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ON A JOURNEY OF FAITH – CHOOSING THE NECESSARY THINGS
SUSQUEHANNA CONFERNECE
June 14, 2013
Bishop Mark J. Webb
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I. INTRODUCTION
A. During our time together we are going to focus on two topics. I have entitled my message this
morning – “On a Journey of Faith – Choosing the Necessary Things.” Tomorrow, our focus
will be: “On a Journey of Faith – Focusing on the Destination”.
B. Prayer
C. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age
of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the Season of
light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair,
we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven,
we were all going direct the other way.”
D. Those famous lines, open A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens. They give us a glimpse of
the novel’s central tension between love and family, on the one hand, and oppression and hatred,
on the other. The book suggests that good and evil, wisdom and folly, light and darkness stand
equally matched in their struggle. The book makes prominent use of “doubles” to get and keep
the readers interest.
E. There is a familiar New Testament account that also seems to use “doubles” to get our attention
and to teach us some valuable truth. I want us to hear that account again and spend some time
focusing on what it may say to us. I’ll admit, I may be sharing this today, because it is what I
need to hear, but I invite you to share my pain.
F.
Read Luke 10.38-42
Now as they were traveling along, He entered a village; and a woman named Martha
welcomed Him into her home. 39 She had a sister called Mary, who was seated at the Lord’s
feet, listening to His word. 40 But Martha was distracted with all her preparations; and she
came up to Him and said, “Lord, do You not care that my sister has left me to do all the
serving alone? Then tell her to help me.” 41 But the Lord answered and said to her, “Martha,
Martha, you are worried and bothered about so many things; 42 but only one thing is
necessary, for Mary has chosen the good part, which shall not be taken away from her.”
G. I don’t know about you, but I really have never liked this passage of Scripture. Maybe it’s the
way I read it, maybe it’s the teachings I have heard about it, but it has always made me feel
guilty. It seems to always force me to make a choice. To answer a question that seems to have a
right answer and a wrong answer. Am I a Mary or am I a Martha?
H. I find the placement of this account in the Gospel of Luke interesting. Earlier in the 10th chapter
of Luke we hear Jesus answer the question of the lawyer, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit
eternal life.” Jesus returns his question, with a question, “what does the law say”? The
lawyers response: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your
soul, and with all your strength, and with all you mind; and you shall love your neighbor as
yourself. Jesus affirms the answer and the lawyer presses the issue, “Who is my neighbor?”
Jesus replies with the parable of the Good Samaritan – Then we are thrust into the visit of Jesus
with Mary and Martha. And it seems like we are being forced to choose.
I.
The priest and the Levite believed they were doing the right thing. According to the law, they
were doing the right thing. The injured man may have been dead and touching him would render
them ceremonially unclean. Martha believed she was doing the right thing. She was living up to
societal expectations, being the proper hostess. This section of Scripture is not about choosing
good over bad, it’s about making sure the good does not crowd out the best.
J.
I believe the account of Mary and Martha, and even the parable of the Good Samaritan is about
our primary focus. Who and or what has our attention the majority of the time. By what are we
driven. Is our primary focus driven by the expectations of society, expectations of our church
members, expectations of our pastor, expectations of the Bishop, expectations of the DS,
expectations of ourselves or is our primary focus driven by the identity of our God and who we
are in relation to God.
K. Martha sees her sister Mary sitting at the feet of Jesus, while she is out in the kitchen busting her
butt and she can’t take it anymore. She runs into Jesus and lets it rip. She wants Jesus to set
Mary straight. Do you hear what Jesus said: “Martha, Martha, the Lord answered, you are
worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is
better . . .”
L. God has called us to ministry. God has called us to good works. God has called us to live and be
in the midst of the world. God has called us to be United Methodist pastors and laity with all
that brings with it. But our ministry, our good works, our responsibilities, the expectations and
the strategies to fulfill all of those things can never be the focus. The call upon our lives is to
focus upon who we are, upon who we are promised to become in our relationship with God
through Jesus Christ. From that everything else must flow.
