Sermon 10 February 2013 - Busyness

Psalm 23; Luke 10:38 – 42

How many of us are busy?  And more important how many of us feel guilty if we’re not busy?

There’s a game that Ministers play, and it’s probably played in many other work situations.  We get asked how we’re going and the automatic response that we give and we’re supposed to give is to say “oh I’m busy.”  And then we rattle off all that we have to do, would like to do and should do.

If you really want to mess with somebody, when they ask you if you’re busy, say no.  And then watch the reaction on their face.  They don’t know how to comprehend that type of response.

Life in the 21^st century is supposed to be busy.  We’re supposed to be stretched beyond what we’re capable of.  If we’re not too busy, then we’re missing out.

We’re missing out on opportunities to be with people, to do something, we’re missing out on work that we should be doing and for parents we think that we’re missing out on providing all the right opportunities for our children.

But guess what?  We’re not made for busyness.  Busyness is one of the biggest causes of stress in our lives today.

God builds into our lives times of rest.  As we continue to travel through the 23^rd Psalm we look at verse 2 today.  “He makes me lie down in green pastures”.

Busyness is destructive.  It distracts us from what is important.  We tend to overlook relationships, our health is overlooked and we allow small details to slip by, that in the long term can be very important.

More importantly, busyness affects our cognitive abilities.  We don’t have time to think things through.  We are less creative.  Our ability to analyse situations is reduced and therefore we are more likely to go with the flow.

But most importantly, our ability to respond to the situation is reduced.  When we are too fixed on the next thing that we have to rush off to, we don’t have time to spend listening to another’s problem, we are less able to respond to particular situations.  We become selfish with our time.  Our capacity to envision and live out a better lifestyle is stifled. 

And for those of us who are parents, we teach this to our children.  When we rush them from school to sports, to music, to groups, to homework, to dinner and bed.  Only to start it all again the next day, we’re teaching them a specific way of living.

Jesus never wanted us to live lives that are so busy, so stretched, so stressed that we never have time for enjoyment, for relaxation, for pleasure.  But at the same time, he never planned for us to live a life that precluded all work or responsibility.

Often when people read the gospel reading from today, they see it as a choice that we need to make between being Mary, spending time with Jesus in prayer, worship, bible study or being Martha and working at the practical things of ministry.

We even make jokes about our need to be Martha’s, when it comes to serving.

But we can’t read part of the gospels without considering the way they are impacted by the rest of the gospels.  Just in chapter 10 alone, we read the story about Jesus at the home of Mary and Martha, alongside the story of the Good Samaritan, together with the sending of the 72 disciples out on mission.

The chapter in totality reminds us that the life of a disciple of Jesus calls us to love God through serving others, participating in God’s mission and having time to renew ourselves.

When Mary is commended for choosing the better thing, this better thing is attention to Jesus and his teaching. 

And this is something that the busyness of Martha precludes her from doing.  How often do we find that in our society?  We live in a society that demands action and activity and causes us to fill our lives with so much each day.

There are the things we have to do, the things we’d like to do and then the things that we can do.  And if we let them, they can crowd the time we need to relax to renew our bodies, our relationships with other people and our relationships with God.

The busyness of our daily lives can rob us of the time we need to give to these three important aspects of our lives.  And so we look to the twenty-third psalm to find God’s antidote to busyness. 

In psalm 23:2 we “he makes me lie down in green pastures”.

See even when King David wrote this psalm he knew then what we know now, it’s hard to find time to rest.  It is God, the shepherd who makes us lie down.

Because for many of us we don’t find it easy to switch off and limit what we do.

It’s a common practice now in many larger businesses and government departments for people to take the time off between Christmas and New Year.  It usually works out that with weekends and public holidays you can take 10 days off in a row but only need to access 3 days of annual leave to make that happen.

Yet when it was introduced there were significant murmurings of displeasure from some workers.  People didn’t like being told to take time off.  Yet I remember one person saying, “nobody has ever forced me to take holidays.” 

He was making the point that we should be wanting to take time off, looking forward to holidays and getting any opportunity we can not to work. 

When I worked in the government there was a rule that you could only accumulate 8 weeks of annual leave.  After that you’d get a letter telling you to take some time off.  My boss took it as a sign of pride every time he got one of these letters.  He’d parade it around the room, bragging about how hard he’d work.  And then he’d go through the agony of having to arrange to take some leave.

So God makes us lie down, he makes us rest.  How do we do that?  What is God’s key for us to make sure that we don’t become too busy?  It’s found in an acrostic on the word relax.

