Paradigm Shift
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
Dictionary.com defines a paradigm shift as “a fundamental change in approach or underlying assumptions.” A paradigm is the way something is generally thought to be. It typically stays that way until something major happens and suddenly people are rethinking what they always thought to be true or right.
Jesus was full of paradigm shifts. He was constantly causing people rethink the Law, rethink God, rethink themselves. Let me give you a couple of quick examples. During the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus brought about a number of paradigm shifts.
Remember the whole “everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery? Suddenly the thinking moves from action, to intent. Or there was the idea that one’s righteousness must exceed that of the Pharisees. The Pharisees were assumed to be the most righteous people around. To say one had to exceed that was to say that even the Pharisees were not worthy of heaven. Mind blown!
This morning, we see another paradigm shift. But this one hasn’t caught on like the others. What we find are two sisters who are doing exactly opposite of one another. One acts according to the old paradigm—the old way of thinking. The other is a living example of the shift Jesus is about to make. So we see two paradigms this morning: the old and the new.
The Old Paradigm
The New Paradigm
Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a village. And a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house.
And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching.
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.”
The Old Paradigm
The Old Paradigm
The first paradigm that we’re looking at this morning comes from Martha. And Martha does everything right…according to the traditional, old-school thinking and assumptions.
Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a village. And a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house.
Here are Jesus and his friends coming into town. Martha proceeds to welcome them. And from that point on, it’s all about the hospitality. That’s what a good hostess does: show hospitality. She makes sure everyone is comfortable. She makes sure there is enough to eat, enough to drink. If you’ve got one or two guests—maybe even 5 or 6—it’s easy enough to host on your own. But when you have 13 guests, its possible to be a good hostess, but it sure gets much more difficult.
As a woman in those days, Martha (and Mary for that matter) would have been expected to be hosting Jesus and the disciples. It was just assumed. It was the paradigm of the age. If they were able to catch some of the teaching that Jesus gave while they worked, wonderful, but those tables aren’t going to serve themselves.
So it wasn’t as if Martha was doing anything outside the norm. As we read
Luke 10:40 (ESV)
But Martha was distracted with much serving.
The word distracted is in the imperfect, passive tense. Imperfect means that something just kept happening. The passive means that it kept happening to Martha. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to listen or that she was looking for things to do. Things were looking for her. So, it may have been that she welcomed Jesus and the disciples, got things ready, and when Jesus started to teach, she was standing in the back listening. But then maybe one of the disciples ran out of wine and made eye-contact that he needed more. So off to the kitchen she went to fetch the pitcher. She listens for a couple of moments but notices that another disciple keeps shifting around. Clearly he is uncomfortable. Off to find a pillow for him. And it keeps going and going. So that she only hears a small portion of anything that Jesus is saying.
And we’d go, “Isn’t that a good thing? She’s loving her neighbor.” And yeah, it’s a good thing. I think most Christians relate to Martha and the old paradigm. Being Christians we have welcomed Jesus into their homes—their hearts and lives. We want him there; we welcome him there. And we want to serve him. To these Christians, serving is better than sitting.
Luke 10:40 (ESV)
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.”
Martha is the ordinary Christian. We want to be where the action is. We like the events. We want to programs. We’d rather sing than listen to preaching. We’ve got to be moving. We’ve got to be doing. After all, isn’t that what’s expected anyway? We need people to serve on this team. We need people on this committee. What have you been doing for the Lord lately?
The New Paradigm
The New Paradigm
But then we come to the paradigm shift. We go from the old paradigm in which serving is more important than sitting to sitting being more important than serving.
We don’t see it being said, but it seems clear enough that Mary was just as welcoming to Jesus as Martha was. After all,
And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching.
If Mary wasn’t welcoming to Jesus, she certainly would not sit at his feet clinging to every word. And again, that word “listened” is in the imperfect. It’s an ongoing thing. She’s not in the back. She’s up front, right at the Lord’s feet. No distractions. I’m not saying that Luke was trying to discourage sitting in the back pews here, but certainly the less people are in front of you, the less you’ll be distracted by them.
Mary is all in. If Martha is the ordinary Christian, Mary is the extraordinary Christian. She’s the ideal. Whether or not she understood all that she was doing isn’t really the point. Jesus made it clear that she was in the right and Martha was wrong.
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.”
Here Jesus gives Martha a loving and gentle rebuke. Remember that a rebuke is a correction. The fact that Jesus used Martha’s name twice, shows an affection toward her. He understands her plight.
When Martha asked if Jesus cared if Mary was leaving her to do all the work, it appears that Jesus answered in the affirmative. Of course he cared. I say that it appears so, because Martha followed it up with a request to rebuke Mary. “Tell her then to help me.” Don’t you care? Then tell her.
Instead, Martha gets the rebuke. Like most of us who follow Jesus, Martha thought she was so right when she was so wrong. Peter said that he would never deny Jesus. He would fight for him. But he was wrong. James and John asked if Jesus wanted them to call down fire on the Samaritans for how they treated Jesus. Thomas doubted the resurrection until he saw Jesus personally. How many times should I forgive? Seven? No. Seventy-seven.
Jesus shifts our thinking. He sets up new paradigms. Women were supposed to be serving. They weren’t supposed to be disciples. Jesus says, on no. Discipleship first. Intimacy first. Personal time first. All that other stuff can wait.
And you know, those things on our agenda are really important.
Cooking dinner for our families is important. Helping the kids with the homework is important. Singing on the praise team, teaching Sunday School, community service is all so important. If they weren’t important, we wouldn’t have them in our schedules. They wouldn’t be in our reminders. But we see them as important and so we make time for them. None of those things just happen. We plan them. We meal plan, we grocery shop. We study our lessons. We have homework/homeschool time. We have Praise Team practice and music selection and so forth. Why? Because they are important. We believe that we cannot forget to do them.
