God and Culture
Luke 10:38-42
Rabbi Rev. Dr. Michael H. Koplitz
The Mary and Martha story can be found in Luke chapter 10 verses 38 to 42. The usual
interpretation is that Jesus is telling Martha that it’s more important to listen to him
than it is to do the regular household work. And that’s a fine interpretation. I want to
add in more to the interpretation of the story because there’s so much more to it. I
could spend quite a bit of time going through different aspects of it. But I will do that
because we only have so many minutes together.
In my research on the Bible, I look heavily at the language and also the culture. When
you understand the culture of Jesus day, the stories met start to make a lot more sense,
and you get a lot more out of them. Remember that the authors of the Bible did not
have to write their culture into each of the narratives because they knew their culture.
For example, if you wrote in your diary on Sunday that you went to church, you didn’t
have to write all the details. Details like: I drove my car to church which had gasoline
in it and yes, I did have a license to drive. We know there is a lot more than just having
a car and driving to church.
So let me tell you a little bit about the culture of what’s going on here. When a holy man
shows up at your house, the cultural aspect of hospitality takes over. The first thing you
did, of course, was you invited him in with some of his entourage because you could
probably only fit so many people into your house. The ladies of the house would then
do a couple of things. First, they would bring out a basin of water, and they would wash
the feet, especially of the holy man. Remember, there were no paved roads that Jewish
people could use. Their roads were plain dirt and dusty roads.
The second thing the ladies would do would be to prepare a meal. In the morning, when
the lady of the house awoke, she would make bread for the day. She knew how much
bread she needed to make because it was for her entire family. Then she would make
an extra loaf, which was much smaller in case visitors showed up that day. Therefore,
she would be ready to show hospitality to whomever showed up at her door or whoever
her husband may have brought home.
Therefore, Mary and Martha were obligated by the culture of hospitality to go into their
kitchen area and prepare a meal for Jesus. However, Mary decided to violate the culture
and sat at Jesus’ feet. This also tells us that she probably washed his feet also. And of
course, Martha got very upset because she had to do all the work and the serving all by
herself.
When Jesus says to Martha that Mary made a good choice, he’s informing us that there
is a difference between God’s law and the culture law. So, which is more important to
follow God’s law or obey the laws of the culture. Hospitality was considered a tradition,
but it was also an under-the-table law that you did. Mary was obviously breaking that
law.
So, who makes up the laws and the culture of our society? I wondered where these
different ideas came from. For example, if you look back to the 1950s coming all the
way up to today, you will see that clothing styles have changed. Many of you may
remember the time that men got dressed in fancy suits on Sunday to go to church and
women broke out their prettiest dresses, they even wore hats.
Have you ever watched the show Dinosaurs that was created by Jim Henson and his
Muppets? Well, Jim Henson talked about society’s culture of the day through dinosaur
families. One day, the baby said the word “shmu.” The whole family gasped when the
baby said this because this was considered a bad word. The show goes on to tell us
we’re the dinosaurs got the idea that this word was a curse word. They end up in front
of the council of elders, and by the time the episode is done, the entire language was
considered curse words. Jim Henson’s satirical attempt to tell us that there are laws in
ways that we do things that are developed by humans, and we should question why we
do them. That’s precisely what Jesus was saying to Martha. Perhaps we need to examine
these traditions, and the human-made laws, to determine are they the right things to be
doing?
St. Paul talks about this in Romans five, even though he is very verbose, and it is pretty
well twisted language. He was placing God’s law and society’s law up against each other
and which was the more important to be following. Let me give you an example, if
society’s law violates a biblical law, is it something that we should be allowed to do? I
think all of you listening or reading this message would say it’s the wrong thing to do.
So, in California, a law was passed that said that you could steal $950 out of a store, and
not be charged with the crime. However, those of us who are following the Bible and
are following the ways of our Lord Jesus Christ know that violates God’s law. We know
in the Ten Commandments it says that we are not allowed to steal. Just because society
decided that it’s okay to steal doesn’t mean that we should be disobeying God’s law in
favor of society’s laws. This past year or so, California repealed the law because it was
totally ridiculous.
Paul is saying that we are reconciled to God for the forgiveness of our sins through our
faith in Jesus. Thus, we have to measure what society says we can do versus what God’s
law and what Jesus said we could do. It reminds me of the expression WWJD. For those
of you who don’t remember, it means “what would Jesus do?”
We need to evaluate every time we come up against a tradition of society or laws made
by humans and determine is this something that violates biblical law, the ethics, or moral
code that Jesus gives us in the Gospels. The answer is pretty simple, that we should not
be doing anything that could possibly violate God’s law. Being a disciple and follower
of Jesus is sometimes difficult because you can’t partake in some events that might seem
really cool to do or exciting because they are in violation of God’s law.
But I have to ask you which is better to be in alignment with Jesus and God’s Bible or
in alignment with your society and the traditions of your area? Which one of these is
going to get you into heaven, which one may keep you out? When we become disciples
of Jesus Christ, we take on the responsibility that we will follow God’s law as Jesus tells
us and demonstrates to us in the Gospels. We can’t just get baptized and then go out
and do the societal accepted things that we know are against the Bible. Martin Luther,
one of the champions of the Reformation, said that if you are baptized and sin against
God’s law, then that baptism was simply water placed upon your head and your baptism
at that point doesn’t mean anything. So, I implore you to contemplate when you’re
thinking of doing that this something that society says you can do, but you know is
morally wrong or against God’s law that you will stop and ask yourself the question:
“what would Jesus do?” Of course, then you know what is the right thing to do.
