Stop Freaking Out: July 17, 2022

 Year C, Pentecost 6                                   Luke 10:38-42                                                    

         Ever since the story of Martha and Mary was first read, it has been interpreted and misinterpreted in about 100 different ways.  Often times Mary and Martha are pitted against one another. You are either Mary or Martha.  And if you are Martha, you better learn how to be more like Mary. Books like: Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World, Having a Martha Home in a Mary Way, Made Like Martha: Good News for the Woman Who Gets Things Done---have oversimplified this story. (At least the titles have.) 

People have used this story to create archetypes for all women—you are either Mary or Martha. Mary is the devoted learner who sits at Jesus’ feet as a disciple would.  Martha is the worker bee who can’t be bothered to stop and listen because she has too much to do. At times, people seem to be trying to use this story to describe the right and wrong way to be a disciple.

          But really, it’s about different ways of being a disciple and the challenges that arise when all of the preoccupations of our life get in the way of being in relationship with God. There is little doubt that Martha was a wonderful disciple of Jesus.  Showing hospitality was incredibly important at that time.  One doesn’t have to look any further than the story we have from the Old Testament when Abraham drops everything to help three strangers wandering by his tent.  Anyone who has spent any time volunteering in the church knows that a lot of what needs to be done is the very stuff that Martha was doing. 

          Then why would Jesus be critical of Martha? I am not sure that is what is really happening here.  Notice that he’s not criticizing her for what she is doing, not even for what she is complaining about.  He said, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things….”  If you look at the Greek that this Gospel was originally written in, you might note that better translation would be: “Martha, Martha, you are completely freaking out.”   The Greek word that is translated to worried is describing someone absolutely panicked.

This was more than just dinner party stress.  It was stomach churning, headache producing---panic. I am sure there were a variety of things contributing to the panic.  But I don’t think it’s a coincidence that we are at the point in the Gospel when Jesus has set his face toward Jerusalem.  Just a few chapters before, Jesus had started talking about his imminent death.  Maybe Martha was thinking this might be the last time she would see him and here she is doing the dishes when what she desperately wanted to do was sit at his feet like her sister Mary.  But something was stopping her.

          When Jesus told her that Mary had chosen the better part and that was not to be taken away from her—he wasn’t minimalizing what Martha had accomplished.  He was simply reminding Martha that there was a better part to play at that moment.  There was something else she could be doing.  There was a way to step away from the anxiety and panic.  We don’t know how Martha responded, but I hope she sat down for a few minutes, to absorb God’s presence.  Because there he was, the very embodiment of peace, the balm for her weary soul.  All she had to do was stop for a minute and listen.

          If it was hard for Martha to find peace when she was in the presence of God in the flesh, it is no wonder that we have a hard time releasing ourselves from the burden of anxiety in times such as these.  I could start listing the many anxiety provoking things going on in our world, but I fear that would not be helpful.  We all know what is causing us anxiety because it seems to be constantly with us.  With the advent of smart phones, it’s impossible to step away even for a moment.  And it’s not just smart phone causing the problems. The pandemic has intensified all of life’s challenges. 

          In the last 2 years, the number of adults with anxiety disorders has increased by 26%. The number of children with an anxiety disorder has doubled over the course of the pandemic.  The number of people with mental health issues was increasing before the pandemic.  The pandemic simply accelerated the mental health crisis in our country. The rates of depression have also increased exponentially, but that is a conversation for another time.  The point is that we are in anxious times. 

          Many people wonder why Martha went to Jesus to complain about her sister rather than going directly to her sister to ask for help.  I think it was because she knew that that the help she needed was not the help Mary could provide.  She needed (like we all need) Jesus’ help.  She needed healing for her mind---a peace that passes all understanding.

“Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing…” The word for distracted also means to be pulled in many different directions.  Even when we were in part of the pandemic when we were all locked down and limited in what we could do and where we could go, our minds were still being pulled in different directions.  When that happens, our lives become so fragmented, we can barely remember what the big picture is.  For Martha, the big picture was right in front of her---God incarnate.  For us, the big picture—God’s purpose for our lives is a little more elusive. We may hear God calling our name, but it’s a lot easier to ignore.

This is a hard sermon for me to preach because I struggle with anxiety.  I find that the distractions of life can consume me at times. I wonder. I wonder if we could find a way to be distracted by God. If our distractions have started to consume us, what if we found small ways to let God break through and distract us from our own fears and anxieties?

My view from traffic

 That will look different for each one of us. What I know is that God’s peace is here, in this place.  I felt it the first time I walked in. I feel it when the light passes through the windows in a new and glorious way. God’s peace is out there in our cemetery where the names of those who have passed on to the next life surround us.  God’s peace is looking out over the water (even when on the HRBT) when the sun hits the water in a way that makes you forget you are sitting in traffic. 

