Sermon 8/11/13
Matthew 6:24-35
Sermon on the Mount: What Not to Wear
My mother will tell you that in some ways, I’ve been a
worrier since I was a little girl. When I started kindergarten, I went through
a stretch where I kept asking my mother “what if” questions about starting
school. What if I couldn’t find my bus? What if I got locked in the bathroom
and no one heard me calling for help getting out? What if no one was home when
I got off the bus? What if the teacher didn’t show up? What if I wore a dress
on a day I was supposed to wear pants for gym? What if I didn’t have my money
for milk? These were apparently serious concerns on my 5 year old mind, and my
mother did her best to help me relax, to know that I would be safe and that
someone would be there who could help me no matter what I encountered. I don’t
even remember having all these questions myself, so she must have done a good
job in calming my anxieties. Everybody, it seems, worries about something
sometime. Are you a worrier? Do you experience stress? How do you cope with it?
I’ve told you before that I am working hard to be a
healthier person. One of the many reasons for this is that I find that the
stress and worry I experience in my life shows up in my physical health
sometimes. I have a family history of high blood pressure, for example, and I
need to be careful to manage the stress in my life in healthy ways, so that my
blood pressure is better controlled. When I’m not managing my stress, sometimes
I can actually feel my blood pressure rising, or I find myself clenching my jaw
while I’m sleeping. I think that one of the reasons people become addicted to
things like alcohol or smoking or caffeine is because we use these things as a
way to manage our stress, our worries.
What is it, exactly, that we’re all so worried about? I
went through a country music phase when I was in high school that may or may
not have been related to my crush on a handsome young man from Texas who listened
to nothing but country music. One of
my favorite country songs has stayed with me through the years is called, “I’m
in a Hurry,” recorded by Alabama. The chorus goes, “I’m in a hurry to get things done. Oh I rush and rush until life’s no
fun. All I really gotta do is live and die, but I’m in a hurry and don’t know
why.” For me, at least, a big source of stress comes from my endless to-do
list. Sometimes, instead of daydreaming, I find my mind running through the
endless cycle of what needs to be done next. Sometimes when I wake up in the
morning, the first thing I think about is the list of things I have to
accomplish in the day. For many people who experience insomnia, thinking about
everything that has to be done the next day is a big source of sleeplessness.
And neck-and-neck with worries about to-do lists are peoples’ worries about
money. How much we have, how much we need or want, and the gap in between those
figures. We worry a lot about having enough, it seems: time and money.
Today,
as we continue reading through the Sermon on the Mount, we hit a passage that
is probably familiar to you. It’s a passage we characterize as being about
“worry,” although there’s certainly a lot packed into this text. In this
chapter, Jesus has just talked about giving alms, praying, and fasting,
followed up by saying that “where your treasure is, there your heart will be
also.” And then Jesus starts with today’s passage. He says that one cannot
serve both God and wealth. This statement is a springboard for Jesus to speak
about worry. Don’t worry, Jesus says, about what to eat, or drink, or wear.
Life is more than these things. The birds of the air don’t work or worry, and
have plenty to eat, and we are more valuable than birds. And the lilies are
clothed with great beauty, but they only last a little while. Won’t God take
even greater care of us? So why worry? God knows what we need. So strive for
the Kingdom of God, not these other things, Jesus concludes. Strive to live
righteously, and everything else will come as well.
In some
ways I love this passage – it is beautiful, comforting. But I have to share
with you my other reaction: Is Jesus serious? How can he be? Most of the time
when reading the gospels, I’m struck by the deep wisdom of Jesus. By his
perceptiveness, his way of seeing right to the heart of the matter. By the way
he makes things so clear. It is one of the many reasons I choose to follow
Jesus – his ability to trim away all the meaningless stuff and get to the core
in a world that so needs that, when my
life so needs that. But then sometimes there’s a passage of Jesus’ teaching
that comes along like this one and my reaction is, “Yeah, but Jesus…,” “Jesus,
you’re pretty naïve, idealistic, you really don’t understand how stressful my
life is.” “Yeah, but easier said than done Jesus. Have you seen my to-do list?”
It’s hard to picture Jesus keeping an appointment calendar, Jesus with a to-do
list. A quick assessment of this passage tells us that Jesus says we’re not
supposed to worry. And perhaps some of you are like me, then, walking away from
the passage worried that we worry too much.
As usual, when we really examine the text, Jesus says
something much more compelling than “Don’t worry.” He doesn’t offer easy
platitudes – this isn’t “hakuna matata” or “don’t worry, be happy.” Jesus is tying his words about worry back to
his opening comments in this passage today about having more than one master.
