive and time-consuming to go back every summer, but as the time rolls around I realize I’m not just doing this because it’s a charitable thing to do or because the camp needs my help. I lead this camp, I participate, because it’s really the best thing I can do for myself and subsequently, the best thing I can do for my family and for everyone in my life.

I don’t exactly know why or how or when it happens, but at some point during the week of crafts and devotions and sing-alongs, the talent show and shared meals, I remember the person I want to be. I see the woman I desire to become. I find myself slowing down, paying attention to small things, saying thank-you more often, laughing at myself, holding hands with someone. At some point in the midst of the campers’ delight, their unique spiritual maturity and their special needs, I find myself more loving, kinder, a gentler spirit and I have to admit I am happy and relieved to find and be that woman again.

It’s not that I dwell in self-loathing. It’s not that I hate who I am the other 51 weeks out of the year. It’s just that I’m not always pleased with how I handle things, how I process events, how I participate in relationships. It just seems that so often during the rest of the year, the rest of my life, I hurry through the days and worry through the nights and I’m not always very nice or very hopeful and I look in the mirror and I’m not happy with who I see. Special Days, this camp I attend, puts me back on the spiritual track I try to follow. It makes me slow down, makes me be attentive to things going on around me, makes me sing and laugh and reach for the hand of somebody else. And somehow by Tuesday night while the campers congratulate each other on their great talents or Wednesday morning when we’re getting ready for the magician or the dance troupe, our entertainment for the week, or later that evening, dressing for the dance, I catch a glance of myself in the mirror and I see her. I recognize her, that woman I want to be. There she is, the kind woman, the loving woman, the gentle woman. And truth be told, I’m afraid that if I quit going to camp, quit participating in this summer experience, I will lose her forever and that I will not remember how to find her.

So, during the first week of June I will be in the mountains. I’m directing a camp called Special Days. I’m playing the guitar. I’m helping with crafts. I’m dancing. I’m serving meals and rocking in a rocking chair. I’m leading devotions and I’m laughing. And most importantly, I’m finding the woman I want to be. The good news for my family and friends is that when I come home I plan to bring her back!

Fall in Love

by Rev. Lynne Hinton

Since it’s the season of graduation and we get to hear lots of advice of how to live life, I decided to write my own little speech. It’s simple enough; my advice to graduates and to us all is to fall in love.

Fall in love with yourself, with being a child of God, created in that perfect image. Fall in love with your Creator who formed you in your mother’s womb, knitted you to be just as you are, while knowing who you will be. Fall in love with the miracle shining back at you in your reflection.

Fall in love with the world and its magic of starry nights and changing moons, yellow sun and greening earth. Fall in love with the dry desert soil with its hidden seeds and nutrients, with the tender shoot and thin blades of grass. The cottonwoods and rivers, the rocks and creeks and small speckled eggs of blue birds. Love the breeze that changes things, the drift of clouds across the sky, the lean of blooms on stalks to light. Love the color of things, the way the world turns and breathes and tilts. Fall in love with this round planet with its vast horizons and deep waters, its layers of ash and stone and dirt.

Fall in love with your family, mothers and fathers and embarrassing uncles, your siblings, your spouse and your children, how they all learned your dark secrets and still make a place for you and call it home. For the moment that your beloveds took your breath away, remember that, hold onto it, and never ever let the memory of that moment leave you.

Fall in love with being yoked, with having companionship and friendship, with promises made even while knowing how hard they are to keep. Fall in love with the stuff you build together, the places you go, the dreams you make, the inside jokes that only you know. Fall in love with all of those connected to you because marriage and family and friends are what will hold you up when the earth quakes and everything shatters and they are the ones who sooner or later will have to take your calls. That’s just what they do, so fall in love with that.

Fall in love with Saturday mornings with their chores and games, with church and the silence arriving in prayer, with Thursday night spaghetti and Tuesday’s breakfast cheerios, and the taste of ripe strawberries and the smell of a burger on the grill and the chill of ice cold lemonade sliding down the back of your throat.

Fall in love with the way your body moves, for the delight it feels, the touch of water and sun, the hand caressing yours and the ache in muscles well used, for eyes that see and ears that hear and arms that can hold more than you thought, feet that take you from here to there, your heart that breaks and heals, breaks and heals.

Fall in love with the moments that make you laugh so hard you hurt and the ones you wish you could take away or at the very least, forget. Fall in love with them all because every one of them makes up this life that is yours, this life that is you.

