There's Something About Mary

Dear friends in Christ, grace to you and peace, from God our Father, and His Son, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

My seminary classmate, Pastor Stephanie Frey tells the story of her mother on most of the holiday dinners of Stephanie’s childhood, and many other meals as well. Stephanie’s mother always sat sideways on her dining room chair. Why do you suppose a mother would do that; sit sideways in a wooden dining room chair? Yes, of course; she sat sideways so she could easily get up to bring more mashed potatoes, or fill water glasses, or offer more coffee, or to cut the dessert. In a sense, I suppose she wasn’t really part of the dinner group as much as she was a waitress who was allowed to sit for awhile during the meal. It’s sort of sad, when you think about it; that everyone else at the table was in "relax and enjoy mode" but Stephanie’s mom was working; she was on duty until all the dishes were done and all the guests finally went home. When Stephanie describes her mother, I can see my own mother doing the exact same thing. And in my mom’s case, she was often so busy making people feel welcome that she missed out on the conversations at the meal. She was so concerned about their comfort, she became an outsider at the dinner she was hosting; in fact, and she became an outsider at life.

I would like to suggest that Stephanie Frey’s description of our mothers is really an allegory of our lives. Today, we are living in a period of chaos and craziness, in case you have been too busy to notice. Partially to blame is the demanding work schedules that most of us keep. There was a time when people who worked 40 hours only worked 40 hours. Now I hear stories of people working 50 or 60 hours at their jobs, and bringing work home with them for evenings and week-ends. But it’s not just our schedules that are nuts; we also have our children scheduled right out to the very margins of their day. Music lessons, hockey practice, summer school, Scouts, mission trips, service projects and lawn mowing jobs no longer leave any time for them to simply be children. Add to this the expectation of our modern culture that demands that if we’re not busy, we’re not "livin-la-vida-loca" as we should. No wonder most Americans today feel overworked, under-rested, burned out, stressed out, and rusted out. Because the choices we are making about the pace of our lives are killing us.

In the spring of 2004, I was fried. Pastor Keith was a faithful colleague at Our Savior’s, serving as associate pastor for about 15 hours a week, but other than that, I was a solo pastor. Our congregation was growing, we were less than a year into our new Community Life Center, and the pace here was frenetic. And then one Sunday morning in February at the 8 o’clock service, I nearly passed out. I got into the Mayo Clinic for a battery of tests, and when I met with the doctor, he told me there was essentially nothing wrong with me. I asked Dr. David Larson "Can stress do this?" and he responded "Steve, stress can do anything it wants to do." Fortunate for me, I was scheduled for a sabbatical in April, and 15 weeks away from here was the perfect remedy for me.

Do you know what the word "sabbatical" means? Literally, it means "to take a breath." The expanded definition would suggest a time when one steps out of the rat race for an extended period, to recharge body, mind and spirit. Not just a time to rest, but a time to be renewed. A time to catch one’s breath?

So my question for you today is, when do you take a breath? If you say "vacation" I say phooey! Most vacations are not refreshing because they end up being more work than rest. The truth is, we often need a couple of days to rest between our vacations and when we return to work.

Modern technology is supposed to have improved our lives, reduce our workload, and enable us to have more free time. That ought to allow us to catch our breath, right? But the problem is, we end up doing more work and now have even less time. Because of technology, we’re never off the clock. Email, cell phones, texting, Facebook, Twitter -- the demands can always can always find us and require our time and attention. TV, radio, newspaper and internet headlines constantly bombard us with more and more information to worry about, information to cause anxiety, information to consume us. Stress can do anything it wants to do. So the question remains: When do you take a breath?

Let me take a few moments to remind you of Martha’s story that we read in today’s gospel account. Martha and her sister Mary were good friends of Jesus; in fact, their brother Lazarus was one of Jesus’ closest friends. Well, Jesus was coming to their home for dinner one evening, and the sisters would be his hosts. By the time he arrived, Mary was all relaxed and ready to enjoy the company of Jesus, but Martha was a wreck. She was in the kitchen, putting meat in the oven, washing spots from the glasses, and picking flowers for the table. And she couldn’t let it go. Perhaps she was so consumed with making everything nice she didn’t even greet Jesus when he arrived. In her busy-ness, she missed out of renewal and refreshment that her sister enjoyed. Perhaps Martha felt that her worth was measured by how hard she worked. Perhaps she was only as good as the last meal she served, or the last floor she scrubbed, or the last dust bunny she swept. By the time dinner was over and she had single-handedly cleared the table, she clearly resented her sister for her laziness. "Jesus, don’t you care that Mary is sitting here like a slug while I slave away in the kitchen? Tell her to help me!"

