Martha, Mary and Jesus
American Baptist Women in Ministry Sunday
WELCOME/ANNOUNCEMENTS
CALL TO WORSHIP
One: In the name of Jesus, author and perfecter of our faith, we gather as a community of faith to worship our God and Creator.
All: We are surrounded by the memories of those who continued the race begun by Christ Jesus.
One: We treasure the memories of what they have left behind, yet to hold on too tightly to the past does not honor the gift of their spirit.
All: The baton is being passed to us here today; men, women, adults, children. Our hands will carry the torch into the future. Let the race continue.
MISSIONS MOMENT
Invocation and Lord‘s prayer: Creator God, on this Sunday we recognize that you have called each of us into ministry with you. You call us to use our gifts regardless of our gender. You urge us into deeper relationships with you regardless of age. You challenge us to walk beside you regardless of abilities or disabilities. And God, call us, urge us, and challenge us so that we may see with your eyes and heart, and not our own, that there is a place for each of us to serve in your world. In Christ’s name we pray. Amen.
HYMN Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee # 20 (v1, insert,v2, v3)
SEE INSERT: God of Love and Joy and Laughter, by Jane Parker Huber
God of love and joy and laughter, calling us to fruitful days,
May we be the echoes after church and people sing your praise.
Your love calls our love to being, grows, surrounds, up builds and holds,
Clears our eyes for keenly seeing all the world your love enfolds.
GREETINGS
PRAISE SONGS
PRAYER God of the Women
God of the women who answered your call, Trusting your promises, giving their all—
Women like Sarah and Hannah and Ruth: Give us the courage to live in your truth.
God of the women who walked Jesus’ Way, Giving their resources, learning to pray—
Mary, Joanna, Susanna, and more: May we give freely as they did before.
God of the women long put to the test, Left out of stories, forgotten, oppressed,
Quietly asking: “Who smiled at my birth?” In Jesus’ dying, you show us our worth.
God of the women who ran from the tomb, Prayed with the others in that upper room,
Then felt your Spirit on Pentecost Day: May we so gladly proclaim you today.
0 God of Phoebe and ministers all, May we be joyful in answering your call,.
Give us the strength of your Spirit so near That we may share in your ministry here.
tune : “Be Thou My Vision.”,Carolyn Winfred Gillette, Gifts of Love: New Hymns for Today’s Worship, Geneva Press, 2000.
SPECIAL MUSIC: I Cannot Tell - Rick Irish
SCPRITURE READING Mark 8: 31-38
Prayer of Dedication of Gifts and Self
Gracious and Loving God, as we bring you the gifts we have to offer we pray for guidance to use them wisely. Teach us to use our money to make the world a place where justice is the norm, not merely a hope. Show us how to use our time and abilities so that our choices will be ones that honor you. We pray that our spirits will work to bring peace to a struggling and hurting people. You are a God who breathes hope into each of us. Give us the courage to breathe hope into others in Jesus’ name. Amen.
*HYMN: Be Thou My Vision #532
Martha, Mary and Jesus John 11:1-44
The beginning of this story is fascinating. It’s like the beginning of many stories we tell where we try to get all the characters straight. We have Lazarus of Bethany, not some other Lazarus. We have the Bethany where Mary lives with her sister Martha, not some other village of Bethany. Then we are told which Mary. Mary the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair. This is a story about that Mary. There doesn’t seem to be anything peculiar about these descriptions, or is there?
For those of us who have a general knowledge of the Bible and have read so many of the stories before, we might not notice much about these few verses. But there is something interesting. We are reading in chapter 11 of the Gospel of John. Mary does not anoint the feet of Jesus until chapter 12. So Mary is being identified by something that she has not yet done according to the way the author of John is telling the story. By the time the author of the Gospel of John wrote chapter 11, everyone already knew the story in chapter 12. So the reference makes sense in that context. People would say, “Oh, that Mary.”
For me, this small detail that seems so insignificant, is very significant for another reason. It reminds us that when we read the Bible we need to let go of some of our ideas about time. We need to read this story not simply as a report of an event that happened 2000 years ago. We need to remember that this story is a story about what is happening this very day in all of our lives.
Jesus arrives four days late. When he arrives, Lazarus is dead and buried. This is an important point. Lazarus is not simply sleeping. He is not merely sick. Lazarus has died and been sealed in the tomb for four days by the time Jesus gets there. Large crowds of people have gathered in Bethany to mourn and grieve. Some have come to comfort and console Mary and Martha. It isn’t unlike what happens today when someone dies.
When Martha hears that Jesus is coming, she goes out to meet him. She greets him with these words. “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” The same exact words that Mary later speaks to Jesus. It is as if Mary and Martha had spoken about this before Jesus arrived. It is common when people die, isn’t it? We tell the story over and over of what happened and the story telling isn’t just about letting newcomers know what has happened. There is something sacred and healing in telling the story of what has happened.
“If only Jesus had been here,” I can imagine them saying each time they told the story.
Some have suggested that Martha’s words are intended simply to express her grief. Perhaps that is not the case. Most of us have probably noticed that people are frequently angry when someone dies. They are angry with the doctors and nurses who couldn’t do anything to prevent it or who didn’t get there in time. They are angry with the person who died. They are angry with themselves for something they did or did not do. They are even angry with God. It isn’t difficult to imagine that both Mary and Martha might have been angry with Jesus. After all, they had sent word to Jesus that Lazarus was sick. They had seen Jesus heal other sick people. If only Jesus had been there, their brother would not have died. It isn’t so difficult to imagine feeling angry in such a situation!
