Area Pastor Gets Stuck In Paper Bag

In Which I Melt Down About That Lutheran Mangling the Story of Mary and Martha

File: Jan Steen - Christ in the House of Mary and Martha GL GM PL 96.jpg - Wikimedia Commons

First of all, I’m in WORLD this morning talking about how women are giving up on marriage. Second of all, I am so scattered. There are so many things to be done—wedding things, writing things, laundry things, catechesis things, Holy Week things, puppy things. And oh my word, THE GARDEN. Or rather, the front porch, which is becoming a heap of despair as I move my abundant possessions around in a circle of chaos.

Last week, I received a large copy of Preston Sprinkle’s Upside-Down Kingdom Bible in the mail. I flipped through it real quick and found that all the articles are delinated by subject like "“Women,” “Science,” “Creation Care,” “Mental Health,” “Migration,” “Politics,” Sexuality and Gender,” “Singleness and Friendship,” “Social Justice,” “Trauma and Resiciliance,” and so on and so forth. And what I thought was so interesting is that times sure do change. Whatever cultural fad evangelicals are embracing, there is always a study bible for it. In the ‘90s, we had those splashy Teen Study Bibles and the Women in the Word and Beth Moore. I can’t remember what it was in the early 2000s because I was too busy having squishy babies to read the Bible with any consistency. In that era, I was preoccupied with making baby food from scratch and gorgeous loaves of bread with seeds and flax and other kinds of organic matter. I washed and folded baby clothes with aplomb and cooked dinner and other astonishing domestic activities.

I only bring this up by way of changing the subject, for I don’t have anything to say about Preston Sprinkle’s Bible just at the moment, except that the bits I glanced over seemed innocuous and bland, excessively “relevant” to the concerns of most Americans last year. I expect by 2026, everyone will have to rush out and buy a Bible that is more to whatever the point will be then.

The Church is always five years behind the times. To illustrate this point, Protestia brought to the desultory attention of the internet a person named Nick Utphall, pastor of Advent Lutheran in Madison. It is an inclusive ELCA congregation, which means that there are a lot of aesthetically sub-par gender flags and badly organized liturgy and a sermon from the pit of hell. Protestia had some pull quotes but I went ahead and transcribed most of it. You can click the pic to go watch if you want, but it won’t make you feel the warm, gracious affection of Jesus down in the depths of your soul, down in the depths of your soul:

Let’s just consider this astonishing theological thought, shall we, and try to work out the logic, if there is any:

If you already didn’t like Luke, hearing implicit criticism of housework, of domestic labor, of what still is way too often known as ‘a woman’s place,’ then let me go ahead and make it worse and say that this may actually be trying further to diminish women’s roles. It comes from the mouth of Jesus and I really hope that it was the writer Luke who just put it on Jesus’ lips.

So, if you have read this text before, you will remember that Martha is the one who is disconsolate, angry even, about being stuck in the kitchen while her sister, Martha, sits rapt at the feet of the Lord of the Universe. Why Martha is mad is a point of fascination for most women. She could be angry that Mary is potentially beclowning herself by sitting with the men. She could be tired and needing help. She could be jealous. It’s one of those big, marvelous question marks in the Bible where, depending on your emotional and spiritual state when you stagger up to the text, God can pour a healing balm over your wounds.

Anyway, this guy missed a crucial detail. He thinks that Jesus, by being able to see into Martha’s soul and admonish her in such a way that reveals to her her own motivations, hubris, sorrows, and exhaustion, is actually the badie. If this wasn’t a family-friendly blog, I would type a couple of rude words here that ought never to be uttered in polite theological company. We carry on:

Martha has a strong social position but what’s more, hidden in the original language is that the tasks she’s doing are described as ‘diakonia.’ It’s the word that gives us the title ‘deacon,’ which became and remains a title in the church….

You know how in human languages, words can be used in ways that are rendered sensical by the context? Don’t worry about that; just make stuff up. It’s 2025, Baby:

Luke is telling Martha and other women that they shouldn’t be deacons. In Luke’s sequel, the book of Acts, no woman is referred to as ‘deaconing.’ There was a purge. The so-called ‘better part’ that Mary has chosen is to sit passively in church, an instruction that no man is ever supposed to fill.

You Guys. There Was A Purge. All those women who had been deacons were killed off right away by the early church, or whatever. More to the point, this man should sit passively in church and never ever speak from the pulpit because all that he has said here is hot garbage, which is my special prophetic word for 2025:

Just listening, she doesn’t ask questions, she doesn’t respond in anyway. Mary remains voiceless. Maybe not Luke, but Jesus here is telling women that. If so, I’d put it in the category with the Cananite woman, when Jesus needed to have his world view and the preview of his goodness expanded…

I don’t want to be mean or anything, but is this person lacking something essential, like a mind? So, just to recap, the Cananite woman did not teach Jesus anything. That is a heretical and wicked reading of that text. Likewise, here, Jesus is not in the wrong. If you read the Bible and come away thinking that Jesus was wrong and Martha, or worse—you yourself—is right, may God have mercy on your soul. Jesus isn’t forcing Mary to “remain voiceless.”

How do I hate this take? Let me count the ways. First of all, it shows a deep and stupid incuriostity. Imagine being the presence of the God of the universe and thinking, ‘I’m not really being heard here.’ Wouldn’t you like to know what God thinks? There is Mary, sitting at the feet of Jesus, absorbing every word from The Word like a sponge—and all the disciples with her—and this genius walks in and is like, ‘You Guys, Muh Voice.’

Second of all, it is just so boring. Imagine waking up in the morning and being very anxious about how all the ways you are going to be able to express yourself, and not bothering to read the actual text and discover the deep affection that Jesus has for Mary and Martha. They are his friends. He goes to their house every night in the week of his passion, to rest and sleep before his death and resurrection. He raises their brother, Lazarus, from the dead. When they both look at him in unutterable grief, having only a few paltry words to express their disappointment, their horror that he didn’t come sooner, he himself weeps because of the consequences of sin and death, even though he is about to undo it all.

So here, if it really was Jesus telling Martha not to serve, not to be a deacon, then Jesus needed to learn his lesson and stand corrected, maybe even doubly. See, whatever you feel about Mary pitted against Martha, if the better part is sitting voiceless is actually trying to indoctrinate women’s subserviance in the church, then it got flipped around as a passage to promote Mary learning and has been used to foster women’s theological education. If it were meant to keep women out, instead it’s contributed to lifting them up. Take that Luke, or Jesus, or whoever.

Or whoever for sure. Way to get caught in that paper bag there, and not be able to climb out. Again, imagine being more worried about your position, how far up you are in the seating so that you miss the sublime moment when the Host walks in and takes his seat, and begins to speak. What is that kind of person called? Oh! I remember! a Fool.

Ok, so, have a nice day!