The R stands for realise your worth. Our busyness can come from a simple confusion, where we confuse our work for our worth.  Our society tends to define us by the things we do, our jobs, but what we own, by what type of car we drive, what type of clothes we wear, or how we have achieved in some way. 

All things that are external to us.  And all things that mean that we need to work harder to achieve more to find our worth in the eyes of others through these things.

But God doesn’t do that.  He values us and loves each of us equally.  In psalm 8 we are told that God created us a little lower than the angels.  We are valuable and loved by God, just as we are.  We are loved by God so much that he’d die for us, whilst we were his enemies.

In realising our worth, we need to ask, do we want our worth to be determined by this world or by God?  If it’s by God then what’s the point in working ourselves to distraction, he already values us just as we are.

The E in relax refers to enjoy life as it happens.  How often do we find that we’re too busy preparing for what is going to happen that we fail to simply sit back and enjoy what we’re going through.

Often I think that some people live life like the TV series, The Amazing Race.  This is a game show where teams of people race around the world to complete tasks and be the first ones finished win a million dollars.  On the way they go to some amazing and beautiful places.  In the current season they’ve been to Mongolia, Vietnam, Beijing, India and others.  Occasionally, you’ll hear some of them say, “oh isn’t this beautiful, I’d love to come back and spend some time here.” 

They’re too busy racing to the next thing to enjoy what they’ve got at the moment.  Martha was too busy getting ready for the meal to enjoy the company of Jesus.

Enjoy life.

The L in relax stands for Limit your Labour.  This is about making a conscious decision to make time for things other than work.  And then decide how much time are you going to have for your God, your family, yourself and for your friends.

This is a simple biblical principle that goes back to creation and is embodied in the 10 commandments.  In Exodus 20:8, 9 God instructs us to remember the Sabbath.  “Six days you shall labour and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord.”

To be healthy and relaxed we need to build into our lives a rhythm of practices that replenish our energies.  This means making sure we have time each week to do those things that provide rest.  We also need longer periods of time regularly, weekends away, every couple of months.  And annual holidays. 

Storing up all our time off for just one break a year is not enough. 

The principle of a Sabbath is to rest our bodies.  Its leisure time, party time, time to engage in a hobby or a sport or going out for a meal or watching a movie.  Doing something that is pleasurable and provides space in our busyness.

The Sabbath is also a time to renew your relationship with God.  We can’t live as God’s people without spending time in worship, prayer and bible study.  If you are living your life without these things.  If you get to Sunday and say that you’ve been flat out all week and you feel like resting on Sunday morning and not going to church, then you have your priorities and your way of life wrong.

Nurturing your time with God is essential to leading an un-busy life. 

The A in relax refers to adjust or align your values. 

Do you need to adjust your values to what is important in life?  Do you hunger for temporary possessions, for the attention and recognition of others, for things that are limited to this world? 

If so, then you need to consider how you adjust your values to the things that matter, to things that endure.  Consider how you can build into your family and live on in your children.  How you can make a difference to the society we live in. 

Consider the importance of eternal life for yourself and others and what you need to be doing now to ensure you and the ones you love and care about spend eternity in heaven.

Or do you already hold these values, but find it difficult to reflect them in your daily living.  Does the immediate and urgent crowd out the important?  Then you need to realign your living to your values.

Make sure you have time for family and God.  Make sure you have time for the things that are important to you and substitute the other less important things.

In Mark 8:36 Jesus asks the questions, "What good is it for you to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?"  Is your busyness worth it in the long run?  When you stand before God on judgement day, are the priorities of your life going to be the priorities of God?

Finally, the x in relax is for exchange.  I know I cheated.  Exchange your busyness for God’s peace.  The deepest and best way of shedding our busyness and freeing our stress is by entering into the peace of God.

Like Mary, learn from him.  Learn to lie down in pastures that will refresh you, learn the rhythm of life.  Allow him to teach you a pace that allows you to balance the many competing demands on your life. 

This is found in a relationship with Jesus where you exchange his peace for your pressure.  When you live for God, it's not only the right way, it's the healthy way, the whole way, the balanced way, and the most relaxing way.

