Rev. Eugene N. Nelson, Jr.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
September 27, 2009
Matthew 6:25-34
The song Don't Worry, Be Happy is played for the congregation.
That’s a happy little song! "Don't worry, be happy…" I was wondering if that could be a summary of this morning's text - these familiar words of Jesus from the Sermon on the Mount? “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat of what you will drink or what you will wear…consider the lilies of the field, how they grow, they neither toil nor spin, yet look absolutely fabulous. God takes care of them and God will take care of you…Do not worry. God knows what you need.” In other words, “Don’t worry, be happy.” Sounds good to me, give me an “Amen”, and let’s go have some coffee! What do you say?
Maybe it’s just me but, somehow such an easy interpretation just doesn’t quite do it. “Pastor, my hours have been cut back at work; we are going through our savings; we are piling up medical bills and I don’t know how we will ever pay them; our kids’ college fund is in jeopardy; why did our car pick this moment to break down?; we just learned our home is worth less than we owe on it.” And so it goes. I recently read that, in times of economic uncertainty, an even greater casualty than shrunken home values and denuded brokerage accounts, is the shrinkage of hopes and dreams and faith in the future – the perception that the doors we always thought would be open are suddenly closing, and that we may never be able to gain back the ground we lost so quickly.
And so, at first, at least for me, Jesus words about birds and lilies, as lovely and lyrical as they are, really aren’t very compelling. Birds and lilies don’t stay awake at night, that’s true. They don’t worry about life, but they also don’t have mortgages, grocery and medical bills. Yes, Jesus, I would love to be relieved of worry and anxiety, but looking to lilies and birds really doesn't feel like a very realistic strategy for me right now.
But is he really saying that human beings can be like birds and lilies? Is he really saying, "Hey, don't worry, be happy"? I'm not so sure. "Look at the birds;” he says, “consider the lilies." New Testament scholar, Thomas Long, points out that these are strong verbs. They mean to suggest more than just a casual glance; they invite us to study and scrutinize the world of nature. Says Long, “Jesus commands us to look, really look, at a world where God provides freely and lavishly, and where anxiety plays no part, where worry is not a reality. Jesus invites us to allow our imaginations to enter this world, to compare this world with the world in which we live most of our lives. The rent is still due, of course, department stores still expect payment for jeans and coats, but we have seen this other world, this world of God’s gracious and tender care, and it promises to overthrow the power of anxiety.”
Could that be what Jesus is talking about – overthrowing the power of anxiety? Well Jesus, good luck with that one! Here I am, preaching on this text, probably the worst person ever to have to preach on this text, and I have to confess that I'm not convinced that what Jesus is talking about is even possible...at least not for me. Overthrow the power of anxiety in my life? He might as well tell me to overthrow the power of gravity in my life. Let today's trouble be enough for today. Right! Like that is ever going to happen!
And yet…as Tom Long suggests, could there be another way? I once heard a poet talk about people who are prisoners in the world of objects. For them life becomes, in the poet’s words, “Produce! Get results! Make money! Make friends! Make changes! Or you will die of despair!” Thomas Merton makes a similar point when he writes of people who are, “Prisoners who have no choice but to submit to the demands of matter. They are pressed down and crushed by external forces – fashion, the market, events, opinions. Never in their whole lifetime do they recover their right mind.” Both the poet and the mystic use the same word – “prisoners.” But we think we’re so free. They look at us and see prisoners. Could Jesus be inviting us to make a mass escape from whatever prisons are holding us? Could he be showing us a way to ”recover our right mind?”
“Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.” Now, on the one hand, I struggle with this. It just feels do irresponsible. “Folks, I really intended to have a sermon today, but you know, I was sitting there last night, and Jesus said don’t worry about tomorrow, so I didn’t.” “Did you finish your homework?” “Well No, Dad, I decided not to worry about it. After all, I’ve heard you talk about Jesus saying not to worry about what might happen tomorrow.” Something tells me it would not be a good idea to use this text as an excuse not to save money for your next mortgage payment. An invitation to irresponsibility? Or is he taking us just a bit deeper than that?
