Finding the Balance 

Luke 10:38-42 

July 17, 2016 

Mark S. Bollwinkel

            Our text this morning describes two special women.

            Mary and Martha welcome Jesus into their home.  All of those traveling with the Master were assumed to be invited as well, so there is quite a lot of work to do.  Martha is overwhelmed with the kitchen chores.  She complains to Jesus that her sister should help her.  The Lord answers that it is Mary who has her priorities straight.  She has chosen to hear the Word of God.

            Mary and Martha appear in John’s gospel as well.  The two women are described as the sisters of Lazarus, one of Jesus’ dearest friends.  They live in the village of Bethany outside of Jerusalem (John 11:1, 12:1-3).

            A similar pattern of behavior about these two characters is found in both stories. Martha goes out to meet Jesus when her brother dies, while Mary sits at home (John 11:20.  Martha serves a meal for Jesus upon his arrival in Bethany, while Mary anoints Jesus’ feet with costly oil (John 12:1-3).   In Luke, Martha cooks and serves while Mary sits at the feet of her Rabbi to listen.

            Preachers have traditionally used Mary and Martha as examples of either “good” or “bad” discipleship.  Martha is “service”. Mary is “nurture”.  Martha wants to earn grace.  Mary simply receives it.  Mary is lazy.  Martha is committed.  We have all heard these interpretations before.

            If a church is in need of volunteers for a clean-up day, or a stewardship drive, or the Sunday school, we’ll hear Martha venerated for her work ethic and devotion.  If attendance is down at church, or a new Bible study is being formed, we’ll hear Mary honored for sitting at the feet of the Lord.

            But there is much more the story than meets the eye.

            Consider the historical context in which the story is written.

            In first century Palestine, men and women had distinctly separate roles.  Men would not even converse with women outside of their own family.  For Jesus to accept the hospitality of an unmarried woman like Martha was scandalous.  Trying to justify this oddity and their own traditions of polygamy, our Mormon friends suggest that Jesus must have been married to Mary and Martha to explain this strange intimacy.  (Protestants don’t believe this.)

            Only men were allowed to study the Torah and learn from a Rabbi.  For Jesus to insist that Mary had a right to sit at his feet while he taught was unheard-of.  “Jesus treated women and men as equally capable and worthy of dealing with sacred matter…in a time when…women were viewed as both dangerous and inferior” (Marcus Borg, Jesus a New Vision, Harper Collins, 1987).

            This radically transformed view of gender continued in the early church after Jesus’ death, where Paul would write in Galatians, “There is neither Jew nor gentile, slave nor free, male nor female, but you are all one in Christ Jesus” (3:28).

            How the Roman Catholic Church can continue today to exclude and restrict women from certain offices of the ministry is beyond me.  How some Protestant churches, even some United Methodist congregations, refuse to consider hiring female pastors simply because of their gender is a mystery to me.

            A seminary colleague of mine was once asked to fill-in for a vacationing pastor.  Following her first sermon at the local church, she was out by the sanctuary doors greeting people.  A well meaning and sincere saint approached her, shook her hand enthusiastically and told her, “I am so excited.  When men are no longer fit for the pulpit and women have to become preachers, it must mean that the world is about to end and Jesus is returning soon!”

            It is not the end of the world for women to take more and more roles of leadership in our society.  It is a change, yes indeed, but it is a change we need.  Across the country during the last ten days, United Methodists have been electing new Bishops, 15 in all; 7 are women, 5 are African-American and 2 are Hispanic.  I am proud of our United Methodist commitment to ethnic and gender diversity in our leadership!

            In the story of Mary and Martha we not only hear about qualities of discipleship…hard work vs. contemplation…we also hear about the radical equality with which Jesus saw men and women.  He broke through the barriers of his society’s prejudice and pointed in a new direction even though such boundary breaking came at a great cost to him.

            Contemporary men and women, who break the boundaries of gender expectations find themselves paying a precious price too.

