Tag Archives: ministry

The Trouble with Mary and Martha

July 18, 2022 The Rev. Erik Parker Leave a comment

*Note: Sermons are posted in the manuscript draft that they were preached in, and may contain typos or other errors that were resolved in my delivery. See the Sherwood Park Lutheran Facebook Page for video

GOSPEL: Luke 10:38-42
38Now as [Jesus and his disciples] 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.”

Once again this week, we hear a familiar story from the book of Luke. Last week as we unpacked the parable of the Good Samaritan, we looked at the way in which that parable was less about loving our neighbour through good deeds, as it was a metaphor for God’s mercy and grace given for us. When we read the parable through the lens of the lawyer’s question regrading inheriting eternal life, we discovered that in fact God was the Good Samaritan and we were the one in the ditch. God is the one rescuing from sin and death when our efforts to justify ourselves fall short.

Today, we pick up just after that story with the story of Mary and Martha, another familiar story from Luke. A story for which there are countless pieces of art, bible studies and sermons that all warn against the distracted fussing of Martha and lift up the quiet listening of Mary. Another sermon when the brain can be turned off early on, because we think know what the message is here.

If I am honest, I can go back into my files and find sermons about the version of Mary and Martha that I just described. About two versions of hosting and “women’s work.”

And yet a deeper dive into the text reveals a story very different than the one we so often imagine,

Biblical Scholar, Mary Stromer Hanson and Pastor Amy Courts have done some excellent work to re-visit this text and a lot of what to come is based on their work.

Following Jesus’ conversation with the lawyer who prompted Jesus to tell parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus and his disciples are on their way to a certain village. Presumably this village is Bethany, the home of Mary and Martha.

Upon their arrival, Martha meets Jesus but exactly how and where is not so clear. What reads as “welcomes” Jesus may also be heard as receives Jesus, as in receives his message or teaching. And while we might imagine Jesus the disciples crowded into Martha’s home, the earliest manuscripts of Luke do not include this detail. So this interaction between Martha and Jesus might be taking place anywhere, on the road, in the town square or some other public place.

Then the story notes that Martha has a sister Mary who sits at the feet of Jesus. This of course has led to the many paintings or other pieces of art depicting Jesus and Mary sitting in a living room of sorts as he teaching, while Martha scurries about the kitchen. However, “sitting at the feet” is well known 1st century phrase which means to be a disciple of or follower of a teacher or rabbi.

So Mary is not quietly siting at Jesus’ feet while he id waiting supper, but rather is named as one of his disciples. But it isn’t just Mary. In many English translations the word ‘also’ is omitted. Martha had a sister named Mary who ALSO sat at the feet of Jesus.

In other words, Mary and Martha are both disciples and followers of Jesus. Jesus who earlier in Luke declares that his disciples are the ones who hear his word and do it.

So rather than two women taking different approaches to hosting a guest for super, we have two sisters and two disciples of Jesus.

The story goes on to say that Martha is distracted by many Diakonen, a greek word you might know from Diaconal Minister or Deacon. We have traditionally translated that Martha was distracted, but the connotation is being troubled and in an ongoing way. Martha is troubled by diakonen, not the tasks of keeping a home, but ministry. Martha is troubled, almost being split and divided in herself by all the work of ministry around her.

Martha is not distracted by cooking dinner, but by tending to her village. Feeding the hungry, caring for the widows, visiting sick and imprisoned. Doing all the kinds of things a disciple of Jesus would do locally in her village.

And being troubled, Martha comes to Jesus to confront him about her sister, Mary. Now, ever why wonder why Mary doesn’t speak in this story? It is likely because she isn’t even there. Again the connotation in Greek is that Mary has left her sister, Mary has gone off with the rest of Jesus’ travelling disciples to preach the good news throughout Galilee. Martha does not know where Mary is but Jesus does. And so she is relaying the message through him, that she wants her sister to come home.

And just maybe Martha isn’t only stressed by the task of ministering to her community. Maybe she is worried about her sister who is out on the road, out doing the things that are usually reserved for men, out in the world which is not a safe place, especially for a woman (remember the bandits we just heard about in the story of the Good Samaritan).

