All Things Hold Together

​Our Old Testament reading from the prophet Amos ends with a poignant line. Amos foresees a time when people “shall run to and fro, seeking the word of the Lord, but they shall not find it.” People will long to know God’s will, to feel God’s love. But, Amos says, they won’t be able to.
 
That time came quickly in Israel, within a decade or two of Amos speaking those words. But Amos anticipates our own time as well.
 
We all want to know the truth. But, as best I can tell, many of us don’t know where to find it. We are overwhelmed with “information,” and we don’t know how to process all that information, and we don’t know where to look for reliable guidance.
 
The authorities that a previous generation trusted no longer seem very trustworthy. A high percentage of Americans have lost confidence in our government, our educational institutions, the media, and, of course, the Church. People don’t know who to trust, and so people don’t know what to believe.
 
That’s a tough place to be. I don’t know if there has ever been a time of such pervasive doubt and questioning.
 
One result of our doubt is exactly what Amos describes. We “run to and fro” looking for answers, except that in our case our running to and fro is on the internet. And we end up looking in different places and putting our trust in different authorities, and we can’t agree on even the most basic facts.
 
As Christian people, we have one great advantage. We don’t have to run to and fro looking for the word of the Lord. We know Christ. We have the Bible. But that doesn’t solve all of our problems.
 
Look at poor Martha in our Gospel reading. Martha is a good and faithful woman. Martha loves Jesus. On a different occasion, Martha recognizes Jesus as “the Messiah, the Son of God” (John 11:27). In our passage, Martha is working hard to show hospitality to Jesus and his disciples. It all seems good. This is a woman who knows what and who to believe.
 
But it isn’t good for Martha, not in our story. Faithful Martha is so busy doing good that she becomes bitter and resentful. Martha resents her sister for not helping her. Martha even resents Jesus. “Lord,” she says, “do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself?” Those are the words of an angry woman.
 
Jesus responds that Martha is “worried and distracted by many things,” and that Martha seems to have lost sight of the only truly needful thing. It seems like Martha wouldn’t be running to and fro looking for the word of God. Martha knows exactly where to find the truth. Jesus himself is in her house, And yet, in our reading, Martha has lost sight of the truth and is looking in all the wrong places.
 
My guess is, we can all identify with Martha at least some of the time.
 
I have many tasks, which I mostly think of as a good thing. I find genuine satisfaction in taking care of business. You might not believe it from looking in my office here at Saint David’s, but I take a weird and probably exaggerated pleasure in ending my day with a clean and empty desk, with no little piles of work to be done.
 
But sometimes, when I review what I have done at the end of the day, most of it seems trivial. Like Martha, I have been worried and distracted by many things that don’t particularly matter, and I have lost focus on the one thing that does matter. I haven’t been focused on Christ. I haven’t been focused on love. 
 
Like Martha and even more so, we live in a culture full of worries and distractions. And even those of us who are blessed with the word of God, even those of us who love and follow Jesus, we lose sight of the one needful thing. On those occasions, we, too, need to do what we can to find the word of God.
 
But at least in theory we know where to look.
 
So, we come together each week to sit at our Lord’s feet and to listen to Christ’s words. And on our good days, we do the same thing at home. We spend time in Scripture, and we spend time in prayer, and we remind ourselves that Christ is the source of ultimate truth, that love is the one needful thing.
 
And on our best days, as we pray, or as we do whatever it is that we do although I think prayer is the best, as we pray, we draw closer to Christ, the image of the invisible God, the one in whom the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.
 
And as we draw closer to Christ, we remember what we know but somehow forget, that all things were created in Christ and through Christ and for Christ. We remember that through Christ God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things. Best of all, we remember that in Christ all things hold together.
 
I want to emphasize that word, “all.” In the first four sentences of our passage from Colossians, Paul uses the word “all” seven times. All things created by Christ. All things reconciled to God through Christ. All things holding together in Christ. I take great comfort in all those alls. We all can.
 
Back to Amos and the poor folks running to and fro, seeking the word of God and not finding it. All things are in Christ, and Christ, is in and with and around them all the time. They just need to open their eyes.
 
Or back to our contemporaries, who long for truth and don’t know who to trust. And the right answer is not a politician or a professor or a journalist or a priest. Christ is the capital T Truth. Christ is the way and the truth and the life.
 
Or back to any of us who get worried and distracted by many things. And it turns out that if all things hold together in Christ, then Christ is in all those tasks and distractions, even if we are too blind to see.
 
But because we are so often too blind to see, we need to do what Mary does. We need to sit at Christ’s feet. We need to spend time at Christ’s feet on Sundays and all through the week.
 
Sadly, spending a little more time in prayer doesn’t suddenly remove all our uncertainties, or answer all our questions, or mean that we don’t need to work hard at discerning truth in our confusing world.
 
And as we sit there at Christ’s feet, hopefully, over time, our eyes open a little bit wider to see Christ’s hand at work in the world all around us and Christ’s hand at work in every corner of our own lives too. By focusing our attention on Christ in prayer and worship, we train ourselves to know Christ with us always, to the end of the age.
 
May Christ help us to do it. Amen.