            Golda Meir was the Prime Minister of Israel for a number of years when she wrote, “At work, you think of the children you have left at home.  At home, you think of the work you’ve left unfinished.  Such a struggle is unleashed within you.  Your heart is rent.”

            Forty percent of our nation’s families are headed by single parents, most often women (Pew Research Center, 5.29.13). Over half of American women work outside of the home.  Those women who do stay at home to raise their kids rarely have time to sit and listen to anything!  Whether it is a two income household or a home in which a parent stays home with the kids, our families face great stress and busyness.

            Ours is the generation that has spawned the “Tiger Mom” (Amy Chua, 2011).  She’s a well-educated woman, working in or outside the home, committed to family, husband and personal growth, who spends hours each week rushing from the kid’s activities, to volunteer opportunities, to exercise classes, to the store, to school participation, to church involvement, back to home to do chores and cooking only to dash out to another evening meeting or class or children’s program before crashing into bed at midnight.

            There are plenty of “Super Dads” around too, who fit in professional pressures while fully committed to children, wife, community and over achievement as well. 

            Since World War II many important social barriers to women have been broken and for good reason.  Many more still remain.  Yet the inclusion of women in the workplace on a scale never seen before in our country has come at a real price of stress and pressure for many.

            God help us to somehow find the balance. 

            We are not to pick out our faith ideal between Mary or Martha.  We are called to follow both of their examples.  Jesus called for both an active engagement with human needs and contemplation.  Both examples of faith are to be emulated.  Our burden is to discern when and where to find the balance between the two worlds of service and nurture.

            It is easy to spot when we are out of balance.

            Watch for resentment.

            If you find yourself resenting your spouse’s priorities, or your friends’ jobs, or your kids’ demands, chances are something is out of balance.

            It is especially true in the church.

            Churches live or die by the investment of time and talent by volunteers.  It is easy for the committed church volunteer to enthusiastically sign up for a church office, excited that they have found a new opportunity to serve God and their brothers and sisters in the faith.  When that church volunteer job begins to compete with all the other demands of our busy lifestyle, frustration can creep in.  When the realities of the bills that a church has to pay with meager income or the lack of other volunteers to help becomes apparent, discouragement can arise.

            It is a standard rule of thumb that 20% of a church’s members do 80% of the volunteer work.  20% of the church’s members give 80% of the money as well.  New volunteers will often express resentment that others aren’t also involved in what they care so deeply about.

            As soon as we feel that resentment, it is a good time to stop and reconsider what we are doing in our church and why.  As important as it is to a Pastor that a volunteer say “yes”, their “no” is just as important.  Church involvement should not result in bitterness or anger.  Some feel that way because they aren’t asked to do a certain job.  Some because they are asked to do too much.  Either way, burnout or neglect, if you feel resentful about your church involvement it is time to take a step back and reconsider your priorities.  It is also time to have a talk with your Pastor.  At least, that is what Martha did when she found her service to others overwhelming her ability to respond.

            It is easy to feel all alone in the world.  Especially when we are conscientious and committed.  We work hard.  We do our best.  We try to make it right for those around us and at times it is exhausting and tough.

            For men or women, it is easy to feel we are the only ones keeping the family going with all the economic and activity stress we experience today.  It is easy to feel anger toward those who ignore our needs while they get their own met.

            Martha comes to Jesus saying, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve along?  Tell her then to help me.”

            Of course, Jesus cared about her.  When he heard the news about her brother’s death he dropped all of his plans and rushed to be by her side.  But she had let the frustrations and resentment build up so great in her busyness that she forgot who she was cooking for…the Son of God, the Savior of the world.  She had begun to think it was all up to her.  Jesus gently reminds her that only “one thing is needful”…”We do not live by bread alone but by hearing the words that proceed from the mouth of the Lord” (Deut 8:3, Luke 4:4, John 6:27).           

It’s true for men and women.  Make time to sit and listen and learn about God’s love for you.  Let your service to God come from a cup that is full, not empty.  Take as much time to heal and be nurtured as you take time to give.

            Our text this morning describes the lives of two special women but it speaks to us all.  All of us who are active and committed and sincere.

