Sermon for Sunday, June 18, 2010 The First Baptist Church of Lewisburg

“The Better Part:”

Amos 8: 1-12; Colossians 1: 15-28; Luke 10: 38 – 42

I knew a woman named Mary who was always unhappy with the story of Mary and

Martha, because she often fed people and she could see the justice in objecting to Mary’s

abandoning Martha to do that work while she took the chance to hear the talk that the men

usually got to hear. I start with this of our scriptures because the contrast between dutiful,

indignant Martha and apparently idle Mary always annoys people. Especially in this culture

we’re a can-do crowd, and one of the theses about Protestantism and the rise of capitalism

is that in the absence of more certain evidence of the invisible God mentioned in

Colossians, our Protestant forebears worked hard to make good to demonstrate that they

were being blessed in some concrete terms. It was hard to point to the purity of their heart

but it was not so difficult to point to the size of their house, and practical people, as they

were, and making their way in religion without the reassurances of priests or too much

confidence in rituals, they were driven to prosperity to measure God’s approval of them,

and so anxiety about God became a goad toward industry and the accumulation of wealth.

That old adage of John Wesley, the founder of Methodism “work all you can, make all you

can, give all you can” is an echo closer to our own origins of that busy, earnest, commercial

spirit which animated the Dutch in their golden age and that nation of shopkeepers which

succeeded them, as well as those Germans whose combination of toil and thrift has made

Pennsylvania the big industrial and agricultural state that it long has been.

Even people so serious about their religion as to be borderline kooks have tended

to shun idleness of any kind. The Ephrata Cloister is the product of a hardworking

community, and the Plain People famously benefit not only from eschewing many modern

expenses but by industry and ingenuity. Other cultures sometimes recognize ragged

individuals living in poverty at the boundaries of society as holy men, when they have zeal

for God, but we think people like that. are crazy. If a person acts too interested in religion,

no matter how prosperous he is, we think he’s crazy, too. But we certainly see no spiritual

advantage in poverty, despite a large Christian tradition–Catholicism–making a virtue of it,

and despite all the negative things said in the New Testament about the love of money and

reliance on money. What secures us from poverty, which we are inclined to view as

evidence of failure in life instead of aspiration to holiness, is work, and so we work. We are

some of the workingest people in the world. Those nations which every so often offend us

by being identified as more desirable to live in often have shorter work weeks and more

generous provisions for public services and still, so far, have enough economic muscle to

underwrite their overextended neighbors– they aren’t so self-professedly Christian as we

are, and they don’t work nearly as hard.

There’s two conclusions that can be drawn about such invidious comparisons. One

is that we’re going about things the wrong way. The other is that there’s something wrong

with European-style social democracies, and most of us prefer this second conclusion.

There’s something wrong with them. They’re like Mary in the Mary and Martha story.

They’re not pulling their weight.

I belabor the difficulty of agreeing that Mary is being more right than Martha because

it really is a difficult scripture. One problem is that we feel that Mary knows what Jesus is

going to say, anyway, so she might as well be making the hors d’oeuvres. Isn’t Jesus

always talking about the kingdom of God and the healing power of forgiveness and each

person’s responsibility to other persons? How many times does a person need to hear a

story about some lost thing that gets found and then the person who finds it is overjoyed?

See, we accept that God’s word is abundantly available. Why should anyone put

aside their ordinary, productive work in order to listen one more time? Some time back

Robert Fulghum made a splash with that bit about how everything he needed to know in

life he’d learned in kindergarten. There were posters made of it.

That’s one reason we don’t get the Mary and Martha incident. Mary must know this

stuff. It’s really traditional religion. It’s not that new. Jesus isn’t that much of an innovator,

even though he’s questioned by his peers and even though he characterizes what he says

as good news. The newest thing is that he represents a caring God who’s really there,

really there with people. But the teachings themselves–sharing better than greed, peace

better than violence, humility better than pride–that’s the same old stuff.

But there’s a difference, isn’t there? between knowing something and listening.

Anyone who’s ever had one of those heart-to-heart talks with a misbehaving child of

anything like an age of reason will get told by the child, “I know, I know”. It’s wrong to take

things–”I know, I know.” It’s rude to eat in front of guests–”I know, I know.” People know.

People know a lot of things. In fact that was one of the things which made Fulghum’s thing

about learning everything in kindergarten strike a chord with people. We do know. We’ve

known for a long time.

But knowing and listening aren’t the same thing, or there never would be those heartto-

heart talks between big people and children, or those lectures from the bench in the

courtroom. People know, but people need to listen. Listening demonstrates a desire to

have one’s knowledge reinforced– in the case of religious listening, it shows a will to live

more conscious of the presence of God and one’s personal responsibility in God’s world.

The kind of listening Mary does shows a conviction that being reminded of the nature of

God and what God wants is important.

Does that make the thing about Mary and Martha seem a little more reasonable. It’s

not that Jesus is commending loafing around or abandoning work. It’s that Jesus approves

of the desire to pay close attention to godly things. Jesus believes that a person’s getting

what a person needs to be spiritually healthy requires time apart from the busyness of life.

