What is it you have wanted to do with your time, your talents, your passions, your treasure? Maybe you are like Martha. Your calling, your vocation, has been to serve others in a way that is practical, necessary, culturally acceptable, and commendable, even by Jesus himself, when he declares in the Gospel that “the greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like one who serves” (Luke 22:24-26). The phrasing employed in that saying is the same used to describe Martha in this passage, that of serving as a deacon, a role later assumed by St. Stephen and regarded highly in the church community. This kind of service Martha renders is the kind of a leader, a leader among the people of God.

But maybe you’re more like a Mary. Part of your calling, your vocation, part of who God has made you to be, has been to grow and become someone that your culture does not embrace, does not accept, does not easily reconcile itself with. It’s not because you want to cause trouble, or because you’re seeking attention from those around you. After all, your focus, like Mary’s, is not on the crowd. Your focus is on the truth of things, such as Jesus’ teachings, and you, like Mary, too, may be found sitting at Jesus’ feet, learning.

But what you are doing, what Mary is doing, is attracting the attention of others, anyway. And, because Mary stands out so plainly amidst the crowd of men clamoring to learn from the Rabbi, Martha is doubtless not the only one to notice. But Martha is the only one who has the boldness of spirit to call Mary out in front of the crowd. Martha is, after all, the host of the banquet, the household owner, the land owner, with staff and help and willing assistants to manage the undertaking of hosting seventy-something disciples and hangers-on with both graciousness and grace. Maybe Martha Steward patterned herself after Martha of the Gospels.

Who wouldn’t want to be Martha? After watching men host banquets for guest speakers and rabbis, after seeing her community gather in other people’s households to compliment the hosts on their tables, the decorations, their tidiness, their generosity, after waiting and waiting for some brave rabbi who would be honored to speak at her house, a house headed by a woman and not a man, the moment had finally come. She was finally the one to host the greatest teacher of all. But Mary was doing nothing to help – just sitting there like a child rather than making the most of the occasion and bringing honor to the household.

And, looking at Mary in that light, who would want to be her, living in her sister’s shadow? Mary didn’t fit the mold like Martha did. Mary was a woman who was drawn to living life more as a man of her time, as a student of theology, scripture study, and legal interpretation. Have you heard stories of women entering into fields once held exclusively or predominantly by men?

Maybe you’ve seen the movie about the career of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The assumptions we live in are hard to change. My wife told me a story about her husband, whose office, when he taught at Georgetown Law, had an invitation posted on his door, the address to which read: To Justice and Mrs. Ginsburg…” Even having attained a role occupied by only eight other people on earth, a beloved beacon of hope and determination for women around the country still would suffer reminders of how rare it was to be a judge who happened to be a woman, let alone to be a woman who happened to be a Justice.

Who would want to be a Mary in the world of Jesus, or in the world of today for that matter? I’m not sure the Gospel writer, Luke in this case, was convinced it would be a good idea.[i] While he likens Mary to Jesus and St. Paul, sitting at the feet of religious scholars listening (Luke 2:46 and Acts 22:3), Mary also differs from them both in her silence before her teacher. Jesus, when he was just a child, asked and answered questions of the religious teachers at the Temple.

And Paul, who learned at the feet of Gamaliel, eventually took up his own calling as a teacher of the Word. Not so with Mary, we are told. To Luke, she is only a disciple and a follower of Jesus – not a leader, preacher, teacher or apostle or anything other than a quiet student.

And we are the poorer for it, for living in a world that listens to the perspective of Luke, for only recently embracing women in roles heretofore held by men alone. We are the poorer for it, for failing to train girls as much as boys to occupy positions outside the keeping of the home and the rearing of children, for failing to equip women to solve the problems we only have allowed half our world to puzzle with. We are the poorer for it, for falling to the same fear that Luke had of a woman learning to do something only a man had done before.

We are the poorer for it, because we are allowing our own preconceptions to place limits on what God can do with us, what God can do with our neighbors, what God can do with the world God created. And that’s not who we are. It’s not what Jesus preached. It’s not what the Church has taught. It’s not what John Wesley believed. The founder of the Methodist movement thought that we are, as Christians, not just redeemed and justified before God, but also that we are continually being made more and more whole. We are being sanctified, perfected, made complete in love.

I was asked at my ordination: “Do you expect to be made perfect in this life?”[ii] I was asked, in archaic language, if there was anything in me that would keep me from believing that God could do whatever it is that God wants to do with me – to make me whole, to convince me of my belonging and redemption time and again, to reinstate me as many times as Jesus reinstates Peter, to empower me to care more for others than I believed I ever could.

I was asked at my ordination, “Do my own preconceptions place limits on what God can do with us, what God can do with our neighbors, what God can do with the world God created?” I answered my Bishop, that I believe God can do what God will do.

This Sunday, it’s my prayer that you feel similarly, if you haven’t before, that you believe in God enough to follow after your own sense of the Spirit’s callings and promptings, whether that’s to do something socially acceptable and practical and clearly needed in the world around you, or something that’s radical, difficult to comprehend, and equally challenging to undertake. It’s my prayer that you believe enough in God that following your calling will not be threatened or undermined by others following theirs, and likewise that you won’t try to restrict people from pursuing their vocations, just because you don’t share them.

It’s my prayer that all of us will bravely believe in God so much, that all of us will be able to support one another in our own callings, our own vocations, our own missions and ministries, so that our service to God in this world is not mired in conflict or casting blame but instead is so full of diversity and creativity that it can only come from the Source of all creation, the Creator of all callings, the Teacher to us all. Will you believe in a God like that? I pray you will. Amen.

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[i] Schaber, Jane. “Luke.” Newsom, Carol A., and Sharon H. Ringe, eds. Women’s Bible Commentary. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998. PP. 363-380.

[ii] Wogaman, J P. Surrendering my Ordination: standing up for gay and lesbian inclusivity in The United Methodist Church. Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2018. P. 20.