And so in the midst of her troubled spirit and worry about her sister, Jesus brings Martha back to herself. ‘Martha, Martha’ Jesus says her name twice. Like a good friend grounding another, Jesus helps her find her feet.

Jesus looks around the village of Bethany, knowing all that Martha is tending to in her community, all the care she is giving. “You have much that troubles you Martha, but there is only thing.” Jesus tells Martha that despite the many jobs and responsibilities of caring for her community, that there is only one call to discipleship. The same call that both sisters are following each in their own way.

And so this story that we used to think was about a couple of sisters fighting over the domestic duties of hosting a guest in their home is something completely different. It is the story of a disciple who confronts Jesus when he arrives in her town with her narrow expectations for what the work of the Kingdom of God might look like, only to have Jesus remind her that ministry and God’s work happens in a variety of ways, and through a variety of people.

Sound familiar?

As churches we have had the habit of being Marthas, not in the distracted busybody way, but as communities that have often and long expected the work of the kingdom to look and be a certain way. We have preferred ministry to take place among us according to our vision and expectations. And lately — say in the past 20 years or so — keeping up with it all has been troubling us and stressing us out. Especially as we think there are folks who should be here with us doing this work.

But Jesus meets us where we are and grounds us too. “Church, Church, you are stressed and troubled by many things, but there is only need of one thing.”

There is only one thing to keep at the forefront, one thing to press us on, one thing that guides us as followers of Christ:

There is only one call to ministry. That each who is called to serve is called by the same God with the same call. That one call is expressed in the variety of work that God is doing in and through us and countless others.

We have been hearing this message over and over again in the Gospel of Luke. As Jesus and the disciples have gone about Galilee proclaiming the gospel, Jesus has ben constantly challenging the displaces to expand their understanding of what God’s work in the world can look like. To be open to others and their different forms of service, who have also heard that one call to discipleship.

And so as we enter this new age of being church together, Jesus is challenging us to too:

Jesus is hearing our complaints and struggles and stress, hearing our prayers and pleas.

Jesus is calling out our names and grounding us again in the Word of God and the sacraments. Jesus is reminding us that God us the one who calls us to serve, and we don’t get to decide what what service looks like for everyone.

And Jesus shows us that this call, this ministry, this discipleship, this preaching of the good news is going to look and be different than we expect.

But it is still the work of the gospel, still the work of the church, still part of the body of Christ to which we all belong.

Today we are called to be like both Mary and Martha, disciples following God calls, using our diverse gifts to take the good news first given to us, good news of mercy and new life, out to the whole world.

Pastor Thoughts, Theology & Culture

Church conventions are boring…and vitally important – Pastor Thoughts

July 17, 2022 The Rev. Erik Parker Leave a comment

As I write to this, I am sitting and watching the ELCIC’s National Convention online. National Church Council decided to hold an online gathering in the 2022 and an in-person gathering in 2023.

The convention this summer will deal only with the items of business that needed to be dealt with according to the constitution (elections and budgets, etc..) Whereas items for discussion and deliberation, important reports from task forces, and other conventions items that are better dealt with in-person will be on the agenda next year.

If I had to guess, even the mention of the words “church convention” would cause most folks to start yawning. The perception of church conventions is that they are pretty boring affairs, with lots of motions, amendments, reports, minutes, points of order and generally people droning on about very uninteresting things.

Certainly, sometimes they can be that.

Church conventions can also be important moments for the church to gather together, to share in worship, discussion and fellowship together, to be one church body together across the country.

Most people who attend ELCIC churches like SPLC might only have a handful of times that they participate in events with other folk from the ELCIC. When the larger church does gather at events like the ordinations of new pastors, or installations of pastors taking new calls, synod conventions and national conventions, there is an opportunity for representatives from our congregation to meet with representatives from other ministries and congregations. These are chances to see what our siblings in faith are doing, to share in one another’s joys and commiserate in our struggles, and know that we are no not alone in the work of ministry. We have others all around us there to support us and who need our support.

As we already know through our shared youth ministry experience, the time of congregations functioning mostly on their own is over. More and more we are going to find ourselves meeting up with and then working intentionally with folks from other congregations. The larger church is going to become a far more interconnected and interdependent environment in the future. We are all coming to learn that we cannot do the work of ministry on our own. Not as congregations, not as Lutherans in Winnipeg or in Manitoba or in Canada.

