Today’s story of Martha and Mary sets up a certain tension for me.  Coming from a strongly achievement oriented, work ethic family, we were always expected to be doing, doing, doing.  Even during her supposed leisure time, Mom was doing something: knitting, mending, doing a craft.  The family adage was ‘the devil makes use of idle hands.’  Which means that even when I am sitting at my computer, I am usually at some kind of productive task.  Sitting still with Jesus, just enjoying His company: this is something that runs counter to my inclination and upbringing.  And likewise, simply relying upon Him--without jumping right in and ‘helping Him out’--is likewise something I find difficult.  Maybe you are like this as well.  Anyway, here is something to think about and ponder.

Loving God with our entire being and loving, caring for, and wanting the best for our neighbours in the same way and in the same dimension as we love ourselves: surely this is asking the impossible of us.  In fact, the only way that we can ever hope to even come close to this is by trusting and depending upon God.

Today’s meditation raises certain pertinent topics for discussion.  One might pertain to how we co-exist within the church and within society when we have widely diverging opinions and convictions.  The so-called Council of Jerusalem shows us how to sincerely and genuinely listen to each other and respect each other, while still firmly maintaining the faith.  Another topic would be the grounds for salvation: it is faith alone, or is something more needed besides?  And another topic would be the grounds for decision making.  Here we see the move of the Holy Spirit, the Scriptures and experience all being touted as important.  Lots of food for thought and reflection.

Have any of you, apart from the clergy, ever thought that you were chosen by God and called out for some particular purpose or mission in this world?  I happen to think that all of us are chosen and called in this way, even when we are not aware of it, or may, in fact, be resisting or fighting against it.  This calling doesn’t have to be anything spectacular and can, in fact, seem pretty ordinary.  Your occupation may be part of your calling, part of the way you show forth God to other people.  Certainly being a parent or grandparent can do the same.  Or, it may be something you do in the church or in the community.  Whatever it is, there are a myriad of ways of doing this, just as there is a myriad of people, and a unique way that each of us can serve God and others.

A spiritual leader of Islam once remarked that he had grave trouble with the so-called ‘heroes of the faith’ depicted in the Bible.  “They are so visibly and obviously flawed’, he said.  ‘How can anyone take their words and actions seriously given how flawed and weak they are?”

To me, it is just the opposite: that weak, feeble, flawed people--people incredibly like you and I--could find the strength and determination to pick up after themselves when they fell, and to continue on with Jesus, gives me great hope.  In today’s passage and meditation, we see some other people, people perhaps like you and me, who had trouble following Jesus, but even so, Jesus didn’t give up on them.  And so too, He doesn’t give up on us either.  Thanks be to God.

Today’s passage and meditation have to do with ambitions, which is a tricky subject, even for us as Christians.  Ambitions are the kind of thing that kind of sneaks up on us unawares.  (It is sort of like pride and humility in this way).  We can excuse ambition or overlook it completely because we tell ourselves that we are simply trying to do a good thing or simply trying to help out--or whatever.  But we may thereby be blinded about is that we are still doing it for ourselves, sometimes because it makes us ‘feel good’.  But then, are we really doing it to serve others, which is what Jesus tells us that we should be doing.  It’s a tricky one, one that I sometimes wonder about with other people, but then one that I’m not always sure about even for myself.

Do you think that our Lord ever has reason to be frustrated or exasperated with any of us?  Seeing as we probably aren’t that different from Jesus’ earliest disciples, I suspect that we do.  Today’s passage and meditation suggest some of the ways--there are probably ‘tons’ of other ways as well--that we can do this.  It is something well worth looking at, and attending to.

What do you think?  Do you have the conviction that Jesus is presently standing in our midst, enunciating His ‘job description’, and then declaring, ‘today all this is fulfilled in your very midst’?  And, if this was indeed so, what difference would it make in our lives and in our world?  And, stemming from this question, yet another one: ‘do we need to believe in Him, trust in Him, and trust in His working in order for this to happen?’  It appears that this lack of belief was a stumbling block for His audience in Nazareth, so what about us?

Unfortunately, far too often, when we think about Jonah, we think only of his being swallowed up by a whale and miss out on the rest of the story.  We miss out on the fact of his disobedience and refusal to do as God directed.  And we miss out on the outcome of his preaching to the city of Nineveh.  Most surely, the city and the nation as a whole deserved God’s judgment for they, collectively, were the recipients of the evils and injustices perpetuated over the years by that nation.  And yet, they were spared, all of them, simply because a remnant of that population were too young to have known of those evils and injustices, much less having taken part in them.  Because of them, the city and the nation as a whole were given the chance to repent and change and start over again.  I think that this is perhaps a great message for our world today.

Once again, our passage and meditation are calling us to place our trust in Jesus and depend upon Him.  However, in trying often to be self-reliant and independent, we have trouble doing this, especially if it doesn’t seem feasible or logical.  But sometimes that is exactly what we need to do, to suspend our doubt or hesitancy, and simply trust Him anyway.

