Context and Water Lilies

This is the second of a series I'm writing just for fun in conjunction with the Journey Girls Summer Study, Hermeneutics.  Next week's will be short.  Promise.  

I took this picture with my phone two summers ago, when our family visited the phenomenal SLAM (St. Louis Art Museum).  No, I don't have any idea who these two random people are.  Yes, that's an original Claude Monet Water Lilies.  

When I look at the context of a passage in Scripture, I feel like the couple in this photo.  I don't know if this was their first experience of a real-live Monet, or if they've been coming to SLAM and doing this right here every week since they were kids.  It doesn't matter.

You see, I had seen calendars with "reproductions" of Monet's artwork, print-offs from someone's color printer.  And when I taught preschoolers, we learned about famous artists and their masterpieces from five-by-seven-inch board books.  But when I saw this two summers ago, all I could say was, Oh.

To me, it serves as a metaphor of what happens when I take a step back from a passage of Scripture, take in the full scale of the historical-cultural and literary context and, in awe, can't believe I exchanged the whole counsel of the Word of God for an isolated, uninformed glimpse.  Oh.  What I have been looking at was so small... incomplete at best, cheap and blurry at worst.  But this?  This is altogether beautiful.

Check out their feet.  They're gonna get as close as they can get to this masterpiece without crossing the line and getting thrown out of the place.  I long to see men and women press their toes to the line and take in deeply the meaning, beauty and truth of the full scale of the whole counsel of the Word of God.  To step back and honor the way the Creator Himself chose to communicate. Not in five-by-seven-inch board books or glossy printer paper calendars.  To see the big picture.  To encounter real-live Truth straight from the hand of the Creator.  That's why we study context.

This couple in their t-shirts, shorts and tennis shoes could come back here to SLAM every day for the rest of their lives and see something new... another shade, a different stroke of the brush.  Just ordinary people, taking in the extraordinary.  It's us, with the living Word. 

One such instance - a Water Lilies experience, if you will - happened for me when I first learned a little about the historical-cultural context of Luke 10:38-42. 

Here Martha and her sister Mary hold a dinner party for Jesus and His disciples.  Well, Martha holds a dinner party.  Mary's the infamous little sister who doesn't pull her weight in the kitchen.  In fact, Luke tells us explicitly that while Martha was busy with preparations (we can only imagine - the Lord Jesus for dinner!  that trumps the preacher by a mile, even the president!)... Mary "sat at the Lord's feet, listening to what He said."  Did you catch that?  "Sat."  I think every adult female living knows how it feels to be pouring themselves out in work and look over only to see a sister sitting doing nothing!

Yet, a little background info clues us in that Luke 10:38-42 isn't about a sisterly spat.  It isn't about laziness.  It isn't even about priorities.  I don't think it's even about a posture of worship vs. a posture of work. 

In Jesus' day, to "sit at someone's feet" meant a very specific thing: a teacher-student relationship.  And not just any teacher-student relationship, but in particular the exclusive relationship between a rabbi (Jewish religious teacher) and his disciple.  Paul, in his self-defense and testimony to the Jewish crowd in Acts 22, refers to his education "at the feet of Gamaliel" (ESV).  As a Jewish young man, whom you "sat under" carried implications for your socio-economic position, your intelligence, your zealousness, your future, your life.  For a Jewish young man.  But here we see a Jewish young woman.  Sitting at a rabbi's feet.  And not just any rabbi.  The Messiah.  The King.  The One and Only.  God the Son. 

When I first learned the meaning of this figure of speech to Luke's first audience, to say a light bulb came on in my head would be an understatement.  It was like stepping back from an original Monet and seeing the scope.  I imagined what it would have been like to be a new Christian, when all Christians were new, and hear the evangelist-doctor Luke's story read aloud.  To be a Jewish wife who had spent a lifetime staying in the outer courts of the temple while my husband entered past the gates.  To be a thirteen year-old girl whose older brothers were all receiving their rabbinical training while I learned to sew and cook and care for my younger siblings.  What would it have been like to have just accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior and Lord, be taking in this portrait of His life and ministry for the first time, and hear this little description of an ordinary girl named Mary. 