Listen to what Jesus says to us:

Are you tired?  Are you worn out?  Are you burned out on religion?  Come to me.  Get away with me and you'll recover your life.  I'll show you how to take a real rest.  Walk with me and work with me.  Watch how I do it.  Learn the unforced rhythms of grace.  I won't lay anything heavy or ill fitting on you.  Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly. (Matthew 11:28 – 29 The Message)

Psalm 23; Matthew 6:25 – 34

For many of us we start a new year fresh and ready to go.  We’ve had a rest and holiday to recover from last year and we’ve made plans for this year which inspire and enthuse us.  This fresh outlook puts us in a very different emotional state than we were in at the end of last year.  But we know the pattern of life tells us that we won’t stay like this for the whole year.  Life will get on top of us, we’ll become stressed with work, family, friends and church.  What started out as achievable goals will turn into overwork. 

The question I want to address over the coming weeks is how do we deal with the stress that is in our life?

  One way is to use this stress reduction kit that I was issued when I worked for the Government.

Another one is found in a study that was conducted by the University of New South Wales about 5 years ago.  Eat junk food.  The study showed that mice who were fed junk food, experienced much less stress than mice who ate healthily.  Initially I thought that this would be a good way of solving our stress problems.  Instead of having church for the next 7 Sundays we’d all pop down to Macca’s and have a Big Mac and we’d reduce our stress.  However, our weight and cholesterol levels would have increased, causing us to stress about our health.  So it probably isn’t the best idea.

For many people the way to deal with stress is to have a break.  Go away for the weekend or a holiday.  Or separate themselves by time and distance from the cause of the stress.

Whilst holidays are important, we need to be careful that we’re not running from the means of our cure.  Another study that came out of NSW Uni showed that for Ministers who burnt out that in their period of recuperation they ceased their spiritual disciplines.  In doing so they cut themselves off from the practices and the one that provide nurture, life and healing.    

Jesus tells us “come to me all you who are weary and I will give you rest.”

So as we think of the things that stress and weigh us down, we look to God and the answers he provides in the 23^rd Psalm.  In here we find more substance and less cholesterol than any junk food we can have.

The first cause of stress that we look at this week is worry.  In Proverbs 12:25 we read “that anxiety weighs down the heart.”  We all have things that we worry about.  Things that at times will keep us awake at night, will distract us from enjoying life, will give us grey hair and lines on our faces. 

What are the things that you worry about? 

Jesus tells us “do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear.”  He tells us this for a very good reason.

Firstly, it distracts us from the kingdom of God.  Whilst we’re worrying and becoming pre-occupied with our lives here, we’re taking our attention away from God, the mission that he calls us to and the life he wants us to express.  When we’re worrying about ourselves, we’re distracted from our calling as disciples.

Secondly, it's unhelpful because it never accomplishes anything, it never solves anything.  It is stewing without doing.  It's like racing a car engine, it creates a lot of smoke and noise but you don't go anywhere.  Worry has never solved a problem.  You cannot change the past if you worry about it.  Worry cannot control the future.  It only makes us miserable today.  It's unhelpful, it doesn't work.  It is unreasonable.  It exaggerates your problems, makes mountains out of molehills.  It just makes problems seem bigger and bigger.  The more we review something when we’re worried about it, the bigger it gets.  To worry about something you can't change is useless.  To worry about something you can change is pointless, change it, rather than worrying about it.  It is unhealthy.  When we worry we get ulcers, backaches, headaches, insomnia.  Our bodies were not made to worry.  We’re made for better things.  When we worry we think that we concentrate our efforts on controlling the uncontrollable, of affecting that which we can’t affect, of exerting an influence that we don’t have. 

The antidote to worry is found in the first verse of Psalm 23.  “The Lord is my shepherd.  I lack nothing.”

The Psalmist had no need to worry, because he had God as his shepherd.  Living in an agricultural society the writers of the Old and New Testament made many comparisons between God and a shepherd.  What do they see as the comparison? 

A shepherd provides.  He provides food, shelter, the basic necessities for his sheep.

A shepherd protects.  He defends against enemies, harm.

A shepherd guides.  He leads sheep when they're confused and don't know which way to go.

A shepherd corrects.  Any problem that comes along, he sorts out for them.

David, the writer of the 23^rd Psalm named God as his shepherd.  The one who was able to provide for him, the one who was an antidote to the stress in David’s life.

Many years later, Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount that his followers were not to worry.  In doing so he makes two points.  The first is that our life is more than material possessions.  The second is to look at the way that God provides for birds of the air.  The conclusion that he draws in verse 33 is that the priority in our life is to be a living relationship with God, through Jesus himself. 