Fall in love with what you have and what you want and fall in love with giving it all away because in the end we discover that it is never the things we own that make us happy. Fall in love with mercy and forgiveness and the unpredictability that is forged within the hours of every single day. With hope and faith. Fall in love with love, the love that makes you patient and kind and keeps you from being rude and irritable or having to have your own way.

 Fall in love because all of it, all of this, all of life happens so fast and it is all so meaningful and not, important and not, necessary and not; so that the only thing that really lets you surrender at the end of it all is to know quite simply that you have experienced the sweetest and most thrilling part of what it is all about anyway, but only if you fall in love.

Mothering the World Right Now!

by Kay Klinkenborg, (Church of the Palms member), MA, Spiritual Director, Member Spiritual Directors International, Retired: RN, LMFT, Clinical Member AAMFT)

What is not in turmoil is easier to answer than list what is in turmoil in this world and on Earth.  Climate change roaring; wars; politically divided countries; democracies fighting for their life; missing Indigenous women and children; mass shootings; trafficking; institutional and personal racism (in all its forms); addictions; more immigrants in the world than those that have a place to call home and we fear the list will run into eternity or the end of the planet upon which we live. What are we to do? 

      I reel at times with the realities of destruction, pain, terror I witness in the news.  How do I stay centered; stay focused on what my core knows is true:  LOVE…the world needs love.

     Instantly my feminine energy kicks into gear. Mothering.  Creation has been ‘mothering’ since the beginning.  God speaks of ‘we’ in Genesis; not alone as Creator. Then other Hebrew Scriptures speak of Sophia, Wisdom; which has been interpreted by highly respected theologians as the feminine side of God. 

     The Talmud also introduces the term Shekhinah to connote God’s presence in the world. Though the term is grammatically feminine, in the Talmud it is not explicitly gendered, though in some passages it refers to moments when God shares in human experiences of loneliness, loss, and exile.1

      In the case of Jewish thought, grammar at times meets theology in as much as impersonal Hebrew nouns are gendered, so that words like hokhmah (wisdom) and shekhinah (presence) over time lent themselves by virtue of their feminine.1

     In fact, the personal name of God, Yahweh, which is revealed to Moses in Exodus 3, is a remarkable combination of both female and male grammatical endings. The first part of God’s name in Hebrew, “Yah,” is feminine, and the last part, “weh,” is masculine.2

     I am pleased that I can attest to many men I know that use ‘mothering characteristics’ in their relationships and interactions.  I am not suggesting that this is a woman’s task at all.  In fact, I think history and biblical interpretations show us that feminine traits are revered.  And our world right now needs that kind of love!.

     Remember the famous song: “What the World Needs Now is Love, Love, Love.”  One word most will resonant with to describe that is a verb:  mothering.

     Since the beginning of time…’mothering’…to nurture…to care for…to watch after’ has and does occur.  It had to have occurred or evolution would not have sustained, extended or be continuing.  As the human species evolves our archeological discoveries tell us that ‘mothering’ occurred.  It is nature’s form of care taking, survival of the species.

     One major thing I continue to learn and have reinforced:  ‘getting out of God’s way’.  My instinctual need to control, be in charge is being challenged.   I am learning more about the spiritual discipline of surrender.  Let God evolve.   There is no surprise there is mass turmoil. There have always been pandemics, disasters, wars, a disappearance of life as we understand it.  None of this is news.  Yes, we live in a more informed world, and more technology but the real truth is human’s are still evolving and every generation has to learn for themselves what is means to be human, to love and have relationships with all peoples and creation.   Our ownership that this can happen to us is what is new.  This is nature. This is the evolving of life in this known Universe.

     I have found myself ‘should-ing’;  I should do this; I should say that; I should not be having this fear and anxiety. A sampling of my should list. What about ‘mothering myself’? What about starting there in order to have the energy and compassion to extend to others? If I can have compassion for my own journey/feelings during this extraordinary time in history, will not that enable me to understand/hear and have compassion beyond myself.  Then I am ready to extend ‘mothering’.

     Only in self-compassion and owning my own emotions in this particular journey will I then have the energy and compassionate response to others to be mothering the world.  Mirabai Starr writes in her book Wild Mercy: Living the Fierce and Tender Wisdom of the Women Mystics, “…we need a mothering of the world together right now.”    We need that feminine energy that is male and female brought forth to face these challenges.

