The Good Portion
“O Lord, if I have found favor in your sight, do not pass by your servant.”
The Chinese-American artist He Qi — currently an Artist-in-Residence at Fuller — produces his own unique style by blending Chinese folk art and traditional painting techniques with iconographical themes of the Western Middle Ages and Modern Art. In his depiction of Mary and Martha, Martha is bent and burdened in her much serving, where Mary is seated, her head bowed and hands folded in prayer, inclined peacefully towards Jesus, the Spirit descending quietly upon her. Jesus sits between them, recipient of Martha’s hospitality, and his hand raised, receiving, honoring, and defending Mary’s patient attention. The three together recall another incident of hospitality, that of Abraham, and his three visitors, often taken as a type of the Trinity.
God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
—Colossians 1:27
Sixth Sunday after Pentecost
Texts for This Week
Prayer
O God, you declare your almighty power chiefly in showing mercy and pity: Grant us the fullness of your grace, that we, running to obtain your promises, may become partakers of your heavenly treasure; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Do not I love thee?
The 18th C Puritan hymnographer Philip Doddridge is little sung in churches these days, but — in the good fashion of Puritan spirituality — his hymns are aflame with themes of a deeply personal love for God that often touch on the imagery of Mary and Martha. Two hymns, indeed, in his posthumous collection Hymns, Founded on Various Texts in the Holy Scriptures (1755) includes two meditations specifically on the scene: Why will ye waste on trifling cares? and Beset with snares on every hand. This text is somewhat less on point, but it is beautifully performed to the old Sacred Harp tune, DETROIT. Evidently, the song featured a scene in the movie “Lawless,” which offers a visually compelling recreation of this primitive American worship tradition.
