Luke 10: Intentionality

A snippet (granted, a long snippet!) from the sermon preached on August 4:

As they went on their way, Jesus entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to what he was saying. But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, "Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work myself? Tell her, then, to help me."

But the Lord answered her, "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." - Luke 10:38-42

..........Because in that moment…the doing, has become more important than the who, that we’re doing for.  The work has become about the task and appeasement and the "proper thing" …rather than about pleasing God and hearing Jesus’ call and breathing in the Spirit in all that we do.  

It is NOT that Jesus doesn’t want us to work…to do and be the active embodiment of the Divine in the world.  It is, rather, that when we do these things…we do them remembering whose we are and who we are…people of faith, called out by Jesus Christ, to do the work of the Kingdom, here on earth.  That is who we are.  

If the bread is burnt, because we are talking to one of God’s children…that’s okay.  If the roof leaks for one more month, because one of God’s beloved needed grocery’s to feed her family…that’s okay.  If the kitchen is left dirty one night, because those who have found respite in God’s house, were celebrating one year of sobriety…that’s okay.   If the bulletins don’t get done because another was comforted in their grief…that’s okay. 

And on the flip side….

if we bake bread, so that others can eat…that’s good too.  If we fix the roof, so that others can worship comfortably in this place…that’s good too.  If we clean the kitchen, so that we can offer hospitality to the least of these…that’s good too.  If we print bulletins, so that another can lean in closer to God on a Sunday morning…that’s good too. 

It’s when we forget the heart behind what we do, that it becomes meaningless, glorified busyness. 

Sometimes I fear that we are becoming Martha’s.  So focused on the doing…of what comes next for Cherokee Christian Church…that we forget to be church.  We busy ourselves with worry and nervous chatter and hand wringing rather than the prophetic, embracing, table work that we have been called to.  And we start to stand in the doorway and call to Jesus, reprimanding those who don’t work and function and busy, the way we do. 

And somewhere along the line, we forget that Jesus is beckoning to us to do the “better thing.” To forget this – the country club with its “right way” of doing things and its cleanliness and perfectly baked bread – and instead, to give ourselves to Jesus in all its rawness and messiness and expectedness. 

One of the options before us, as a body of Christ, is to sell this building…with all its needs and busyness and bigness…and move to a smaller building…something that will accommodate our small size a little better.  But I’m going to be honest here…if we simply pluck up and land somewhere else… we’ll still fizzle out.  We will.

Unless we can remember that which brought us to this place to begin with – that deep, heart yearning that continually points to Kingdom, to Christ in our midst.  We must recapture the passion of the Spirit.  We must find Jesus and sit at the proverbial feet of the one who is calling.

It doesn’t seem like much really…but it also can seem like everything.  Because it takes a pretty significant shift.  Suddenly, we don’t just “do” church… we “become” church.  We don’t “go” to church…we are church.  We aren’t just Christians on Sunday…but are Christ’s followers everyday.  We don’t just work because we have to…we work because we are called to. 

There is an article written by Rachel Held Evans, that’s being passed around on Facebook, about why the Millenials (that age group of folks born between 1980 and the year 2000) are leaving church.  She talks about how the church gets so busy getting wrapped up in the business of church, that they forget that Jesus isn’t found in the coffee bar or the pastor wearing skinny jeans or the LCD screens.  And she says,

“You can’t hand us a latte and then go about business as usual and expect us to stick around. We’re not leaving the church because we don’t find the cool factor there; we’re leaving the church because we don’t find Jesus there. Like every generation before ours and every generation after, deep down, we long for Jesus.”

We have only to look around on a Sunday morning…and we can probably rightly assume, that this isn’t just a millennial issue. 

There is a world that longs for Jesus…and they won’t tie themselves to custom and they won’t care if the bread is burnt and they probably won’t even notice if the LCD screens are blank….but they WILL notice Jesus and how we treat each other and how we listen to the Spirit and how we move an do and work for God. 

So before we make any moves, sell any buildings, continue to busy ourselves with this…we need to find ways to connect with Jesus.  To leave the busyness behind and be church.  Let us hear Jesus, when he says, “…you are worried and distracted by many things; there is only one thing that matters,” and know all the way down into our toes, that the one thing that Jesus refers to, is him.  The Divine.  The Hope.  The Restoration.  The Promise of New Life.

Let us live as those who hear that word, head that word, and live that word. Let us give our whole selves to God…our service, our work, our prayers, and our stillness…