It is so important that he is compelled to side with Mary, even though Martha might take it

wrong, and even though most of us might find it hard to take it right.

There are an awful lot of people who are unchurched. There are thousands of

people within a few miles of here who never go to church, who don’t feel any need to pay

attention to God in the way that we’re trying this morning. Some of them honestly believe

that there’s nothing to religion, but a great many of them have an attitude like the one which

makes us miffed at Mary. Many of them think they know what it’s about already and they

don’t need to take time away from other things that they feel should be done simply to be

quiet, even for a very little while, to pay attention to God.

I had a preacher friend once who had a brother who told him, “I can worship God on

the golf course just as easily as I can worship God in a church service,” and the preacher

said to him, “I believe you can–but do you?” Martha could honor what Jesus had to offer

and gain from it herself despite feeling the need to provide hospitality–but did she? Was

her wanting to take her sister away from Jesus’ teaching an indication that she wasn’t as able

as she might have thought to be on Jesus’ wavelength while taking care of her own

agenda?

The prophecy from Amos has an interesting punishment foretold to give the willful,

greedy, religiously indifferent Israelites their just desserts. It’s not the typical fire and sword

or swarms of locusts or famine– it’s a famine of the word of God. God’s not going to waste

God’s breath any more. God’s through talking. People will discover that they do need to

know who they are and what life means and what hope they can have, but God is going to

withhold that information. That’ll teach ‘em. They treated the word of God lightly, they took it

for granted, they reserved the right to pay attention to it when they finally decided they had

time to do that, and to fix them, God simply will take it away. It won’t be available. All that

stuff that “everyone knows” because it’s been said over and over and taught to children and

celebrated by faithful worshipers, all that stuff will be gone. People will hunger for the word

of God but it will be too late.

It’s a good scripture to read alongside the Mary and Martha story because it gets at

the importance of hearing God’s word by a different path. If you were to tell people they

couldn’t go to church, if you were to ban reading the Bible, people would show an interest.

It’s simply too easy to think it doesn’t make much difference, the way things are now,

whether people take time out of life to work on the health of their souls or not.

The part from Paul’s letter that I want to highlight here is when the apostle says that

the word of God is shared with people, and people are informed and warned by God’s

word, in order that people become mature believers. Paul was converted himself, but he

followed his accepting the news of Christ’s being alive with years of effort to understand

what that meant and who he was to be and how he was to live. Paul converted lots of other

people, and he understood that merely getting them to say “I believe” wasn’t the end of it,

but the beginning. Discipleship is what it says–accepting a discipline, serving a Way,

apprenticing oneself to a Master. That takes more than knowing–it takes listening.

To read sermons from past years, hit the “View All” link beneath the “This Week’s Sermon”

button, and then hit the “Archives” link in the sentence at the top of the page presenting

recent sermons.

Broke the Bonds

Psalm 42; 1 Kings 19: 1-15a; Luke 8: 26 – 39

The presence of gangs leads to crime. Isn’t that how we think about it? Isn’t that the

motivation for the gang-awareness and gang-discouraging programs being promoted in the

area? We know there are places where gangs dominate drug sales and crimes against

property and persons, and we expect that somehow physically keeping gang members

from coming here, or people here from joining gangs, will keep crime from happening.

It is not as simple as that. The truth is that the presence of crime leads to gangs.

Demand for illicit drugs, or demand for illegal opportunities of whatever kind, create a

situation best exploited, not by individuals, but by groups. There is safety in numbers, and

strength in numbers. Organized crime is, like organized anything, more efficient and more

likely to be effective. It is also true that something like a mob mentality can influence

persons to behave much more lawlessly as members of groups than if they were on their

own. It’s possible for people to be more wholeheartedly evil when they have companions

in wrongdoing.

The local paper carries terrible stories about beatings and killings which involve

multiple persons attacking an individual. Whether these are more spontaneous crimes than

the sort perpetrated by solitary persons I don’t know, but they often seem to arise out of

circumstances like drinking or partying; for some reason someone is identified as an enemy,

and things go from bad to worse. A person who might hesitate to get into a fight all alone

may be more willing to use violence if he thinks he has overwhelming force on his side, or it

may be that a contagion of brutality infects people and takes over events.

If there is a temptation to lawlessness and violence in groups, there is a

corresponding vulnerability in solitude. Persons alone are conscious of their exposure to

trouble, and when circumstances like having a relationship dissolve or losing a job occur, the

individual without a supportive circle feels dreadfully isolated. A person suddenly is

conscious of how few resources secure him from all the possible difficulties life harbors.

The story of Elijah fleeing into the wilderness to escape Jezebel’s death threat is

memorable for that still, small voice of calm which comes to the prophet in his hiding place.

God is the great companion and comforter of persons cut off from their former lives and their

human supports. When outer circumstances lose their certainty, inner strength becomes the

only salvation for persons, and that inner strength often results from a fresh encounter with

the reality and care of God. Many a soul has found, in a dark hour, new hope through

prayer, or through reading the Bible, and sometimes through that gracious illumination of the

depth of experience and presence of another world found in mystical vision. In the midst of

surrounding dangers, something quiet and serene and certain is the solace. That is one of

the roots of religion.

