Sermon for the Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost

"If you love somebody set them free"

The Dream of the Blue Turtles

Sting

1985

"So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions." 

The humilty we heard of last week gets turned outwards.
We are to regard others as more important than ourselves.
Now, such humilty, not looking out for ourselves, gets turned on to how we view our relationships.

Do illustrate, Jesus deconstructs the standard building block of society: the family.

‘Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.”

Now we all know that he doesn't mean hate your family.
That would be disgraceful and evil.
That certainly is  not what he means for us to do.
But he is asking us to look at our relationships, and our understanding of family.
He is asking us to look at how are relationships are, how they work.

The key is the phrase:

"So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions." 

We have heard Jesus speak about our attachment to items, but here is speaking about people.
The Greek helps a bit.
“Possessions” in the Greek can be “possessing.”

So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessing.

When we heard about the danger of possessions, we found it wasn't the things in themselves,
but rather our attitude toward them.
Here Jesus is saying that we need to look at our relationships, and our attitude toward them,
or rather our attitude toward those we are in relationship with.

If our attitude toward our possessions was the problem,
then it follows that our attitude toward our relationships has the same problem,
that of trying to own or possess them.
To this Jesus adds “even life itself.”

It's our possessing things that turns love to hate and life to death.
We try to possess others and we try to possess our own lives.
We don't treat our lives and the lives of others that we love as a gift.
We treat them as something as something we have worked for, have earned.
Life isn't something we have to cling on to.
Life is not something we need to possess.
It is something we have to be able to share, something that is for everyone.

Our relationships are the same.
Those we love we need to be able to set free.
We have to be able to let go of those we love.
If we let go it means we aren't trying to possess them.
If we let them go, we can receive them back as gifts.

I know there is a lot of pain around this for some of you.
For many of you feel hurt by the fact that your children haven't followed you in the faith.
I think what Jesus is getting at here may be of help and comfort.
It may lead to some uncomfortable soul searching, but I think it will also lead to healing of relationships, and healing of yourselves.
If you have truly let go of your relationships with your children,
you will see that their decision to follow Christ is nothing to do with you or anyone else. We can't possess our children. We love them, and that means freedom.

The only way to true life is for each of us to be willing to give up all our possessing.
And this is true of our churches.
We can't possess them.
We have to be able to let go of any ownership of them.
It is only by doing so will they have true life.
They aren't ours to possess, rather they are ours to let go, to be free.
They are ours to give to others as a gift.

All this isn't to say that we aren't to care for our relationships, our families, our churches, ourselves.

It is more that we need to look at our attitude toward them.

It follows from Jesus humility we spoke of last week.
Jesus showed the ultimate in humility in his giving of himself, his very life, on the cross.
He saw his life as something to give.
In doing so he showed us the way to real love, love that doesn't need to posses.
God's love doesn't possess, it gives, even in death.
On the cross, Jesus said “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit."
The last thing he did was to give his life to God the Father.
And that act wasn't the end.
In three days, God the Father gave his life back to him.
And that life Jesus shares with us, eternal life, a gift.

If we treat our lives as a gift as Jesus did for us, we know we can't possess anything.
By giving we receive back.
Generosity breeds generosity.
Jesus gave his life so we could have eternal life.
We give freedom to those we love to receive freedom.

"So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions." 

To be a disciple of Jesus means a great letting go of possessing anything.
He gives us that freedom and to be a disciple means to accept that freedom and to live our lives freed from the need for possessing anything.

Sermon for the Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Christ Crucified
Diego Valasquez
1632

'For all who exalt themselves will be humbled,

and those who humble themselves will be exalted.’

Humility is a most overlooked quality in in our society.

Most of us admire it when we see it in those we don’t expect to have it.

In fact that is when we notice it the most.

We notice humility when we don’t expect it.

And if you think about it, that is right.

Humility by its very nature should not be visible.

Imagine, instead of an Oscar, or a Grammy, or an Aria, that there was 'Humbly.'

A 'Humbly' is the award for the person who showed the most humility in the world that year.

First imagine the selection process.

What would the criteria be?

How could you define the most humble?

How would you even know about their activities?

The committee would have to find these people.

How? The only way could be if other people nominated them without the knowing.

You can’t nominate yourself for an award for humility.