     I want to explicitly point out the fact that women who have not born children… mother; men… mother,  It is part of our innate design if we own that part of ourselves.  A friend taught me a profound lesson about mothering;

One particularly Mother’s Day, I was quite depressed; estranged from our son and blaming myself for his adult choices. A friend sent me a text that day that knew of the circumstances.  “Kay, you have been mothering people your entire adult life.  As a nurse, friend, manager, counselor, consultant and the list goes on.  So today claim all the mothering you have and do. Let that bring comfort.”

     So I am challenging myself as I write to this audience, let my ‘mothering show forth’; let my love be visible and make me an instrument that releases a song of ‘Love, Love, Love…’

Going on without denying any aspect of the human drama is what strength is all about. We are carved by life into instruments that will release our song, if we can hold each up to the carving.

Mark Nepo

1”Feminine Images of God”:  Yehudah Mirsky, Jewish Women’s Archive.

2CBE (cbeinternational.org) (Christians for Biblical Equality). “The Feminine Imagery of God in the Hebrew Bible.” Joan P. Schaupp | October 30, 2000.

                                                                                                       ©Kay Klinkenborg, Revised May 2023 (May 2022)                                                            

Crawling Out of the Hole

by Jane Jones*

I’m constantly amazed at how the Holy One works – we just have to learn to (as my Gramma Milly would say), “Let go.  Let God.”

I suppose I can admit to the fact that as a lifelong “fixer” this is one hard task!  I’m used to being in charge of something – I’ve trusted what I’ve known as “The Voice” my whole life, and so when I feel called to take on a challenge, I tend to step up to the plate and get to work. 

Often, I’m successful in these attempts, because I believe the Holy One uses me as a tool for the good in this world.  I feel humble and grateful to be chosen to help…but what happens when you suddenly find yourself on the other end of fixing?

Four years ago, real life of a different type happened and suddenly, I was the one who needed help at the deepest level anyone could know.  A relationship I treasured and totally devoted myself to suddenly ended; my marriage of 22 years ran into a cement wall. I was blind-sided, shocked, heartbroken. In one day, my whole world took a 180-degree turn.

The circumstances swirling around it were ugly,  very public, and it all ripped me apart.  So much pain, so much doubt about myself, so many details forcing me to step into a life I truly never expected to live – on my own. 

I went down a very dark hole, doing all the things another instinct tells us to do to ease the pain, and I wondered how I’d ever crawl out of it again.

This Fixer was in desperate need of being brought back to life. 

Here’s the part where the God reveals just how amazing a Being God is…

At the worst time I’ve ever experienced, I was surrounded by a cloud of atypical saints, (most of them not people of faith!) and each one of them contributed to the healing journey I found myself on.

I truly was never alone. 

Did you know that the God has many disguises?  Do you remember that Spirit can show up in the oddest places at just the right moment (in the wrong place) to give you a poke, reminding you who and Whose you are?  Did you know that getting through a life-changing event can change you in ways you never thought you would know and understand; dropping new hope, new strength, new life right at your feet? 

These aren’t just buzz words thrown at us during a sermon in any church…this is absolute Truth. 

I know this, because I’ve been constantly in awe of how the Holy One works – how the Holy One reaches out – always, and often when you least expect it. 

With honest love from friends, family, even people I didn’t know personally, I’m finding my way back.  I’m crawling out of that dark hole, one step at a time. I’m also learning about real forgiveness – God’s trademark – and true peace.

The newer me is a modified version for sure, (and a better one, I think) – and as I squint each morning at a much brighter day ahead, I find that I’m not the only one who has suffered such loss. There is so much to grieve about in this world these days…The Voice is telling me that it’s time to get to work again. 

What’s different, though, is that instead of being a fixer, I’m now a “mender” because we’re all in this together. We need to patch up the torn places…and keep going.

It feels good to step up to the plate again.

Thanks, Holy One.

*Jane Jones served as the licensed pastor for First Congregational Church in Prescott from 2009 – 2015, has been SWC’s Moderator and Moderator Elect, is almost a former member of COCAM B, and currently sits in on Faith Formation ZOOM meetings.  She will be one of the facilitators at the “Doing Grief Community Healing Project” at Church of the Palms in Sun City.