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M. A little boy who lived far out in the country in the late 1800s had reached the age of twelve and
had never in all his life seen a circus. You can imagine his excitement, when one day a poster
went up at school announcing that on the next Saturday a traveling circus was coming to the
nearby town. He ran home with the glad news and the question, "Daddy, can I go?" Although
the family was poor, the father sensed how important this was to the lad. "If you do your
Saturday chores ahead of time," he said, "I’ll see to it that you have the money to go."’
Come Saturday morning, the chores were done and the little boy stood by the breakfast table,
dressed in his Sunday best. His father reached down into the pocket of his overalls and pulled out
a dollar bill-the most money the little boy had possessed at one time in all his life. The father
cautioned him to be careful and then sent him on his way to town. The boy was so excited, his
feet hardly seemed to touch the ground all the way. As he neared the outskirts of the village, he
noticed people lining the streets, and he worked his way through the crowd until he could see
what was happening. Lo and behold, it was the approaching spectacle of a circus parade! The
parade was the grandest thing this lad had ever seen. Caged animals snarled as they passed,
bands beat their rhythms and sounded shining horns, midgets performed acrobatics while flags
and ribbons swirled overhead. Finally, after everything had passed where he was standing, the
traditional circus clown, with floppy shoes, baggy pants, and a brightly painted face, brought up
the rear. As the clown passed by, the little boy reached into his pocket and took out that precious
dollar bill. Handing the money to the clown, the boy turned around and went home. What had
happened? The boy thought he had seen the circus when he had only seen the parade!
N. I believe one of the major issues the church faces, perhaps the major issue is this: We have
allowed ourselves to focus upon the good at the neglect of the best. We don’t have a strategy
problem in our church. Our struggle as a denomination is not because we lack programs. Our
difficulties are not because we have a leadership crisis. Our issue in the church is a spiritual one.
We have a spiritual problem that we need to address. Intentional or unintentional, forced or
accepted, we have found ourselves too busy in the kitchen to sit at the feet of Jesus. And I
believe it is time for that to change and it is time for those who are sitting at the feet of Jesus to
help those of us stuck in the kitchen, so that together we can claim who we are and in that
claiming become the leaders and the church God desires for us to be. God is calling us to be a
Martha with the seeking heart of a Mary and to be a Mary with the servant heart of a
Martha.
O. How do we do that?
We must claim the truth that we are on a journey of faith and we must choose the necessary
things for our journey.
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II. WHAT IS A JOURNEY OF FAITH?
A. Video – “After the Heart”
B. A journey of faith is allowing ourselves to trust the heart of God, so that our heart can be
captured and transformed! Spiritually speaking the heart isn’t about the vital physical organ
that keeps the blood circulating through our bodies, spiritually speaking the heart is the
innermost area or part of our lives. That part of us that we guard with all that we have. That part
that holds our greatest desires, and our deepest secrets and fears. A journey of faith is about that
part being captured by Jesus, owned by Jesus and then transformed, developed and grown.
C. Remember these words from the prophet Isaiah that Jesus quoted in Matthew 13.14-15:
“YOU WILL KEEP ON HEARING, BUT WILL NOT UNDERSTAND; YOU WILL KEEP ON SEEING, BUT
WILL NOT PERCEIVE; 15 FOR THE HEART OF THIS PEOPLE HAS BECOME DULL, WITH THEIR EARS
THEY SCARCELY HEAR, AND THEY HAVE CLOSED THEIR EYES, OTHERWISE THEY WOULD SEE WITH
THEIR EYES, HEAR WITH THEIR EARS, AND UNDERSTAND WITH THEIR HEART AND RETURN,
AND I WOULD HEAL THEM.”
D. Look at Romans 10.9-10: “ if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your
heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; 10 for with the heart a person
believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.”
E. Galatians 4.4-6: 4 But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a
woman, born under the law, 5 in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we
might receive adoption as children. 6 And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of
his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!”
F.
Look at Ephesians 3.14-19: For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, 15 from whom
every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, 16 that He would grant you, according to
the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, 17
so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and
grounded in love, 18 may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and
length and height and depth, 19 and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge,
that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.