To do so is not humble.

Then, let’s say they do get some nominees.

How could any of them accept the award?

To accept an award for humility lacks humility.

There would be this never ending cycle of people deferring the award to the other nominees.

All being humble, and out humbling themselves.

The whole thing wouldn’t work.

This is so typical of Jesus. He turns the world upside down. He reverses expectations.

What used to be right is wrong.

For all who exalt themselves will be humbled,

and those who humble themselves will be exalted.’

And the thing is that Jesus didn’t just say this. He lived it.

He wore rags when he could have worn the best clothes there were.

He could have worn a crown of gold, but he wore one of thorns.

He could have sat upon a throne, but he was nailed to a cross.

As St Paul tells us in his letter to the Phillipians:

Christ Jesus,who, 

though he was in the form of God, 

did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, 

but emptied himself, 

taking the form of a slave, 

being born in human likeness.

And being found in human form, 

he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— 

even death on a cross.

Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, 

so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, 

in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 

and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, 

to the glory of God the Father.

And being found in human form, he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death
—even death on a cross. 

In his death, Jesus showed the ultimate in humility.

Obedient to the point of death.

And we know that being crucifed was the most shameful way to die.

So Jesus lived with humility, his death was also in complete humility.

Paul gives us more of clue to humility

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. 

So being humble means having no ambitions for ourselves.

It means not being conceited.

It means regarding others as better than us.

But I think his last clause is the most significant.

We aren’t to look out for our own selves, but rather for others.

Society in our time is allergic to humility.

It does not understand it, and it does not recognise its value.

Our society is one that rewards those who push themselves to the top,

who win the game,

who have the most likes on facebook,

or who has the most money,

or friends,

or the most influence.

Humility can’t compete with that.

It is like oil and water.

And that is why Christ’s message seems so lost amidst all the noise.

But the one thing the world can’t ignore is the figure of Christ on the cross,

in that act of selflessness,

in that act of putting others needs ahead of his own,

in that ultimate act of humility.

The world can’t ignore the crucified Christ.

Within that act, humility is shown to have the greatest power that the world has ever seen. By dying for all, he saved all.

Christ upon the cross shows the world the true meaning of humility.

'For all who exalt themselves will be humbled,

and those who humble themselves will be exalted.’

Sermon for the Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Christ of Saint John of the Cross
Salvador Dali
1951

Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth?
No, I tell you, but rather division!

Jesus the Prince of Peace.
The one who says the way of the kingdom is the way of forgiveness.
The one who showed us that God’s love is for everyone.

Yet here he is saying he didn’t come to bring peace to world, but division.

Does this make the angels at his birth liars?

 ‘Glory to God in the highest heaven,
  and on earth peace among those whom he favours!’

In his farewell speech, Jesus says:

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives.
My peace, not the peace of the world, but the peace of God.

What is the difference?

We need to see how peace occurred in Jesus time.
There was a ritual called the scapegoat.
In this ritual, all the wrongs, all the evils, sins, bad stuff was prayed onto a goat,
and the goat was sent off and ran away.
In this ritual, the community was cleansed of all their wrongs.
All was put onto the goat.
The goat was a sacrifice for the community, so they could all get along.
Any animosity between people was put onto the goat, and went away.
This system worked.

If you think about it, we still do this.
We place all our anxieties onto people, or a group of people.
We put all our anger and resentment onto a group, and we release all those feelings onto that group.
We are bound together by our mutual dislike of them.
Peace prevails because all the negative feelings are placed onto someone or a group of people.
They become the problem.

Think about football. Think about how everyone hates Manly in the NRL.
In Rugby Union, think about how all New Zealanders are bound in the mutual hatred of Quade Cooper.
You see this happen.
People are joined together in their mutual dislike of something.
Peace prevails among them, but at the cost of the other.
The scapegoat.

That is how the world gets peace.
A constant move of putting someone of the outer.

Think about Hitler and the Jewish people. All Germany’s woes were because of the Jews.
What about our own time and place.
For us it is asylum seekers. They are the people put on the outer.
Australia’s worries will cease if we get rid of the asylum seekers.
Or it is Muslims, or teenagers, or Asians, or mining companies, or greenies, or feminists, or faceless men.
Old people, teenagers, baby boomers…
Any group can become the one that is the one on the outer, that becomes the bonding agent for everyone else because of everyone hating them.