We can tell this because of how this section about not worrying starts. In our
New Revised Standard Version bibles, we just get “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life.” But the original
Greek is even more specific. It says, “Because of this I tell you do not
worry.” So the whole section reads: “No one can serve two masters; for a slave
will either hate the one and love the other; or be devoted to the one and
despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth. Because of this I tell you do not worry.” So, in context, what does
this passage mean for us, that because of
not being able to serve two masters, Jesus tells us not to worry?
You know when Pastor Aaron talks about those mysterious
two people in the whole room who might actually care what the original Greek
says? I’ll confess to being one of those two people, one of those nerdy
language geeks – I love finding out what the Greek says, and seeing if it helps
me understand. When Jesus talks about worry,
the word used is merimnate, which
means more literally to “be preoccupied with or be absorbed by.” (1) When Jesus
speaks of worry, he’s speaking of something that preoccupies us, absorbs our
attention, takes our effort and energy and heart’s direction. In fact, in this
way, Jesus is equating worry to something that’s very close to idolatry.
Idolatry is when we take anything that is other than God, and give it the place
of God in our lives. All through the scriptures, idolatry is one of the things
that God most deplores about our human behavior. Again and again, we’re putting
something else in a more important place than we put God. Worried? Preoccupied?
Absorbed? Not only is your stress hard on you, it’s also putting your very soul
at risk, because your worry is just another form of making idols. That’s why
Jesus talks about worry and serving more than one master. If we don’t want to
end up serving a master other than God, we must
stop worrying, stop being absorbed by and preoccupied by things that aren’t
God.
Instead
of being naïve, Jesus is, of course, being extremely wise. He calls our worry
out for what it is – a way of distancing ourselves from God and God’s plan for
our lives. We’ve been studying John Wesley in a book study this summer. We’ve
learned about his Explanatory Notes on the whole bible. On this passage, Wesley
writes: “Does not every [one] see, that [one] cannot comfortably serve both
[God and wealth]? That to trim between God and the world is the sure way to be
disappointed in both, and to have no rest either in one or the other? How
uncomfortable a condition must he be in, who, having the fear but not the love
of God, -- who, serving [God], but not with all his heart, -- has only the
toils and not the joys of religion? He has religion enough to make him
miserable, but not enough to make him happy: His religion will not let him
enjoy the world, and the world will not let him enjoy God. So that, by halting
between both, he loses both; and has no peace either in God or the world.”
Wesley knew that by trying to strive for what’s important in worldly terms at
the same time we strive spiritually would only make us miserable in the world
and miserable in our relationship with God. We worry because we’re striving for
the wrong things, or striving, at the least, in the wrong order.
So what
do we do? How do we change? How do we give up this striving, our obsessive
anxiety, our stress, our worry, our preoccupation with so much that has nothing
to do with God, faith, discipleship, ministry? How can we just “not worry” like
Jesus says? He gives us the answer: We still strive, we’re still preoccupied,
we’re still consumed – but all that energy is given to striving for the kingdom
of God. And we’re able to do that when we recognize that our lives are covered
already by God’s love. Our lives are given value already by God who created us,
and if this God who created us even gives value to birds and lilies and grass
in the field, which is here today and gone tomorrow, how can we doubt the value
given to us? We’re precious to God, of such value to God. The value we get
elsewhere isn’t real. The things we worry about only define us if we let them
define us. But if we choose otherwise, if we strive after God’s kingdom
instead, we’ll find our real value as children of God.
Does
seeking God’s kingdom free us from worry? Does seeking God’s kingdom clothe us
and feed us? Maybe not in the ways we’d expect. But I think striving for God’s
kingdom ultimately turns our view from ourselves out to the world God has
created. So striving for the kingdom lead us to feed others, to clothe others,
to fill others. If the whole world strives after God first, I think we’ll find
that Jesus is right – all the rest is added to us as well. We struggle to exist
in a world that is full of worry, ever torn, as John Wesley described, between
more than one master, never being satisfied by either. But our lives,
individually and together can be so much more than we sometimes settle for.
Strive first for God, God’s kingdom, God’s justice. If we do that together, God
promises that the rest will come to us as a gift to God’s beloved children.
What’s
on your mind? What’s preoccupying you? “Therefore I tell you, do not worry
about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body,
what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than
clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather
into barns, and yet God feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And
can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? But strive
first for the kingdom of God and God’s righteousness, and all these things will
be given to you as well.” Amen.
Comments