April 24, 2016
Hoosier Neighbor? | Time
- Luke 10:38-42
- Rev. Dr. Jerry Deck
In this series we’re talking about the importance of loving your neighbor and we’re talking especially about loving your literal neighbor. As a part of that we wanted to bring up a couple of things that make loving our neighbor difficult. Last week we talked about how fear oftentimes inhibits us from loving our neighbor. It might be that we’re afraid of being rejected or being looked at as the weird neighbor or any of a multiple possibilities of things that cause us to honestly say we’d prefer to sit on our couches in the safety and comfort of our homes, rather than going out. And, as we said, the real task is for us to begin to wrestle with whether or not we shouldn’t be more fearful of missing out on being a part of what God’s doing in our neighborhoods then on whatever other fears we might have.
And so this week we want to look at what the book, The Art of Neighboring, says is the number one reason that most of us don’t love our actual neighbor: a lack of time. And to be sure, I think they are probably right. Oftentimes it isn’t because we are intentionally not wanting to love our neighbors that keep us from doing so, but simply a lack of time. I mean it wouldn’t surprise me if some of you went home after the first Sunday and said, “Ok, Jerry wants us to walk the neighborhood and pray, let me look at my “to do” list (flipping over page after page), oh great I can put it right down there, or perhaps you thumbed through your calendar and said, “Great, there’s some space right there between 3 and 3:30 in the morning.” We are a busy people who love getting things done, love feeling productive.
As the book points out, what is interesting is that all of the technology that is popping up was supposed to help us become more efficient and give us more time. Cell phones that would allow us to call folks while we were in the car or do email while waiting in a line someplace. Keurig’s that allow us to instantly have coffee without wasting time doing preparing or cleaning up. DVRs that allow us to fast-forward through all those time-consuming commercials. All of these things were created to give us more time and yet for the vast majority of us that has not been the case. The dream of magically having free time seems elusive.
Perhaps we wake up early to go out for a run because we’re training for the Indy Mini then we hurry home to help get breakfast for the kids so that they will see our faces then head off to work, quickly fitting in a stop off at the dry cleaners, then head home and grab two kids, dropping one off at Lion’s Park and one at Interactive Academy (detouring just briefly to grab something at Taco Bell) then pick the kids up and get them home in order to do their homework and for you to kiss your spouse before putting the kids to bed, catching up on a few emails, watching an episode of House Hunters or the last half of the Pacer’s game, heading to bed and then waking up and starting it all over. [And, of course, while we’re doing all of that we’ve also been talking on our cell phones or texting at the stoplight.] Whether you’re married or single, have kids or don’t, work out of the home or from your home, all of us seem to go from one thing to the next with little time to breathe.
And, of course, what makes it a challenge is that none of those things are, in and of themselves, bad. In the example I gave, it’s good to exercise, to have things cleaned, to fix breakfast for your kids, to work, to eat, to have your kids dance or play a sport, to relax and watch some television. It’s good to provide for yourself and, if you have one, your family. It’s good to give opportunities to your children. If you single any of those things out you think, well, that’s a good thing to do, and yet when we do all of them we can’t help but feel both good because we’ve accomplished a lot, but also a bit torn and exhausted. As someone has pointed out, it’s not like we set out to live chaotic lives it just sort of happens, right? It creeps up on us and though perhaps we know better, the truth is that we all give into that lie that if we just finish that one last thing, that last project, that last ballgame, that last concert, that then things will slow down and we’ll have some space to do other things, to be present, maybe even to love our literal neighbors. But we, and the people who live next to us and the people who live next to them just keep going, keep hurrying.
In many ways this seems like a modern day phenomena that is just getting worse and worse and yet, as Ecclesiastes says, there is nothing new under the sun. And while it may look different and involve different characters, in reality, being distracted and hurrying has been something that has plagued us since at least the time of Mary and Martha.
For a story as short as this one is it’s really a pretty powerful and fascinating one. It starts out with a woman, Martha, doing exactly what Jesus seems to always be telling people to do which is welcoming people into their homes. Jesus is traveling, he enters into a village, and Martha welcomes him. And Martha is doing what one does when they’ve welcomed someone in which is to be as hospitable as possible. She’s fluttering about, it seems, going from one thing to the next in order to have everything be perfect for Jesus, the guest, while her lazy sister (in her eyes at least) is sitting at Jesus’ feet, just listening to him and soaking in his presence. And so, not all that surprisingly Martha asks to get a little help from Mary, “If it’s it not too much to ask!”
And before we talk about Jesus’ response let me point out that Mary sitting there at Jesus’ feet would not have just been troubling to Martha, but actually to most who would have seen it because women should not have been sitting in there with Jesus. There was a particular place for where a woman like Mary should be and a particular place where she should not be. And so her sitting there, in the pose of a student to a teacher, would have been remarkably counter-cultural. It would have gone against the grain of what everyone else was doing. Which is important to keep in mind.
Okay, so back to Jesus’ response. Jesus, rather than saying anything to Mary, looks at Martha and, seeing that the many tasks that Martha was doing was keeping her from doing what was most important, said to her, “You are worried and distracted by the many things you are doing.” In the Greek the word for “distracted” has the connotation of being pulled or dragged in different directions. And so what Jesus is saying is that she has so much going on that she has lost track of what is most important. That in the midst of everything else that she is missing Jesus, missing listening to him, missing his teaching about what is most important.
