How much can we do? How much do we need?

Proper 25-A Oct. 26, 2008

St. Paul’s Deuteronomy 34:1-12

Psalm 90 1 Thessalonians 2:1-8

Matthew 22:34-46

In these recent days, with unimaginable sums of money being discussed, bandied about, lost, traded, borrowed, given, pledged – 700 billion dollars here, 250 million dollars there – I find myself frequently turning to the person next to me and asking, what IS money after all? Where does all this money come from? Is money real? Or is it all a shell game? Who can keep your eye on the ball?

The newspapers are full of stories of the anxieties of the times. Pieces of this huge financial puzzle seem to be crashing down around us – people are being thrown out of their homes, even if they pay their rent, because the people who own the houses are too much in debt to pay for their upkeep, or their taxes, or their mortgages. Far too many people, it seems, thought they could play the angles, rob Peter to pay Paul, keep this plate spinning while putting several others in motion at the same time, and now it is all crashing down like those jugglers we used to see on TV – when I was young, on shows like Ed Sullivan or Captain Kangaroo, back in the dark ages when simple things like that on TV amused us for hours.

This multi-tasking culture seems to have gotten a little out of hand, and people are beginning to notice the toll it is taking on us as individuals, and on us as a society. I’ve noticed several times recently, in the press, mention of studies that say people just can’t do more than one thing at a time. There are those terrible stories of young people sending text messages – this requires using two hands to type and look at the words you are typing on a tiny phone keyboard – while driving – and then losing control of their cars and crashing. Yet even talking on the phone while driving is distracting and dangerous. How often do people answer e-mail while talking on the phone, or students do homework while watching TV, downloading music, checking multiple facebook pages? Really, the scientists are telling us, it cannot be done. With all this stuff, this stimulation, these constant demands and interruptions, we lose concentration. Our brains and our bodies are not designed to work well with this frenzy of speed and stress. The way we are made, we can only focus on one or two things at a time. Multi-tasking does not make us more efficient: just the opposite. We are fragmented and unable to do what we are doing well. “As our minds fill with noise,” one scientist wrote, “the brain gradually loses its capacity to attend fully and gradually to anything,” inducing in us “a constant low level of panic and guilt.”[i]

The big international financial managers feel this; we feel this, even in our ordinary daily lives. Multi-tasking and its discontents are in the air we breathe.

Today’s gospel is for us:

When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. "Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?"

That question cuts through all the noise, doesn’t it? In the face of all that is around us, Teacher, all the confusion and crashing that affects even us little people here, what does God want us to do?

The Gospels present us with the picture of a changing world. The old understanding of faith in God – follow all the many laws, listen to the authorities like scribes and Pharisees – the ones who symbolically sat in Moses’ seat – is being challenged by this one particular teacher, this Jesus, who seems to embody in his person all the hope and good news and promise of God, the God who has been made known through the law and the prophets. Whom do we follow? We can hear the concern in the voices of the people: if we follow Jesus, do we have to abandon everything we have known about God up to now?

From the midst of all these questions and confusions and options and interpretations, Jesus breaks through with remarkable simplicity:

"`You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: `You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."

What Jesus is saying is, Keep your faith where it has always been: with God. As he spars with those religious leaders trying to entrap him into making some big mistake, he makes it clear that his faith is with God, and with the essentials that God has always, always, always been trying to get across to us. This is the big thing that everything hangs from. This is the start, the first, the banner headline screaming across the top of the newspaper:

Love God.

Love your neighbor as yourself.

Everything starts with this. Anything else is distraction, multi-tasking with no result, mere interruptions that take us away from giving ourselves fully to the God who loves us and wants us to love back, and wants us to love all these other people whom God loves, too. In this ever-widening circle of care and concern lies our treasure, our heart, our true home.

The newspaper article I read on the high cost of multi-tasking ends with this:

So the next time the phone rings and a good friend is on the line, try this trick: Sit on the couch. Focus on the conversation. Don’t jump up, no matter how much you feel the need to clean the kitchen. It seems weird, but stick with it. You, too, can learn the art of single-tasking.[ii]

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. You, too, can learn the art of single-tasking.

---

[i] “Multitasking can make you lose … um … focus” by Alina Tugend, The New York Times, Oct. 25, 2008, p. B7.

[ii] Ibid.