Some of you have heard this story shared by a pastor – I’ve used it before. “Up in the Georgia hills, in the county where I was serving a church, ministers in the area would take turns being chaplain for a week at the local hospital. One week when I was on call, a baby was born. There weren’t a lot of births in this thirty-bed hospital. I got to the hospital about nine o’clock in the morning and I saw all these people gathered around, looking through the glass, looking at this little baby. ‘Is it a boy or girl?’ I asked. ‘It’s a girl.’
“ ‘What’s her name?’
“ ‘Elizabeth.’
“ ‘Is her father here?’
“Leaning against the wall was a young man. He said, ‘I’m the father.’
“ ‘Beautiful baby,’ I said. She was squirming and screaming. You couldn’t hear her through the glass, but she was screaming, red-faced and all that. I thought the young father might be concerned, so I said, ‘She’s not sick or anything. It’s good for babies to scream like that. It clears out their lungs and gets their voices going. It’s all right.’
“He said, ‘Oh, I know she’s not sick. But she’s mad as hell.’ Then he said. ‘Oh, pardon me, Reverend.’
“I said, ‘Oh, that’s all right. But why is she mad?’
“He said, ‘Well, wouldn’t you be mad? One minute you’re with God in heaven and the next minute you’re in Georgia.’
“I said, ‘You believe she was with God before she came here?’
“He said, ‘Oh yeah!’
“ ‘Do you think she will remember?’
“He answered, ‘Well, that’s up to her mother and me. It’s up to the church. We’ve got to see that she remembers, ‘cause if she forgets, she’s a goner.’”
The words of that hill country theologian/philosopher remind me of some words of that great saint of the church, Howard Thurman. He said, “It is a strange freedom to be adrift in the world of humanity without a sense of anchor anywhere. Always there is the need for mooring, the need for the firm grip on something that is rooted and will not give.” And, you might say that, without that anchor, without that mooring, we are goners. And so Jesus says, “Strive first for the kingdom of God and God’s righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” Jesus isn’t talking about irresponsibility. He is talking about faith and trust. He’s reminding us of what ultimately anchors our lives. Because, as that young father knew and we so easily forget, we end up making decisions and living lives that simply reflect the assumptions and anxieties of the world around us. And before we know it, we are adrift without an anchor, we are goners. A strange freedom indeed.
And so Jesus invites us to a fuller humanity, a fullness in which we don’t have to worry about the status, security, and survival of the self. Tilden Edwards says it like this: “Jesus invites fresh eyes and fresh breath with which to see and be in the world. We are freed from the often narrow sight and limits of workaday living. From the rigid roles and relationships, and divisions and controls that warp, blind and paralyze our responsiveness to the Spirit’s presence. We are free to realize our fuller humanity in the image of God that is beyond our productivity. We are free to dwell on the simple, unique givenness of ourselves and of each other.”
Yes, the bills must be paid and responsibilities fulfilled. For better or worse, I suspect I will show up with a sermon next week, just as you will show up at work or whatever commitments you have made for tomorrow or for the coming week. And yes, we will continue to have justified concerns about the future, be it a chemistry test, or a job interview or family finances. But below the anxiety, in the depths of our life, Christ wants us to know that there is something – someone – that is stronger, more abiding than our restless anxiety. He wants us to know that nothing in the future can destroy our basic worth as human beings created in God’s image and that, whatever tomorrow brings, it will also bring God and God’s anchoring love and care with it. And therein lie our confidence and hope. Says Long, “We will still wonder if we can make the checkbook balance this month, but there is nothing in this world that can take away what God provides – dignity, a sense of worth, the confidence of being treasured, of being treasured in the heart of God.”
Overthrowing anxiety – well, that’s a big challenge for me. But perhaps it begins with the recognition that, no matter what, large areas of my life are pure gift, and the joy beyond anxiety and despair begins when I can just let go, consider the lilies, and allow myself simply to be a grateful recipient of all the amazing gifts life, the God of life, provides.