No Worries?
Text: Matthew 6:25-34
Thanksgiving Sunday 2009
Sometimes there are certain passages from the Bible that it seems nearly pointless to write a sermon on because on the surface they seem so self-explanatory. I look at the passage, my keyboard, and the screen and I wonder to myself as to how to make this sound any more relevant than it already is. On Thanksgiving Sunday, we shift gears away from the Gospel of Mark over to Matthew, who offers a very timely and very wise reflection on worry. It may seem a little strange to be talking about worry on Thanksgiving weekend, but at the same time I think the timing is very apt.
It seems to be really out of place. After all, with all of the big family dinners going on, there’s so much to be done, so much to be put in place and so much more to do… and Jesus is telling us to not to worry about it?
But then again, maybe that’s the idea. These days worry is what dominates our life… anxieties about trying to keep up with all the work that we need to do, to keep the schedules in place, whether we’ll have a job next week, or whether or not we’ll have enough for retirement.
Worry has become so much a part of our life, that we’ve integrated it right into our holiday planning… and worse yet, we don’t even know that we’re doing it!
So it wouldn’t surprise me that as straightforward the message Jesus has, we turn a deaf ear to it because we genuinely don’t believe that such a message has any relevance for us. We believe that Jesus has no idea how busy our lives have become…
But maybe that’s exactly why we need to hear it… especially on this Thanksgiving weekend.
We’ve heard it once already, but hear it again:
“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?”
Some things don’t change over time… and maybe it is human nature to worry… and that’s what Jesus was after…
I think it is possible to become so mired and enmeshed in the busy-ness of our lives that we don’t take time to stop and actually enjoy what’s going on around us. At best, we get these “breathers” between rushing from one place to another… and usually in those spaces, we spend time worrying or planning about the next place we have to be.
But what if we listened for once? What if we stopped what we were doing… turned off the phone… shut down the computer… I think many of us would find that very difficult because we would begin to worry if we are missing something… it has become so engrained in who we have become.
But then Jesus sets things into perspective:
Look 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.
There’s not a lot more than I can add to that… Maybe you’ve heard the saying “stop and smell the roses” –but there is more to that than a simple cliché. Jesus was speaking to people of his own time who were so busy with their own lives, and so consumed by worry, that they simply couldn’t see the value of life itself right in front of them… and how little things have changed.
There’s one line in particular that caught my eye…
can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?
It’s a rhetorical question… the answer is of course, “no” –but as we have learned over the years anxiety and stress can actually reduce our lifespan! We cannot add any time to our life by worrying about it… and even worse, as anxiety can bring on a whole host of medical conditions, worrying about something can actually shorten our lives. We call that called irony.
But that’s where we’re caught. Most of us have trouble believing that God will just provide what we need. Right now we find ourselves in the midst of the longest and deepest recession since the 1930’s… Many of us are fearful of what may come next, so we hunker down and try to hold onto what we have, worried that if we do anything at all we might lose it. We have lost faith in our material things, and yet that’s what we’re still trying to hold onto.
One of the dangers we have in our society is that we too often fall into the trap of believing that what we have we have as a reward for hard work or as an entitlement. These passages remind us that what we have is a gift that is graciously and freely given. Life is a gift to be enjoyed. One of the dangers of modern society is that we are taught to worry, we are taught that what we need is scarce and we have to do what we can to ensure we "get our share". These passages remind us that what we have is the result of abundant gifts. These passages call us to reflect on the difference between worrying over the world's scarcity and rejoicing on God's abundance.
And what better message is there on Thanksgiving weekend? If we stop worrying so much we may see the world differently. When we see abundance instead of scarcity it enables us to see what we have to share with the world. It enables us to practice better stewardship of what we happen to have…. In the end worry is a variant on fear, and fear is the opposite of faith.
When writing this, I had Bobby McFerrin’s now famous song “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.” echoing around in my head. I think at this point in time we say to ourselves “if only if it were that easy.” When Jesus says to us “do not worry about your life… or what you will eat or drink or wear.” We often respond by saying “easier said than done!”
