Emmanuel Lutheran Church

Menominee - Michigan

LogoMainWide1

2901 Thirteenth Street
Menominee, Michigan 49858
Office Phone: 906-863-3431
Email: mail@e-mmanuel.com

Luke 10:38-42                         
Ninth Sunday after Pentecost            
July 17th, 2016

Grace and Peace to you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

As you may, or may not, be aware, there is this Pokemon Go! craze that has taken over our country during these past few weeks. If you are not aware of Pokemon Go!, what it is is a game app that you download onto your smartphone which connects to your camera and creates animated Pokemon figures in the real world, wherever you go, which you collect through the game.

Quite possibly you have encountered these players. If you have been outside at all during the past few weeks and you’ve come across groups of young people walking and looking down at their phones, they are most likely on a Pokemon hunt. In fact, our very church building is a Pokemon Go Stop. Every evening when I take my dog to Henes Park, I’m seeing so many more people at the park because of the Pokemon at the park, and I am glad for that.

But the one major drawback to this game is that even though these kids are getting out and putting on a lot of walking miles, they’re constantly looking down at their phones and I’ve encountered a few that seem somewhat oblivious to their greater surroundings. Yes, they’re in the park, but I fear that many of them may be missing what the park truly has to offer; the beauty and the serene surroundings.  The game is good, but what is around you may be even better.

Which I think is what Jesus is driving towards this morning. In this story of Mary and Martha, Jesus points out to Martha that she is distracted by many things, and in doing so, she’s missing the one thing that she truly needs, the one thing that her sister has, and that is the awareness of God’s love in her world.

Which can really be true for a lot of us, can’t it? Between deadlines, doctor’s appointments, ballgames, family concerns and work, so many of us need to have this Martha moment, this moment where Jesus places his comforting hand on our shoulder, grabs our attention, and reminds us that it’s really quite alright to stop, to take in our surroundings, and to give thanks to God for this moment.  And to do so, because all too often, this moment is fleeting. And all too often, unfortunately, it’s a moment that you cannot ever recover.

A businessman, harassed and discouraged from overwork took his problem to a psychiatrist who promptly told him to do less work. “Furthermore,” prescribed the doctor, “I want you to spend an hour each week in the cemetery.”

“What on earth do you want me to do that for? What should I do in the cemetery?”

“Not much. Take it easy and look around. Get acquainted with some of the men already in there and remember that they didn’t finish their work either. Nobody does, you know.”

Nobody finishes their work. That’s rather profound and really counters a lot of what we are taught to believe and think we experience. Many of us are blessed enough to be able to retire from our occupations, so, in that sense, we do finish our work. We raise our children. They find jobs and spouses and move out of the house. In that sense, we do finish our work.  We pay off our mortgages, school and car loans.  In that sense, we do finish our work.

But Jesus isn’t talking about this sense or these milestones. Jesus is talking about something so much more, something that Mary is experiencing right now, and that is that Jesus is talking about our relationship with God.

Jesus is reminding us that our relationship with God is one that has no end. From before we were conceived, when we were drowned in the waters of baptism, when we affirmed those promises of baptism in our confirmations, when we take our final mortal breath and transition into the immortal, our relationship with God never ends, but in fact is fluid and is always growing. Every moment that we walk this earth, until we take our final breath, we are invited to be in relationship with God in all of life’s circumstances. It’s just a matter of whether or not we’re willing to look up and to see the wonder in that relationship.

And there truly is wonder and awe in that relationship. During the fifteen years that I lived in eastern Iowa and western Illinois, I’m willing to bet that I must have seen the Mississippi River hundreds of times. I’ve been on bridges that cross the river where it’s a half a mile wide. I’ve seen big cargo barges passing through the Lock and Dams in Dubuque and Guttenburg, Iowa.

I have seen that river flood so severely that the flood waters completely surrounded a minor league baseball field and covered several blocks of the Davenport, Iowa waterfront. I have seen that river, and the amount of water in that river, do some incredible damage.

Yet, while in Minnesota last week, near our mission site, we passed over the Mississippi River near its point of origin, and the river we passed over was not much wider than this center aisle between the pews. I couldn’t fathom how this could be the same river that I’ve seen so many times a couple of hundred miles to the south. It amazed me how this little river could grow into something so powerful as to be the largest river in North America.

But then it hit me that that’s what our relationship with God has the potential to be as well. When we are baptized, it is much like the origin of the Mississippi River in that there’s maybe not much there at the beginning, at least on our end; our understanding and appreciation of being claimed in those waters is just not yet fully comprehended on our part. Yet, as the river flows south it is always growing and swelling, right up to the point that it enters into the Gulf of Mexico.

Which parallels our faith journeys. Because that’s what this scripture is all about. It’s about growing in our faith. It’s about opening our Bibles and engaging with the Word. It’s about carving out an active prayer life. It’s about experiencing times of meditation and devotion. It’s about growing in our faith and, much like the Mississippi River, washing over anything and all people that get in our path with the love of Christ through witness and work, prayer and praise.

It’s all about taking that time to stop and to remember why we are here in the first place. We are not here to work ourselves to the bone. We are not here to fight and bicker with the people that God gave to us to love. We are not here to spend our time living in regret for what we could have done or should have done. Our time spent here is God’s time to mold us and shape us, to invite us into relationship with Him through the everyday events of our lives.  Our only response is to simply lift up our eyes to see God there and then to live in His glory and on His time.  And, unlike the Pokemons that exist in our world, there’s nothing animated about God’s love and God’s presence.  God is truly here. Amen.