And it’s also fascinating to see that Jesus says Mary has chosen the “better” part. Which is not insignificant because it brings up the fact that the things we’re doing aren’t always simply classified as being good or bad, but sometimes it’s important to classify what we’re doing as either good or better. In other words, what Martha is doing is not necessarily bad (it’s good at times to be hospitable), but on this day and at this point she could have spent her time doing something better, more significant. Which is why I think time is actually such a hard thing for us to get a handle on. Because there are so many good things for us to spend our time on that we might not realize that we are missing out on doing things that are better, that are more significant. And unfortunately, sometimes we are in such a hurry, just like all those that surround us, that we might not even notice what we are missing out on until something wakes us up. Maybe it’s a passage like this one or a bad medical report or a letter you receive.
As most of you know in February I went with a few other ZPCers to Romania. As oftentimes happens on these kinds of trips where you spend lots of time together you end up talking about lots of different things. There was a day when Dave Gall and I were hanging out and he began to tell me a story about something that happened a while back in his life. Now Dave is a smart guy (he did chair the committee that brought me here!) and so when Dave talks it’s always wise to listen. But as Dave was talking I realized that his story was something that I needed to not forget and, as I thought about it more, I realized that if he were willing to tell it, that I would love for you all to hear as well. After taking a little time to think about it, Dave graciously agreed to tell his story and so I’m going to ask him to come up now.
[Dave interview]
As I’ve thought about Dave’s story over the last couple of months one of the things that kept coming up in my mind is that we really can’t do it all. One of the hard things about living in a place like we do is that there are opportunities all around us and if we aren’t careful we will begin to think we can take advantage of all of them, for ourselves and for our children. One of the passages that I think is so important for us is Psalm 90 in which the psalmist asks the Lord to teach him how to number his days. This is not a morbid request, but is a request that realizes we only have so much time and rather than trying to make sure that we can do everything, no matter how good it may be, that we really need to ask how we can limit ourselves to doing the better things. Because if we try and do all of the good things we will end up living hurried lives and before you know it our children will be grown up or our time on earth will be drawing nigh and we will wonder if we’ve been in such a hurry that we actually haven’t focused on what is most important, on what is most significant.
I’ve been struck by this John Ortberg quote. “Love and hurry are fundamentally incompatible. Love always takes time and time is the one thing hurried people don’t have.”
So what does this mean for us and more specifically what does it mean for us as followers of Jesus? One of the things I think it means is that we have to ask whether we are actually present where we are. Jesus was there, but Martha was so busy doing things that she didn’t have the time, or take the time, to really be with him. How many of us do that with the people we are around, whether they are friends or spouses or children or neighbors? This week I’ve had to ask how many times I have been with my kids or even feeding Liesel her bottle while scrolling through email or FaceBook or the news on my phone? Why do I find it so hard to just be with them? Or how often have Megan and I been scrambling this way and that (doing perhaps good things) and yet still those things can keep us from having the time to simply be with one another? We keep thinking that time will just become available and yet we must realize that this will not just happen. And my guess is that I am not alone.
Of course, the truth is if I’m doing that with my family then it should not be surprising that I, that we, find it difficult to be present, to give space for, our literal neighbors. And yet, if we want to follow Jesus and his teachings, if we want to be a community that is engaging in its’ neighborhoods, then we can’t wait for the time to just magically appear, we have to start making decisions that will allow us time to simply be, to be present, to be aware of the presence of Jesus in our midst. What does that mean for you? I don’t. I can’t tell you. There is not a one-size fits all.
For some it will mean asking whether you are working too much and whether or not that next promotion is actually worth it. For some it will mean saying “no” to a committee or activity at church so that you can be present to your family or neighborhood. For others it may be cutting back on the travel teams or the choirs that may be good experiences, but also may be keeping us from being present with our children or showing them what it means to love our literal neighbors. Or perhaps it means cutting down or out on social media or time watching television or playing video games or whatever else seems to swallow your time with ravenous hunger.
Before I get any complaints let me be clear I’m not telling you to not take the next promotion or to say no to doing something for the church or to keep your kid from playing sports or to throw out the television, but I am saying that some of us, many of us, perhaps most of us, need to do something different. If we’re going to genuinely love and be present for our neighbors (both figurative in our friends and families and literally our neighbors) then most of us probably need to wrestle with how we are being distracted and whether in so doing we are missing out on opportunities to see Jesus and be a part of what he is doing. To make sure that we aren’t settling for the good rather than the better.
And so perhaps this week we can do something like an audit of how we are spending our time. We can do that by looking over your calendar over the last couple of weeks or just writing it down this week. Or perhaps this is a week to cut out social media or television and see if that gives you a bit more margin in order to be more present. Whatever you do, the question for the week has less to do with an activity and more to do with asking if you are investing in what is better, not just what is good. Are you distracted or do you have the time to be present to Jesus, to your family, to your neighbor. If not, then what needs to change? Brothers and sisters, may we have the courage to live lives where we have the time, where we make the time, to love as Jesus has loved us and to love others as he has called us to. Now is the time. Hallelujah. Amen.