Amelia Church of Christ - Christian Church in Amelia, OH near Cincinnati in Clermont County

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? If you’ve ever been to a big circus, you know it is a crazy time. There is stuff happening everywhere you look.   Acrobats, performers, clowns, and animals are everywhere. It’s a blitz of activity and it’s impossible to focus on just one thing. The whole show is designed to send you into sensory overload. And really, that’s not just a good description of a circus. That’s a good description of life. A blitz of activity. Sensory overload. Impossible to focus on one thing. For a lot of us, life is a circus.

Our world has gone completely insane. You can’t stop. There’s no slowing down. Keep going. Do more. You’ve gotta multitask. I hate that word. Recently my wife almost witnessed an accident because a woman decided to multitask. She was talking on a cell phone and reading a book while driving her car! Welcome to the circus.

Our daily schedule has become an exercise in insanity. Get up extra early. Breakfast is coffee from the McDonald’s drive thru. Make your phone calls from your car. Schedule a working lunch. Stay late at the office pecking away at the computer keyboard. Get home late. Say hello and goodnight to the kids in the same breath. Collapse into bed and get up early the next morning just so you can do it all over again. Welcome to the circus.

Stay at home moms have the life, right? Just stay home and play with the kids all day. Yeah, right. You know that almost every moment of your day is consumed with those little angels tugging on your pant legs, coloring on the walls, fighting with each other, tracking mud on your carpet, refusing to eat the dinner you prepared for them…and then they have the audacity to cry in the middle of the night! Welcome to the circus.

And what about our single, working parents? You do all of the things mentioned above by yourself. You do double, or triple the work as the rest of us. Your life is a three-ring circus.

And parents, let’s remember that our kids are more stressed out than ever before. More than any generation before them. I learned this lesson early on in my youth ministry days when I asked one of our kids to share a devotion with the rest of our students. He was a sophomore in high school and do you know the topic he picked? How to handle stress. How many of our teens can relate to this? You get up extra early because you have weightlifting or some meeting before school. During school hours, you rush from class to class, hardly stopping at all. After school, you name it…work, meetings, ballgames, band practice. And you haven’t even gotten around to your homework yet. Hopefully you can squeeze in dinner at some point, and you wind up going to bed way too late and getting up way to early the next morning just so you can do it all over again. Welcome to the circus.

Is anybody tired yet? Question: Is it possible to live for Jesus in the midst of a world gone crazy? The answer to that question is yes. It is possible to live for Jesus in this circus world of ours, but it will require some deliberate, intentional decisions on our part.

This crazy circus life is not new. This morning I want to look at a short story about two women in Luke 10. Let’s look at how each of them responded to the circus of their day. The two women are named Mary and Martha. Let’s pick it up the story in Luke 10:38.

³⁸As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. ³⁹She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet listening to what he said.   ⁴⁰But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, "Lord, don't you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!"

⁴¹"Martha, Martha," the Lord answered, "you are worried and upset about many things, ⁴²but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her."

(Luke 10:38-42, NIV)

These two women are faced with the same situation, but they responded quite differently. Let’s picture the scene. Martha invited Jesus into her home, and from verse 38, we can assume that all Jesus disciples came into the house, too. So there’s a big crowd for Sunday dinner this week. The Bible doesn’t tell us Martha’s last name but I think it was Stewart, not because she had an inside stock tip, but because she hops right to it in the kitchen. She’s got meat going on the George Foreman grill, she’s stirring the sauce on the stove, preheating the oven for the dinner rolls, mashing the potatoes in the mixer, cutting up vegetables for the salad, cracking eggs for her cake mix…and she turns around to get some help from her sister Mary and she’s not even in the kitchen. She’s in the living room hanging out with Jesus.

There are two words in our passage that I want us to key in on. These two words tell us a lot about Martha…and probably a lot about us.

The first word is in verse 40. “Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made.” Martha may have intended to hang out with Jesus initially, but something distracted her. I think it was her culture. In the society Martha lived in, women served the men, period. Women were considered inferior to men in every way. They were though to be inferior mentally, physically, and spiritually. Now, before you guys start elbowing your wives and saying, “See, that’s in the Bible,” you need to stop and notice something. I’m going to save you here. We need to notice that Jesus didn’t buy into this view of women. Jesus didn’t tell Martha to scurry around getting everything ready. It wasn’t his idea.