Jesus’ way of peace is not this way.

He gave himself up as the scapegoat, he allowed himself to be crucified in order to reveal the innocence of all who have been victims of this behaviour.
By doing so, he takes away our way of disowning our own violence and hatred.
He takes away our option of placing all that onto the other.
With his sacrificial death, he became the scapegoat to end all scapegoats.

But this is where the division comes in.

Our way of peace is sin which the Lamb of God comes to take away.
So what happens in between the taking away of our peace and our embracing of God's peace? Division.

By depriving people of the main way they have to disown violence and hatred by putting it onto to others, doesn’t mean it goes away. It ends up coming out much closer to home:

From now on five in one household will be divided,
three against two and two against three;
they will be divided:
father against son and son against father,
mother against daughter and daughter against mother,
mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”

The violence is out in the open. And we have to choose.

The way of peace in the world is the way of blaming someone else,
making a group the cause of all issues.
Society is glued together by this.
The scapegoat takes it all everyone is happy.
Until the peace dissapates and another scapegoat is needed. And so on.

The peace of God is different.
There is no other. Everyone is in.
There is no one to blame because we are all in it together.
The peace that Jesus gives is unlike peace in our time.
It is true.
It is real.
It passes all understanding.

By Jesus allowing himself to be crucified, he was the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

And that sin is not loving our neighbour as ourselves.

Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth?
No, I tell you, but rather division! 

That division will continue as long as we don’t love our neighbour, as long as we keep people out, as long as we keep trying to attain peace the way the world does, not as God does.

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives.
My peace, not the peace of the world, but the peace of God.

Sermon for the Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost

The Queen of Hearts
Miki de Goodaboom

 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Where is your treasure?
What is your treasure?

If we think about what we really value in our lives,
we quickly start to see that it is not a physical object or a thing that we really value.

That is not the treasure at all.
Often it will be a memory attached to it, or who it was who gave it to us.

I recently received a gift in the mail from a very dear friend.
It was something he knew I would love.
It was something that we both love,
and have spoken about for twenty or so years.
A bond we have in common, shared in this physical object.
I put the item on my shelf.
It sits there, a beautiful thing in itself.
But it itself is not the treasure.
The treasure is the fact that my friend thought to send it to me.
I look at it  and I see the item, but I feel my friend.
It makes me happy, not because of itself,
but rather because of the friendship and love it shows.
I look at it and I feel twenty or so years of friendship.
That is the treasure.
The item could be destroyed or lost,
but the fact that my friend sent it to me does not get destroyed or lost.
The treasure is in here, not in the item.

This is kind of what Jesus is getting at.
But he takes it to a much more cosmic scale.

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Maybe if we look at this another way.

For where your heart is, there your treasure will be also.

Our heart is the inner core of our being.

It is the part of us that really determines who we are.
Our actions, attitudes, and behaviours all come from our heart,
or as we heard last week from the Rich Fool, he addressed his own soul.
Our attitudes towards others, our actions in dealing with those we love, or those we find difficult to love, come from our very being.

Now if our heart is one with God, is anchored in Him, then all our attitudes, actions and behaviours will reflect Him.
Moreover, if we are secure in our relationship with God,
if we know of his great love for us, we are free.
We are free to share the treasures of our hearts with all we come in contact with.
We become free to share the Kingdom with all.

We are free to give.
When we give of ourselves and of our goods we are free.
Giving to those who need is good for those who receive.
But it is also good for the giver.
By giving, the heart is freed from holding onto goods.
You see, we can’t buy Kingdom of heaven with money or possessions.
But our attitudes toward our possessions can keep the Kingdom distant from us.
By giving to those in need, freely, what could become a hindrance actually becomes a help.
By giving, we help those in need,
and we help ourselves to free of attachment to our goods.

By being attached to physical items we allow them to become like thieves.
By being attached to them, we allow them to rob us of the treasures in our heart.
Jesus said The Kingdom of God is within you.
What he meant was that it is in our hearts.
It is in our very being.

The treasures of heart, the treasures of heaven what St Paul refers to as the fruit of the Spirit in his letter to the Galatians: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
Those are the qualities of the Kingdom. And if you look, at them, they are the way God is with us. That is the way we are to be with others.