So yes, National Convention might be something that elicits a few yawns. But it is also a tangible sign that we are not alone as a congregation and the work of ministry will include more siblings of faith working together than ever before.

PS You can follow-up with all the ELCIC’s National Convention things on their Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/CanadianLutherans

Pastor Thoughts, Theology & Culture

Stranger Things and the Good Samaritan – Pastor Thoughts

July 10, 2022 The Rev. Erik Parker Leave a comment

And now for something completely different…

For the past couple of months or so, I have been watching the Netflix show Stranger Things. It first came out in 2017 and for some reason I didn’t get into it. I really should have been really excited to watch it as it checks a lot of boxes that match my interests. It is set in the mid-80s, the era of my childhood. It focuses on a group of friends who play Dungeons & Dragons together and do other nerdy things. There is a healthy dose of pre-teen and teen angst navigating the challenges of school, relationships and growing up.

Behind all of this is the fact the there is a government science lab running secret tests that result in some pretty fantastical stuff involving monsters, portals to other dimensions, missing friends and danger that could end the whole world. Of course, the kids who play Dungeons & Dragons who understand the world of fantasy are the only ones who can really figure out what is going on.

While I can see myself and my childhood in the kids in the fictional town of Hawkins, Indiana, it is the adult characters that I identify with. I understand the sheer panic of Winona Ryder’s character, Joyce, when her son goes missing, and her determination to do anything to save him.

But it is the Chief of Police Jim Hopper whom I cannot help but identify with. He is a big shabby grump with a tragic back story, who ends up caring about the kids of Hawkins and Joyce more than he ever thinks possible. I can see that without Courtenay, Oscar and Maeve I might have found myself living a similarly grumpy and shabby life.

Now, what does this all have to do with church? Well, this week we are about to hear one of the most familiar parables of the bible, the Good Samaritan. A parable so common and whose image is so powerful that we encounter it frequently in culture, despite most biblical images falling out of the cultural awareness. (A metaphor that even Stranger things uses in on episode).

Though the Good Samaritan is story that we often think is about doing good works, caring for our neighbours even when it doesn’t benefit us, it isn’t really about that at all.

The Good Samaritan a parable Jesus uses to warn against the temptation to save or justify ourselves. To try and be the hero of our own stories, or take control of our lives and world and do it all alone.

This is where Stranger Things meets the Bible.

A common theme through the seasons of Stranger Things is that when one character thinks that they have to solve a problem, take on a mission alone or be the sole hero, they ultimately fail. It is always in team work that they succeed.

This Sunday, this is precisely what we are going to explore. Now how the Good Samaritan is an example of how to care for our neighbour, but in fact why this parable is telling us the truth that we cannot do it alone, that we cannot save ourselves, that we cannot justify ourselves.

The Good Samaritan is one of my favourite passages from the bible because when it is truly explored, it undoes our first thought about its meaning. And instead reveals to us what God is actually up to in our world and how God meets us right in the moments we are sure we don’t need God anymore.

Looking forward to Sunday.

Pastor Thoughts, Theology & Culture

Thinking about a future church more than 1, 2, or 5 years from now – Pastor Thoughts

July 2, 2022 The Rev. Erik Parker 1 Comment

On Monday, the fourth of July I will be remembering an important anniversary in my life and my time in ministry. No, not American Independence Day. Only that I was ordained as a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada (ELCIC) on July 4^th, 2009.

I was 26 at the time and went from being a full-time student my entire adult life to serving a congregation on my own as “The Pastor.” I was full of enough naive and youthful confidence that I didn’t know what I didn’t know.

Still, my immediate experience was that my sense of the future church was much different than nearly everyone I was working with. Most of the church leaders and most of my colleagues were old enough to be my parents or grandparents. It wasn’t long before it became clear that most people when imagining the church were thinking one or two or five years down the road, if they were thinking forward at all. Often times the church of people’s imagining was a church 10, 25 or 50 years prior.

My first pension plan statement really brought home the difference for me. My expected retirement was in 2048 – 39 years from my starting date.

