Anyone besides me hesitant to start a conversation about Jesus, hesitant to share your faith?  We don’t want to offend anybody.  Society and culture tell us religion is private, and we agree and keep it to ourselves.  I mean, we still live our faith, of course, just not so as anyone can see and possibly be offended.  Beloved, if we’re living as faithful Christians, we are living offended and living offenses.  We are living offended by this fallen, sin-saturated world, by our culture that heedlessly encourages sin, our society that ignorantly praises sin—just the little, harmless ones, of course!  We are living offenses as we live the way Jesus shows us.

Jesus came calling people to repentance and reconciliation.  We don’t mind the reconciliation part so much—relationships need mending, Lord we know that!  But we overlook why reconciliation is needed, and we overlook that there can be no reconciliation without repentance.  Without repentance there is no reconciliation; without repentance, the sin remains.  Sin is an offense against God.  Everyone’s life, everyone’s living, has offended God, for people have not been living to honor and glorify God but to define and determine themselves.  People are defined and determined by their relationship with God, or the lack of it.  You and I are continually compelled to sit with the heartbroken aftermath.

It’s hard to live our faith and share Jesus too when we’re so busy.  Some of us aren’t as busy as we used to be, and some of us who used to be busy with one thing—work, activities—now seem to be just as busy with other things—doctors' appointments, hospitalizations, recuperations, therapy.  After our two-year hiatus, we’re getting out more, and some of us now just aren’t getting out much at all.  Baptist pastor and church consultant Thom Rainer suggests that another of the hindrances to evangelism is that churches “have too many activities,” with the result that the people “are too busy to do the things that really matter.”  So busy doing the things we need to do that we lose sight of the one needful thing.  I believe Jesus once said something about that.  Be a Mary in a Martha world.

Rainer probably had in mind larger churches.  None of the churches with which I have been associated had weekly calendars so full that members simply had no time away from church to share the Gospel.  Of the many sad things brought about by COVID, one of the saddest was the increase in feelings of isolation, yet one of the results also has been a significantly increased use of communications technologies.  We may yet be remote from one another, yet we also have the potential to be more connected than ever before.  We don’t turn this to our profit, though, that is, to the profit of the Gospel.

Well, we could get fired!  Or written up.  Our co-workers might shun us.  We might be de-platformed.  Our friends and neighbors might go another direction.  Our family might stop taking our calls or responding to our texts.  Our teachers might take a dislike to us.  Why add more pressure or seek more woes?  We have more than enough!  Last Sunday, I shared research suggesting that people may be more open to deeper conversations than we assume.  They might not want to talk about Jesus, sin, and salvation right off, but one conversation leads to another, as you both get to know each other by sharing, listening, and enacting care for one another.

In any gathering, any organization or function, there seems to be a pull or a built-in draw away from its original purpose.  Congress, I had always thought, was supposed to debate and make laws.  What does Congress do now?  Corporations, I had always thought, were to produce and sell the best products at the best prices.  What do corporations do now?  Disney was supposed to make Mickey Mouse cartoons and ransack the Brothers Grimm, but Disney’s fairy tales have gone a whole different direction of late.  Sports teams were to train and compete for victory.  And now?  Colleges and universities were to educate young people in the love and pursuit of truth, beauty, and goodness.  Naïve waif that I was!  What do they do now?  The church is no exception.  What is the church supposed to do?  What is the church for?

In the early chapters of Acts, we are told how, “In those days when the number of disciples was increasing, the Hellenistic Jews among them complained against the Hebraic Jews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food” (6:1).  I was waiting to hear about some trouble with worship, or preaching, or learning, or mission.  I’m hearing about in groups and out groups: Hellenistic, Hebraic.  I’m hearing about the daily dole, the bread line.  Is that what the church is for?  Our daily bread, certainly!  What is our daily bead, a half-stale roll?  Helping to provide food for the hungry, especially if they are part of your own church family, is good, blessed.  Don’t get me wrong.  The church, however, does not exist for the purpose of giving people half-stale rolls, even with a smile and a “God bless.”