He wasn’t Frank Barone from Everybody Loves Raymond. Whenever Frank wanted something from his wife, Marie, he just barked out his command. “Eggs, Marie!” “Cake, Marie!” “Beer, Marie!” Nowhere does Jesus say, “Kishke, Martha!” “Kugel, Martha!” “Hamantashen, Martha!”  See, Jesus was Jewish and these are classic Jewish foods. Martha was distracted by what she thought her culture wanted, maybe even by what she thought Jesus wanted.

Our culture is no different. It provides plenty of distractions. We can allow ourselves to become consumed by work or school. This is really easy for me. I’m so passionate about what I do that it can distract me from more important things. When you’re striving for that promotion, when you’re working hard for that scholarship, it can become an all-consuming thing.

And we also live in a society that can entertain us to death. TV, cars, golf, video games, the Internet, boating, fishing, music, traveling, movies…None of these things are inherently bad or wrong, but they all have the power to distract us.

Remember…it doesn’t have to be bad to be a distraction. Even good things can cause us to shift our priorities in a different direction. Something that seems completely harmless can distract us by taking our focus off of Jesus.

The second word that describes Martha, and often us, is in verse 41. Jesus said that Martha was worried about many things. Martha was worried. Maybe you would have been, too.  I hope I don’t overcook the meat. I think I might be out of eggs. What if Jesus doesn’t like my casserole? Martha got so caught up in her worries that she forgot that Jesus was present. Sound familiar?

Earlier in the book of Luke, Jesus warns us about worry.   He says that a lot of people begin a relationship with God, but “they are choked by life’s worries…and they do not mature.” (Luke 8:14, NIV)

Just like distractions, there is no shortage of issues to worry about in your world. Issues of grades, Issues of money, scheduling issues, issues at the office, issues with your spouse, issues with your kids, issues with your parents…We have issues! But Jesus warns us that worry can choke the life out of our walk with Him because it fixes our sight on our problems instead of God, who is bigger than our problems. Remember our message from last week.

So Martha comes to Jesus and says, “Jesus, make my sister help me in the kitchen!”   Jesus said to her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better and it will not be taken away from her.” What had Mary chosen? To hang out with Jesus. To sit at His feet and take it all in. Mary had learned to filter out what is important from what is less important. She learned to focus her attention on what was best. She focused on being with Jesus. Now, did you notice that the Bible never says that Mary wasn’t eventually going to go help Martha with the meal? Mary may very well have planned to help with the dinner, but while Jesus was teaching, nothing else mattered. She was going to sit at his feet. Mary had learned how to live in the circus. She learned how to filter out the less important things so she could focus on the one thing that was needed: being with Jesus.

So how do we become more like Mary than Martha? How do we choose what is better? How do we filter out the distractions and worries of this circus world that we live in? What I want to do is just give us some practical things we can all do to help us eliminate some of the Martha-ness in our lives.

First of all, we need to set aside a time just to be with God. To live for Jesus in the midst of a world gone crazy, you have to set aside a time just for you and God to meet. A time where you communicate with God and He communicates with you through the Bible and through prayer. For this to work, it needs to be the same time every day. If you just wait until you find the time, you will never do it. The circus will never slow down enough to allow it. You have to carve out a time, the same time everyday, and then, no matter what distractions exist, no matter what worries exists, you set them aside for this time with the Lord.

Another way to live for Jesus in the insanity of this world is to invite Him into every activity in your day. What does that mean? Think about the things you do every day. Unless it is something sinful, there is no activity where you can’t invite Jesus along. When you’re bushing your teeth, invite Him along. That may sound corny, but give it a try. It would look something like this. As I’m brushing my teeth, I simply pray, “Thank God that I have a toothbrush, toothpaste, and running water. I know there are people in our world who don’t have even these simple things.” What did I just do? I approached God with an attitude of thankfulness and invited him into what I was doing. And if you do this, if you invite Jesus into everything that you do during your day, let me tell you what it’s going to do. It will help you keep him in the forefront of your day-to-day life instead of allowing Him to fall into the background.

A third way to live for Jesus in this circus world is to meet regularly with God’s people. One of the reasons God set up the church is because he knew that we would need a refuge, a safe place to be. A place where we can not only learn more about God, but also where we can rest from our circus world. Sundays need to be an absolute priority for you and your family. You need to be with the church. The church isn’t this building that we’re in. You know what this building is? It’s a building. The church is the people who are in this building. You need a refuge, a place of rest. That happens when you’re with God’s people. Our presence with the church is not optional. It’s expected…not to bump up our attendance numbers, but because we all need to be here.

