Tuesday of the Twenty-Seventh Week in Ordinary Time
LECTIONARY № 462 · WEEKDAY YEAR II
When Theos, who from my mother's womb had set me apart and called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me… I did not immediately consult flesh and blood.
— Galatians 1:15–16
Yesterday Paul claimed that his gospel did not come from a human being. Today he proves it the only way such a claim can be proved: with a timetable. This is autobiography deployed as evidence, and every date in it is doing forensic work.
What happens
"For you heard of my former way of life in Judaism, how I persecuted the assembly of Theos beyond measure and tried to destroy it, and progressed in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries among my race… But when Theos, who from my mother's womb had set me apart and called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, so that I might proclaim him to the Gentiles, I did not immediately consult flesh and blood, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me; rather, I went into Arabia and then returned to Damascus. Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to confer with Cephas and remained with him for fifteen days. But I did not see any other of the apostles, only James the brother of the master. (As to what I am writing to you, behold, before Theos, I am not lying.) … they only kept hearing that 'the one who once was persecuting us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy.' So they glorified Theos because of me."
What to notice
The self-description is not modest and is not meant to be. Proekopton en tō Ioudaismō — "I was advancing in Judaism", prokoptō being the word for cutting a way forward, getting ahead of the field. Paul was not a failed Pharisee looking for something better; he says he was outperforming his contemporaries, which removes the most convenient psychological explanation for what happened next. Then Galatians 1:15, which is a quotation even though he does not mark it: ho aphorisas me ek koilias mētros mou, "who set me apart from my mother's womb" — Jeremiah 1:5 crossed with Isaiah 49:1. Paul is describing his commissioning in the exact language of the prophetic call, and the phrase to the nations is in both sources, which is his point. Galatians 1:16 has a preposition worth stopping on: apokalypsai ton huion autou en emoi — most versions read to me, and the Greek says in me.The unveiling happened somewhere interior, and the purpose clause immediately turns it outward. Ou prosanethemēn sarki kai haimati — "I did not consult flesh and blood"; the verb means to lay a matter before someone for a ruling. Then the itinerary, which is the argument: he went to Arabia, the Nabatean kingdom, away from anyone who could authorize him; then Damascus; then after three years, Jerusalem, for fifteen days, seeing exactly two people. The verb for what he did with Peter is historēsai — from which we get history — to visit someone in order to get information from them. He concedes that he asked Peter questions, and bounds it. The oath in Galatians 1:20 shows how much weight the chronology carries. And the last note is generous: the Judean assemblies did not know him by sight, only by report, and they glorified Theos en emoi, in me. The section that began with his own advancement ends with somebody else's praise going somewhere else.
Psalm 139 came four days ago with the escape verses — heaven, Sheol, the wings of the dawn. Today the lectionary takes the other half, and it is the half that matches Galatians: not where you cannot flee to, but where you were made.
The selected verses
Psalm 139:1–3."Yahweh, you have probed me and you know me; you know when I sit and when I stand; you understand my thoughts from afar." Psalm 139:13–14ab."Truly you have formed my inmost being; you knit me in my mother's womb. I give you thanks that I am fearfully, wonderfully made." Psalm 139:14c–15."Wonderful are your works. My soul also you knew full well; nor was my frame unknown to you when I was made in secret, when I was fashioned in the depths of the earth."
What to notice
Psalm 139:13 is the verse Paul is standing on today, and its vocabulary is manual labor. Ki-attah qanita khilyotai — "you acquired my kidneys"; the kelayot are the innermost organs, the Hebrew seat of conscience and hidden motive. Tesukkeni b'veten immi — "you screened me over in my mother's belly", from sakhakh, to weave a covering, the verb used of the cherubim's wings overshadowing the ark. Psalm 139:15 is the strange one and the best line in the psalm: ruqqamti b'tachtiyot aretz, "I was embroidered in the depths of the earth."Raqam is not a general word for making — it is the technical term for variegated needlework, appearing in Exodus for the screen of the tabernacle and the sash of the priest, ma'aseh roqem, the work of an embroiderer (Exodus 26:36, Exodus 28:39). The psalmist says he was worked like the tabernacle curtain — coloured thread by coloured thread, by a craftsman, in a place no one could watch. And b'tachtiyot aretz, "in the lowest parts of the earth," is a deliberate strangeness, since a womb is not underground. The psalm has fused the mother's body with the earth itself — the adamah the first human was shaped from — and put the making in the same region it earlier called Sheol. The place you were made and the place you are going are named with the same word. Set beside Galatians the point is exact: Paul was set apart from the womb for a mission he would not learn about for thirty years, and the psalm says the work in that room was fine needlework done in the dark, by someone paying close attention.
Immediately after the Samaritan. Luke has just spent thirteen verses on a story whose punchline is go and do likewise, and he follows it with a story in which the woman who is doing likewise gets corrected. The juxtaposition is deliberate, and any reading of either passage that ignores the other will go wrong.
