I particularly like Sayer's quote about Mary and Martha.
I think I have never heard a sermon preached on the story of Martha and Mary that did not attempt, somehow, somewhere, to explain away its text. Mary's, of course, was the better part--the Lord said so, and we must not precisely contradict Him. But we will be careful not to despise Martha. No doubt, He approved of her, too. We could not get on without her, and indeed (having paid lip-service to God's opinion) we must admit that we greatly prefer her. For Martha was doing a really feminine job, whereas Mary was just behaving like any other disciple, male or female; and that is a hard pill to swallow.
Thanks, Simone. This is good. I especially like her second last paragraph:
ReplyDeleteStanding humbly with this knowledge, we reject the self-exaltation and self-directed theology of our times. And we also reject the proud human tendency to value and define people by their roles, knowing that our Savior modeled and commended the role of a servant to His followers. Female Christ-followers are first His disciples who, at various times in life, labor in differing roles as He assigns them. The lives of individual female Christ-followers will never look exactly alike, so we must never reduce the message and definition of biblical womanhood to that of a role. Nor should we allow others to define this message as such, for being a woman made in the image of God and rescued from corrosive, indwelling sin by the atonement of Jesus is the preeminent definition of biblical womanhood.
I almost put that one in too!
ReplyDelete