G. A journey of faith is about the heart of God colliding with our heart. A journey of faith is about
that innermost part or area of our lives being transformed, SO THAT we experience the reality of
our creation and the reality of our purpose. It’s a journey that we must choose individually and it
is a journey that we share corporately. It’s a journey that makes us God’s and then allows us to
be used by God in the lives of others, that they too may experience the journey.
H. I want to spend the rest of our time together this morning talking about some of the necessary
things we must choose for this journey of faith. These are some of the foundational things we
must remember, things we must choose for the first time or make a decision to choose in a fresh,
new way. Things that I must choose. Things that you must choose. Things that we must choose
together, if we ever hope to be the kind of church that God is calling us to be. Tomorrow we are
going to talk about how we live our mission as a church, but first we have to talk about what we
will choose that will change our heart!
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III. CHOOSING THE NECESSARY THINGS
A. We Must Choose Grace
As Wesleyans, as United Methodist Christians, we have an amazing theology of grace. We talk
about grace all the time. We preach about grace. We even sing about grace! We know and
believe that grace is at the heart of our relationship with God. Grace is what allows us to
understand who God is. We know and believe that grace allows us to be drawn closer to God, to
love God more, and to become the people that God desires us to be. We have great definitions of
grace. Definitions like this one: Grace means that God gives me what I need, not what I
deserve.” Or this one: “Grace is everything for nothing to those who don’t deserve
anything.”
We can quote the Scripture verses that point to the truth of grace. Verses like Romans 3.23-24:
“for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and all are justified freely by his
grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”
Ephesians 2.8-9: "For it is by grace that you have been saved, through faith and this is not
from yourselves. It is the gift of God. Not of works so that no one can boast."
Grace is a word and a concept that we toss around a lot. We have an amazing theology of grace.
The problem is we don’t always believe what we know and preach. Those of us in the church
are trying to live a mission that extends the power of grace when we have not fully allowed the
power of grace to be claimed and owned within our lives.
Two friends arranged to meet each other for breakfast at a restaurant down south. They met at
the diner, were seated in a booth, and were greeted by the waitress. One ordered two eggs over
easy, a side of bacon, whole-wheat toast, and coffee. The other ordered oatmeal and fresh fruit.
The two friends talked and sipped coffee until the breakfast arrived. The one who ordered eggs
surveyed his plate and saw the eggs nicely scrambled, the bacon and toast and something else- a
light colored grainy substance. Do you know what it was? “What is this?” he asked the waitress
pointing to the goo. “Those are grits,” she replied. “I didn't order them”, he challenged her.
“That's okay,” she said, “you don't have to order them, they come with your meal. The man was
starting to get frustrated. “But I don't want to pay for them!” “You don't have to pay for them—
they're free!” The man just didn't get it. “I'm still not going to eat them!” he protested. And the
waitress said with firmness, “You can eat them, or you can leave them, that's your choice. Just
consider it a gift!”
If we are going to be alive in Christ, we have to stop playing around the margins of God’s grace
and fully allow it to collide with our hearts. We have to believe it, claim it, choose it! There are
too many people sitting in too many of our churches for too many years who have yet to fully
trust the promise of God’s grace
As we talk about being transformed by God, about becoming that which God claims for us, we
need to claim the simple yet powerful truth that God meets us right where we are. God doesn’t
wait for us to get our act together, God doesn’t wait for us to get our life cleaned up. God meets
us and accepts us just as we are.
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This is an important truth to understand. There are some here today who do not believe that God
loves them unconditionally. There are some here today that can’t imagine that God will accept
them, because of where they have been, what they have done and who they are. There are some
here today who are still trying to earn God’s favor by what they do. There are some here today
who believe that God could never accept the neighbor down the street because of how they live
and who they seem to be.
Every once in a while you encounter a book that needs to be read and re-read. One of the books
that I try to read once a year is Henri Nouwen’s “Life of the Beloved”. It is a book of being.
About claiming who you are in God. About understanding that God calls us Beloved. Nowen
says “being the beloved is the origin and the fulfillment of the life of the Spirit.” He goes on to
say “from the moment we claim the truth of being the beloved, we are faced with the call to
become who we are.”