This relationship doesn’t mean that we stop working, sowing, reaping or meeting our earthly needs.  Nor does this relationship say that these things are unimportant.  Just that they are less important than the righteousness that comes from trusting in God and participating in his kingdom as disciples of Jesus.

So the admonition to not worry is in effect a call to trust in the provision, protection, guidance of Jesus who calls himself the good shepherd.  It is to surrender to the work of the Spirit in our lives and a sign of the kingdom of God amongst us.

Seeing Jesus as shepherd is saying that he’s in control of our lives.  And when he’s in control of our lives, worry is not an issue.  Because when we worry about something, whatever it is, the issue behind it is control.  Our worry is our desire to control and our realisation that we can’t control it. 

Worry is always an attempt to control the uncontrollable.  Worry is assuming responsibility God never meant for us to have.  Worry is a warning light.  Whenever we start to worry we should see it as a flashing beacon that says we’re trying to control too much.  When we seek to take control, we shove God out of his rightful place.

So that’s all fine and good, don’t worry, instead follow Jesus who is the shepherd of our lives who provides and guides and corrects and protects.  But how?  But I’m sure you’re waiting to hear how.  How do we do this?

The answer is through prayer.  In 1 Peter 5:7, we are told to “Cast all of your anxiety on him because he cares for you.”  Peter is telling us to unload everything that we have to worry about.  Go back to the beginning of the sermon and think again about those things I asked you what you worried about. 

Peter says take all of them, each and everyone and give them to God.  It’s not just telling him about them and then keeping them as our own problem.  Peter tells us to give them to God and not to take them back.  Why?  Because God is the good shepherd who will leave the 99 sheep and go out to look for one lost sheep.  One sheep who is lost in an unhelpful, unreasonable unhealthy wasteland of worry.  We unload on him in prayer.  Pray in the middle of the night when you’re lying awake worrying.  Pray when you’re fretting unable to concentrate on anything because you’re worrying.

If your mind is in a whirl because you’re worrying, you can easily translate those thoughts into prayers.  Just tell God what’s confusing, what you’re anxious about.  Express your total and utter inability to find anyway out.  Share with him the possibilities and why you don’t think they’ll work.  Cry about the other people who are involved and your concern for them.  Tell God that you’re looking to him to show you the answer.

And then know, know that in his way and his timing things will work out.

We discovered this for ourselves when we moved from Rockhampton over 10 years ago.  In 1996 and 97 we were experiencing a lot of things, that were very anxiety and worry inducing.  I was starting to firm up a sense of call into ministry, but still had some more questioning to do.  Wendy wanted to be back in Brisbane, but it didn’t seem there was going to be much of a way for this to happen.

Then in April 1997 I applied for and was told unofficially that I’d got a job in Brisbane.  The official notification of this job didn’t come out for over a month, so I sat on tenderhooks waiting.  Turned out that the head of the interview team, had just been slack.  We wanted this job badly.  Not knowing about it also affected my decision about applying for other jobs, both in Brisbane and Rockhampton (the department I worked for had created a number of similar positions throughout the State, which were the next logical step for me to take).  Eventually, the job came through. 

Then we had to arrange for a date to move.  This couldn’t happen until our house in Rockhampton sold.  1997 was a very bad time for house prices.  We had friends who’d bought and when they left Rockhampton couldn’t afford to sell because their property value had dropped by $20000.  We had no body look at our house for 3 months.

At the same time the office I was working in Rockhampton was understaffed and they wouldn’t let me go. 

Wendy was teaching and wanted a transfer.  The staffing officer in Rockhampton told her flat out that she wouldn’t get a transfer.

Lots of things to worry about.  But as we trusted God, listened to him and followed him, things worked out. 

We sold our house, for what we bought it for, a good result at that time.  It settled on the day that I was to finish work in Rockhampton.  So we could all leave together.

In Brisbane we were able to find a great house, that met all our criteria.  At the church that we were led to, I met an older man who mentored and grew me a lot in my Christian faith. 

Wendy got a supply job within weeks of being in Brisbane.  And at the beginning of 1998 she got a transfer and a permanent job in Brisbane. 

Everything worked out for us, as we trusted in God, waited patiently for him and listened to the sound of Jesus’ voice.

Worry is a key source of stress in our lives.  And it’s something that God wants to be rid of, so that we can live as disciples of Christ’s and live out our passion for him. 

How do we rid ourselves of worry?  We embrace the relationship with Jesus that he offers to us.  The relationship in which he says he is our shepherd who provides, protects, guides and corrects.