God’s peace is everywhere, if we look for it. Take some time to consider what thing or person or place distracts you enough to experience some peace and then make some space in your life for opportunities to search for God presence.  When you have found that presence (that peace that passes all understanding)--- bask in it.  Even for a moment.  Because that moment, that moment leads to other moments and those moments are the ones that will save you.

Disciples who are Desperate: June 26, 2016

Year C, Pentecost 6                                                               
Luke 9:51-62                                                                          

            People often struggle with this passage from the Gospel of Luke.  Jesus seems a little insensitive.  He’s not quite as insensitive as the disciples who want to command fire to come down from heaven and consume an entire city because they were inhospitable, but still insensitive.   In this story, he had three people who wanted to follow him.  The first person said that he would follow him wherever he went. Jesus did not say no, but his response was less than affirming.  He said, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”  The second person wanted to follow Jesus but wanted to bury his father first.  Jesus replied, “Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the Kingdom of God.”  The third agreed to follow Jesus but wanted to say goodbye to his loved ones first.  To that Jesus essentially replied, “You can’t follow me when you are constantly looking back.  When proclaiming the Kingdom of God, you have to look forward.”

            The response that troubles most people is to the man who wants to bury his father. Anyone who has experienced the death of a loved one knows how important the grieving process is.  And even if we set aside the emotional needs, what about the very practical needs?  Someone has to make the necessary arrangements for a funeral.   It makes perfect sense that it would be the son who would do that.  Why would Jesus be so unreasonable as to not let someone bury his father?

            In order to answer that question, we need to take a couple steps back to the beginning of the reading.  “When the days drew near for Jesus to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.”  It seems like a benign enough sentence; but it was anything but that.  Remember what happened in Jerusalem: that is where Jesus was crucified.  For the author of Luke, this sentence marked a turning point for Jesus. If it was a movie, the music would have changed and the screen would have darkened.  There would be a close up of Jesus’ face and things might switch to slow motion, because slow motion always adds drama. This was Jesus’ walk to his death.  It is when things got very serious.  When the first man said that he would follow Jesus wherever he was going, Jesus knew that he had no idea what he was talking about.  Even the disciples who had been following him all along did not understand where this journey would lead them. 

            For Jesus, it wasn’t just that things got more serious at this point-- there was an urgency to his actions.  He could not wait for people to say good bye.  He could not wait for people to make funeral arrangements.   His task was to follow the will of his father.  Nothing else mattered in comparison.  Jesus understood the importance of his mission, the urgency of his journey, but it must have been difficult for him to convince others of that.  Even when he started talking to his disciples about his death, they did not really understand it.  They did not understand it until he was arrested.

            About five years ago, I was able to take a month long sabbatical.  I had been studying something called the Emerging Church for several years at that point.  It is essentially a movement in modern Christianity to revitalize the church and find new ways of being the church.  What I learned was that the roots of this emerging church were in England.  The Church of England had begun working on initiatives like this decades before and had even started funding the process long before the Episcopal Church even acknowledged that there was a need.  I was able to visit places in England that had been engaged in this kind of work. They had an entire facility devoted to all kinds of church revitalization. 

I sat down with one of the leaders of the organization as he described all of the things they were doing.  At one point I said, “I don’t understand why you are so far ahead of the American Church in this conversation.” He said, “We hit rock bottom before you did. The church over here has been in decline far longer than the church in America.  You just aren’t desperate enough yet.  However, it looks like you are getting there.”  This past year at General Convention, the church dedicated millions of dollars to exploring new ways for the church to grow and thrive in this day and age (essentially engaging in the very same things the Church of England has been doing for the last 10-20 years). It would appear that we finally got desperate enough. 

            Sometimes that is what it takes for there to be change in the life of a person or an institution.  There needs to be a sense of urgency and desperation.  We have to be prepared to make our faith and even our church a priority in our lives.  You can see it in the history of St. John’s as well. It was not until the church was in ruins after the Civil War when people discovered a renewed energy for the church.  The church had been in decline since the American Revolution, but it was only after the Civil War when people got serious.  The need was obvious as the building was complete rubble.  Our building is not in ruins, but our church is facing hard times in more ways than one.  There needs to be an infusion of energy and hope for it to have chance to make it to year 500, or even 420.  We can’t assume that someone else will do it, someone with more time and more money.  It is dependent on each one of us to make following Jesus our priority. 

Unlike Jesus, we are not marching to our death, but we should still be marching somewhere, with that same determination that Jesus had.  There comes a point in our lives when we have to decide what our priorities are---what really matters in our lives.  What we will see time and time again is that how we spend our time, points to our priorities.

            We don’t need to look very hard to know that the need in our lives and in our world for disciples of Jesus is urgent and desperate.  In our baptism we have been saved, but it is up to us become disciples, to live into that call.  There is no better time than now to commit to follow Jesus.