Well, this year I am about one third of the way into those 39 years, and if you did the math based on my ordination date and age, you will know that there is a milestone birthday coming up for me.

With my 13th anniversary of ordination on the horizon, I have to say that things aren’t much changed. I still spend a lot of my time speculating about what the church will look like between now and 2048. Not just because it is my retirement year. Now, I often think about the church of my children’s future, and what it will look like for them.

I think a lot of people in church leadership these days, whether lay or ordained, might think I am still naive for imagining a church that exists that far into the future. For a lot of people, imagining a church that is NOT closed one, two, five or ten years from now is really hard.

In fact, a lot of the big questions that loomed in the background in the past decade or two have been pushed to the forefront. Questions are on our minds more than ever about whether or not the church that many have known for the past 50, or 60 or 70 years can survive into the future.

Certainly it is on my mind.

But let me say this, even though there are big questions demanding to be answered just ahead of us, I don’t think I have ever felt less concerned about the church’s survival than I am now in 2022. I think the church needs to change and the way we do ministry together needs continued adaptation, but I can picture the church of 2048 as clearly as I ever have been able to.

Thirteen years ago I was often planning for the church of the future, and that hasn’t changed for me.

As I have been musing about visioning for the past three weeks, I hope it has been clear that I think God is calling us into the future. A future already prepared by God, a future that will stretch and challenge us, a future that will make the church look even more different than it has since the 1950s. It will be hard, and it will be exciting.

But most of all, I believe that God will carry us through. Even when we are sure that the end has come for us, or think that it isn’t worth the effort anymore, God will show us the way.

In fact, if there is something I learned in 13 years of ministry, God is already showing us the way to the next thing. The question is whether we are ready to go along for the journey.

Sermon, Theology & Culture

Impatient Jesus and Ministry Not Going the Way We Expect

June 27, 2022 The Rev. Erik Parker Leave a comment

GOSPEL: Luke 9:51-62
… 57As they were going along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” 58And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” 59To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” 60But Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” 61Another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” 62Jesus said to him, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

Maybe this is a familiar experience to you. You are part of a community or group and someone shows up to something with energy and passion, ready to kick start things with new ideas and vision. Maybe it is at church, on the hockey team, in the office, on the PTA, in the music group. They show up, try their new thing and it does’t go the way they expected. In fact, the community doesn’t receive this new person very well at all. So they pull pack, drop out and probably disappear as soon as they appeared. Maybe you have seen this person, maybe you have been this person. I was this person when I tried out coaching kids soccer for about 8 weeks in 2019.

Today, as we hear from Luke’s Gospel, there is definitely something familiar about this story and experience…

Jesus is out in the world proclaiming the gospel and he sends some disciples ahead of him to make things ready in a Samaritan village. Samaritans and Judeans did not get along.

So when the Judean disciples show up in Samaritan village to tell these backwater folks they are brining the real good news, it doesn’t go so well.

Disappointed, the disciples return to Jesus asking if they should get revenge on these unreceptive folks… which Jesus doesn’t take too well either.

But it is the next part of the story that might be the most interesting or the most convicting. As they walk away from their failure in the Samaritan village and rebuke from Jesus, some disciples in the group begin reflecting on their commitment to the cause. First one vows to follow despite the failure, to which Jesus warns that there might be more unreceptive folks ahead. The next says that they have to go home and care for an aging parent before following (the father is not dead yet, but likely aged). And then another says they have to say goodbye to family before they can follow… to family that is certainly begging or demanding them to stay home.

As we hear this story of Jesus and his disciples today, we hear it as people who have lived through the same disappointment.

I can think back to a number of experiences in my own time in ministry:

One summer I decided to try hosting campfires on a few Sunday Evenings through the summer months. The church I was serving at the time was not a congregation with a strong connection to camp or outdoor ministry and I thought that this might be a small way to introduce them to some of the things I loved about camp. So I invited folks to come out to our large green space behind the church on some select Sunday summer nights to sit around a large fire for some hot chocolate, s’mores, and camp songs. The first week there were 8 people that showed up. Smaller than I hoped, but a good start I thought. The next time there were 4. The third time 2… and then last one zero.

