Strive First

Sunday, February 27, 2011

Epiphany 8

Matthew 6:24-34

Theme:  Setting priorities

²⁴“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.

²⁵“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? ²⁶Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? ²⁷And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? ²⁸And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, ²⁹yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. ³⁰But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? ³¹Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ ³²For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. ³³But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. ³⁴“So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.  

There are passages in the Bible that speak to us in a timeless voice.  Especially passages that speak of comfort, such as the 23^rd Psalm.  And there are lessons that Jesus speaks that are also equally timeless – “I am the vine, you are the branch”, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life …” the phrases just roll off the tongue and the words stick in our hearts and in our memories like Velcro. 

Today’s passage is not one of those.  At least, it doesn’t seem to be.  When Jesus said ‘do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear’, he had no idea what kind of a world we live in today. 

He didn’t know the multitude of bills that have to be paid, or the letters and calls that need to be replied to, or that the cost of gas keeps going up, and all the driving that needs to happen, or the appointments that need to be made, to say nothing of the ones that need to be KEPT … it’s just one thing after another, and another, and another. 

He didn’t know what MY LIFE was going to look like when he spoke those words almost two thousand years ago. Heck, >>I<< didn’t know just ten years ago!  How could he?    

But I’m getting ahead of myself. 

Let’s back up a little, to the opening verse of today’s passage.  Jesus is concluding the previous thought, where he was talking about wealth – back up to verses 19 & 20:

¹⁹“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; ²⁰but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal.”     

So the beginning of today’s passage is the conclusion to that idea, one that we’ve probably heard more than once from any number of pulpits:  you can’t have more than one master at a time.  You either serve the one or serve the other, but you can’t serve both. 

But how does that tie in with worrying – or NOT worrying? 

If we begin to think that the worldly perspective makes sense, that what we HAVE determines our happiness and our worth, we begin to fall into the worldview that underlies that idea, and it might not be what you think.  The determining factor for that worldview – for what forms the BASIS for the idea that wealth equals happiness – is the idea of scarcity. 

David Lose, from Luther Seminary in St. Paul, MN, puts it this way:

“I think we live in an incredibly anxious culture. The evening news certainly depends upon worries at home and abroad to attract viewers. Commercials are constantly inviting us to worry about one more thing – usually about ourselves! – the sponsored product should supposedly solve. More and more houses seem to sport home security signs in their front lawns. And whenever I go to the airport I'm greeted outside by an electronic sign that reads, "See Suspicious Activity – Call 1-800...) and inside by an ominous voice informing me that, "The threat level, as determined by the Office for Homeland Security, is Orange." (I don't even know what "orange" is, but I'm betting it's not good.) And there it is: everywhere you turn, everywhere you look, there are visible reminders of just how much there is to worry about.”   

Let me put it into perspective for you.  If you have nice clothes to wear, AND a roof over your head AND you have a pretty good idea of where your next meal is coming from, you are already better off than several hundred million, if not a couple of billion of your fellow human being.  In fact, if each of those three factors come together for you, you are actually in a minority of the population of the earth. 

We hear a phrase periodically spoken “to preserve our way of life.” That is what it is referring to.  Yes, it is also referring to other less palpable aspects of our culture here in the United States; ideals and laws and things like that, but when it comes down to brass tacks, as they say, it is also very much a reference to our standard of living. 

And it’s not that we are necessarily turning a blind eye to the poverty that exists in the world, we’re not.  Most of the time.  But we ARE constantly reminded of the gulf that exists between us and those people and children whose faces we see in those commercials for any number of charities and help organizations that depend on our contributions to provide that charity or that help. 

And what comes out of that is the idea that scarcity equals unhappiness.  And the converse of that idea is that plenty – or wealth – equals happiness.  And our response to that underlying presupposition is that we begin to be concerned with avoiding scarcity.  We begin to spend a lot of energy and time in the accumulation of material possessions, or figuring out how we are going to acquire material possessions, or how we are going to KEEP material possessions.   

David Lose goes on:

So why can't we give our allegiance and worship to money? Because to do so is to fall prey to the larger worldview that crowns money lord in the first place: scarcity. Again, the issue isn't money per se; the problem comes when we make money our god – ‘that thing,’ as Martin Luther once observed, ‘which we trust for our every good.’ Once we believe that money can satisfy our deepest needs, then we suddenly discover that we never have enough. Money, after all, is finite. And so once we decide money grants security, then we are ushered immediately into a world of counting, tracking, and stock piling. No wonder we worry - in a world of scarcity, there is simply never enough.



The alternative Jesus invites us to consider is entering into relationship with God, the God who is infinite and whose love for us and all creation is infinite as well. Love operates from a different "economy" than money. I mean, when our second child came along, I didn't divide my love for our first child between the two, I suddenly had more love, more than I could possibly have imagined before. No doubt you've noticed the same thing: how the more love you give away, the more you have. Love – and especially God's love – cannot be counted, tracked or stockpiled. And when you live in this kind of relationship of love and trust, you've entered into the realm of abundance, the world of possibility, the world of contentment. Suddenly, in this world – Jesus calls it the "kingdom of God" – not worrying actually becomes an option.



I know, I know, it's hard to believe in this world of abundance that Jesus proclaims, this world that invites us to trust God's faithfulness like a flower does spring or sail upon the currents of God's love like a bird does the air. This is why, in the end, Jesus dies – not to somehow pay for our sins (there we go tracking and counting again), but because those in power were so invested in the world of scarcity that abundance was downright frightening, even threatening. Scarcity, after all, creates fear, and fear creates devotion to those who will protect you (think "threat level orange" again). Abundance, on the other hand, produces freedom. So rather than imagine Jesus' world of abundance, and committed to keeping the power they derived from a fear born of scarcity, the rulers of Jesus' day put him to death (see John 3:17 and following).



But God doesn't operate from scarcity; God operates out of abundance. So in response to the crucifixion of God's Son, God does not, in fact, keep track, or look for payment, or hoard power with which to destroy the offenders; instead, God resurrects – which, when you think about it, is the ultimate act of abundance: creating something, once again, out of nothing, drawing light from darkness, giving life to the dead.



This is the world Jesus invites us into: a world of abundance, generosity, and new life. But it is also a world of fragility, trust, and vulnerability. Lilies and birds, after all, can't defend themselves but must trust God's providence and love.

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton? 

It means we have to become adept at identifying when that other worldview – the one that feeds on fear and seems to come so natural – is informing our thought process and our motivations, and stand against it, and in the reality of the Kingdom, where there is an abundance and a generosity that comes directly from God.

What priorities can we set that would reflect that Kingdom reality rather than the worldly reality?  What projects would we take on that would speak to the fact that we DO strive first to live out of the abundance of God’s love rather than of our fear that there won’t be enough to go around? 

What would we dare to do if we daily lived in THAT Kingdom reality?

Let’s pray.