Martha’s opened her home to offer hospitality to this traveling rabbi and his entourage. She’s doing it as a public sign of her religious commitment. In welcoming Jesus and his followers, she’s following the time-honored Middle-Eastern ritual of hospitality. AND THEN… How busy are YOU these days?
She was sick with a fever; …and that-was a serious-thing… Now-a-days, we generally-think-of ‘fever’ as a minor-kinda-thing. It’s unpleasant. It’s not-something that you’d wish-on-a-person; …but, when you have a fever, you take a Tylenol and go-to-bed. But… that wasn’t the case before pharmaceuticals! A fever could be a life-threatening experience.
Disciples who believe resurrection, live resurrection: we form our lives in the way of the one who sends us, we passionately pursue peace, we breathe into the world the life that has been breathed into us, we let go through forgiveness. May the world see the Resurrected One in our living.
On Easter morning, at early dawn, the women walked to the tomb with the spices they had prepared. They were expecting death, not life. But when they arrived to anoint the body, they found the stone rolled away from the tomb. When they ran inside, they were unable to find the body, which left them perplexed. Yet, their working hypothesis was still that Jesus was dead. It […]