Martha, Mary, and an eclipse
Sermon for Pentecost VI, 2022, delivered at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Louisville, KY Text: Luke 10:38-42 In August of 2018, we drove to my mother’s house in Nashville, Tennessee to see the total solar eclipse that passed over the city. I brought all of my photography equipment and a telescope that I had recently bought. As we sat in a parking lot with dozens of others, I was busy setting up, checking and rechecking everything. I wanted the perfect, Pulitzer-prize winning photo of the total eclipse, as if no one had ever taken such a picture before. I had rehearsed everything in my mind over and over, and when the sky went dark and that dim, silvery eclipse light shone down on us, I took pictures, and looked through my telescope, and took more pictures. I almost missed the eclipse itself. About mid-way through it, I stopped and looked around at everyone else marveling at the sight. So, I took it all in, and for the remaining precious few minutes, I experienced the eclipse. I saw