The Seeds of Others

by Rev. Lynne Hinton

Once we moved into a church parsonage in Washington State in late October where I took the position as Interim Pastor. The front and back yards, though small, had landscaped flower beds wrapping around the house and garage. No one told us what was planted in the beds. No one told us what to expect once winter ended. In the first few weeks of spring at least forty or fifty bulbs had broken through the thawed ground and by early May, this house we called home for a few more months, was surrounded by color, bathed in the hues of spring. We came to realize that we lived in a beauty imagined and created by the hearts and hands of others.

In that season of birth and new growth and in a place gardened by others, I was reminded of the power of planting seeds. I was reminded of the hope that emerges in the hearts of planters, how diligently farmers and gardeners rake and plow and dig and make way for life. Every year lovers of the earth go to nurseries and stores, purchase the seeds or bulbs that offer possibilities, and in faith, with care and hope, drop them into the earth in joyful anticipation. Most plant gardens for themselves but some folks, like the anonymous members of that church, hearty ones who love to landscape and care for church properties, plant their bulbs and seeds for others.

It is the same in spiritual gardens. We plant seeds of kindness, faith, hope, joy, love, peace, and patience in our own hearts, hoping to enjoy the bounty of our work and desire. We plant seeds within our souls, toiling with tools to grow spiritual gifts that we look forward to see come to fruition. We pray and study and meditate and practice for us to become patient, to become kind, to become people of peace and love. It is the harvest of our work for our own souls. But we also plant seeds in the hearts of others, in temporary places, in organizations, places of worship, in souls of those who may or may not ever know our names. We plant seeds without having to reap the bounty. We plant seeds without needing to watch the garden grow. We plant seeds letting the hope of what might come, the power of what may spring forth, the joy we expect for someone else, to be reason enough to keep planting.

I’m sure I could have asked members of the Trustees who planted those bulbs that grew in perfectly-spaced rows, filling the beds in the front and back yards of the parsonage and someone would have given me names; but I did not. Instead as they popped and bloomed I thought of the people in my life who planted seeds within my soul and never saw what grew. I think of grandmothers and teachers, the parents of my adolescent friends, the authors of books that shaped me, the countless words of wisdom from others that fell like seeds in my soul and have finally begun to bloom. I will think of planting my own seeds, being kind to strangers, writing words of hope, working for justice and peace, and learn how to be content with just the planting. It takes faith to grow a garden you don’t get to harvest. It takes faith to plant a seed. I know because I lived that season in the center of someone else’s hopes for spring.

Do Lent, or not do Lent

by Rev. Talitha Arnold, Senior Pastor, United Church of Santa Fe

“What the heck is Lent?” a friend asked. “What’s with the ashes, the morose songs, the somber colors? I thought the United Church was for happy Christians. Why do we have to do Lent?”

Truth be known, we don’t. “Doing Lent” or giving up something for the next 40 days isn’t required at the United Church of Santa Fe. As part of the United Church of Christ, we’re in the reform Protestant tradition (Congregational, Disciples of Christ, Baptists, etc.) that historically didn’t “do” Lent. In fact, many “free church” Protestants looked with suspicion on Lent. Some still do. Lent was something those Catholics, Lutherans, or Episcopalians did. The ashes, giving up meat or candy, all that purple was a bit too Popish or liturgical for our tastes. As my friend said, we were supposed to be happy Christians.

Other Protestants didn’t mark Lent, because as one friend observed, in her church it was Lent all the time. With all the rules against dancing, drinking, and card playing, they didn’t have anything to give up!

So technically, we don’t have to do anything or give up anything for Lent at the United Church of Santa Fe. But many of us have found that Easter has deeper meaning, if we set aside Lent’s 40 days for something other than life or business as usual.

If we wanted to sing in a concert, we’d need to set aside time to rehearse. To compete in a basketball tournament, we’d take time to practice our free throws. The same is true for our experience of Easter. To know new life in any form—spiritually, physically, intellectually—we need to take time to practice. Setting aside the 40 days of Lent for study, prayer, silence, and other spiritual disciplines is a way to engage new ideas, new feelings, new possibilities.

Sometimes to let in new life, we also have to let go of some things. Before you start a new project, you might need to clear off your desk. Before you ran a marathon, you might want to shed some weight. The same is true of our souls. Sometimes we need to clean out and shed extra baggage to make room for something new.

Observing Lent is not required for admission to Easter at the United Church. Come Easter morning, you’ll be as welcome at United as you are any morning.

