We can easily misinterpret what is being said; we can get locked into a tradition of interpretation which isn’t actually faithful to the text; and we can use the story to suit our own agenda. (I read a sermon last week on the Parable of the ‘Good’ Samaritan, and it turned out that the point of the narrative was to be inclusive and liberal, rather than being like those unpleasant narrow biblical scholars; you might be able to infer from that the beliefs of the preacher!).

The short stories told by and about Jesus in the gospels are both attractive and challenging. They are attractive because they are easily memorable (and there is a basic neuroscientific connection between story and memory), because even in their compressed retelling they include compelling characters, and because we are drawn to Jesus’ pithy summaries of what we are to learn from these narratives (‘Go thou and do likewise’, ‘Mary has chosen the better part’ and so on). Yet they are also problematic, since the stories are set in a culture that has, in many respects, a different outlook from ours and a different set of values, and the lessons are often implicit rather than explicit. This means that we can easily misinterpret what is being said; we can get locked into a tradition of interpretation which isn’t actually faithful to the text; and we can use the story to suit our own agenda. (I read a sermon last week on the Parable of the ‘Good’ Samaritan, and it turned out that the point of the narrative was to be inclusive and liberal, rather than being like those unpleasant narrow biblical scholars; you might be able to infer from that the beliefs of the preacher!).

This is especially true of the lectionary gospel reading for Trinity 5 in Year C, the very short narrative of Jesus at the home of Mary and Martha. The Wikipedia entry on this story nicely summarises the dominant interpretive tradition:

Mary chose listening to the teachings of Jesus over helping her sister prepare food. Jesus responded that she was right because only one thing is needed, “one thing” apparently meaning listening to the teachings of Jesus… To simplify, this is frequently interpreted as spiritual values being more important than material business, such as preparation of food.

There are many practical problems with this reading (who is going to move the chairs and tables after the Sunday service?) as well as personal ones (can I really justify my laziness by saying I was listening to Jesus?) and there has been some push back against this idea, one of the most interesting being Rudyard Kipling’s poem ‘The Sons of Martha‘ which celebrates those engaged in practical service, which concludes:

Moreover, there is good research evidence which shows that Christians both feel they are expressing their faith most clearly when involved in practical action, and that this helps them learn and grow as disciples.

And Joel Green, in his NIC Commentary on Luke (p 433) rejects this tradition, since ‘the interests of this brief narrative unit lie elsewhere’ and Luke’s narrative is ‘manifestly concerned with the motif of hospitality’. There are, in fact, textual, contextual, and canonical reasons for reading the text differently.

The passage begins with ‘Now, as they went on their way…’. We need to infer who ‘they’ are, and some ETs (such as TNIV) make this explicit (‘Jesus and his disciples’) even though Luke’s text does not specify this. The idea of being ‘on the way’ is typical of this long section of Luke’s gospel, until the entrance into Jerusalem on Cloak Sunday (no palms in Luke!) and connects back to the beginning of this material in Luke 9.51. But there is also a connection with the preceding episode about the Good Samaritan, where the practical context was the danger of journeying and the importance of help and hospitality.

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