Happy Easter, Everyone!

Heresy, Humor, or Bad Taste? You Decide!

I’ve always liked the stories about Mary and Martha.  They told us in Sunday School that Martha was too involved with worldly things (like making sure a houseful of people got something to eat) and Mary was more interested in listening to Jesus.  Mary, we were told was right.  After all, Jesus said she had chosen “the Better Part.”  (Luke 10:42)

Unfortunately, I never thought to use this as Biblical justification for my preferring sitting around and talking to cooking and cleaning up, even though the things I wanted to sit around and talk about (everybody’s love life, workplace drama, what was going on with Friends, The Sopranos, The Big Bang Theory) wouldn’t have qualified for “the Better Part.”

The story of Mary and Martha has something for everyone:  sibling rivalry, the philosophical tension between being and doing, maybe even some romance.  I still wonder if there was some romantic tension between Jesus and Martha.  She complains to him that he should tell Mary to help her.  ("Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me."   Luke 10:40)  He then basically tells her to chill.   Later when Jesus is about resurrect Lazarus, Martha points out the he has been dead for four days and smells.  Jesus rebukes her “"Did I not tell you that if you would believe you would see the glory of God?"  (John 11:40)  Maybe Martha missed that when she was in the kitchen.  Does this remind you of Tracey and Hepburn or any Meg Ryan movie?

And maybe Mary was interested in Him, too.  Isn’t there something kind of steamy about her pouring perfume on Jesus’s feet and drying them with her hair?  Let’s face it, in that story, Mary is no longer a slacker but a hottie. 

And I’ve wondered why Mary and Martha were single and living with their brother.  Were they waiting for husbands?  Instead of the young women I’ve always pictured, maybe they were confirmed spinsters like those found in English “cozy” mysteries or the novels of writers like Barbara Pym.  I can picture a modern Martha in good tweeds and sensible shoes running the church bazaar, while Mary had earnest discussions with the unmarried vicar.

But we never find out what happened to them.  Did they ever get married?  Did they become leaders in the new church?  I’m a romantic and a feminist.  I hope they did both.

 

It's not string theory . . . or is it?

I don’t understand string theory, although I’ve tried.  Well, I looked it up on Wikipedia.  I got halfway through the first sentence.  Thanks to The Big Bang Theory, “string theory” has now replaced “rocket science” as the ultimate impossible-to-fathom thing that something else (like changing a tire or retrieving lost computer files) is not.  (Or supposedly is not.)

Supposedly, Christianity is not string theory.  Some say it can be reduced to “Love God. Love your neighbor.  Love yourself.”  Others say, “The Old Testament has ten commandments and the New Testament has two.  Everything else is a suggestion.”  That sounds simple enough.

But then we come to the double problem of Details and Stuff.  How long did it take God to create the universe? Did Moses turn the Nile into blood or was it just red mud? Was Mary really a virgin?  The Old Testament is full of details and a lot of them are about Stuff – how to build the temple, how to sacrifice animals, what the priests should wear, what to eat or not eat, how to treat skin disorders.  (Leviticus goes into great detail about the making of beautiful things for the Tabernacle and then talks about smearing them with the blood of the sacrificed animals.)

And today, we still have details:  millions of books about theology, millions of debates in meetings in churches, millions (Or is it billions?) of people worrying if they are “doing Christianity” right.  How many of them are making themselves sick with this worrying?

And of course, there is Stuff:  candles, altars, incense, stained glass.  A lot of it is beautiful and even fun.  But what is the Stuff doing to create Christians?  This creates the problem of how we should feel about Stuff.

Have Details and Stuff turned Christianity into string theory?  Do they have to?

Not necessarily.  And maybe the problem is not that they are making Christianity harder, but that as simple as it really is, the problem is that doing is a lot harder than understanding.

I don’t have a solution.  But maybe the first step is to stop worrying about the Details and Stuff.  You won’t be able to ignore them; you just don’t have to worry about them.  Loving God, our neighbors and ourselves is challenging enough.

But we still had the best bands!