But perhaps if we take the 40 days of Lent to practice new life or if we set aside time to remember the sacredness of our lives and all life, then maybe, just maybe, Easter might have a new meaning for us this year. We don’t have to “do Lent,” but we might be surprised what’s possible if we do.

Fasten your seat belts—Lent has come!

Get ready—because Easter is on its way!

Lent: It’s the most wonderful time of the year!

by Rev. Deb Church

“…for dust you are and to dust you will return.” (Genesis 3:19b, NIV)

You may or may not know that this coming Wednesday, February 22, 2023, is Ash Wednesday… which marks the beginning of the season of Lent…which will take us, before we know it, to Easter. Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! 

But wait—first, Lent. Woo hoo! Everyone’s favorite time of year! Who doesn’t look forward to this season set aside for deep self-examination and grim-faced repentance? Who doesn’t love this period reserved for turning away from (bad!) fleshly debauchery and turning toward (good!) spiritual disciplines? 

Who doesn’t count down the days until it begins–this opportunity to focus intentionally on our sinful nature and our need for repentance? 

Lent–say (sing??) it with me: “It’s the most wonderful time of the year!” 

Wait…that doesn’t seem quite right…

Or maybe it is… 

What if we thought of Lent not as a forced opportunity to focus on our sinful nature, but instead as a chance to claim more deeply our true identity as God’s beloved, and consider what are the parts of our personality that are keeping us from embracing that more fully? 

What if we thought of Lent not as a period reserved for begrudgingly giving up something we do that’s “bad” for us and equally begrudgingly taking on something that’s supposedly “good” for us, but instead as a window of opportunity during which we’re given permission, and in fact encouraged, to recognize and step away from the things that keep us fractured and frantic and broken, and make choices instead for what brings us healing and wholeness and peace–which, yes, might possibly include allowing more space for the Divine Source of our being in our day-to-day living? 

What if we thought of Lent not as a season of somber self-examination and grim-faced repentance, but instead as a recurring invitation for honest and humble reflection on who we are, who we want to be, who God is calling us to be, and how we’re living our “one wild and precious life?” (from Mary Oliver’s poem, This Summer Day) as one (and a collection) of God’s beloved?? 

Is it possible that Lent is the most wonderful time of the year?? 

Maybe, just maybe…

May God’s Holy Spirit, and an openness in our human spirits, be with us all as we prepare to enter this holy season, in all of our glorious humanity!

Attributes of God: Free from Anxiety

by Rev. Teresa Blythe

Don’t know about you, but I, like millions of others right now, have anxiety issues. “Generalized Anxiety Disorder” is the technical term my therapist writes down in their little notebook. I’m not ashamed to admit this. In some ways, when you look around at all that is going on in the world, like…

  • Mass shootings
  • Raging war in Ukraine
  • Wildfires, drought, floods, the shrinking ice caps in the Arctic
  • Lack of affordable housing
  • Inflation
  • Political division and threats of civil war

Well, if you’re not a little bit anxious, you just aren’t paying attention.

In our continuing exploration of the attributes of God found listed in the apocryphal book of Wisdom (7:22-24), our lovely Wisdom passage tells us that the Divine is free from anxiety. 

For Wisdom, the fashioner of all things, taught me…

…there is in her a spirit that is free from anxiety.

This is also something Jesus —  a New Testament Wisdom figure — told us: “don’t be anxious about anything,” in Matthew 6:25-31.

What would it be like to be free from anxiety? To have hope that God, working through all of us, can bring about a more peaceful, sustainable, and just world?

This attribute of God is one reason I attend worship. In my congregation, we never ignore the injustices of the world but at the same time we always emphasize God’s grace and the hope for change. It is this hope that has the ability — if I allow it — to calm my anxious spirit.

Anxiety can easily raise my blood pressure. This morning, as I prepared for the day and did my daily blood pressure check, it was borderline high. So, I took 15 minutes to sit, breathe and be in the presence of God (the one free from anxiety!). After finishing, I rechecked and sure enough, my blood pressure was back to normal.

We can’t singlehandedly make the world a more just and sustainable place. We can, however, sometimes lower our anxiety-produced-high blood pressure if we…

  • Check in with ourselves. Ask “what do I need right now?”
  • Take several slow, steady, deep breaths.
  • Let go of anxious thoughts with our favorite mantra or just saying “I let it go.”
  • Allow God to absorb our worries and burdens for the time being.