Grace and Peace to you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

As you may, or may not, be aware, there is this Pokemon Go! craze that has taken over our country during these past few weeks. If you are not aware of Pokemon Go!, what it is is a game app that you download onto your smartphone which connects to your camera and creates animated Pokemon figures in the real world, wherever you go, which you collect through the game.

Quite possibly you have encountered these players. If you have been outside at all during the past few weeks and you’ve come across groups of young people walking and looking down at their phones, they are most likely on a Pokemon hunt. In fact, our very church building is a Pokemon Go Stop. Every evening when I take my dog to Henes Park, I’m seeing so many more people at the park because of the Pokemon at the park, and I am glad for that.

But the one major drawback to this game is that even though these kids are getting out and putting on a lot of walking miles, they’re constantly looking down at their phones and I’ve encountered a few that seem somewhat oblivious to their greater surroundings. Yes, they’re in the park, but I fear that many of them may be missing what the park truly has to offer; the beauty and the serene surroundings.  The game is good, but what is around you may be even better.

Which I think is what Jesus is driving towards this morning. In this story of Mary and Martha, Jesus points out to Martha that she is distracted by many things, and in doing so, she’s missing the one thing that she truly needs, the one thing that her sister has, and that is the awareness of God’s love in her world.

Which can really be true for a lot of us, can’t it? Between deadlines, doctor’s appointments, ballgames, family concerns and work, so many of us need to have this Martha moment, this moment where Jesus places his comforting hand on our shoulder, grabs our attention, and reminds us that it’s really quite alright to stop, to take in our surroundings, and to give thanks to God for this moment.  And to do so, because all too often, this moment is fleeting. And all too often, unfortunately, it’s a moment that you cannot ever recover.

A businessman, harassed and discouraged from overwork took his problem to a psychiatrist who promptly told him to do less work. “Furthermore,” prescribed the doctor, “I want you to spend an hour each week in the cemetery.”

“What on earth do you want me to do that for? What should I do in the cemetery?”

“Not much. Take it easy and look around. Get acquainted with some of the men already in there and remember that they didn’t finish their work either. Nobody does, you know.”

Nobody finishes their work. That’s rather profound and really counters a lot of what we are taught to believe and think we experience. Many of us are blessed enough to be able to retire from our occupations, so, in that sense, we do finish our work. We raise our children. They find jobs and spouses and move out of the house. In that sense, we do finish our work.  We pay off our mortgages, school and car loans.  In that sense, we do finish our work.

But Jesus isn’t talking about this sense or these milestones. Jesus is talking about something so much more, something that Mary is experiencing right now, and that is that Jesus is talking about our relationship with God.

Jesus is reminding us that our relationship with God is one that has no end. From before we were conceived, when we were drowned in the waters of baptism, when we affirmed those promises of baptism in our confirmations, when we take our final mortal breath and transition into the immortal, our relationship with God never ends, but in fact is fluid and is always growing. Every moment that we walk this earth, until we take our final breath, we are invited to be in relationship with God in all of life’s circumstances. It’s just a matter of whether or not we’re willing to look up and to see the wonder in that relationship.

And there truly is wonder and awe in that relationship. During the fifteen years that I lived in eastern Iowa and western Illinois, I’m willing to bet that I must have seen the Mississippi River hundreds of times. I’ve been on bridges that cross the river where it’s a half a mile wide. I’ve seen big cargo barges passing through the Lock and Dams in Dubuque and Guttenburg, Iowa.

I have seen that river flood so severely that the flood waters completely surrounded a minor league baseball field and covered several blocks of the Davenport, Iowa waterfront. I have seen that river, and the amount of water in that river, do some incredible damage.

Yet, while in Minnesota last week, near our mission site, we passed over the Mississippi River near its point of origin, and the river we passed over was not much wider than this center aisle between the pews. I couldn’t fathom how this could be the same river that I’ve seen so many times a couple of hundred miles to the south. It amazed me how this little river could grow into something so powerful as to be the largest river in North America.

But then it hit me that that’s what our relationship with God has the potential to be as well. When we are baptized, it is much like the origin of the Mississippi River in that there’s maybe not much there at the beginning, at least on our end; our understanding and appreciation of being claimed in those waters is just not yet fully comprehended on our part. Yet, as the river flows south it is always growing and swelling, right up to the point that it enters into the Gulf of Mexico.

Which parallels our faith journeys. Because that’s what this scripture is all about. It’s about growing in our faith. It’s about opening our Bibles and engaging with the Word. It’s about carving out an active prayer life. It’s about experiencing times of meditation and devotion. It’s about growing in our faith and, much like the Mississippi River, washing over anything and all people that get in our path with the love of Christ through witness and work, prayer and praise.

It’s all about taking that time to stop and to remember why we are here in the first place. We are not here to work ourselves to the bone. We are not here to fight and bicker with the people that God gave to us to love. We are not here to spend our time living in regret for what we could have done or should have done. Our time spent here is God’s time to mold us and shape us, to invite us into relationship with Him through the everyday events of our lives.  Our only response is to simply lift up our eyes to see God there and then to live in His glory and on His time.  And, unlike the Pokemons that exist in our world, there’s nothing animated about God’s love and God’s presence.  God is truly here. Amen.