You’ll notice that all these treasures are ones which involve someone else. They are gems that shine and glimmer only when presented to someone else.

Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

The treasure of hearts is the same as the unfailing treasure in heaven. Items can be stolen or destroyed, but the memory attached to them, the feelings attached to them cannot be.

For where your heart is, there your treasure will be also.

In our hearts is where the fruits of the Spirit live and come from:(love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control). These are the treasures that we store up in heaven.
We say they are stored up in heaven, because when they are part of our being, we are drawn heavenward.

The Kingdom of heaven is within you.

Sermon for the Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost

Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions 

There are two tv programs I really enjoy.

One is Antiques Roadshow.
To see these amazing things that people have found or have had handed down to them being appraised by experts is fascinating.

To see the reactions to the valuations is even more fascinating.
It is there you see either joy or disappointment.
This thing they value is sometimes worth a lot, or is worthless.

Collecting things isn’t bad or wrong. It is something we do as humans.

Sarah collects Teasmades. You’ll have to ask her to explain them to you.
I collect books and cds. I get pleasure from reading and listening to music.

Collecting things isn’t bad, it is when collecting takes over our lives that we end up in trouble.

The other tv program I like is Hoarders.

It shows you someone’s house that is packed with stuff.
Often, they can’t move around, or there are rooms that have become oversized cupboards.
We look at the house and the people involved with pity.
We are thankful we are not like that.

But then we see the process of letting go of things.
We see the pain and anguish that that often involves.

Then we see the final result.
We are happy that the person’s house is now liveable.

But there is an emotional reaction.
We can see that the person has now gotten their life back.
They are now no longer a prisoner to their possessions.
It is an emotional experience, for the now ex-hoarder, and the viewer.

Collecting things is not bad. It is when collecting takes over our lives, and we are no longer ourselves free to be who we are, or free to be with God that collecting becomes a problem.

Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; 

Earlier this week, a friend of mine on Facebook posted an image that said the following:

If a man has a house stacked to the ceiling with newspapers,
we call him crazy.
If a woman has a trailer house full of cats,
we call her nuts.
When people pathologically hoard so much cash that they impoverish others,
we put them on the cover of fortune magazine and pretend they are role models.

Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; 

Greed is a monstrous thing.
Think of the hoarders.
Their inability to let go things means they imprison themselves, physically, emotionally, socially, and spiritually.

Think too of millionaires and billionaires.
We hear how they are wealth creators, but often it is at the cost of others.
It is often at cutting costs, wages, finding tax loopholes that their wealth is created.

Think of the banks.
They announce record profits, yet at the first sign of the government putting on a levy of %0.05, they say they have to increase fees.
Billions of dollars of profit a year still won’t cushion them from a small levy apparently.
They have a duty to their shareholders, thereby shouldering the blame on to others.
And the people that are CEOs of the banks are held up as leaders and paragons of society.

It is not right.
Yet, the hoarding of money is an acceptable and even admirable behaviour in our society.

But to Jesus, it was not.
To Christians it should not be.

Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; 

See, it is not the possessions, or the money that is the problem.
It is greed.
The word Luke uses is literally, ‘the desire of gaining more and more.’
This is the problem.

Like the hoarder who gathers so many things that they can’t move in their house, if we desire more and more things, we become trapped in our desire.

Like the man in the parable.
He is so concerned about his security, that he neglects other areas of his life: other people, and God.

His desire to store more crops is so significant to him that he speaks to his soul, his very being.
And I will say to my soul,
‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years;
relax, eat, drink, be merry.’


Jesus warned about this:
“For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also”


But his storage of his goods does not really supply him the security he is after. His wealth provides no security in the sense that his life may be very short.
If he were to die tomorrow, what use would his stored crops be?

‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you.
And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ 

The need to acquire goods, the need to hold on to things, the need to increase wealth, these behaviours are the most destructive in our relationships with each other, and even more so in our relationship with God.

The need to acquire more and more comes from fear,
and that fear has nothing to do with God. A real relationship with God casts out fear, and in such a relationship, fear of not having enough money or possessions does not exist.