            You are not alone. 

It is not all up to you. 

Do your part. 

With all of your gifts. 

But do your part only.  It is God who is saving the world, not you or me.  We are simply called to join in.

            We are simply called to find the balance.

            Amen.

There Is No Escape

Luke 11:1-13 

July 10, 2016 

Mark S. Bollwinkel 

            “Tradition has it that on the morning Teresa of Avila was leaving her home to join a convent, a gentleman saw her climbing into the carriage and could not resist making an appreciative assessment of her ankles.  “Take a good look,” she is said to have called out merrily, “that’s the last one you’ll get!” (Enduring Grace, Flinders, Harpers, 1993, page 155).

            We don’t usually think of saints as people with a sense of humor.  Most of us think of the mystics of the Middle Ages as severe, morose and hermit-like people.

            Teresa of Avila didn’t practice physical self-punishment.  She was a beautiful woman.  She was well known as a great cook.  She was a “superb conversationalist”, the type of person that was a joy to be around.  She is not known to have performed many miracles and no real exorcisms.

            Teresa of Avila has been venerated for her brilliant visionary faith in one of the darkest times in history.  The Spanish Inquisition was in full rage in the 16^th century when her writings on the spiritual life began to circulate.  If she was perceived as a heretic or if her visions of God were suggested to be hallucinations of the devil, she would have easily been burned at the stake.  Those who expressed faith different than those in power, especially women, were prime targets for the Inquisition’s terror.

            At that time women were prohibited from preaching or writing about the scriptures.  This did not stop Teresa from publishing four books, hundreds of letters and poems.   Her wonderful descriptions of contemplative prayer have been treasured for centuries.  Teresa of Avila was a woman of real courage and wisdom.  She writes, “Without [a] doubt, I fear those who have such great fear of the devil more than I do the devil himself” (Autobiography).

                        We most often think of mystics as those who seek to escape this world through spiritual discipline, especially prayer.  This is a shallow form of mysticism and not the case with Teresa.

            Western culture, and Christianity in particular, has had to struggle with the Platonic dualism of the Greek world.  Those philosophers suggested that there is a dual nature to human life.  The physical, earthly life is considered profane and limited, while the spiritual life, or the soul, is held up as sacred and eternal.  These two natures are considered in opposition to each other.  Some forms of mysticism claim that an individual can nurture an inner life capable of “escaping” the defiled outer life of daily existence.

            Prayer for folks like this becomes a technique where by we master our evil, physical selves and escape to a higher, spiritual plain. 

Consider this modern definition of prayer taken out of an advertisement from the Bay Guardian for a New Age religious workshop:

Prayer is the bringing of one’s heart into the sunshine, so that like a plant, its inward life may thrive for an outward development.  It is the plea of one’s better self against one’s weaker self.  It is the ascent of the soul above time into the freedom of eternity.

             For those convinced of a dual nature to life, prayer becomes an escape from time, history and self, to the ‘freedom of eternity”, from the slavery of our bodies and our daily needs.

            This is not the transcendence of which Teresa wrote.  She knew an intimacy with God so complete that the divinity inherent in this life was fully experienced not avoided or denied.

            John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement in England during the 1700’s, rejected the notion that we are divided selves, sacred spirits and profane bodies.  He writes, “All the other enemies of Christianity are triflers…the mystics are the most dangerous…” Albert Outler writes that Wesley understood discipleship as “active holiness in this life” not out of it (John Wesley, Oxford, 1964).

            As a result, John Wesley took his ministry to the factories and mines, preaching in prisons and market places.  The first Methodists actively opposed slavery in Great Britain.  They started the first public education of children.

            I share Wesley’s suspicion for techniques of spiritual escape.  Did you see the ad in the newspaper the other day that read, “The Clairvoyant Society has cancelled its scheduled meeting for tomorrow due to unforeseen circumstances?”

            Faith in Jesus Christ is not a means to escape life, but rather, by God’s grace, faith is a means to fully engage life and find God there.