I guess that it all comes down to faith, that is, trusting in and depending upon Jesus.  But what about those occasions when it ‘seems impossible’, as it was with the two individuals that received healing or restoration to life in today’s passage?  Can we really trust God to do something in Ukraine or in the Middle East?  Or, withs the political impasse, the partisan politics of Canada and the United States?  Or, with seemingly overwhelming problems closer to home or in our own lives?  For one thing, I’m not sure just how I, or we, should be praying, what we should ask for, if that is it?  And, then, I’m also not sure what the solution would look like, whether I would even recognize it?  (It may not be what I’m expecting!)

The only thing that I can think of is simply to ask God: "what would you have me do, today", and then go from there.

Today’s passage and meditation remind us that, ultimately, God is in control and that He can indeed do great and wonderful things.  However, we don’t always see this, partly, I suspect, because we don’t give Him a chance.  When I read accounts of what incredible things happened when people decided to jointly and deliberately come together for prayer, I cannot help but be astonished.  Maybe we need to do the same.

Today’s passage and meditation focus on what is probably life’s biggest and most pressing question, namely, what or who will we put our ultimate trust and faith in.  Will it be our bank accounts or investment portfolios or pension plans, our friends and relatives, our public institutions and their leaders, or our own habitual ways of thinking and behaving?  The problem is that all these can, and perhaps will, let us down on occasion.  I have found that even our churches or denominations are not always ‘there’ for us.  They too can let us down.  It is only our Lord that we can fully trust in every count and on every occasion.  But, as the Rich Young Ruler shows us, that surrender to Him is not always that easy to do.  In this, we solely need God’s help.  Amen.

How hard it is for us to pay attention, or, at least, how hard it is for me.  Visually, I often miss out on observing things, both at home and in our neighbourhood.  And it’s not just to do with my sight, but to do with other things as well, not noticing people or situations for instance.  But, of much more crucial importance is our ability to notice the things of God, to notice them, pay attention to them, and then act accordingly.  I think that this is a message that God has for all of us, all of the time.

The Parable of the Sower isn’t really about the sower at all, except somewhat in passing, nor is it really about the seeds.  It is about the soils, that is, the receptivity of us human beings to God’s message.  And, in a sense, that is the same with parables in general: just how receptive will we be to their deeper and sometimes not so obvious message?  Will we be like the inner circle of Jesus’ disciples who wanted to know more, or will we be like the crowds who maybe just heard what seemed to them to be an engaging and interesting story?  But even there, did the story begin to take root and eventually produce results?  That was up to them, just as it is up to us.  And so the questions remain: Just how well will we hear, and Just how will such hearing impact our daily lives?

The story of Jesus, Simon the Pharisee and the so-called ‘sinful’ woman reminds us of how much we have received from Jesus and how grateful we should be for that.  For those of us who have always been what our society labels as ‘respectable’ and who have always been church going, upright people, people who can almost imagine that we ‘deserve’ it or have ‘earned’ it, this may be more difficult.  Nevertheless, all that we are and have, and certainly our salvation, are entirely unmerited gifts from a loving and gracious God.  It is helpful always to be reminded of this.

The life, ministry and example of John the Baptist always gives me pause, always challenges me, for he was tireless and unstinting in his efforts to point people to Jesus, which he did regardless of the cost and regardless of the reception he received.  So I find myself asking of myself, ‘am I labouring to do likewise, to do my best to point others to Jesus, whether by word or by action?  Good questions indeed, and ones worth asking of each of us.

Something that astounded me years ago when I first heard it, and still astounds me, is that God has at times allowed Himself to be limited, to be limited by our lack of faith.  This idea, this truth, was revealed to me in the account of Jesus’ visit to His home synagogue in Nazareth.  The text says that He "did not do many miracles there, because of their lack of faith” (Matthew 13:58).  This, then, is very sad, for I believe that God can do great and glorious things, things that we might well consider to be impossible (as illustrated in today’s text), but that then we limit Him by refusing to go to Him, as did the centurion, and trust Him to do the impossible.  May we, you and I, grow in faith and become more like that man in his faith.

I guess it often comes down to a certain question, namely upon what or who are we going to depend upon?  Where it becomes problematic is that we are just naturally ‘wired’ to depend on ourselves, or on some human being or resource (like money or information or our own wisdom, experience, and ideas) rather than on God.  That was the problem for ancient Israel, and not much has changed since then.  The problem is, of course, that human institutions invariably fail us when needed and our human wisdom and understanding is limited at best and even wrong at times.  Even so, we find it ‘hard’ to put that aside and place our trust and dependence more fully in God.  But that, that exactly, is what we are called to do.

It took me literally hours to ‘come down for landing’ on this text and meditation, as it is one of the most perplexing subjects in all of Scripture.  Many approaches could have been taken, but the one that I wanted to remain true to it the idea that the Scriptures are the authoritative word of God for all time. That meant that I wasn’t really free to dismiss any of the passages as being wrong or outdated.  It also left me in something of a quandary in terms of how to apply it to our lives today and our current contexts.