One’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions

We know this to be true, for the life we have in Jesus is worth far more than our bank accounts, or piles of books, or cds.
Our life in Jesus is the pearl of great price, there is nothing of greater value. Our life is worth so much,
not because of what we own or possess or have stored away,
but because of the love God has for us.
That is how valuable we are.

The creator of all things, of all time, loves us.
That is worth more than our bank accounts, libraries, or knick knacks.

Sermon for the Tenth Sunday after Pentecost

Forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. 

This intricate and beautiful carving is normally placed on the chapel wall.
I sit there every morning and evening. I look at it while I wait for 8:30 or 5 to come around.

It is such a beautiful thing.The amount of time and care that has gone into the carving.
I like to think of the person carving it using the process as a meditation.
Each word, each phrase over and over, the implications of each sentence running around their head.

But looking at this carving, there is also a tendency for the words of the prayer to get lost,
the meaning and depth of prayer becomes a mass of words in the wood.
From where you are sitting, I suspect it looks like any other picture.

It is much the same with our use of the Lord’s Prayer.

We say it every Sunday before we receive communion.
We say it at Morning and Evening Prayer before the prayers of the day.
We say it often.
At funerals, weddings, baptisms, it is said.
People that don’t go to church very often, or at all, know the Lord’s Prayer.
You can hear people join and stop at different parts.
You can hear the older version of the prayer from parts of the congregation.

We say this prayer so often, but I wonder if we really take it all in.
Like in this carving, words get lost, some of the phrases become hollow.
It becomes the empty repetition that Jesus warned against.

The prayer is a petition to God the Father.
We state who he is, we pray that the earth will become like heaven.
We ask for our physical and spiritual needs to be met.
We ask to be forgiven.

Then, the first clause that says we will do something.

As we forgive those that sin against us.

Or as it says in Luke’s version:

Forgive us our sins,
for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. 

We ask God to forgive us.
And he does.
God forgives us for everything we do.

Think about our confession:

We have sinned against you in thought word and deed,
and in what we have failed to do

Then the absolution:

Almighty God
who has promised forgiveness to all who turn to him in faith,
pardon you and set you free from all your sins.

If we are truly sorry, and repent, we are forgiven.

This is wonderful and incredible thing.
God forgives us for all the stupid, mean, selfish, unthinking things we do.
He forgives us again and again and again.

This is an astounding thing.
I have seen and heard how astounding it is when explaining to the kids at SRE.

I have been in baptism interviews where the concept of forgiveness has been discussed, and have seen the look of amazement and disbelief and awe in a young mothers face as we spoke of God’s unlimited forgiveness. The idea that God could forgive her because he loves her was almost too much for her to bear.

Forgive us our sins,
for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. 

Not as simple as we thought.
for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.

Forgive us God,
because we forgive everyone too.

Is it that we earn God’s forgiveness by being forgiving ourselves?
Not at all.
God’s forgiveness does not depend on anything but a sorry heart.
We don’t earn God’s forgiveness.
So what is this second clause all about?

For we forgive everyone indebted to us.

In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus explains this part of the prayer:

For if you forgive others their trespasses,
your heavenly Father will also forgive you;
but if you do not forgive others,
neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

But God forgives us by his grace, not by anything we do.
If we repent and are truly sorry, we are forgiven, but it isn’t about doing something to earn God’s forgiveness.

So what is Jesus getting at here?

It strikes me that we are called to be a forgiving people.
If we don’t forgive others, we block the flow of God’s forgiveness.
God’s forgiveness of us needs to keep flowing from us in our daily interactions.
If we don’t forgive, we halt the flow of forgiveness.
It is like we are trying to store it up for ourselves, or are unwilling to share such a wondrous gift.

Forgiveness is difficult.
It is not easy to forgive some things, behaviours and traits.
It is hard to forgive someone, or an institution, or a group that has done you wrong.
When we feel we have received the raw end of a deal, our resentment toward those that have trespassed against us is a natural reaction.

Yet feeling such a way does not help us.
To let go of such feelings, to forgive such actions is to regain life.
It is to be freed.
Such freedom allows others to be free.
Freed from their sins,
freed from the things that keep them far from others,
freed from the things that keep them from God.
Freed so they can forgive others.
And on it goes…

Forgiveness gets lost in all the messiness of life.
All the hurts and pains get stored up.

