"AN M&M Story"

Luke 10:38-42 Do you remember the special contest that M&Ms candy ran some years ago? Everyone knows the traditional colors of M&Ms – red, green, yellow and brown. But if you looked at your M&Ms carefully, if you found a blue M&M, you would have won a million dollars. If you found one of those blue M&Ms you would win the jackpot, because only a few blue ones were made, hidden among the zillions of other M&Ms. A million dollars! I don’t know about you, but there’s a lot I could do with a million dollars. If all it took to get that million dollars was to find a blue M&M, that’s a short-cut I could live with. When I sat down in my Mom’s apartment to prepare my sermon on Thursday night I was glad to have remembered this search for the million dollar blue M&M, but last night, when I got at home I did a little more research and found out that my memory is totally wrong! There was no blue M&M contest at all. Instead, what happened was that people got to vote on a new color to add to the traditional mix of M&Ms, and Blue was color that won. But let’s pretend that my incorrect memory is accurate, that there was a million dollar blue M&M. But before moving on, let me digress, I also found something else about Blue M&Ms’ last night. According to a July 28 2009 CNN news story, “The same blue food dye found in M&Ms could be used to reduce damage caused by spine injuries, offering a better chance of recovery, according to new research. Researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center found that when they injected the compound Brilliant Blue G (BBG) into rats suffering spinal cord injuries, the rodents were able to walk again, albeit with a limp. The only side effect was that the treated mice temporarily turned blue.” As someone who has had a spinal injury, it’s nice to know that the good scientists at the University of Rochester believe that a fistful of Blue M&Ms has a medicinal benefit. If you see me, or anyone else, looking bluer than usual, now you know why! OK, I have digressed wildly from the Gospel lesson, and digressed from my digression, so let’s get back to the main business of the day: the saving Gospel of Jesus Christ! I was in a Bible Study group when I was a student pastor at Trinity Presbyterian Church on West 57th Street on Manhattan. We were reading one of those hard to understand stories about Jesus and his hard to understand teachings. Maybe it was this story about Mary and Martha? Mary and Martha – the M&M Sisters. What the heck does this story mean? During the two hours of Bible Study we talked about what all the things it might mean: do Mary and Martha represent different categories of faith or discipleship? Is Jesus is giving psychological insights about their personality types, so that we might emulate in our own lives something of the personality of either Mary or Martha? Is there practical instruction about the washing of dishes in the home? Or does washing dishes or not washing dishes represent a critical perspective in the journey of faith? Or is everything in this story governed by context, that dishwashing, normally an important daily chore, is rendered unimportant because Jesus’ time is drawing to a close? All these interpretations, all these insights, and Judy Fryer, one of the Bible Study participants. finally turned to me in exasperation: “Jim you’re a seminary student just tell us what it means. Just tell us what it means. There’s too much guesswork, too much uncertainty; just tell us what it means.” In a way, Judy figured I had already found the blue M&M, not because of good luck, or because I was willing to eat my way through a million M&Ms to find it, but because I had the inside track due to my field of study at Union Theological Seminary. She estimated that she read the Bible one hour a week and she imagined that I read the Bible ten hours a day every day of the week. And because I must have already found the answer, I could save her a lot of time and trouble and just give her the answer, too. “Here, Judy, here’s the meaning, here’s your blue M&M!” Judy would have been very happy! From time to time I’ve had different people ask me for the blue M&M answer concerning other parts of the Bible, communion, for example. “Jim, just tell us what it means” for those who are confused about the meaning of the bread and the cup, or “Jim, just tell us how to make communion work”, for those who are trying to feel the difference when they partake. “There are so many interpretations, just to tell us what it means?” Well, there are a lot of answers to offer to those questions. It’s just a meal that teaches people about sharing, it’s all about Jesus getting ready to die, it’s the Jewish Passover turned into a Christian ritual, it’s a ritual representing things that happened a long time ago, it a powerful experience of Jesus Christ in the present, it’s a taste of heaven to come, it’s a time of sober reflection, it’s a joyful celebration, when you eat and drink your life will be different. “Jim, just tell me what it means” might be how Judy Fryer would ask. Just give me the blue M&M.” I won’t give you the blue M&M of perfect understanding. But I will give you my best thinking, my best thinking this morning, but I have to tell you that my mind might be different tomorrow, or next week, or next year! But here’s what I like about the story. Mary and Martha were friends of Jesus, and he enjoyed visiting their home, and he enjoyed being part of the family’s back and forth, give and take, all their conversations about things important and unimportant. He enjoyed the dinner preparations, he enjoyed being with his friends. So today rather than psychoanalyze Mary and Martha, or decide who in your family is best suited to wash the dishes in your home, just try to enjoy the meal, enjoy being together, enjoy our friendship. Yes, there will be some clean-up afterwards – whose turn is it this morning? – and you can help with the cleanup if you are more like Martha, or just come right out onto the steps to enjoy the goodies if you feel more like Mary.