What happens
"Jesus entered a village where a woman whose name was Martha welcomed him. She had a sister named Mary who sat beside the master at his feet listening to him speak. Martha, burdened with much serving, came to him and said, 'Master, do you not care that my sister has left me by myself to do the serving? Tell her to help me.' The master said to her in reply, 'Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things. There is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her.'"
What to notice
Mary's posture is technical. Parakathestheisa pros tous podas tou kyriou — "having seated herself at the master's feet" — is where a disciple sits: Paul says he was "educated at the feet of Gamaliel" (Acts 22:3), and the phrase means enrolled, not merely present. Mary has taken up a student's position in a curriculum that did not admit women, and what Jesus defends is not her serenity but her enrolment. Martha's problem gets a violent verb: periespato, from perispaō, to be dragged around, pulled in several directions at once. It is not that she is working; it is that she is being torn. And the word for what she is doing is diakonia, service, ministry — which Luke does not treat lightly: in Acts 6:1–4 the Twelve use it twice and have to choose between diakonein trapezais, waiting on tables, and tē diakonia tou logou, the ministry of the word, appointing seven men so both can happen. Luke knows this is a real problem in real communities, and he is not sneering at Martha's kitchen. The doubled name is his tenderest formula and always signals something serious — Simon, Simon; Jerusalem, Jerusalem; Saul, Saul. The diagnosis uses Sunday's word, merimnas, you are anxious — the verb from Philippians 4:6 — paired with thorybazē, from thorybos, an uproar, a crowd noise. Martha is not lazy or resentful so much as loud inside. Then the textual crux: henos de estin chreia, "there is need of one thing", is what most Bibles print, but the manuscripts also offer "few things are needful, or one" — and if the longer reading is original the sentence is gentler and more domestic. And the last phrase repays the most: tēn agathēn merida exelexato, "she chose the good portion."Meris is the word for an allotted share — land, inheritance — with a specific career: the Levites get no territory because "Yahweh is their portion" (Numbers 18:20), and Psalm 16:5 says "Yahweh is my allotted portion and my cup."Mary has chosen the Levites' inheritance, and it ouk aphairethēsetai, will not be taken away — the promise attached to a land grant that cannot be alienated.
How They Fit Together
Three refusals of the obvious productive next step
Three texts about a productive next step that somebody declined to take.
Paul's is the most startling once you notice the scale of it. He has just had the decisive experience of his life, has been given a commission to the Gentiles, and knows perfectly well that the men who walked with Jesus are one week's travel away in Jerusalem. Any sensible person goes to Jerusalem. He goes to Arabia — Nabatean territory, away from the centre, away from anyone who could authorize him — and stays away three years. When he finally does go, it is for fifteen days and he sees two people. The chronology is the whole argument of the letter, which is why he stops in the middle of it to swear an oath that he is not making it up. If his gospel had been briefed into him at Jerusalem, then the men now correcting the Galatians in Jerusalem's name would have standing to revise it. He is establishing that they do not.
But underneath the polemic is something quieter, and it is what the psalm is for. Paul does not ground his independence in his ability, his experience, or even his vision. He grounds it in Galatians 1:15: set apart from his mother's womb, before there was anything of him to set apart. The most self-assertive passage in Paul rests on the one thing he had no part in. He had been advancing brilliantly in a career he now describes as persecuting the assembly of Theos; the advancement was real and it was in the wrong direction. What was actually load-bearing had been decided in a room he could not remember.
The psalm supplies the room. You acquired my kidneys; you screened me over in my mother's belly; I was embroidered in the depths of the earth.The verb is the tabernacle's, the fine variegated needlework of the sanctuary screen — slow, close, coloured work done by hand where nobody could see it. And the site is described as the lowest parts of the earth, which is not where wombs are, and is where Sheol is. The psalm insists that the formative work happened underground, unwitnessed, and was exquisite.
Then Martha and Mary, and Luke's placement is mischievous. The Samaritan story ends with go and do likewise, and the very next scene rebukes the woman who is doing likewise — hospitality being, in that world, the plain and honorable duty the Samaritan had just modelled. So the two stories cannot both be a rule, and neither is meant to be. The Samaritan is not praised for activity and Mary is not praised for passivity. What the Samaritan does not do is ask a definitional question before acting; what Mary does not do is let the work in front of her decide what she is for.
And the word that seals it is meris, the portion — inheritance vocabulary, the allotment a tribe receives and cannot lose. The tribe that got no land got Yahweh instead, and that was accounted the better arrangement. Martha's many things are real and will need doing, and Luke is not pretending otherwise; what he says is that they can be taken away, and this cannot. Paul's grant was made in the womb and could not be revoked by Jerusalem. Mary's cannot be revoked by her sister.
Both are people who declined to do the next obvious useful thing, and were right.
A Question to Sit With
Paul had the experience of his life and then declined, for three years, to go and get it confirmed by the people best placed to confirm it — and Mary sat down in a house where there was obviously work to do. Neither was being idle; both refused to let the next reasonable step decide what came next. I am rarely short of a reasonable next step. If something had been settled about me before I was in a position to have any say in it, would I be able to hear it over the noise of the things that need doing?