Hospitality for the Elder Sister

If I had heard of the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon when I was in high school or college, I would have immediately made it my band's name. It sounds like an angsty progressive German punk group or something. What it actually describes, though, is much more interesting. It's the sensation you feel when you've learned a new word or idea, and suddenly you begin to see it everywhere. As a person who is delighted by words and ideas anyway, this happens to me a lot. And it can be dangerous, as was the case with Jim Carrey's character in the movie, 23. To the man with a hammer, everything is a nail.I'm in the midst of a season of my life where I'm trying to read all the books people assume I've already read, and last week I finished John Steinbeck's East of Eden. It's an imaginative retelling of the Cain and Abel story, set in Northern California at the dawn of the 20th century and got my mind reeling with regard to the fundamentals of family relationships. So when I picked up C.S. Lewis' Till We Have Faces this past weekend, I was struck with a Baader-Meinhof moment. Was I just reading the Cain and Abel dynamic into this story about two sisters and their struggles to connect with the Divine and with one another? No, I don't think so.I saw it again in this week's text, Luke 10:38-42. It's a familiar scene and such a short passage for the amount of ink that's been spilled on it. Martha and Mary are another female Cain and Abel pair. In some ways, the story nearly foreshadows that of Jesus' Prodigal Son parable in chapter 15. Maybe Martha and Mary served as his inspiration to craft that tale. Perhaps as he walked away from their open home and extravagant hospitality, he began to think of a story to describe those sisters: the one who had much love because she’d been forgiven much, and the other, center of the home yet far from the Father’s heart. We can certainly say that the connection between how we think our Father treats us and how we treat our sisters and brothers is a theme Jesus is very concerned about.And how is all this going to wrap up our series on Making Room? Come Sunday and find out!-Josh