The reverence and nostalgia for evening campfire that I had after 5 summers for working at Bible Camps, was simply not part of their experience and so sitting around a fire in mosquito season didn’t make a lot of sense… Mydream of singing Kumbyah around the fire weren’t to be.

And over the years there have been more disappointments: Bible studies, confirmation classes, fellowship events where things have not been as well received as I hoped for and not turned out as I imagined.

Still, I am hardly the only pastor who has a story of planning an event and folks not showing up as hoped for. And there are more stories of this happening to whole congregations, planing events to welcome the community only to be received tepidly.

In fact there are many places in our lives and world where this same story has played out. Where we have jumped in with two feet, put ourselves into something while also hoping and expecting things to go a certain way, only to be disappointed when when they don’t… and then to quit altogether. Whether it is in the workplace, in the neighbourhood, in volunteer activities, even within families. And in the church, there are lot of congregations who are feeling like there have been more failures than successes lately, and many folks slipping away because it is too disappointing when expectations aren’t met.

This is an understandable human reaction. And yet, when Jesus responds to these disciples making excuses to quit, he does it pretty harshly: “Let the dead bury the dead” and “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

Clearly, Jesus is frustrated with disciples who are throwing in the towel when things don’t go their way.

But why is Jesus frustrated. Does he think the response of the samaritan village should have been better? Or that maybe his followers should have done a better job? Is the solution to do more and do better instead of quitting…

I don’t think that is it.

Rather, Jesus seems to get quite well that failure is part of the price of doing the work. Or rather, that doing the work in order to meet our expectations is not the point.

He didn’t send his disciples to meet conversion quotas in that village. Jesus did NOT promise cheering hoards excited to finally hear from his followers. Jesus isn’t measuring his work by how many attended or put money in the plate. In fact, Jesus is often annoyed by the crowds, frustrated when they want more and more from him.

For Jesus, the thing that he is looking for is not the result, but the action. That the gospel is preached, that God’s Kingdom comer near is proclaimed, that the coming of the Messiah is announced, the good news is told to God’s people. Whether it is to 1 or 10 or 100 or 1000… it does’t matter to Jesus. What matters is that God’s story of Good News is shared in the world.

And however that happens does’t really matter. Jesus knows where he is headed. He knows that the cheering crowds will welcome him into Jerusalem on Sunday and call for his death by Friday. Jesus knows that his rag tag group of followers will be barely able to get it together to make sure the story of his resurrection goes beyond their fear and baggage and resistance. But the Easter story cannot be held back and makes it in to the world none the less and that is enough for God to do God’s work. That is enough for God to change everything.

And 2000 years later, Jesus knows that it is the same for us. Our expectations and visions of how we think this ministry business ought to go get in our way more often than not. But for God that isn’t the point.

God is at work in our failures and false starts. God is still present and up to something when our target audience doesn’t get what we are trying to do. God has plans in mind for us even when we put ourselves out there and things go sideways, or things don’t happen at all. God is still calling us to go ahead and make things ready even when we are ready to pack it in, when it feels like our best isn’t good enough, when it seems like the world doesn’t care, when we are looking for excuses to go home and stay home. God is still doing in and through us – in and through our community of faith, our meagre feeling gatherings for worship, study, and fellowship – the thing that God has always been doing. God is putting the story of Jesus out into the world. God meeting whomever will hear it, with the promise that the Messiah has come with good news, given for us.

The point is that the story keeps getting told. The good news for us is that the good news told to folks who receive it tepidly, told to folks who only hear it once in a while, told to crowds that hardly seem worth the fuss… that is enough. That good news of the One crucified and Risen, the one who claims us in the waters of baptism, the one who feeds us with his own body and blood, the one who calls us to go out into world and tell the story again… that this one only needs the story to be told. That this one calls us to figure out how to tell the story and what the story does in the world after that is up to God.

Jesus doesn’t call us to change the world, that God’s job. Jesus doesn’t call us to manifest crowds of faithful followers, Jesus simply calls us to follow. Jesus doesn’t expect that we will succeed at every turn, but instead warns us that we will likely fail… But that is the mission, that is the call. To tell story of God’s love for the world, and let God carry us the rest of the way… to places we would never imagine and never expect.