Parents, your kids need the church as well. They need to be here on Sunday mornings, but they also need to be present in our ministries that are specific to their needs. For example, if you have a Jr. or Sr. Higher, they need to be at Quest on Wednesday nights. They need that time, not only to learn and grow, but just to rest. To be with other believers, hang out, have fun, and rest from what is going on in their world.

Some of you may not like this fourth practical suggestion, but it is still true.   To live for Jesus in our circus world, we need to eliminate some activities. Everything we’ve talked about this morning all sounds good, but it won’t work if your schedule is totally crammed everyday from morning until night.

Bill Hybels is a minister at a large church in Chicago.   In his book Too Busy Not To Pray, he wrote, “The archenemy of spiritual authenticity is busyness.” What does that mean? To put it simply, you can’t experience a true faith in Christ if you’re too busy. Whoa. That’s heavy, but it’s true. If you’re so busy that you cannot focus on Jesus, then you may have a religion, but it’s not the kind of relationship that God intended. Some of you need to take a hard look at your schedule and do some eliminating. That may mean that you drop back from that club. It may mean that you pass up some money because you’re not willing to work overtime. It may mean that you toss out the TV. Whatever it is, if we’re serious about simplifying and slowing our lives down, we’ve got to do some eliminating. We’ve got to learn to say “no.”

Parents, even though they may always like it, it is your responsibility to help your kids achieve simplicity and slowness in their lives. Do your kids really need to play 3 or 4 sports? Help them out by eliminating. Play 2 sports instead of 3, or 1 sport instead of 2. Help them cut one club or organization, even if it’s a good thing. To live for Jesus in a circus world, we have to eliminate some stuff in our lives.

A lot of us need to cut the RPMs. (For those of you who aren’t into cars, RPM stands for revolutions-per-minute. The higher your RPMs, the harder and faster your engine is running.) My PT Cruiser is equipped with a tachometer, which is a gauge that tells me how many RPMs my engine is running. There’s a white area on the gauge, and then there’s a red area. The owner’s manual says, “Before reaching the red area, ease up on the accelerator to prevent engine damage.” Before the needle on my tachometer gets to the red, I need to let off the gas pedal or I could damage my engine. I need to cut my RPMs. Some of you have RPMs that are buried in the red, and they are doing damage. You don’t have anytime for God, you feel like you’re a million miles away from Him, You never slow down enough to experience a real and authentic relationship with Him…You need to take your foot off the gas. Eliminate some activities.

Last, to live for Jesus in our circus world, we need to realize that our circus world is temporary. Everything that is vying for your time, everything that is distracting you, everything that is worrying you…it’s all temporary.

Look at what Jesus said at the end of our passage. “Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.” It will not be taken away from her because it is permanent. It is eternal. Jesus is forever.

Life is crazy. For some of you, that’s a huge understatement. You want to live for Jesus, but it’s tough to do in the middle of a circus. But I’m confident that if you leave her today determined to really apply these things that we’ve talked about in your life, you will begin to see a noticeable change.

Isaiah 30:15 reminds us, “This is what the Sovereign Lord…says: “In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength, but you would have none of it.” (Isaiah 30:15, NIV) It’s pretty incredible how relevant the Bible is to today’s culture. God is offering us rest and quietness and a lot of times we just won’t have it because we’ve been conditioned to live in the circus.

If that’s the case, then it’s time to change some things up in our lives. It’s time to understand that the urgent things in life are rarely important and the important things in life are rarely urgent.

It’s my hope that you’re walking out of here with a plan in mind. A plan to simplify and slow your life and the life of your family. A plan to look at your circus-like schedule and make the adjustments that you need to make.

Here’s your sermon in a sentence: My faith and family depend on my willingness to slow and simplify my life.

Everything we’ve talked about this morning really does run counter to the beliefs of our culture. But that’s what God does. His truth contradicts the wisdom of our world, and it always proves itself to be superior. If you’re ready to trade in your old way of life for something better, God offers a new start. He offers new life. And it’s a free gift for the asking. We invite you to come as we stand and sing.

Mike Edmisten