Feeling Overwhelmed, Burnout?

Picture this:  A doctor rests his stethoscope on one of the rib bones of a human skeleton that is laying on the side of the road and the caption reads:  I guess I'm a little too late!!  

Oct. 21, 2018 Job 38: 1-1 Psalm 104, Mark 10: 35-45

How many of us here today quite frankly feel overwhelmed with all of the things you are being called to care about.    We have our family’s needs, our church needs us, the community beckons us, the different clubs and organizations call upon us, as they ask for our time, our money or our talent.  How many here get junk mail weekly with a plea to help the poor and needy of our world.  We are constantly being asked to fill the coffers of some worthy cause, church buildings, the Bible Society, research for cancer, kidney, heart, diabetes and list goes on doesn’t it.  

To top it all off,  if we don’t already feel guilty for not caring enough, there are an abundant number of people around whose whole purpose in life it seems is to ensure us, that we will no long escape that sense of guilt.  At least that is how I have felt at times in my life and I think that is how many others feel as well.  We get tired of all the people who ask us to care, we get tired of the guilt we feel for feeling this way, and we get tired of the fact that there is so much that needs caring for.           So what are we to do? 

I would like to suggest to you this morning that we need to reclaim for ourselves the good news of the Gospel in all this.  Here are three practical ways we might begin to do this. 

FIRST    - we need to try and understand what the Gospels and Jesus want us to do in our daily life.   There is no question that Jesus wants us to care and calls us to be, as he was, a servant of others.  But now where in the Gospels will you find that we are called or expected to be superman or superwomen, that call is coming from whom in your life?   Is it from your family, the church, your social group, your work place who?     Many of us do not have the strength nor the resources to make a dint in the overwhelming amount of caring that is needed to heal our own family let alone the church or situations within our world.   Jesus is not asking us to do what we can’t, but only what we can.  What does Jesus say”  May I suggest looking at the parable of the Sheep and the Goats  Matthew 25: 30-40,  there you might find the answer in verse 40 where Jesus says:  "I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these, you did for me."   As many times as we have heard this statement before, many of us have not heard what Jesus said?     
Now I want you to close your eyes and emphasize these words from Jesus in your mind, “Whatever” not quantity, but whatever you did for one of the least, not many but one of the least, you did it for me.   In other words whatever we can do for each another is all Jesus is asking of us.  The amount or quality of care or concern we offer is not as important as our willingness to actually do something for just one person.     Some of us may have great resources to offer from, others who have little in material resources can share their time, their talent, their physical ability, make a phone call to someone who needs and ear, send a card, a visit in person is just as important as offering money or other material resources.     All caring gives signs of hope to the recipient, and a feeling of worth to the giver if done without an ulterior motive.   Folks, each of us is called to do what we can as the opportunity arises.   This is what the good news of Jesus Christ is about in our daily lives: having a servant attitude - a person who cares and wants to do it - and then does it even just for one.

SECOND:  We the baptized need to reclaim the good news of Jesus Christ for ourselves. Social Justice work without first getting its roots planted in the Gospels will eventually turn on its self to become self-justifying and self-centered.   Jesus is lord of our lives because we have professed Him to be, follow His ways and have become his disciples.  The good news of Jesus Christ is that we need to reclaim ourselves with his teaching of inclusive unconditional love and forgiveness for both friend stranger and foe.  You must learn to love yourself unconditionally first, and forgive yourself for any past mistakes before you can authentically offer this love and forgiveness to others.   When you have accomplished this for yourself, you will feel the burdens being lifted.  The load you are carrying will get lighter.  As you believe and try to live by love in and through Christ, God forgives you and helps you, for God knows that you are human and that you can only do so much.  Jesus knows we are incapable of surrendering everything.   All we are asked is that we try, giving out of gratitude,  and when we try - Christ himself intercedes for us and gives the blessings of God's mercy and grace in our time of need.   May I suggest that this is the way it was intended. 

THIRD and last:  We need to show others that we are a people of resurrection, that we have been changed and we must proclaim who changed us.  That out of the fertile dirt and dust created in our despair, loss  poverty, oppression, and yes even death itself, we will emerge, as did Christ resurrected, with the power of love, compassion, full of forgiveness with ready and willing heart nourished with the riches of Christ himself.   God in his ultimate wisdom has given us example after example of how change, even death itself, brings new life.  Look at the wonder of the cocoon, where new life in new form emerges, the forests that never die but recreates itself from its own death over and over again, food from the soil, fruit from the vine, new life requires change folks.  Something that appears to us to be totally consumed by death is nothing more than fertile ground for new growth, and new life.  We need to be a people of the way.  What way you ask why the way of Christ.  In Him we become a new being.  The old has passed away and the new has hope and promise.   As we show and proclaim, others will follow, we are a resurrected people, thanks Be to Our God in Christ, who lives within us.