The story is told of a pastor in a small town who, every day, without fail would go down to the train station and watch the daily train roar through town. When asked why he did this, or what he got out of it, the preacher said, "It is an amazingly comforting thing to see something happen around here without my having to do it all myself."
There are a lot of people who think that they have to do it all by themselves, and that nothing happens unless they make it happen. Sometimes they’re called “type A personalities”, highly driven, and wanting to be in charge. I think that people who think it all depends on them have a messianic complex.
The fact is, we don’t have to do it by ourselves. It doesn’t all depend on us. There are many other people all around us who are quite capable of pulling their own weight. More importantly, God is also active. And, in reality, God is in charge. It’s not all up to us. It’s all up to God.
So when you feel overburdened, be still and know that God is in charge. When you’ve got the weight of the world on your shoulders, let go and let God.
In the name of Jesus, and on behalf of the one who does have the whole world in his hands, I greet you with God’s grace, God’s mercy, and God’s peace.
Text: John 3:3
Jesus answered Nicodemus, "Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above."
Prayer: from Psalm 19:14
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts obe acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
The gospel of Luke tells the story of Jesus being welcomed into the home of Mary and Martha for dinner. While Mary is listening to what Jesus was saying, Martha was busy preparing dinner. Martha was preoccupied, and distracted, and frustrated by the fact that Mary wasn’t doing anything. It was all being left up to her. I can just hear her deep sighs accompanied by the rattling of pots and pans in the back room. Finally she can’t take it any longer and complains. "Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me."
You remember what Jesus said to her, “Martha, Martha, … there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.” The gospel doesn’t tell us how Martha reacted to the Lord’s admonition. We don’t know what she said or what she thought, but I can hear her saying to herself, “Jesus, is everything left up to me? Do I have to do everything?”
There’s something of Martha and something of Mary in all of us. Sometimes we just like to hang out and be with people and at other times we’re fretting all by ourselves, worried and anxious about many things. Sometimes we just like to sit on the beach and at other times we’re distracted and frustrated by all the things we think we have to do and get accomplished. Sometimes we can just let the world go by and at other times it feels as is the weight of the world is on our shoulders.
I suspect, however, that there is more of Martha in most of us, especially those of us who are relatively successful in our present day American culture. Those of us who are reasonably well-fed, well-fixed, and well-educated have solved many of life’s challenges on our own. It’s natural for us to think that we have the capacities that are equal of all of life’s challenges. We think that we can handle anything and everything that comes our way. Moreover, we think that it’s up to us to take care of everything.
A pastoral counselor was analyzing the source of people’s problems with his friends one night. He recalled that when he was a little boy, he came home with his first report card. On the way home, he looked at his report card and it said, "John is very conscientious." He pondered that word. What could she mean by "conscientious"? What had he done wrong?
When he got home, he thought he would get the jump on his mother so he said, "I don't know why that teacher wrote that about me. I have done everything I was supposed to do. I haven't misbehaved. "
His mother read the report card and said, "Why John, that is a compliment. To be conscientious is a good thing."
The pastoral counselor went on to say that he was nearly middle-aged and much older and wiser before he realized that to say someone is "very conscientious" may not be a good thing!
Sometimes we take too much responsibility for ourselves and for the world. We are too conscientious in trying to get everything right, to dot all our i's and cross all our t's.
It was a child developmentalist who said, "If there is one thing worse than a bad mother it is a good mother." She meant that the perfect, conscientious mother, the mother who must be fully sufficient for all of her child's needs, is the mother who is setting herself up for terrible frustration and pain. This psychologist said that we ought to work not to be "good" parents, but "good enough" parents.
When the Martha part gets the better of us, when we think everything depends on us we run into trouble. And I think this is a danger especially for good religious people. Church people who come to church on a Sunday like this, when they might be tempted to go elsewhere, are especially susceptible to this sort of conscientiousness. We are responsible people who sometimes take too much responsibility.
When people are asked why they come to church they often answer in this vein, “I come to church on Sunday morning to find out how I can lead a better life and then to get motivated to lead that better life.” And that’s where the trouble is. There is no God in that reasoning. There is no Jesus in that reasoning. There is no Holy Spirit in that reasoning. It’s all up to us.
It’s all up to me and it leaves out God. And just like Martha we forget the one thing that is necessary. We forget about God and think it’s all up to us and get bogged down with too much responsibility. It is then that we need to let go of our Messianic Complex and let God take over. Let go and let God.
Nicodemus comes to Jesus by night wondering what he needed to do to have what Jesus had. He wondered what he had to do. Nicodemus was a ruler of the Jews, a scripturally literate person who was considered very religious. He was not simply a believer, he was a leader of believers. Jesus tells him that he must be “born from above” and that “the wind blows where it will.
Just think about that. Jesus talks about birth and he talks about the wind, two uncontrollable and mysterious phenomena.
What did you have to do to get born the first time? Nothing! It wasn’t up to you. You had nothing to do with it. Your birth, your life is a gift freely given to you. Your life is a gift from God. The same is true of being born from above. You can’t make that happen. It’s from God, a gift.
God is at work. And, God is in control. Let go and let God be in charge.
And what about the wind blowing where it wills? We have no control over it. Surely we can see the results of its power in tornados and hurricanes. We can try to harness the wind with sails and windmills. But we don’t control it. God controls the wind and the spirit blows where it wills.
It’s not all up to us. We don’t control our own destiny. God is in charge. God is at work. And we are saved, not by what we do, but by what God has done. We are saved by God’s grace alone, and God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. God sent his son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.
This is the gospel. Thanks be to God. Amen.