Proper 11 C + Serve or Receive? + 7.17.22

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He Qi

M. Campbell-Langdell

All Santos, Oxnard

(Amos 8:1–12; Ps. 52; Colossians 1:15–28; St Luke 10:38–42)

 

“Do Swedish People Feed their Guests?” This question recently arose on the internet as people, especially those of my generation and older, remembered not being called to family dinners when hanging out at friends’ houses. The internet threw up its arms and Lynda Carter, who played Wonder Woman, lamented that her late grandmother was not still with us to airlift tamales to Sweden![1]

With globalization and easier access to food, this is no longer so much the case, but come to find out that, in Sweden, families traditionally only had three months to gather food for the whole year during harvest season. As such, each family would store just enough for themselves. Spur of the moment dinner parties with friends were not a thing, because it was considered a matter of pride for each family to provide for their own family members’ needs. Instead of a value of hospitality, Swedes value the independence of the family unit. As such, parents call to ask permission before feeding their kids’ friends so as not to offend the parents by presuming they are not able to feed their own children.

In modern day US, this is foreign to us. Those of us who have teenagers are quite used to their friends stopping by and needing a meal or a snack. We all live in close proximities to grocery stores, and even the food insecure have access to pantries, one of which is here at church. We don’t think much of sharing food, and some cultures even find it shameful not to share food. Food is our way of bonding. Just a couple of weeks back, I went with some new Filipino friends to Ocean Pacific Market and they introduced me to some new foods. It was one way of sharing their culture with me. I tried some new things, and went a bit out of my comfort zone. But it was important to me to receive their hospitality as I know it was important to them to share a bit of their culture. In receiving, I hoped to serve in a way. There are even cultural scenes posted by the dining area and one of the ladies shared how she worked separating rice from its hulls as a child.

If the norm of sharing food is the case today amongst many of the cultures present in modern day US, it was very much the case in ancient Palestine. Food was also hard won in the desert, but there was a big interchange of different cultures as people traveled throughout the Mediterranean and the Ancient Near East. So hospitality, the ability to properly serve others, became the mark of a good house or a bad house. In today’s passage, when Jesus is visiting, we know he is a VIP in their circles, even if they don’t know he is the Messiah yet. Because he is their rabbi, he is special, and they want to roll out the red carpet. The honor of the family rests on his experience. So Martha is feeling the pressure. Why isn’t Mary helping? She seems to ask through the corners of her stilted smile.

Now, have you ever hosted a dinner party and felt so stressed you weren’t even present to it? Maybe it is Thanksgiving, and you start to snap at your beloved guests because you have been up and going since 6am and there is so much to do and you just want it to be perfect. And so you fall apart. I kind of see Martha like that, here. Like she took on too much trying to host Jesus and some friends, and just wants to yank Mary into her whirl to lighten her load. And Jesus is like, no. Mary saw you had it handled and she needed to be with me and learn some things.
To me, here, Martha is not the bad person, nor is Mary. Jesus is just reminding us that at any given moment in life, we are constantly in a dance between serving and receiving. Sometimes we need to focus on serving others, but we must not do so so much that we become blind to those who are in front of us and the gifts they have to give us. Likewise, if we are always receiving, we must think, what can I do to serve? How can I contribute here? If we are young or dealing with our own health issues, these may be very humble things, but we all have a gift to give. And having others receive it helps us know our own worth.

I have seen this in the tender way I have seen family caring for sick church members recently, or for the gracious prayer request made on behalf of a young adult member of our Wednesday prayer group for a more mature member who has lost his wife. These little gifts can mean so much. Sometimes receiving looks like being selfish, too. I read an article about a woman recently who lost her husband and who gave a gift to him by traveling to Hawaii, a place they liked to go to together. While at first it sounded self-indulgent, I began to see the wisdom in the woman’s logic. She knew her loved one would have wanted to share that experience with her, so she did it. Likewise, she said she is taking care of herself, less from her own drive, but from knowing that is what her spouse would have done for her. Sometimes by receiving something, we are serving too. The most important is to try to be present to the moment. What is Jesus telling you in this moment? To serve, or to sit and receive? Sometimes, it is a bit of both!

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