John - "The Good Part"

 John 0 Part 1 - The Good Part (Lk 10.38-42) 

John is truly an amazing book.  Written by the apostle John, the "disciple who Jesus loved".  A passage John gives us towards the end perfectly summarizes what John is trying to do with this book he is writing:

John 20:30-31   Therefore many other signs Jesus also performed in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name.

Frequencies (word counts) in John:

Know - 116x (most)   Life - 47x (most)

See - 82x (2nd) Eternal - 17x (most)

Believe - 98x (most) Love - 57x (most)

Sign - 17x (most)         World - 78x (most)

Witness - 48x (most) Beginning - 10x (most)

Send - 61x (3rd)          Light - 23x (4th)

Truth - 26x (2nd)         Truly - 54x (most)

Word -32x (6th) “Truly truly” (or, amen amen) 25x!

Gospel - 0x

And to start us off, we need to look at a passage from Luke:

Luke 10:38-42  Now as they were traveling along, He entered a village; and a woman named Martha welcomed Him into her home.  She had a sister called Mary, who was seated at the Lord's feet, listening to His word. But Martha was distracted with all her preparations; and she came up to Him and said, "Lord, do You not care that my sister has left me to do all the serving alone? Then tell her to help me." But the Lord answered and said to her, "Martha, Martha, you are worried and bothered about so many things; but only one thing is necessary, for Mary has chosen the good part, which shall not be taken away from her."

I’m an early morning guy.  I’m also an “early evening” guy - I love coming home to my family, to get to be with them, hear about their day.  Coming home is the 2nd best part of my day.  But the best part is early morning.  Early morning.  Well, I don’t know what you would consider “early”.  For me it’s sometime before six, usually.  For some of us, that’s not all that early.  For others of us of course, waking up before 6am is cruel and [inhuman].  Nevertheless.  What I love about that time is that there are no distractions.  It’s fairly dark, and it’s totally quiet.  No phones, no lights, no motor cars.  No tv.  No text messages.  There’s nothing coming at me to bombard my senses.  Nobody else’s noise, none of these external stimuli.  Not yet.  It’s my “Mary time”.  Time to sit and, like Mary, face myself toward the Lord, and listen to Him.  At least, that’s the idea.

Cuz once the sun comes up, once the family gets up, it’s game time.  The day comes crashing in, like a tsunami.  All these distractions.  All these things clamoring for my attention, the things I have to do.  Lots of good things, a few tedious things - but ALL these things come rushing in and make it really hard to be Mary.  Much harder to hear the Lord.  Note the order: having been seated towards the Lord, Mary was hearing Him.  Towards is a word of direction.  It’s a choice.  My choice is to beat the “rush”, and find a quiet space for some quiet time with the Lord.  IF I get to bed early enough (also a choice), then getting up before everyone and everything else is no problem.  Don’t even need an alarm.  No distractions.  And I like to get there before [rush hour], i.e. before what I call the mental rush hour.  If I can get to that quiet place right away, I can beat the mental onslaught - when my mind gets cranked up and the worries and the cares of the day come crowding in.  Cuz once that horse gets out of the barn, it’s really hard to rein it back in.  At least that’s the idea.

This is the Good Part.  Mary time.  “Quiet time”.  Unfortunately, what can happen in that early morning quiet space, even with minimizing all the externals, is sometimes I can still find myself bombarded not by the noise out there but by the noise in here.  In my head.

Like the other morning, as I got down into my “quite space” for my “quiet time”, my head was just filled with all this noise.  All these things, already crashing around through my head, like the proverbial bull in a china shop.  It was just so hard to look away.  Like the switch in our living room that had melted and took out all the outlets - THAT was still needing to be fixed.  Or this Men’s retreat we have coming up, questions of is anyone is even going to go.  And all the serving roles needing to be filled at the church.  Then there’s our son Joshko off in North Carolina, out of sight but NOT out of mind.  How is he doing?  And our other two kids had a bunch of math that needed to be corrected.  And there was this nagging knot in my shoulder that was back in all its furious glory.  And then I had this random song in my head, stuck on repeat.  Hotel California.  I have no idea where that even came from - couldn’t tell you the last time I even heard that song.  But all this stuff, flying around in my head.  A literal cacophony [= an unpleasant mixture of harsh/unwelcome sounds]!

Then on top of all that, to make matters more cacophonous, flying around not IN my head but around my head, in the sacred space of what is supposed to be the sanctum sanctorum of my quiet place, there was this little bloodsucking [mosquito], buzzing around my ears.  Oh man - I can’t tell you how much I do not like mosquitoes.  Anyhow - I took care of that intruder.  But there I was, in this otherwise completely quiet space, and it was like I couldn’t hear a thing.  NOT Mary.  I was channeling my inner Martha.

[40] And I felt just like Martha.  Martha, Martha.  Her heart is totally in the right place.  She’s serving.  She’s welcoming Jesus.  Into her home.  She’s serving Him.  But the Greek says she was literally being drawn around. Turned around and around with all the things she was trying to take care of.  Spinning so many plates [Guinness World Record for #plates spinning =108, btw].

[41] Jesus says she is being worried and she is being disturbed.  The root word for worried refers to things that pull on us.  Pull us in a certain direction.  The more things that pull on us, the more directions we have to navigate.  And Martha has SO many things pulling on her, she is being pulled in circles.  Going round and round.  Going nowhere.  These are the things we believe we can control.  I’ve got this.  I can keep this plate, all these plates spinning.  And the more plates we have spinning, the more they begin to spin us…

Martha is also disturbed.  The root word refers to an uproar. A [riot].  These are the things that are out of our control.  So many things that we can’t control.  Martha can’t control her sister.  She can’t control things breaking down.  She can’t keep accidents from happening.  It IS disturbing.  Being out of control.

But are we ever really in control of anything? [illusion of control]  [Mt 6.27] Jesus asks, “Who of you by being worried (same word) can add even one hour to your life?”  All these things we worry about.  Pulling us in all these different directions.  Things we think we’re in control of.  Jesus says, Your Father knows what you need.  He knows everything that you need.  Jesus says really, only one thing is needed.  It’s about direction.  The passage says that Mariam/Mary only has one direction.  She is seated “towards the feet of the Lord”.  Instead of being pulled in all these different direction, she has one direction (not the boy band).  Again, this is a directional word - towards the Lord.  My eyes, my attention - my trust - is in Him.  Directed towards Jesus.  [and note: there's no autopilot in the Christian life…].  We maintain/reset that direction every day, throughout the day.  Seek first, what?  His kingdom, and His righteousness.  This is a daily choice.  [Fixing our eyes on Jesus…] And what happens?  We get closer to Jesus and become more like Jesus as we fix our eyes on Him.  Gal. 4:19 My children, with whom I am again in labor until Christ is formed in you.  Our goal should be to let nothing keep us from fixing our eyes on Jesus.

We’re coming into a very important season here.  A season when we talk about seeing Jesus.  Advent - isn’t that what Advent is all about?  Preparing to see Jesus.  Behold!  Let every heart prepare Him room.  As a church, we put on the Journey.  Glimpses of Jesus.  And it so happens that we are beginning a study of the book of John.  And what is this book?  Glimpses of Jesus - by a first-hand eyewitness [an eyewitness talks about the things they’ve seen, that are important].  May the Lord give us eyes to glimpse some of the things that John shows us in his book - the good part!