“So the Twelve gathered all the disciples together and said, ‘It would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the word of God in order to wait on tables.  Brothers and sisters, choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom.  We will turn this responsibility over to them and will give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the word” (6:2-4).  Waiting on tables is blessed Christian service: it is for those “full of the Spirit and wisdom”!  It is not the only Christian service.  I’m bold enough to say that it isn’t the premier Christian service.  It can be time- and resource-consuming.  Just look at churches that operate soup kitchens or have bread lines—a lot of resources, a lot of time, a lot of people, a lot of energy.  Blessing, but not the only blessing.  Purpose, but maybe not our first purpose.  We ought to love serving our neighbors and this service ought not be our first love.  We can lose sight of our first love, without even meaning to.

The ministry of the Word—for the Twelve, that was study, teaching, and preaching.  Yet serving the Word has another dimension: we serve the Word when we bring and give the Word to others.  Oh, how they need it.  Oh, how this world needs the Word.  How painfully, devastatingly, this is brought home to us.  Luke tells us something very hopeful, just here.  The church redirected its focus and rearranged its priorities to the ministry of the Word, to serving the Word, with the result that “the word of God spread” and “The number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly” (6:7).  Mission is important.  Fellowship is important.  Worship is important.  Learning is important.  All these come together and work together when we are doing evangelism, serving the Word by taking the bread of the Word out to where the hungry people are, giving it to them and getting to know them.

And we’re also hungry, we’re also hurt, but we know where to get our bread, where to find our balm; we know the bread that truly satisfies the hungry heart.

Oh, yes, we have to work, and not just at work.  We have to eat.  We’ve got to get the kids to dance, cheer, sports, music.  We’ve got appointments to keep.  We are busy.  We get so busy doing the necessary things that we never quite seem to get around to doing the things that really matter, and we know it but what can we do?  Jesus invites us to be Marys in a Martha world.  If work takes all our time, if school takes all your time, if your children and their activities take all your time, what time is left for God?  Today, this hour?  If only it were just one hour, right?!  My Sunday is slipping away!

And what about you?  When do you get time for you?  Or are we not supposed to have that time?  Is that, like sinful or something, selfish, to have or even just to want or dream about having some time for yourself?  Balance, beloved.  My hunch is that God wants us to find a balance; the Spirit is with us to guide us to that balance—not the balance we’re convinced we need or want, but the balance that God knows is best for us, best for His children, whom He loves.  Balance and priorities.  Is work not important?  Work is important, especially as we do all our work to the glory of the Lord.  Is eating not important?  Eating is important, and let us do all our eating to the glory of the Lord, rather than the licking of our wounds or the filling our mouths from boredom.  Hey, where’d all the Oreos go?  God has things for us to do if we’re feeling bored!  I wonder if the disciples were ever bored in the company of Jesus.

The children also are important—so important! never more important!—and we want many things for them.  And Jesus invites us, maybe even so gently commands us, to be Marys in a Martha world.  We want many things for our children, and there is one needful thing, for them as for us.  Wherein, then, is true deprivation?

Not enough hours in the day.  God gives time, for He alone can give it.  It is His to give.  Now, why does He give time?  For frantic, hectic, multi-tasking, multi-failing breakdowns?  Surely not.  For blessing.  God gives time for blessing, to be used for Him who is blessing, used at work, at school, at camp, on vacation, used through activities which become opportunities for connecting and relationship building, through raising our children in God’s blessing and being role models for the children around us.

Okay, but what about me?  Beloved, we discover me when we live for Him.  Part of living for Him is sharing Him with others, help for their hurt; patience, listening, compassion.  Small things done with great love, seeds we plant with care and diligence, watered by grace, sometimes also with our tears.  If we receive time as a gift, a holy gift, let us then use time as a gift, a sacred gift.  How?  God will show you.  Pray, ask, listen, and act.