When Popeye Met Jesus

But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.  -- 1 Corinthians 15:10

This will brief, a kind of continuation or riff on yesterday’s post.  If what Paul says is true – and it is, then the error of self and the world system in general is trying to be something other than what we are by the grace of God.  We fall when we resist God’s grace.  It is as the drowning man who is so panicked that he fights his rescuer.  We can get on the train and ride, or, we can stand in front of it and try to stop it. 

We can trust God and believe that He is actively involved in and with us, or we can become bitter and resentful.  There’s a difference that the world often misses – I’ve missed it as a Christian – between resistance and resentment.  I can resist evil without becoming resentful. 

I recall a line in True Grit where Tom Chaney laments, “Everything happens to me, and now I'm shot by a child!”  It is a powerful insight into the weakness in Chaney’s character.  There are many times when I have not done much better.  If we allow ourselves to always be aggrieved and offended by the troubles that come our way, we are never going to become the people God wants us to be.  We overcome not by umbrage and anger, or even excess spinach consumption,  but by faith and trust, by resting in Him.  As Isaiah 30:15 says:  For thus said the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel, In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength. 

Occupied

But Martha was distracted with much serving. And she went up to him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.”  But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary.  Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.”  -- Luke 10:40-42

Right, Lord, and, if everybody sits there like Mary, you all are going to get mighty hungry.  Somebody has got to fix the frijoles.  Western civilization was not built by people sitting on their butts listening to pretty stories. 

Or was it?

I am extremely lazy.  If it’s work, I try to avoid it, but I’ll work and wear myself out playing.  I like listening to and telling stories better than I like cooking and cleaning.  Strangely, most people like my stories better than my cooking, now that I think about it.  I’d rather be Mary than Martha, but I am also enough of a pragmatic Scot to know that once in a while the corn needs plowing and the taters won’t dig themselves – unless you do the straw thing like John.  And remember that Paul said anyone who doesn’t think they ought to work ought to give up eating while they are at it (2 Thessalonians 3:10). 

One way for us to understand the attitude the Lord expressed here is to make it a sort of allegory of the works versus grace approach to salvation.  The one thing that is necessary is faith, without which it is impossible to please God, no matter how many good deeds we do.  Mary typifies grace through faith while Martha is the type of one who tries to ascend to heaven by piling good works on top of good works. 

Understood this way, the Lord’s call to resting with and in Him makes more sense and eases our fears that we are doing something wrong by working hard and putting in the hours to provide for and care for our families, build our business, save for retirement, etc.  Isaiah said, long before, “For thus said the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel, in returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.  But you were unwilling “(Isaiah 30:15).

I think, though, for some us, there is also a lesson about giving the work we do for the world too much of a priority.  Remember how we are told to pray without ceasing?  We no longer have to sit at the feet of Jesus to attend to and hear Him, and we don’t have to lament that He isn’t walking around with us, because the Holy Spirit is walking around in us.  In others words, if we want to, we can kind of be Mary and Martha at the same time.  All we need to do is get our thinking in the right order, realize, and recognize the presence of God by His Spirit.  If we can practice giving precedence to the still, small voice over the shrill, lurid, cacophonous demands of the world, we can get Mary’s commendation and still not scorch the beans.

Still

Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord GOD, when I will send a famine on the land— not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD. -- Amos 8:11

It is not that the Lord ever ceases to speak but that people can no longer hear.  The world never listens, never hears God.  With directionless lives, they skitter about as if they were on a mission only to skitter back to where they started.  They hear nothing and assume that God is no longer speaking, or that He cannot speak, does not exist. 

Even when we want to hear, our ears may be dulled by the circus calliope, the cacophony of clowns clambering at the foot of the mountain.  Be still and know that I am God, we are told.  Those of us who seek this knowledge may withdraw to the mountaintop, to the deserts, to remote and lonely places seeking that stillness and silence.  This can be good – at least on occasion and for a time.  Some are called to it as a lifestyle, and any of us may  be called aside now and then.  God, though, does not require physical stillness or silence, but a stillness of heart, a space of spirit.  Your body is the temple and in that most holy place there is quiet.  In here, His voice may be heard over the rage and thunder of battle and storm, so long as the storms and battles remain outside.  Go in, as Jesus advised, to that “closet”, that secret, hidden place and close the door. 

For thus said the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel, In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.  It sounds so simple.  Go in and sit at the feet of Jesus.  Yet the verse ends with heart-breaking words:  But you were unwilling.  Let that not be true of us. 

Why would anyone refuse the rest and peace, strength and guidance the Lord offers?  We are willing enough to sprawl in front of a television, to rest physically.  What many of us seem reluctant to do is turn our minds and hearts to the reality of the indwelling Christ, to rest upon Him, His Person and the finished work of the Cross. 

The typical evangelical “worship” service is hardly a place for meditation, reflection, or rest.  There is noise and commotion and high tech displays designed to appeal to the audience’s increasing short attention span.  Many larger churches these days have separate services oriented to divergent demographics.  Older people like me go to one service while the younger crowd goes to a (typically) later service with more flashing lights and newer music played faster and louder, followed by sound-bite sermons from speakers in distressed denim. 

It’s appropriate.  I’m pretty distressed if I happen to walk into one of those by mistake.  My other personal gripe has to do with auditorium lights turned down so low that I can’t see my Bible, let alone read the words.  I’m always tempted to pull out one of my tactical flashlights to follow along – though, of course, the verse is up on the wall anyway.   Real worship is possible in such a place but only because of the inner stillness, the trappings are mostly distractions. 

We seem inclined, like the Romans to whom Paul wrote, to try to ascend up to heaven to bring Christ down or descend into the abyss to bring Him up from the dead with all of our rituals and noisy celebrations.  But what does it say? The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart.  There is no need to suffer famine or drought.  The word is in our hearts.  Out of our innermost being will flow rivers of living water.

God still speaks to the still.