O Lord, we pray, speak in this place, in the calming of our minds and the longing of our hearts, by the words of my lips and in the thoughts we form. Speak, O Lord, for your servants listen. Amen.
Some time ago now, I heard that in The United Methodist Church in the United States, there was a movement afoot called "Quest for Quality". During that time one United Methodist Bishop spoke to the pastor and three lay-leaders from each of the churches in his diocese. The meeting was about a new paradigm for the church.
The old paradigm, said the Bishop, is that we have been focusing on problems. If we don't have enough money we focus on stewardship. If we don't have enough people, we focus on membership drives.
The new paradigm, the bishop said, is "to make sure that the main thing is the main thing". The main thing for the church is spiritual growth, nurture, Bible reading; not meetings, money, membership, or even (I hate to say this) doing justice. If we take care of the main thing, feeding people spiritually, then they will be able to take care of everything else.
According to this paradigm, the important thing to understand is the flow. The flow is circular. People come into the church where they ought to be fed and nurtured spiritually, through prayer, Bible study; and then they go out into the world to do their ministry in the family and work place. Then they come back to church bringing others with them and the cycle starts again.
I think that the bishop is right. I think we in the church all too often focus on the wrong things - both in our life together as a community or family of believers, and in our lives as individuals within the larger world.
And I think people's grouchiness in the church and at home, their critical natures, their power and control issues, are a result of this wrong focus.
That seems to be what the problem is with Judas in today's gospel reading, and that seems to be the problem with many other people today.
If we focus on what other people are doing or not doing to make things work the way we think they should work. If we focus on the problems that we have as a church, or the problems that we have as individuals, that will not fix the problem.
It will just make us feel aggravated - anxious - and resentful. We need to do much more than focus on the problems we have. We need to focus on the solutions.
Or as the United Methodist Bishop put it - on the "main thing".
For us in the church - and indeed for us as we go beyond the church we need to focus spiritual growth and nurture, on what Paul calls in today's epistle reading "the prize of the heavenly call of God in Jesus Christ." If we are focused on that - then if the Bishop is correct - and I know he is - everything else will fall into place.
Recall what Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount about anxiety and worry. About being focused on our needs rather than upon God:
"Do not worry, saying, what we will we eat? Or what will we drink? Or what will we wear? Your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. Rather strive first for the kingdom of God and God's righteousness and all these things will be given you as well."
It's quite a challenge isn't it? A challenge to a different way of looking at things. A different way of dealing with problems and worries that we face as a church and as individuals.
John Wesley used to ask his people on a regular basis: "What's the state of your soul?"
It is a great question - but it's not one we ask very much anymore. We can get so busy within the church going to meetings and worrying about money and about human resources that the "main thing" gets lost - and our behaviour - our words and actions - can end up working against the main thing instead of for it.
And outside the church - in our homes - the main thing - is often virtually invisible. We not only don't walk the walk, we often don't even talk the talk - reserving it all, as it were to Sunday mornings.
Think about it.
We talk more about who will win the World Cup than we talk about where we are going in life. We focus more on the condition of our neighbours' back yard or whether or not we should get a new car - than we do on seeking the mind of Christ and asking him what we should be about. We worry more about how our children will do on the school soccer team or volley ball team than we do on whether or not they will grow up to be people who know the Lord and his love in their lives and are able to show that love to others.
My brothers and sisters-in-Christ - concern for the poor - such as Judas may well have had and giving extravagant gifts, like the gift Mary gave to Jesus, are not mutually exclusive things.
Neither are a fondness for sports and a dedication to doing God's will necessarily contradictory.
And our children most certainly can be encouraged to excel in physical things - while at the same time learning to live a deeply spiritual life.
The question is - what is the main thing in our lives? What do we give priority to as part of the church of Christ Jesus? And as individuals when we go home afterward?
"Oh why are we so haggard at heart, so care coiled, care-killed, so fagged, so fashed, so cogged, so cumbered?" wrote the poet Gerald Manley Hopkins.