Like this carving.
Like how the words lose themselves in all the design and intricacy,
we forget about God’s forgiveness to us and how we are to keep the flow of forgiveness going,
outward to all we come into contact with.

By reading and praying the words, they come out of the carving and become visible.
They are freed from the design.

By forgiving those who have trespassed against us, we free ourselves from our hurt.

Forgive us our sins,
for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. 

Sermon for the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost

Martha and Mary
Maurice Denis
1896

You are worried and distracted by many things

Yesterday, I sat down in my office, and got myself ready to write this sermon.
I sorted out my desk and cleared all the stuff that I didn’t need.
I got the books that I would look through.
I found some quiet contemplative music.
I prepared myself to put all my thoughts, all the conversations I had this week, all the interactions, all before God.

Then I turned on my computer.

Update software.
There are four programs that require your attention.

I started this process.
Another message popped up telling me that I needed to uninstall another program before I could update another one.

Another message was telling me that I might like to change my browser.

A Facebook message appeared.
Arrangements for a meeting were being organised.

Another message told me my installation of something had failed and was directing me to a website that would fix it.

All the while, Martha, Mary, and Jesus are waiting patiently for me to get back to them.

Well Martha is busy herself, but Jesus and Mary sit there, waiting for me to remove all distractions so I can be present with them and learn about distractions and being present.

The whole story of Martha and Mary of Bethany is one about the importance of focus and being present to God in our lives.

The story has often been told in terms of Martha versus Mary,
and ‘which is the right way to be.’
Much damage has been done by such a way of looking at this story.
Many women have been hurt by this thinking.
The place of many women in our churches have been harmed, devalued, and ignored by this view.

Who here has been called a Martha or a Mary?

I have heard many times “I am more a Martha than a Mary.”
I have heard many times women being told they were Mary’s because they weren’t doing their share of work.
I have heard many times women being told they weren’t in some way ‘proper’ because they were busy working and not praying.

All this way of thinking must stop.

I don’t believe there are Marys or Marthas.
I don’t think that is point Jesus makes here.

 Mary sits at the feet of the Lord, but Martha was distracted by her many tasks.

Martha gets cranky about this, and you have to admit she has guts.
She complains to Jesus

‘Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.’ 

At this point we can probably agree with her.
Lazy Mary doing nothing.
We expect Jesus to tell Mary to get of her lazy behind and go help her sister.

But no.

‘Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things;
there is need of only one thing.
Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.’

you are worried and distracted by many things;
there is need of only one thing.

So, Jesus makes the point that Martha is looking at it all wrong.
He doesn’t tell her she is to stop doing what she is doing,
but rather he tells her her approach to her work
and her complaining about Mary are off the mark.

It isn’t her working that is the problem.

Imagine our church without all the so called Marthas.
This space would be a mess.
There would be no morning tea.
There would be no pew sheets.
There would be no hymns organised, no prayer lists, no communion vessels cleaned, no clean linen.
And that is just the work that is done for the service this morning.

Extend that to the other work that goes on:
the organisation of the grounds, the paying of bills, the administration work.

Then think of the Op Shop.
The amount of people and the amount of hours that go into the running of the Op Shop is simply staggering.

It is not the work that is the problem.
All these things need to be done.

Jesus doesn’t say don’t work, don’t do anything.

He says there is need of only one thing.
Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.

And that thing is sitting at the feet of Jesus.
It is spending time with him, learning from him, being present to him.

You see, all the work that happens is important and vital,
but we need to remember why we do it.

If all the work we do for the church becomes all that our God time is,
then we have missed the point.
We have become distracted by many things.

When our jobs,
the things we do stop us from being,
stop us from being present to God,
we haven’t chosen the better part.

It is not that jobs and tasks are distractions.
They aren’t.
It is more that they should not become distractions.

They shouldn’t become the focus.
The focus has to be Jesus.
If Jesus is at the centre, the jobs and tasks take their place.

Time in prayer, time reading the scriptures, time spent in the presence of God is the better part.
All the jobs we do in and around our churches are so we can spend that time with God, so we and others can sit at the feet of the Lord.

You are worried and distracted by many things

If we keep our minds and hearts on the Lord, the things distract us cease to be anything to worry about. Then we know we have chosen the better part.