Be Here Now

Daily Devotion - March 22

I will try to send a brief message  to my congregation each day while we are pausing gathering in person. Today's is the sermon from our online church gathering.
- Kara

 Luke 10:38-42
Martha

I was having an anxiety moment this week on the phone with my sister. This is a surreal reality we are living in, where there is no end in sight, where the threat looms, the numbers climb, the scenarios unfold, and none of them rosy. The losses pile up, big ones and little ones, the pressures build up, big ones and little ones.
And life as we’ve known it has ground to a screeching halt.  An unfathomable stop.

And the questions loom: What happens with school? With the economy? When we start getting sick or losing those we love? What happens to the vacations we had been saving for? To the job we had just gotten? To the comfortable, familiar rhythms of life?  Haircuts, and dentist appointments, and movie theaters, and coffee shops?  What are we going to do?  How are we going to get through all of this? What will this do to us?

If I want to go there, I can go there, quickly. I can elevate my heart rate and feel the adrenaline course through me.  I can get sleepless, and restless, and worried, and anxious, distracted by many things.

So as we were ramping up, pulling each other into anxiety, my sister paused, and as I have shared a couple times this week – she said something that I have been repeating to myself over and over.

From outside the urgency, she spoke truth that brought me back to the present.

She said, “There is grace for what actually happening. Never for what might happen.”
Last week Lisa introduced us to Lazarus- the resurrected man, when she preached about his sister, Mary.  He lived in his sister Martha’s house in Bethany, along with their sister Mary. These three were very close friends of Jesus, and, not having a home of his own, their house was where he went when he wanted to come home.  Since most of us are stuck in our houses, we are going to spend the next few weeks in theirs.

In this scene, we see Martha doing what women were supposed to do when they welcomed people into their home. They were supposed to be preparing – the home, the meal, the table.  Men were supposed to sit with their guests and carry on the conversation; they were allowed to live in the present. But women were supposed to be organizing and planning, and doing the work to be ready for what was next.

 Mary should be preparing too, but she decides she is going to go sit with Jesus instead, and Martha gets stuck with the work alone.
But Martha doesn’t stick with what she should be doing either, because she brings her concerns right to Jesus.  She shows us what to do with our own anxiety.

Lord, don’t you even care? She asks. Don’t you even care that she’s left me to do all the work alone?  Tell her to help me!

There is another time in scripture where Jesus’ friends said, “Lord, don’t you even care…? It was when the disciples were caught in the middle of a terrible storm, and the boat was going under, and Jesus was asleep ASLEEP in the stern.  And they shook him awake in terrified panic and said these very same words, Lord, don’t you even care… that we are dying?  Don’t you even care that we are going to drown?

And for as much as that is NOT actually where Martha is, it is where she feels like she is. I am drowning here! Tell her to help me!  I am alone! Do something!  Jesus, don’t you even care?

Don’t you care that there are not enough hospital beds or ventilators?
Don’t you even care that my retirement is dwindling away?
Don’t you even care that I lost my job?
Don't you even care that my kid is stocking groceries during a lockdown?
Don't you even care about the people stuck in refugee camps?
Don’t you even care that I can’t handle work and kids in the same space a single second longer?
It’s bad, so bad, can’t you see how bad it is? Don’t you care?

It’s the “What if?” of fear that projects the future. We are used to preparing for the worst, or the best, or any possibility that might arise.
This future-oriented, preparation kind of life is how we’ve shaped our whole society, it’s how we operate. We work for what is coming. We look toward what is coming. We live for what is coming. We make calendars, and lists, and reservations, and investments. We know how to be organizing and planning, and doing the work to be ready for what is next.

But this? This being stuck in the perpetual present?  We have no idea how to do this.
We’re stuck at home and not even living, as we’ve come to define living.
Or we’re out there where somehow the hospital and grocery store have become the front lines of something even our high tech models can’t completely predict, and we are not prepared.  We have no choice but to simply face it when it comes.

And what we want, desperately, is grace for what might be.
We want grace for the possibilities, and the dangers, and the contingencies.
We want some way to be organizing and planning, and doing the work to be ready for what is next. We want God to join us in the urgency!  To rally others to take it seriously! To get us all pointed on the solution!

But what we need is God from outside our urgency to speak truth to us.
We need the voice of “Even if…” to bring us back into the present.
Martha, Martha, Jesus says, you are worried and distracted by many things.  There is need of only one thing.  Mary has chosen the good, and it will not be taken away from her.

Just like the disciples, tossed about in the little boat in the big storm, Martha has lost sight of who is sitting in her midst.  Jesus invites her to be in the moment.  Be where Jesus is.

Jesus is inviting us to live in the truth that in life or in death we are held in the love of God. To take a deep breath, and set it all down and come back to that truth.
That nothing can separate us from the love of God.
There is never grace for what might be, only for what is.

The good life is only ever the life we are in, not the life that may be.
God’s grace is for the now.
God is making something TRULY new, right in the middle of what actually is.  Always.
We can’t stop this from happening. It’s what God does.
It is not dependent on the work that we do.
We can’t bring it about, but we can join it when it happens, right now.

Beloved one, you are you are worried and distracted by many things.  There is need of only one thing.  To be in our lives where God already is. To be here now.

God is in our living rooms.  And also in the hospital rooms, and the strategy rooms, and grocery store stock rooms, and the great wide empty streets, and resting rivers and quiet skies of the whole world; God is right here in this with us.
God is seeing us through, right now.
There is grace for what is actually happening.
Each day, right now. Right here.
God is with us.
Amen.

(This year, we are asking, "Who is this God and what is God up to?" And "What is a good life and how do we live it?" along with some of our biblical ancestors.  The sermons related to this series are here: Hannah, Mary, Anna & Simeon, John the Baptist, Samuel, David (we had a theater performance, here's an older sermon about David), The Samaritan Woman, Mary of Bethany (preached by Pastor Lisa), Martha, Lazarus, Mary Magdalene, Thomas (preached by Pastor Lisa, follow up devotion here)