To us, the phrase "sat at the Lord's feet" describes Mary's location in the room.  It conveys devotion to the Lord, maybe even a posture of worship.  But for anyone reading or hearing this text back then, it conveyed much more.  Much like a diamond solitaire is a picture, to us, of a very specific, exclusive relationship (the relationship between an engaged couple), sitting at one's feet was a picture, to them, of the relationship between rabbi and disciple.  If you showed a diamond solitaire to a first-century Christian, would they "get" it?  Of course not.  Likewise, Luke is showing us a picture packed with meaning, emotion, and power... that we just don't "get."  Unless we do our homework, and study the context of the text.

Was Mary the only rabbinical student of Jesus?  In other words, was this a one-time thing, exclusive to the point that we may look in and think, "That's really cool, but what does that have to do with me?"  A step back and a look at the wider literary context shows Mary Magdalene (not the same person) in the Garden of Gethsemane, recognizing the identity of the resurrected Jesus when He called her by name (John 20:10-18).  How does she respond? "Rabboni!"  My Teacher. 

And lest we think the Lord Jesus runs a school for women only, we find Him in the country of the Gerasenes (Luke 8:26-39), with an unnamed man sitting at His feet.  An unnamed man who just had a Legion of demons driven from him... who, "for a long time had worn no clothes, and had not lived in a house but among the tombs."  Luke tells us, "For many a time it [the demons] had seized him.  He was kept under guard and bound with chains and shackles, but he would break the bonds and be driven by the demon into the desert."  Yet here he sits.  Healed.  Free.  At the feet of Jesus. 

I first learned the meaning of this figure of speech in Luke's gospel from a sermon of my second-favorite pastor, Dr. Rodney Reeves.  Perhaps the most impacting sermon I've ever heard.  [If you think "impacting sermon" is an oxymoron, you need to come hear my first-favorite pastor at Journey Campus.  I happen to be married to him.]  It was circa 1995.  Dan & I were newlyweds, and I had just transferred from OBU to ASU. Though I'd sensed a call to ministry while at OBU and had changed my minor to Biblical Studies, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was supposed to marry this guy and go wherever he went, asap.  But something was missing. 

I left that sermon totally understanding for the first time the passion and compassion God has for His daughters, for the female race, for me.  I left that sermon totally understanding my next move:  spend my life "sitting at His feet," and encouraging & equipping my sisters to do the same.  Like a tiny seed packed tight with life-power, that Word wedged in my heart, never to be removed, only to be watered, fed, and let loose to grow into something beautiful, something useful, something living and giving life.  Needless to say, I transferred to the closest Christian university and changed my minor back to Biblical Studies.  That's why I smile so wide when college kids leave a Dan sermon and change their major, break up with their boyfriend, or move to India. :)

Context determines meaning.  Not our context.  Not what's going on in our world, in our church, or in our home.  For reasons we may never fully understand, God chose to write His Love Letter in the form of various literary genres, each set in its own specific time and place in history.  We must honor the way God chose to communicate with us, by getting our feet firmly planted in the world of the original audience of the Bible.  Understanding their historical-cultural context.  Stepping back and taking in the "big picture" from Genesis to Revelation.  Not settling for blurry copies or scaled down reproductions. 

Because when we get our feet firmly planted into the world of "their town" and take in the "big picture," theological principles underneath the details become crystal clear.  And those principles form natural bridges from "their town" to ours, making us able to grasp what the text truly means for us today. That's when the world of the original audience and your world today collide in a spectacular experience of God speaking to you in the manner He chose to speak to us all:  the peculiar little book of books we call "The Bible."  The amazing news is, you and I don't have to wait for our pastor to make the worlds collide.  Why do you think the story of Mary of Bethany is included in the Word?  If a girl in the first century A.D. could be a rabbinical student of Jesus Christ, absolutely anyone can.  Absolutely anyone.

"As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, He came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to Him.  She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet listening to what He said.  But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made.  She came to Him and asked, "Lord, don't you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!"

"'Martha, Martha,' the Lord answered, 'you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed.  Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.'"

Luke 10:38-42