Why indeed?
Why indeed do so many of feel so scattered? So overwhelmed?
Could it be that we try to do too much?
Or could it be that when we are doing things - we are approaching them from the wrong angle?
Perhaps it is a little of both. Perhaps it is a question of focus, of knowing what the main thing is - and making it the main thing.
Paul understand that when he talked about his background, and how blessed he had been by the cultural and religious standards of his day, and then said:
"Yet whatever gain I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord."
This one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind, and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus"
The past is not what is important my friends, nor is what lies to either side of us, those things that can cause us to run off in all directions at once. The goal is what is important, and following the course that gets us there.
For many of us, our hopes and dreams in life centre on our jobs. That's not surprising. That's where we spend most of our time. Our jobs give us the resources for achieving our goals in life. It is natural that we should have dreams concerning our work.
Research shows, however, that around age 45, those dreams begin to change. By then men begin to have some idea whether they are going to keep growing in their work or whether they have gone as far as they will go. If they conclude they have reached their limit--that there is no dream out there for them to pursue - they shift their dreams toward retirement. In fact, some of them retire then and there in their minds. That is why some men in the middle years of life, when they ought to be in their prime, become somewhat listless and begin feeling tired all the time.
The problem is not physical. It's spiritual. They've lost their dream.
Meanwhile women who have spent most of their adult lives as care givers are beginning to taste freedom for the first time. So while their husbands are winding down, many women are thinking about going back to school or starting their own business. They are excited. They bubble over with possibilities
How you feel about life is related to your sense of purpose. To what you consider the main thing.
How the church - how we - manage to deal with our problems also relates to our focus - to what we exert our efforts towards.
Paul is rather found of sports images, of images taken from the World Games of his day.
In I Corinthians - chapter nine - he writes:
Do you not know that in a race the runners all compete, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win it. Athletes exercise self-control in all things; they do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable one. So I do not run aimlessly, nor do I box as though beating the air; but I discipline my body and enslave it, so that after proclaiming to others I myself should not be disqualified.
Five simple things can help us discipline our spiritual life - and bring us closer to winning the prize of our calling in God. Five things can help us meet our problems as a church and as individuals from an entirely new angle - from an angle that focuses not on the problems - but on the great problem solver - God.
First - Recognize your strengths and virtues - but resist complacency. There is nothing positive in thinking that you are devoid of good. But there is danger in being satisfied with the degree of goodness and closeness you have with God today. God can always make you more like Christ than you are right now.
Second - Accept the need to work and struggle spiritually. Salvation is a free gift. But a vital, intimate relationship with God does not come effortlessly. No relationship does. Athletes know their abilities. They also know that they must work to keep those abilities up to standard - let alone to improve them.
Third - Study the Bible - especially the gospels. We can't be more like Christ if we don't really know what he was like. Meditate on how the scriptures show Jesus dealing with life. Pay attention to his priorities, to his conflicts, to his actions, and to his teachings. Let these things be used by God in your life to challenge your thinking - to test how you do things. Every athlete studies the techniques of those who are better than him or her so that they might improve themselves.
Fourth - Continue in prayer. Confess your failings and open your life to the transforming power of God. Don't forget to listen as well as to talk. In prayer face the reality of whose you are and learn to submit yourself to God's purpose for you. Let him show you the direction you should run in - the path you should take. Athletes have their coaches to show them what to do and how to go about doing it. They don't ignore them. Nor should we ignore ours.
And Fifth - Don't fear change. Change is the name of the game. We need to change. When we are open to God not only will we change – but things around us will change. Growth is a process of changing – and that process is not always pain free. If you notice in the middle of the word Growth is the word OW. There are some things we will have to give up. There are some people who will turn on us. Let it happen. What we will receive in their place is far better.
My brothers and sisters - what we regard here today in the church and in our personal lives as a problem is really an opportunity - a challenge - An opportunity to ask what our main thing is - And a challenge to work towards it.
May God bless us in the meeting of that challenge. Amen.
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