I think the response of Jesus must have surprised Martha. He did not scold Mary for her inactivity; he did not order her into the kitchen to help with chores. Rather, he affirmed her ability to turn off all the distractions and relax at Jesus’ feet. And then he spoke the truth in love to Martha. "Martha, Martha, you are distracted by so many things, when only one thing is necessary, and Mary has chosen the better part."

Understand what Jesus was not saying. He was not saying that shirking one’s duties was to be applauded. He was not saying that sitting at his feet, listening to his teaching was the only worthy thing to do. What he was saying was that at this particular place and time, Mary made a better choice than Martha; choosing rest and renewal over busy-ness.

And all of this--all of this leads us to a valuable lesson today for our stressed out world; that Jesus invites us to make the same choice Mary made: to take a breath and care for ourselves. And using the image of Mary, Jesus is reminding us to carve out some time regularly and quietly sit at the feet of Jesus. That’s what worship is; a sabbatical from the chaos and the craziness of our lives in order to enter God’s presence and be refreshed. And yet most of us "statistically speaking"most of us make the Martha choice week after week. Rather than being a quiet hour in God’s presence, worship has become yet another thing to do; another task to fit into our already busy lives. In this church, and in nearly every church across the country, on any given Sunday, only 1/3 of the congregation gathers for worship. Never mind the old school concept of using Sundays as a day of rest and not doing anything else on this day; I’m talking about one hour! That’s what Jesus was addressing to Martha: one hour of rest, and renewal, and refreshment.

And unfortunately, church has become part of the problem, not part of the solution. I put up a sign a few years ago that inadvertently spoke the truth of it all. The sign said:

"Don’t let worry kill you - let the church help!"

We’ve done that; we in the church have done that. We have provided for you lists every week of things you can become involved in and tasks you can do. We don’t have committees in this church anymore; now we have "Task Forces." Sign up, hurry up, get the task done and get out of here. We have jobs that need doing -- and they really are necessary, you know -- but I wonder if they don’t get in the way of worship? Pruning shrubs, teaching classes, mentoring teenagers, serving luncheons; it’s all good, but as Jesus told Martha, it’s not the best part. And when these activities become the focus of our lives at church, then, like Stephanie Frey’s mother, we start sitting sideways in our pew -- if we sit in the pew at all -- and the distractions consume us and take our minds and hearts away from worship.

And ultimately, we become used up and we leave the church in disgust. I’ve seen happen; I’ve seen it happen in this church: Members who simply run out of gas because they failed to set that one hour aside to take a breath. And that, I think, breaks God’s heart. That people would be in the Body of Christ, but their minds and their hearts and their feet and their hands were somewhere else…in the kitchen, perhaps, instead of sitting at the feet of Jesus taking a sabbatical from it all.

This fall, Pastor Linda and I are going to spend some time speaking of worship. We’ll focus on the prayers of worship, on the liturgy of worship, on the music but also on the silence of worship. And we will do our very best to make worship a time for you to escape from the busy-ness of the world for just one hour, and ask God to bring every one of us into the intimate presence of God.

Following the sermon today, I am going to ask us to just sit for a moment. Jane (Dan) will play something quiet so we can digest this idea of having been in God’s circle for this hour. Frankly, I don’t think we’ve done that enough it the past. This was brought home to me again this summer in Sweden and Germany. When I worshipped in those churches, and when the pastor has pronounced the benediction, the congregation is asked to sit back down and the postlude is played -- one more moment of sitting quietly at Jesus’ feet before returning to our crazy world.

I close with this: high on a mountain overlooking Frontier Ranch, the Young Life property in Colorado where I came to faith as a high school student. On that peak there is a wooden cross standing, with some words of the 46th Psalm etched into it. Be Still and Know that I Am God. I recall vividly as a 15-year-old kid, sitting near that cross, thinking about those words. When you’re 15, it’s hard to sit still, but for those few moments, I felt like God was just a few feet away. Is it possible for 59-year-olds to be still enough to know the presence of God? Because that’s the purpose of worship -- for Mary, for Martha, for us. Be still. Thanks be to God. Amen.

©2010 Steven Molin