But what does Jesus say about intimacy with him? What does he say about sitting at his feet? It is the “one thing [that] is necessary.” It’s not just important. It is needed. Yet most Christians treat it as if it will just happen.
Let me say this: Jesus is the one who came to earth for you. He lived for you. He died for you. He rose for you. Everything Jesus did on this earth was to rebuild the relationship that was lost. Everything he did was to this end: to bring us back into a right relationship with him and with the Triune God. Everything!
I don’t say that to make you feel guilty. I’m not trying to guilt anyone into doing something. I say that as a reminder that Jesus is worthy of our time. He is worth sacrificing the important, because he is the one that is necessary.
But Jesus says that intimacy with him is actually more than just important. It is the one necessary thing. Jesus never said that these services were unimportant. Something can be important but not be necessary.
Conclusion
Conclusion
If you feeling guilty or puzzled or even angry about this, you’re in good company. It’s a hard pill to swallow. It would have been for Martha too. Paradigm shifts are painful. They’re aggravating. Most people ignore them or fight them. For most of us, this isn’t something that happens overnight. It takes a long time to change our assumptions, habits, thinking about something. Look at Martha later on. This story of Mary and Martha is believed to have happened about 6 months or so before Jesus died. Let’s look at six days before he died.
Six days before the Passover, Jesus therefore came to Bethany, where Lazarus was, whom Jesus had raised from the dead.
So they gave a dinner for him there. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those reclining with him at table.
Mary therefore took a pound of expensive ointment made from pure nard, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.
Once again, Martha serves; Once again, Mary is at Jesus’s feet—this time anointing them and wiping with her hair. Change is hard.
Let me give you some tips on developing a deeper intimacy with Jesus. Not all of these work for everybody. Sometimes, things have to change over time so we don’t get too stagnant.
Pick a time and place. Schedule it. Time at Jesus’s feet isn’t just important. It’s necessary. If you’re scheduling time with friends, date night with your spouse, playdates for kids, events or programs at church because they are important and you don’t want to forget or miss out on them. Then schedule your time and place to sit at Jesus’s feet. Of course, I would suggest the morning time. This way your not exhausted from all the services of the day. Instead, your energized for them.
Take a moment to settle in. I get that there are times that we can’t wait to tell a friend what’s going on in our lives, but usually we settle in first. We order our coffee. We may chit chat a bit. We settle in. Settle in at Jesus’s feet. If you want/need a cup of coffee; if it wakes you up. Make a cup of coffee. Say a quick prayer. You may have noticed that in my pastoral prayers, I would often say the same things in various ways. I got it from John Piper.
I would pray a short prayer taken from four verses: Psalm 119:36, Psalm 119:18, Psalm 86:11, and Psalm 90:14. Spend a couple of minutes in silence and prepare your heart and mind to receive God’s Word.
Use a resource. For months now, my go to resource is Be Thou My Vision. It’s a personal liturgy. It begins with a praise and goes into a prayer of adoration, followed by a text of Scripture and a prayer of confession. That then is followed by a word of comfort from the Bible and then a doxology, and reference to a catechism. Then prayer for illumination as I open the Bible and do my daily Bible reading. Finally there is a prayer of supplication, time for personal prayer, ending in the Lord’s Prayer. It’s structured, but is different each day. Jay uses it as well. It’s keeps me from getting into a rut. You don’t have to use it, but I highly recommend it.
Don’t use your phone; use a Bible. Phones are distracting. We’re trying to be more like Mary and less like Martha. No more distractions; at least that’s the goal. Normally, I would say you need to lay those things down at Jesus’s feet, but that’s where you’ll be. So leave those somewhere you can’t see or hear. I know! Those messages, those phone calls, those emails, those notifications, they’re important!! But this time at Jesus’s feet is necessary.
Journal. I’m not great at this. I’m hit or miss with it. But it has certainly been a huge deal in Christian history. Sir Francis Bacon said, “Reading makes a full man. Conversation makes a ready man. Writing makes an exact man.” Writing in a journal about what you’ve read or meditated over or prayed about helps you to focus more than anything else. It causes things to stick in your mind better. It allows you to go back, if you do forget, and see what your thoughts were.
Meditate. What you’ve journaled, think about for the rest of the day. Or take a portion, a verse of Scripture and ponder on it, talk about it for the rest of the day. Share it with someone through text or call or email. But think on it until it becomes a part of you.
And this should be first, but I put it here for emphasis: believe Jesus. If you’re not a believer, receive Jesus now as Master of your life. Relinquish your control and entrust your whole being to him. Turn from rebellion and turn to Jesus. But for we who are believers: Jesus is our brother. He is our teacher. He is our example. Sit at Jesus’s feet expectantly. Believe he has something for your hungry soul. Because the reality is: he does.
May today be the day we shift our paradigm from thinking serving is better than sitting to sitting is better than serving. If I want to serve the Lord my best, then I must sit at his feet and rest.
Prayer
Our heavenly Father,
Most of us still believe that we serve Jesus best when we are busy. May we see that as important as all the things in life may be—and certainly some are more important than others—our intimacy with Christ is necessary. Sleep is important, but time with Jesus is necessary. Food is important, but time with Jesus is necessary. Jobs are important, but time with Jesus is necessary. You are gracious enough to forgive us when we fail. But you are strong enough to bring about this change in our thinking. To change us from time with Jesus is just one more thing that is important to time with Jesus is the one thing that is necessary. May your Holy Spirit work in our minds to shift our paradigm today and tomorrow—for as long as it takes until Jesus is number 1. For he is worth it and we shall never regret it.
It is in his name we ask. Amen.