Knowing that God is free from anxiety can be inspiration for us. We won’t be free from concerns and anxiety all the time (we need some of it for self-preservation), yet we can give ourselves the breaks we need to continue our work toward a better, more just world.

Migrating Home

by Rev. Lynne Hinton

I always hear them before I ever see them. Their call is a throaty, high pitched warble and when lots of them are calling, it sounds like a gathering of excited tourists, shouting to each other from across a crowded street. The Sandhill Cranes arrive every year, migrating south, spending the winters in a hodgepodge of fields about a hundred miles south of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Tens of thousands of them make the annual trek, overcoming great hardships, surviving hunters and pollution, desert winds and human population explosions; every year, winter after winter, they come.

Migrations happen all the time, everywhere. We all know the stories; some of us even follow the species. There are migratory movements of butterflies, hummingbirds, salmon, and even dragonflies. It seems as if there are a lot of creatures genetically predisposed to move from place to place.

Scientists tell us that triggers for migration may be local climate, mating purposes, local availability of food, or because of the season of the year. Whatever the pull, they keep going, generations after generations, migrators still migrate.

I believe that humans migrate too. I’m not just speaking about movements from rural life to urban existence or a relocating toward more opportunities or better jobs; I’m talking about a spiritual migration, the internal compass that we all have that guides us to head in the direction of goodness.

We don’t hear about that migration very much. The news gives us other headlines, stories that talk about our propensity toward greed and evil. We hear much more about our leaning in the direction of selfishness and violence. And of course, we know these stories all too well. However, there is something else in our make-up, something that drives us to a better existence, something pulling us to kindness and generosity. We are made in the divine image of our creator and because we have that image stamped upon us, there is a natural migration towards our best selves, our goodness.

Occasionally, we do hear those stories too. We hear about the heroic efforts of those who bear no thoughts for their own safety, rushing headlong to the aid of others in need. We hear about children, not yet cynical about our species, deeply moved by the suffering of others and who remind adults that as human beings we must care for each other. We hear those stories and we are moved by them and not because they are interesting or foreign. We are moved by them because they remind of us of who we really are, where we are meant to be.

It is easy to forget our divine calling, how we were created, what we really need to survive. Many of us have lost our way, feel unable to make the return journey to what sustains us. But the species is not lost. We still know the path. We just need to remember what we have always known. Just listen to your heart. You will get back home.

Balanced

This is Conference Minister Rev. Dr. Bill Lyons’ message preached at First Christian Church UCC/DOC in Las Cruces on Sunday, July 24, 2022.


38Now as they went on their way, he entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. 39She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying. 40But 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 to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.” 41But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; 42there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.” Luke 10:38-42

Martha is fussing, and Mary is listening. Martha is wrong and Mary is right. Right? Or maybe, Martha is doing what a woman is supposed to do (serving) and Mary is doing what a man is supposed to do (learning)[1] so when it comes to the cultural norms and gender expectations of their day, Mary is wrong, and Martha is right. Or maybe, Martha is attending to the needs of others, and Mary is doing something more like what the priest and Levite were doing in the story just before today’s text, focusing on things above. And in that story – the story of the Good Samaritan – someone neglecting the needs of people, especially hurting people right in front of them, in favor of focusing on things above got scolded by Jesus. And in today’s story, that response is reversed. Jesus scolds Martha who is attending to the needs of others and the honor of her house, and he commends Mary. One thing that is certain about this passage is there’s nothing simple about it! A second certainty is that the story of Mary and Martha opens a profound window for understanding the Realm of God as Jesus understood it, and as Luke and the early church tried to live it.

The Rev. Dr. Niveen Sarras is a Hebrew Bible scholar and pastor at Immanuel Lutheran Church of Wausau in Wausau, Wis. She was born and raised in Bethlehem, Palestine. About Mary and Martha she writes:

In my culture and in first-century Palestine, hospitality is about allowing the guest to share the sacredness of the family space. The women’s role is to do all of the cooking and food preparation. It is very unusual for Palestinian women to join male guests before they are done with all the food preparation. In my culture and Jesus’, failing to be a good hostess means disrespecting the guest. 

