|
United Church of Paducah
4600 Buckner Lane
Paducah, KY 42001
(270) 442-3722
Worship Times
Sunday Service: 10:00a
Refreshments &
Fellowship: 11:15a
Christian Education
For All Ages:
11:20a - Noon
Nursery Services Provided Handicap Accessible
All Are Welcome!
A Congregation Of The
 |
From July 22, 2007
Choosing The Better Part
Luke 10:38-42
Mary and Martha. Mary and Martha. Even folks
who don't go to church know about these two sisters and how
one wanted Jesus to get the other one up off the floor and
back to work.
Our story today is about roles and responsibilities,
expectations and exhaustion, discipleship and duty. Dig
deeper, though, and you will see that this isn't just a
story about two very different women with two very different
ways of being in the world. It's also a real-life parable
about the two halves of the human person: the make-it-happen
active self and the let-it-be receptive self. The achiever
and the receiver, if you will.
In the life of faith, both are needed. Even the Trappist
Monks at Gethsemani Abbey near Bardstown know this. They
live in silence, ordering their days around worship, keeping
company with God, and yet they also have work for which they
are each held responsible. Things like chopping onions or
managing the Abbey's website. Work which is, one would hope,
informed and nourished by their silent communion. Work in
which they find God and themselves.
We need both, don't we, in our daily walk with Jesus? We
need Mary with her pure devotion. And we need Martha with
that git-er-done juju of hers.
In order to be whole, in order to be wholly faithful, we
need both sides of this human equation. We need action and
contemplation. We need the taking in and the giving out, the
sitting still and the service that lifts us up and out of
ourselves.
More than this, though, we need these two sides of ourselves
to trust each other, honor each other, rely on each other,
just as our lungs so easily and naturally carry us through
our days, breathing in and breathing out, taking in and
giving back.
For those of us raised on a steady diet of Puritan work
ethic, we know our inner Martha far more intimately than we
do our inward Mary. We were encouraged to be doers,
applauded for being Marthas.
Even in the church. Especially in the church. Here we are
more comfortable with going into Martha-mode than we are
with entering into Mary-ness. Which is at once a great gift
to the church and also a liability.
Some of you know that before my vacation began, I traveled
to Indianapolis to take part in a visioning retreat
sponsored by the Indiana-Kentucky Conference. The purpose of
the gathering (which drew together at least a hundred laity
and clergyfolk) was to offer up wisdom and suggestions to a
blue ribbon committee whose task it is to discern a new way
of being and doing church in our region. Not because we're
not already faithful to our mission and ministries this but
because we can no longer afford the structures that
undergird this. (Sound familiar?)
Along the way to Indianapolis, I thought about the retreat's
schedule and what was being asked of us. I was excited that
we would begin with worship and also conclude with worship.
I was especially eager to be fed and challenged by solid
preaching. In between these two worship services, a
consultant would lead us through a process of dialogue and
discernment, one informed by his experience as a
denominational president and his take on fifty years of
cultural and religious shifts that have, little bit by
little bit, resulted in a decline in denominations like
ours.
Our gathering, I'm afraid to say, favored Martha and
overlooked Mary almost entirely.
We gathered in the sanctuary but there was no worship
service, no keeping company with a sacred text, no listening
together for the word Jesus would speak to us as we began
our journey together. There was no centering, no quieting.
No time even to clear the world from our eyes so that our
vision might also be the Spirit's own mighty vision for this
church Christ loves so thoroughly, has blessed so richly,
and which he seeks to lead into a new day.
Instead, after a few words meant to orient us for the work
ahead, we simply sang two verses of "Spirit of the Living
God" (fall afresh on me, fall afresh on us) and then we
hurried off into the fellowship hall to get busy.
And busy we were. Listening to the consultant's powerpoint
lectures and then talking nonstop as we went about our
Martha-esque work of cooking up ideas and opinions to serve
up to the blue ribbon committee. By the time lunch was over
on Saturday, some were already weary and worn, and so
excused themselves early. Our conversation groups labored on
diligently, but a glance around the room made it clear we
were all losing steam, losing focus.
Our consultant saw this happening, too, so although we were
scheduled to conclude at
5 p.m., by mid-afternoon he made the rounds to each group
and told us to finish on our own and then bless each other
on our way. So much for ending with worship!
I tell you this not to complain, nor to suggest that ours
was a Godless pursuit that will surely result in ruin. I
tell you this because I believe it reflects the greater work
to which the United Church of Christ is being called, vital
and faithful work that is also yours and mine here in
Paducah.
But before I speak more about this, I want to share
something I learned while ministering on the Navajo Nation.
With two semesters of seminary under my belt and five months
with this congregation the previous year, I was good to go!
Like the driver of a souped up car, I wanted to peel out and
tear up the road. (For Jesus' sake, mind you!)
So there I was, vroom, vroom, in my Martha-mobile freshly
settled into my life on the rez. But the light wouldn't
turn. The car and I just sat there. And sat there. And sat
there.