As Nowen lays out this truth, he offers three important reminders or steps:
a. To become the beloved, we have to claim that we are taken.
b. You have to keep looking for people and places where that truth is spoken and where
you are reminded of your deepest identity as the chosen one.
c. You have to celebrate your chosenness constantly. That means saying thank you to
God for having chosen you, and thank you to all who remind you of your chosenness.
You might remember that earlier I said that our problem as a church is a spiritual one. If we
could really deal with the gap between our theology of grace and our experience of grace, this
church of ours would awaken in a way that none of us can imagine. Grace is a necessary thing
that we must choose!
B. We Must Choose a Growing Faith
"A man pleaded with the psychiatrist, "You’ve got to help me. It’s my son." "What’s the
matter?" "He’s always eating mud pies. I get up in the morning and there he is in the backyard
eating mud pies. I come home at lunch and he’s eating mud pies. I come home at dinner and
there he is in the backyard eating mud pies." The psychiatrist reassured him, "Give the kid a
chance. It’s all part of growing up. It’ll pass." The man responded, "Well, I don’t like it, and
neither does his wife."
All of us are called to a genuine faith in Jesus that is growing. That begins with making the
choice each and every day as to the role Jesus will play in our lives and the place of prominence
we will give Jesus. It also involves practicing the disciplines that will allow our faith in Jesus to
mature.
-Daily Devotional Life – Bible study, prayer, worship, fasting
-Fellowship with other believers – accountability
-The giving of our lives in service
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Once a man asked an evangelist “how can we have revival?” The evangelist answered by asking
“Do you have a place where you can pray?” Yes the man replied. Tell you what to do, go to that
place and take a piece of chalk along. Kneel down there, and with the chalk draw a complete
circle around you and pray for God to send revival on everything inside that circle.
Being alive in Christ means we must choose a growing faith.
C. We Must Choose to Live Boldly
Romans 1.16: For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to
everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.
Mark 8.38: For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful
generation, the Son of Man will also be ashamed of him when He comes in the glory of His
Father with the holy angels.”
God needs people – we need to be a Church that is bold in our faith – not ashamed to live and
share what we believe. Being a follower of Jesus Christ in the 21st century is not an easy task.
Everywhere we look and in everything we experience we find a temptation to live our faith in a
timid way.
One of the realities we face as the church today is that the world around us sees us as irrelevant.
There is no difference between the way we live, the way we treat one another, the way we
engage those who do not yet know Jesus than the way the world engages those around them.
We claim to believe the greatest truth none to humanity. We claim a desire to be people changed
by the love of Jesus Christ. We claim that nothing matters but Jesus – yet we live so often
ashamed of what we claim – willing to push aside or step away from who we say we are, from
who we say we want to be. We need live boldly as the people of God we say we are.
If we are going to be alive in Christ together, we need to be on a journey that involves the heart.
We must allow the heart of God to collide with our hearts. We have to choose some necessary
things. We have to choice grace. We have to choose a growing faith. We have to choose living
boldly. There is one more thing.
D. We Must Choose an Attitude of Surrender
One of the greatest barriers to me being fully alive in Christ is my inability and unwillingness to
fully surrender to God. To let go of my agenda, my desires, my plans and to fully allow Jesus to
be Lord. We love Jesus as Savior – we are not as fond of Jesus as Lord. In my life that needs to
change – and maybe that is true for you.
I want to end with a video that I believe speaks the truth of surrender better than I ever good. It
is a video that makes me laugh and makes my cry. It is a video that reminds me that if I truly
want to be who God has called me to be, if there is any hope for the church to live the purpose
for which she is called, we need to choose surrender.
Video - The Stool
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IV. CONCLUSION
We are called by God to be God’s people and to be God’s Church. Alive in Christ together.
Let’s allow God to continue to speak to us, encourage us and challenge us. Let’s be willing to
choose the necessary things and truly experience a journey of faith that changes our hearts,
brings life, vitality and relevance to us and to the world that we are called to transform with the
good news of Jesus Christ!
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