The traditional interpretation of Luke 10:38-42 presents the narrative as a problem between Martha and Mary, but it is about the two kinds of ministries: diakonia and the word. Marta represents the ministry of diakonia, and Mary represents the ministry of the word. Jesus does not prefer the ministry of the latter over diakonia. Instead, Jesus does not want the diakonia to be at the expense of the ministry of the word. Both ministries are important.[2] 

Luke’s point in chapter 10 is that hospitality quintessentially marks membership in the people of God. When the seventy received their mission, a community’s hospitality was the proof of participating in the Kingdom of Heaven. Hospitality defined the Samaritan as a good neighbor. And in the next chapter, Luke 11, the tell of a friend is their willingness to give you good things when you ask for them, even when doing so inconveniences or costs them.

Jesus told the story of the Good Samaritan when he met a man skilled in Biblical study who had trouble living God’s Word in relationship to his neighbors. Luke “shock[ed] [his readers] because they did not expect a Samaritan, an enemy…, to be their neighbor and succeed in what their religious leaders failed to do.” [3]  In this story Jesus met a woman so busy serving others that she wasn’t listening for God’s Word.[4]  Luke shock[ed] his audience again” when he welcomed Mary as a student.[5] 

Recovering the symbiotic relationship between the ministry of service to a broken and hurting world and deeply listening to the words of Jesus can be a step toward healing the divisions in today’s Church and empowering us for being Kin-dom of God friends, Realm of God neighbors. Notice that “Jesus does not ask Martha to give up the ministry of diakonia; instead, he intends to relieve Martha from her anxiety and exhaustion by inviting her to join her sister in learning from him. Then, she can resume her hospitality with her sister.”[6]

These past several weeks I’ve spent a significant amount of time offering a progressive Christian witness in the public square. Listening to the stories of our neighbors about the impact of unaffordable health care and resulting medical debt has been heartbreaking. Listening to the anger and determination of young activists whose communities have been targeted by voter suppression laws has been inspiring. Crafting public statements and working on ballot initiatives in what the UCC Statement of Faith calls “the struggle for justice and peace” is exhausting! Sitting at the feet of Jesus listening deeply to his words grounds us, calms us, reminds us why we are doing ministry in the public square. Without the doing – the struggle, the risks, the solidarity with and accompaniment of our neighbors, “faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.”[7]

Last Saturday while moderating a webinar to inform, educate, and mobilize progressive churches for reproductive rights I heard both Rev. Dr. Cari Jackson with the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Right and Brittany Fonteno, executive director for Planned Parenthood AZ say they were engaged as Christians in the fight for abortion rights not in spite of their faith but because of it. They are women who model for me the ministry of hospitality – neighborliness, and friendship – built upon a foundation of sitting at the feet of Jesus and deeply listen.

More than that, these women are the voice of Jesus for me. The Word of God that Mary was drawn to was not written on the scrolls in her synagogue. The Word of God that engaged Mary was the Word of God embodied and the words he spoke. Balancing the tasks of hospitality with the ministry of the Word means sitting at the feet of our neighbors and listening to them too, for they have a Word from God for us told in the stories of their lives. Jesus always taught us about the Realm of God through the lens of human experience. Jesus was focused on people not issues. He always interpreted the issues of his day through the lens their impact on people’s lives. And when challenged with a decision between what his Bible said and doing the compassionate neighborly thing, Jesus always chose hospitality.

Martha, thank you for opening your home to us this morning. Mary, thank you for your calm non-anxiousness in the midst of swirling surges of busy-ness and doing. Jesus, thank you for affirming countercultural gender roles, and for reminding us that actions related to loving mercy and doing justice and spending time in your presence listening deeply are two sides of a balanced life for everyone invited to your banquet table.

“If we censure Martha too harshly, she may abandon serving all together, and if we commend Mary too profusely, she may sit there forever. There is a time to go and do, there is a time to listen and reflect. Knowing which and when is a matter of spiritual discernment. If we were to ask Jesus which example applies to us,” Martha or Mary, “his answer would probably be, “Yes.”[8]


[1] Swanson, Richard W. Provoking the Gospel of Luke: A Storyteller’s Commentary. P. 167.

[2] Sarras, Rev. Niveen. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-16-3/commentary-on-luke-1038-42-5

[3] Ibid.

[4] Craddock, Fred B. Luke (Interpretation: a Biblical Commentary for Teaching and Preaching. P. 151

[5] Sarras, Rev. Niveen. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-16-3/commentary-on-luke-1038-42-5

[6]Ibid.

[7] The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version (Jas 2:17). (1989). Thomas Nelson Publishers.

[8] Craddock, p. 152