There always are people who are beleaguered, who are not left in peace to live in

the world as they must, but who become the butt of jokes or targets of persecution. One of

the melancholy privileges of being a pastor is hearing people’s confidences. Those

people who are a bit different, who are not as gifted in some way as the rest of us, find a

way through life–but many of them experience considerable unkindness from others.

Human insecurity finds relief in discovering someone even more vulnerable than oneself,

and so the world’s oddballs get picked on. Those people for whom you feel a vague

sense of pity, perhaps mingled with apprehension–those people whom you are too

decent to bedevil, and have no need to insult in order to assert your superiority, are tested

and tormented by other people.

That’s what comes to mind reading the psalm. There are a number of psalms like

this, pleas to God for help in enduring the efforts of enemies to get one down. Some kind

of pecking order gets established, for whatever reason, and the person who offers this

prayer to God is at the bottom, kept down there by the collective effort of a number of

people who enjoy having someone to despise.

In our time there is great apprehension about bullying in the schools, and the most

ordinary confrontations and acts of self-defense are worried over in ways which never

happened in our childhood. At the same time we have developed a fascination with types

of entertainment in which groups gang up on perceived weaker persons to vote them off

islands or out of competitions, or to criticize their fashion sense or to find them inferior in their

efforts in the kitchen, or any number of other means of putting people down. Political

discourse, too, has degenerated into mean spirited skewering of persons who represent

policies or possibilities one doesn’t like. One sure kind of political bandwagon in our time is

the way that many will join in kicking someone while that person is down.

There are two groups who oppress the man Jesus meets in the country of the

Gerasenes. One group is that throng of evil spiritual influences which reveal their name as

“Legion”, there are so many of them. The other are the townspeople of the area, the

settled, law-abiding souls who feel they have no alternative but to combat the eruptions of

this unstable personality by putting him in chains and trying to confine him.

Confinement used to be the routine solution for people whose impulses and

energies and approaches to life were so out of whack with normal society that they

threatened the rest of us. In our time we have abandoned big state hospitals for the

mentally ill for two other approaches, one more humane and one less. Medication permits

many people either to be independent or semi-independent, and gives them an

opportunity to be more a part of society. That’s the better solution. When that doesn’t

work, people who once might have ended up in a place like Danville State Hospital now

sometimes end up in jail. That’s the worse solution.

I mention our current struggle to find a good way to deal with people with mental

illness because it helps us understand the neighbors of this man in the story with Jesus who

used to flee to the wilderness and bruise himself with stones. It is almost impossible to find

a compassionate way to handle people with whom one doesn’t have a common ground for

understanding.

That’s the way it is with this man before Jesus gets there. He has lots and lots of

voices in his head, some urging him this way, and others that. He is distracted, disturbed,

driven mad–and he acts out. Ordinary ways of managing an antisocial person–efforts to

persuade, to influence, to anticipate–don’t work.

Mental illness is like physical illness. Everyone has it some of the time, there are

varying severity and symptoms–and some are chronically ill with it. This man who has a

legion of evil spirits is a scary version of a not unfamiliar diagnosis–people with multiple

compulsions and self-destructive behaviors which dominate them. If they give up one

addiction they’ll engage in another all the more. If they stay sober the fact that they have

some other problem for which drink had been a naive self-prescription comes to the fore.

They represent a terrible possibility, and perhaps that’s why other people react to

them negatively. With whatever degree of justice, they are censured more than pitied, and

they come to occupy an exemplary state of disgrace. They become the town drunk or the

local hothead or simpleton, people keep them at arm’s length and categorize them. In the

order of the local society they have their own place, and once everyone gets used to that, it

is difficult for people to change.

We see that in the story from the gospel. Jesus heals the man. He is clothed, and

sitting calmly, and in his right mind for the first time. He is no longer hostage to the inner

demons which drove him from society. He remains, at least initially, trapped in the identity

he made for himself as a madman. People don’t embrace his cure, people aren’t eager for

Jesus to continue his miraculous healing in the area. Nobody sees him as an instance of the

compassion and grace of God. It is just as disturbing for him to become normal as it had

become commonplace to regard him as a maniac. That part of his illness–that part which

was his local society’s marking him as an outcast, as an impossible person to include–didn’t

get exorcised alongside the demons. It’s going to take people a while to accept him.

When we are young we believe people can change, and as we grow old we

decide that they can’t. It is hard for change to happen–it takes a miracle, quite literally, or at

least a higher power’s involvement, which is something that the A.A. people openly admit.

But since there is a God, and God loves people, it’s important for us to continue to hope,

and to pray, for new life for others, despite our having accepted them as flawed, and grown

comfortable with that role for them. The people on whom we’ve looked down, even if

we’ve looked down with sympathy more than scorn, sometimes disturb us by leaving that

position–but God intends for everyone to live, not by violence or confusion, but by that

right mind which hears the still, small voice of God’s reason and so knows how to live with

others.

To read sermons from past years, hit the “View All” link beneath the “This Week’s Sermon”

button, and then hit the “Archives” link in the sentence at the top of the page presenting

recent sermons.