The days dragged on and I grew restless. A restlessness that
became a burden. I revved the engine of my little sports car
but there was nowhere to go, nothing to do.
The sun rose, moved slowly across the sky, then set, and one
by one stars filled the heavens. And the next day, the same
thing. Dawn would break, the sun would climb up into the sky
and then inch its way down again, twilight would come, and
night would fall.
It was excruciating; the Martha in me wanted to scream. No
one was in a hurry to do anything. No one was in a hurry to
go anywhere. This was the reservation, after all! Nothing
happens quickly, not even when people speak to each another.
Navajo conversations move along like feathers in the air,
drifting, shifting with the slightest breeze, rarely ever
touching down when or where you wanted.
So I gave up. Pure and simple, I gave up expecting the light
to change. Only later would I see that this is exactly what
needed to happen; spatula in hand and impatience bubbling, I
was so out of synch with life there that I was no help at
all. Only later did I understand. My tempo and my attention
needed to mirror the world around me.
It wasn't true at all that nothing was happening; something
big was happening. Slowed down, relieved of my need to do, I
could feel it; it was like the rise and fall of a great
presence at the center of the earth, the center of all
creation. Breath in. Breath out. Each breath filled with so
much potential and power.
Beneath all our hurrying and scurrying, beneath all our
coming and going and doing and deciding, something very big
exists. Call it the heartbeat of God. Call it the Spirit's
presence. Call it the Living Christ. Call you what it will;
it is big and deeply, profoundly good. It is utterly
reliable and always available. But it is easy to miss, even
easier to dismiss.
Because its power and presence isn't felt or found on the
surface of things. No, it dwells in the quiet, it unfurls
from the deep. A quiet, deep place that Jesus knew well. In
fact, it was his well, his source, his place of communion
with Abba God.
I cannot begin to explain the riches that came that summer
when I finally slowed down enough to sense this place Jesus
knew so well, when I began to trust its presence, its pulse,
its power. And once I was willing to be guided by this
source, all I can tell you is that miracles began happening
left and right. And wisdom abounded. And peace, oh the
peace; it was like a river, just like the hymn says it is.
Everything a person or a church would ever need or want was
there, given with more grace and generosity than words can
convey.
Many who took part in the visioning retreat came from
churches like ours. Churches that, like Martha, like us,
look around and feel overwhelmed by the considerable task at
hand, which is keeping our churches afloat in these changing
times. Like you, they love their churches and they love this
denomination of ours. Which is what contributes, as it does
for us sometimes, to a sense of urgency and even a frantic
desperation to fix what's broken so we can move on.
I don't know about you but I can tell when the Martha
kitchen-dance has overtaken me.
With my apron on and my eye to all that needs doing, the
Martha in me gets all caught up in the mad quest for the
right recipe and the necessary ingredients. There's so much
to be done and I'm alone in the kitchen!
The Martha in me forgets what I learned in Arizona, forgets
that only steps away, out there in the living room is what I
really need, what we all need, which is an answer we will
not find rising up out of our activity and urgency.
"Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many
things," says our gentle Jesus, our prince of peace when we
get frantic in the kitchen. "There is need of only one
thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be
taken away from her."
Diana Butler Bass has written recently about what she
learned from a handful of churches who, despite the downward
turn of their churches around them, have found ways to
flourish and thrive and become wonderfully dynamic
communities of faith.
As busy as they are, these churches do something their
sister churches have not yet learned to do: they have
learned to be like Mary. They have learned how to sit with
God and listen - carefully - for God's inner wisdom for their
community. Who are we? What does God want us to do? How can
we be faithful to God's call? They ask God these questions
and then give God an opportunity to respond.
I have said this before but I find it ironic that this
denomination that so proudly (and rightfully) proclaims to
the world "God Is Still Speaking" has not yet lived into
that proclamation itself. I believe the Holy Spirit is
seeking to do a new thing in the United Church of Christ and
here in our church. A new thing founded on and sustained by
taking up the habits and disciplines that enable us finally,
to be with Christ and not simply do for Christ.
Not only here at United Church but across the country, the
choice is ours: we can languish in the kitchen, cooking and
fretting and getting all worked up about all that needs
doing, or we can do what seems counterintuitive and even
nonsensical.
We can sit at the feet of Jesus, we who have so often
worshipped at the altar of the Puritan work ethic. We can
sit at his feet and listen for the word Christ is speaking
to us. A word that gives both hope and help.
Then, when we rise up, we know. We know not only what steps
to take, but we know how much we need and deserve communion
with Christ. You know him, he's the one who says he will
lead if we will but follow. Amen.
© Rev. Karen Winkel
United Church of Paducah (UCC)
Christianity for the Rest of Us: How the Neighborhood Church
Is Transforming the Faith, Diana Butler Bass.
For more about becoming a Spirit-led congregation, I
recommend Becoming a Blessed Church, by N. Graham
Standish. |
"Never place a period where God has placed a comma." - Gracie
Allen
Check the Announcements and
Calendar pages to
keep up to date on current church news and events.
Please join us for a special viewing of
Paper Clips
on May 4th at 12 noon.
|