            Listen to the words from the writer of Colossians, “In Christ the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have come to fullness of life in him” (2:9). It reminds us of John’s gospel where we hear that in Jesus “The word became flesh and dwelt among us” (1:14).

            We worship an incarnate God.  A God who is fully and finally revealed as a human being, in a human body, living a human life of eating, walking, laughing and dying.  In Christ we are not offered an escape hatch from this profane world.  How can the world be profane if God is one with it?

            Rather, in Christ we are given the means to encounter God in the world, even in our own complex and sometimes painful lives.

            Thus, being a Christian has as much to do with our lives from Monday to Saturday, then just on Sunday mornings.  How we work, play, relate to family and friends, is where God is to be found, not simply in church on Sunday.

            This has important implications for how we pray.

            In our gospel lesson, the disciples ask Jesus to teach them to pray.  Instead of a seven-week course and cassette tape package on the correct techniques of mediation, Jesus says, “When you pray, say, Father Hallowed be thy name.  Thy kingdom come.  Give us this day our daily bread.  Forgive us as we forgive others.  Lead us not into temptation.” 

Period.

            Is this “the ascent of the soul above time into the freedom of eternity”?

            So many of us are intimidated by prayer.  We feel like we shouldn’t bother God with our puny concerns.  We feel we haven’t learned the right words to say or the correct techniques to make prayer effective.  Many of us don’t bother with praying, thinking that it wouldn’t help us get along with the boss or handle the kids anyway.

            If God completely reveals divinity in the human life of Jesus, faith in that God has everything to do with our boss and the kids.  It has everything to do with our living, not only with what happened after we die.

            Jesus says, pray for your daily bread.  How much more “down to earth” can you get?  It reminds me of the play and movie “Fiddler on the Roof”.  Remember the scene when his students surround the old rabbi?  They are asking him all sorts of questions.  Right then, during the pogroms and persecution of Jews in Russia one of the students asks him how they should pray for the Czar.  The rabbi prays, “O God, keep our precious Czar…far away from us!”

            God is to be found in our lives, so pray for what you really need, even if it is for daily bread, or two hours of quiet, or a raise at work.  We count in the eyes of God; we can pray for what we really need.

            We can pray with real hope and expectation.  Jesus says to pray, “Thy Kingdom come”.  We can count on God to keep God’s promises.

            Wodell writes, “Our chronic weakness is not that we expect too much from God, but that we trust God too little.”  The answers to our prayers may be “no” or may come in surprising ways, but God’s Kingdom is here in our midst as well as in the future.  We can pray with real hope.

            We can pray actively not passively.  Jesus teaches us to pray for forgiveness as we forgive others.  Thus true prayer in not only sitting in a closet praying that you and your best friend will make up after the fight.  If prayer is to be effective, we also need to get up and go over to our friend’s house and work out our problems.

            Remember this old preacher’s story?  Each day the man went into the chapel and prayed, “Dear God, please let me win the lottery.”  He was devoted, he got on his knees, he lit a candle and everyday the urgent prayer was the same, “Dear God, please let me win the lottery.”  Finally, one day after this usual routine, frustrated and fed up, the man was about to leave the chapel muttering about how God had let him down again, when a voice from Heaven broke the silence, “My son at least you could do is buy a lottery ticket!”

            If we pray for peace, we need to work for it was well.  If we pray for a better world, we need to actively make it that way.  In the overwhelming news of violence in the world, our own country and our own cities we are often driven to prayers for peace and healing for the victims.  Which is a good thing to do!   But it is empty piety if we don’t use that compassion to do something about it: 

Christ has no body now but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours.

Yours are the eyes through which he looks compassion on this world.

Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good.

Yours are the hands through which he blesses all the world.

Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes, you are his body.

Christ has no body now on earth but yours.”

~ Teresa of Ávila

Prayer isn’t passive; it is active engagement in life.  We experience God’s forgiveness as we forgive others.

            In Jesus Christ we are called to find God in the midst of our humanity.  That means we can pray for what we really need, that we can pray with real hope, and that our prayers will empower us to actively find God in our lives and world.

            Saint Teresa of Avila did.  Like all true mystics, she led the contemplative life not to escape the world, but through transcendence to find God within it.

            She writes:

Let nothing upset you,

Let nothing frighten you.

Everything is changing;

God alone is changeless.

Patience attains the goal.

Who has God lacks nothing.

God alone fills all her needs.

            (The “Bookmark Prayer”)

            If we would have such faith there is no need for escape.

            Amen.

Afflicting the Comfortable, Comforting the Afflicted 

Luke 10:1-11, 16-20 

July 3, 2016 

Mark S. Bollwinkel

            Fifteen years ago Bonnie and I had the privilege of participating in a choir concert at the Basilica di Santa Maria Assunta in Clusone, Italy.  It was the last concert of a 17-day tour.  It was one of our best experiences.  A warm and welcoming crowd truly appreciated our presence.

Located in the foothills of the Alps, the paintings, sculpture and tapestries of this 14^th century Basilica were inspiring.  

As are the convictions of European Christians, past and present, who have left the world a legacy of art and architecture. 

And…a number of us Californians could not help but wonder about the content of some of the Basilica’s most prominent art.  Right in the front of the altar area was a large painting of the beheading of John the Baptist and the presentation of his bleeding head by the child Salome to King Herod (Mark 6:14-29).  On the other side of the sanctum was a marble statue of the martyrdom of St. Sebastian, depicting his body tied to a tree and shot through with arrows.  In the center was a marble crucifix, with blood running from the wounds of Jesus’ side, hands and head.   These were but a few of the pieces of art in the wonderful basilica, all beautifully done and quite graphic in their depiction of violence.

It would be hard to imagine such images in a contemporary Protestant worship setting.

What was the message these great artists were trying to get across?  Why did the members of this church feel their art deserved display and preservation?

This art upholds the values of commitment, dedication and faith by honoring the sacrifice of the saints, vividly portraying the cost of discipleship and reminding us of the price Jesus paid for our salvation.  We still think those values are important but we wouldn’t decorate our sanctuary with images of violence to get the point across.  Would we?

How do we get our message across?

            How will we tell our world the good news of God’s love for us and the promised reign of God’s peace, justice and love in our place and time?

            Jesus might have asked similar questions as he traveled towards Jerusalem with his disciples.  Luke describes the sending of the seventy, the “Appointed” in pairs, to the villages Jesus would enter on his way to the capital.      

            News was spreading rapidly about Jesus and his mission by word of mouth, village to village, in the Galilee and Judea.  Crowds were gathering wherever he went.  But the ruling Jewish authorities and the Roman news bureaus in Jerusalem were burying the story.   They wouldn’t give Jesus airtime on their satellite link up to Rome.  Even Josephus, the Walter Cronkite of the year 30 AD, hardly mentioned the Nazarene.  So the Lord sent out “advance men” (we must assume the 70 were all male) to prepare the villages for Jesus’ coming.

            They were to travel light and depend on the hospitability of their hosts.  They were to proclaim the same message as Jesus, “Repent, the Kingdom of God is near.”  Empowered with the spirit of God as Jesus, they were to heal the sick.

            Jesus warned them that not all would welcome the news.  Many would reject it.  Those who were comfortable and invested in the status quo would be upset by such a message.  Those who were suffering or socially disenfranchised were yearning to hear such a message.  The Appointed weren’t to worry about pronouncements of doom or getting even.  If people did not accept Jesus’ message, they were simply to move on.

            Jesus gave something to these messengers that we could use today.  A sense of urgency.

            Jesus and his followers, along with most of the populace, were filled with the expectation that the world was about to end.  The eschaton was a hand.  The Day of God’s Judgment was about to unfold.

            There was no time for people to change their minds.  There could be no patience with the doubtful.

            The Christian mission was not forced upon the reluctant.  Jesus’ message was freely available, given to all.  The Appointed were not to thrust the message upon those who rejected it because in part there was not enough time.

            The message of Jesus and his Appointed was “now or never, the Kingdom of God is here, what’s your choice?!”

            Peter Gomes, the former Chaplin at Harvard University, likens this text to a rescue mission on a sinking ship.  As the ship is going down, there is no time to argue.  We are called to offer the means of escape to each cabin but then we must move on the next.  The initiative of response rests with those who must choose.

            Sinking ships do not allow the luxury of debate.

            Two thousand years after this time of urgent future expectation, we may want to believe that the ship is becalmed not sinking.

            We have been seduced into thinking that the comfort and prosperity of North America is permanent.  Anyone who lived through the Depression can tell you otherwise.

            The Cold War is over and our young people are not drafted to go off to war.  Yet a new age of terrorism, international and domestic, seems to bring us another atrocity each week.    Palestine and Israel, Pakistan and India, Iraq, Syria and Turkey can barely contain their violence.  The doctrines of war still convince us to invest in weapons instead of peace.

            The impoverished nations of the tropical world, where 20,000 children die each day of malnutrition related disease, don’t have much time to patiently wait for wealth to trickle down from the North.

            And how much time do each of us really have to find the purpose and meaning in our own lives that will transcend paying the bills and getting through the day.  What are we waiting for that will set our lives and relationships on fire with a truth beyond ourselves?

            Maybe the world would hear our message more clearly if we had the sense of urgency Jesus gave his Appointed?

            Like Ida Scudder.

In the late 1800’s Ida Scudder reluctantly visited her medical missionary father, John, at his post in South India.  One evening, Ida was asked to help three women from different families struggling in difficult childbirth.  Custom prevented their husbands from accepting a male doctor treating their wives during birth.  Ida herself could do nothing.  She was shocked to learn the next morning that all three women had died.  Although used to the comfortable life of an American expatriate, she believed that night was a calling from God.  Ida Scudder went back to America and entered medical school becoming one of the first women graduates of the Cornell Medical College. 

            Shortly after, she returned to India and opened a one-bed clinic in Vellore, Tamil Nadu in 1900.   In 1909, CMC was the first medical institution in India to offer nursing and in 1918 medical training to women. Today the Vellore Christian Medical College and Hospital serves 2,000 outpatients, 1,000 inpatients, performs 43 surgeries, and delivers 16 births on average each day.

            Ida Scudder’s vision was born of that sense of urgency Jesus gave to his Appointed.  Her life was transformed by Jesus’ call to live in the present by the spirit of God’s future. 

            Remember this old preacher’s joke?  The speaker was really getting into his message and so was his audience.  “We must forever rid the earth of the scourges of capitalism, elitism and political favoritism.”  One little lady raised her hand and said, “Could you add rheumatism to that list?”

            We may grow weary of the great problems of our day, which so often seem overwhelming.  But consider what average folk like us are already doing.  Most of us are not aware that a fraction of every dollar we give here at Church of the Wayfarer goes to support Ida Scudder’s CMC in South India through our denomination.  The United Methodist denomination houses, educates and feeds 1,000,000 children around the world every day.  Our United Methodist Committee on Relief resettles 400 refugees back into their homes, everyday.  Would that our sense of overwhelm be tempered by our convictions of hope!

If Jesus and his Appointed came knocking at our doors, would we be the ones to welcome his message or would we slam the door shut?

            “Repent, the Kingdom of God is at hand” talks about turning our lives around; opening ourselves to something new; orienting our lives to the values of peace, justice and love instead of comfort, consumerism and sentimentality.  It describes a church committed more to those who are not here, than those who are.

            Reinhold Niebhur once described the role of the pastor as one who “comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable”.  The calling is true for any Christian.  Jesus sends the 70 out to declare a message that brings comfort to those who struggle and challenges to those who are most invested in keeping things the same.

            Maybe that is one of the reasons that along with the beautiful renditions of Mary and the baby Jesus and heavenly choruses of angels, European cathedrals, basilicas and churches depict violence and human suffering in their art.

            It forces the worshiper to ask “who are we?”, “whose side are we on?”, the comfortable or the comforting?

            The answer to that determines the message we want to share with the world.

            Amen.