The thought that Martha was angry with Jesus makes the next few verses even more important. Jesus proclaims that he is the resurrection and the life. Heidi Bright Parales points out that, “Jesus then revealed for the first time—and to a woman—the focus of the Christian gospel: that Jesus is the resurrection and the life, and that those who believe in him will live even if they physically die.“1
Martha responds to Jesus with a confession of her belief in Jesus. Martha says, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.” This is an incredible affirmation by Martha! In fact it is the most complete affirmation of who Jesus is that anyone had made up to that point in the Gospel of John. //Even though her brother is dead //and Jesus did not get there in time to save him, //Martha can still boldly proclaim her faith in Jesus. //Even though she has not yet seen Jesus raise Lazarus from the dead, she can still boldly proclaim her faith in Jesus. It isn’t always easy to believe in God in the face of death and yet Martha believes.
The New Interpreter Bible Commentary says, “The way to experience the power of God’s love for the world that defeats death, to receive the promises of God as the reality of God, is to believe in Jesus. When Jesus asks Martha, “Do you believe this?’ he asks her to believe both that he is the resurrection and the life and that as the resurrection and the life he defeats the power of death. That is, he asks her whether she believes in the fullness of his relationship with God and the effect of that relationship on the life of the world.” ///// Do you believe that God has defeated the power of death? ///// How do you see God having an effect on the world through Jesus Christ?
The story continues. Martha goes to tell her sister that Jesus has arrived. The verse says she told her privately. //What did Martha say to Mary? We’ll never know. //So now it is Mary’s turn to go to Jesus. A crowd, thinking she is going to the tomb to weep, follows her. Mary comes to Jesus, kneels at his feet and says the same
words we earlier heard Martha speak. “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” She was weeping. Were they tears of anger? Were they tears of grief? Perhaps they were both. Jesus is so moved by Mary’s tears and the grief of the people gathered that he, too, begins to cry. Jesus weeps with them.
Why did Jesus weep? //We simply don’t know why Jesus wept. And most likely the reason does not really matter. What matters is that Jesus wept.
Ann Weems is her book Psalms of Lament pours out her grief and pain to God in the months following the accidental death of her son. In the opening sentences of the preface Weems writes, “This book is not for everyone. It is for those who weep and for those who weep with those who weep. It is for those whose souls struggle with the dailiness of faithkeeping in the midst of life’s assaults and obscenities. This book is for those who are living with scalding tears running down their cheeks.” //// “Of course, I know my psalms are not finished. Anger and alleluias careen around within me, sometimes colliding. Lamenting and laughter sit side by side in a heart that yearns for the peace that passes understanding. Those who believe in the midst of their weeping will know where I stand. In the quiet times this image comes to me: Jesus weeping.
Jesus wept, and in his weeping, he joined himself forever to those who mourn.
He stands now through all time, this Jesus weeping,
with his arms about the weeping ones:
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”
He stands with the mourners, For his name is God-with-us.
Jesus wept. 2
Perhaps this story of Martha and Mary and Lazarus and Jesus is telling us that two things are true at the same time. God both sees a picture much larger than the one we can see. Jesus knew he was going to raise Lazarus. He knew the rest of the story just as God always knows the rest of the story. God knows that death does not have the final say about who we are and that God always has the last word. Yet God also knows that the pain and suffering that we experience in this life is real. And God weeps with us just as Jesus wept.
But the weeping never has the last word. Jesus asks to be taken to the tomb. When he gets there he tells them to take away the stone. Martha quickly suggests that it might not be such a good idea. “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.” // One has to love Martha for this statement. Just minutes before she had said- “I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God.” And now she is worried about the smell of death. Isn’t it just like us? We claim to believe in Jesus,//and we truly believe in Jesus // and yet we have such a difficult time embracing all that it means to believe in Jesus. It is so difficult for us to let go of the limits that we place on what is possible in order to embrace the limitless possibilities offered by Jesus.
And Jesus says. “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God.” We probably don’t want to even consider the number of times in our lives that Jesus must have thought, “Did I not tell you.” It is so very difficult sometimes to believe. And harder still to live our lives based on that belief. /////
So they take away the stone. Jesus prays a prayer to God and then cries out with a loud cry, “Lazarus, come out!” And the dead man comes out! His hands and feet and face are wrapped in the burial cloth. He is all bound up. Jesus says, “Unbind him, and let him go.” Unbind him and set him free.
Jesus comes to us to set us free. Jesus comes to bring us new life. Jesus comes to release us from our fears and our worries. Jesus comes to unbind us from all that holds us captive. Jesus comes to tell us that death does not have the last word.
If we were to continue reading in the Gospel of John we would discover that it is in the very next chapter that Mary takes out a jar of costly perfume and breaks it open and anoints Jesus’ feet. The stench of death is replaced by the smell of sweet perfume.
And that is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. There is nothing in our lives that is so terrible and awful, nothing so filled with death and decay that Jesus Christ can not transform it into something new. Jesus comes to bring us new life. Do we dare believe?
HYMN Amazing Grace #502
Benediction: Go, knowing that you are not alone. You are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses.