Focus
a sermon by wayne mclaughlin
16th Sunday in Ordinary Time – Year C
July 21, 2013
Amos 8.1-12
Luke 10.38-42
INTRODUCTION
Cameras these days
are amazing.
I have the cheapest
SLR camera you can buy—
a Canon Rebel—the
very first version of the Rebel.
It takes great
photos.
My brother-in-law
who is a professional photographer
tells me I should
always use the manual focus option
instead of the
automatic one.
Sometimes I do, but
not usually.
I let the camera do
its automatic thing—it’s just easier.
Even the cameras on
smart phones do an incredible job,
don’t they?
I’m sure we’ve all
taken photos that were out of focus.
I hate it when that
happens, don’t you?
But it happens much
less frequently these
days because of the
sophisticated cameras
we have.
The focus of today’s
sermon is ‘focus.’
I’m going to focus
on focusing.
MARTHA
Jesus was at the
home of Martha and Mary.
Martha was out of
focus.
That’s why Jesus
said to her,
Martha, Martha…you are distracted
by many things. But only one thing
is necessary. Look at Mary, she’s
focused on what I am saying to her.
Martha was anxious.
The word ‘anxiety’
or ‘worry’ in the Greek language
comes from a root
that means to be distracted
or have divided
attention.
Martha was probably
multitasking
because when you’re cooking a big meal
you have to do
several things at once.
One thing is for
sure: Martha’s mind was divided.
She wasn’t focused.
It’s not that Martha
was doing a bad thing.
She was preparing a
meal for her guest.
She was practicing
hospitality.
It was a good thing.
But even a good
thing is not good
is it causes one’s
mind to be distracted.
The word for it
today is ‘mindfulness.’
To have an attitude
of mindfulness is to
be focused on what
you are doing
right here, right
now.
It is easy to get distracted by doing many good things
and miss the best thing.
Martha’s food was
burning
and her faith was frazzled.
PURE IN HEART
One of the Beatitudes says, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they
shall see God.”
That saying has nothing to do with having bad thoughts or dirty thoughts.
The phrase ‘purity of heart’ in Christian spirituality
refers to having a single-minded devotion to God.
It means ‘pure’ as in ‘unmixed.’
Like pure gold;
gold that is not mixed with something else.
To have a pure heart
is to have an inner disposition
that is not mixed up or stirred up
by something other than
pure love for God alone.
Blessed are those whose hearts
are focused,
for they shall perceive God.
We can’t ‘see’ God;
but we can perceive God—we can
picture what God is like
when our perceiving
is not blurred.
The Letter of James
puts it this way:
If any of you is lacking in wisdom, ask God
who gives to all generously…
But ask in faith , never doubting….
for the doubter, being double-minded…
must not expect to receive anything
from the Lord.
‘Double-minded’ is how James describes
the person who is out of focus.
It’s like taking a photo when your hand is shaking.
The picture results in a double or triple image.
When our lives are out of focus
our
faith is shaky,
and our resulting perception of God
is fuzzy and unclear.
THE EYE
Back to the Sermon on the Mount again…
Jesus says, “The eye is the lamp of the body. So,
if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be
full of light;
but if your eye is unhealthy,
your whole body will be full of darkness.”
Listen to the Cotton Patch Version of those verses:
The body depends on the eyes for light.
Now if your eyes are in focus,
then the body will have clear light.
But if your eyes are not in focus
(that is, with one eye on one thing,
the other on something else),
then your whole body will be in confused
darkness.
Now if your life is so divided,
you’re really in the dark.
(The Cotton
Patch New Testament was translated by Clarence Jordan.)
Those words of Jesus from the Sermon on the Mount
help explain why Jesus said to Martha what he said.
Even though she was doing a good thing,
she was out of focus.
Jesus said that Martha was worried about many things,
but only one was necessary.
Our lives become so cluttered up with
many things
that we cannot focus on the one thing
and the one person
who is Lord.
AT THE FEET OF JESUS
Mary sat at the feet of Jesus
and listened.
What does it mean in 21st century America
to sit at the feet of Jesus
and listen?
I think it means that we take the central message
of the Bible as seen through the lens of
the life of Jesus
as the central principle of our lives.
That central message is love.
To make love the focus of our lives
is how we listen to Jesus.
And when we focus our lives on Love,
we will have a clear picture
of what really matters in life.
Everything will be in focus.
That doesn’t mean that we will always
know exactly what to do.
There will still be days when
everything seems blurry and fuzzy
and unclear.
But as we move forward with love in our hearts
things will become clear.
AMOS
Several hundred years before Jesus was born,
the people of God (Israel) had gotten their
vision of God out of focus.
Their outward religious ceremonies
had become more important than
their inner motivations.
They sang hymns and praised God,
but they didn’t treat their employees fairly;
they weren’t quite honest with their customers;
they treated poor people as if they were inferior.
They got up in church and gave testimonies about
how God had blessed them,
then they went home and abused their children
and violated promises that held relationships together.
They said they loved God,
then they poured poisons into God’s rivers and oceans.
They wore nice lapel pins to show their patriotism,
but fixed the laws of the land in such a way that
people on the margins had no say in who was elected.
They spoke pretty words about being chosen by
the Lord,
then they used their chosen status
to treat people of other nations as if they
were not even made in God’s image.
The prophet Amos told them off.
He told them that they were not focusing on
the real meaning of their calling.
They were forgetting justice and honesty
and mercy.
Amos denounced Israel for showing the world
a picture of God that was terribly
out of focus.
DEVELOPING…
The bleak, negative picture we have from Amos
develops into a grace-filled picture of God
in the New Testament.
Jesus invites all of us to come and sit down
and rest our weary bones,
and quietly listen to his words of hope.
Jesus is our picture of God.
In one of his letters Paul says that Jesus is the image
of the invisible God.
The only clear picture of God we have
is Jesus.
He said to one of his disciples,
“Look at me, look at my life, and you will
see
the picture of God…If you’ve seen me,
you’ve seen the Father.”
MERTON
Thomas Merton, in his book Love and
Living, writes about the need for silence as a discipline of our discipleship:
Where there are many words,
we lose consciousness of the
fact
that there is really only One
Word.
The One Word which God speaks
is Himself…
If there is no silence beyond
and within
the many words of doctrine,
there is no religion.
For religion goes beyond words
and actions,
and attains to the ultimate
truth
only in silence and Love.
where this silence is lacking,
where there are only the ‘many
words’
and not the One word,
then there is much bustle and
activity
but no peace,
no deep thought,
no understanding,
no inner quiet.
Only in silence and solitude,
in the quiet of worship,
the reverent peace of prayer,
the adoration in which the
entire ego-self
silences and abases itself
in the presence of the
Invisible God—
only in these ‘activities’
which are ‘non-actions’
does the spirit truly wake from
the dream
of a confused and agitated
existence.
CENTERING PRAYER
There is an ancient method of Christian prayer
called Centering Prayer.
It has been revived in the last fifty years
largely by Father Thomas Keating.
The method is simple.
You choose a word.
It can be a Scriptural word
such as Jesus, Yahweh,
Savior,
Shepherd, Light, Peace…
Or a word that is meaningful to you,
such as Love, Rest, Free,
Joy,
Mercy, One, etc…
You sit quietly and close your eyes.
You visualize your word hanging in the air
in front of you.
You don’t speak it.
You do not think about what it means.
You just gaze at it.
This is your contact with God.
Naturally your mind will wander.
You will discover that you have a Martha Mind.
It will become distracted.
You will begin to think about all kinds of things.
When this happens,
you merely bring your attention back to
your word.
This will happen over and over and over again.
Just bring your attention back to your word.
Don’t worry about succeeding
or accomplishing anything with this discipline.
You can’t fail.
Keep coming back to your word
until you are done—20 minutes—or
to start out—perhaps five minutes.
Centering prayer does something to you.
It is a form of prayer that deepens your
connection with God.
It helps to focus your life on God.
If practiced regularly over a period of time,
you will notice the difference
and people around you will notice too.
There are many other methods of prayer.
Centering prayer is an ancient Christian way
of praying
which helps center one’s life in God.
**
It’s not easy to be a Mary
in a Martha world.
We so easily become distracted
and divided and worry about many things.
Only one thing is necessary.
As we look at life through the lens of Jesus,
the centrality of love
becomes more clear.
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