But then Jesus really does give some practical advice. He doesn’t just uses the birds of the air or the flowers of the field as theoretical examples… by stopping and observing them we get a sense of how they experience God’s abundance simply by being what they are. Over the past several weeks, I could look out my office window and see any number of squirrels gathering up acorns, running up and down tree limbs and chasing each other. We know the squirrels are gathering up food in anticipation of winter… but get this… the squirrels aren’t worried about whether or not they have enough. They don’t spend their time counting up what they have, and fretting over what they don’t. They simply go about their business gathering up what the trees have happened to drop. They’re not worried about it, at all… they’re simply partaking in the abundance of God’s creation.
Maybe that’s the lesson we really need to consider this Thanksgiving. Shut the TV off… turn off the computer… bury the Blackberry under a pillow… set down the newspaper… spend time with friends and family. If we get a moment, look outside, consider the birds and the flowers, and we might just get what Jesus was trying to say.
Amen.
Thanksgiving Sunday 2009
Sometimes there are certain passages from the Bible that it seems nearly pointless to write a sermon on because on the surface they seem so self-explanatory. I look at the passage, my keyboard, and the screen and I wonder to myself as to how to make this sound any more relevant than it already is. On Thanksgiving Sunday, we shift gears away from the Gospel of Mark over to Matthew, who offers a very timely and very wise reflection on worry. It may seem a little strange to be talking about worry on Thanksgiving weekend, but at the same time I think the timing is very apt.
It seems to be really out of place. After all, with all of the big family dinners going on, there’s so much to be done, so much to be put in place and so much more to do… and Jesus is telling us to not to worry about it?
But then again, maybe that’s the idea. These days worry is what dominates our life… anxieties about trying to keep up with all the work that we need to do, to keep the schedules in place, whether we’ll have a job next week, or whether or not we’ll have enough for retirement.
Worry has become so much a part of our life, that we’ve integrated it right into our holiday planning… and worse yet, we don’t even know that we’re doing it!
So it wouldn’t surprise me that as straightforward the message Jesus has, we turn a deaf ear to it because we genuinely don’t believe that such a message has any relevance for us. We believe that Jesus has no idea how busy our lives have become…
But maybe that’s exactly why we need to hear it… especially on this Thanksgiving weekend.
We’ve heard it once already, but hear it again:
“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?”
Some things don’t change over time… and maybe it is human nature to worry… and that’s what Jesus was after…
I think it is possible to become so mired and enmeshed in the busy-ness of our lives that we don’t take time to stop and actually enjoy what’s going on around us. At best, we get these “breathers” between rushing from one place to another… and usually in those spaces, we spend time worrying or planning about the next place we have to be.
But what if we listened for once? What if we stopped what we were doing… turned off the phone… shut down the computer… I think many of us would find that very difficult because we would begin to worry if we are missing something… it has become so engrained in who we have become.
But then Jesus sets things into perspective:
Look 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.
There’s not a lot more than I can add to that… Maybe you’ve heard the saying “stop and smell the roses” –but there is more to that than a simple cliché. Jesus was speaking to people of his own time who were so busy with their own lives, and so consumed by worry, that they simply couldn’t see the value of life itself right in front of them… and how little things have changed.
There’s one line in particular that caught my eye…
can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?
It’s a rhetorical question… the answer is of course, “no” –but as we have learned over the years anxiety and stress can actually reduce our lifespan! We cannot add any time to our life by worrying about it… and even worse, as anxiety can bring on a whole host of medical conditions, worrying about something can actually shorten our lives. We call that called irony.
But that’s where we’re caught. Most of us have trouble believing that God will just provide what we need. Right now we find ourselves in the midst of the longest and deepest recession since the 1930’s… Many of us are fearful of what may come next, so we hunker down and try to hold onto what we have, worried that if we do anything at all we might lose it. We have lost faith in our material things, and yet that’s what we’re still trying to hold onto.
One of the dangers we have in our society is that we too often fall into the trap of believing that what we have we have as a reward for hard work or as an entitlement. These passages remind us that what we have is a gift that is graciously and freely given. Life is a gift to be enjoyed. One of the dangers of modern society is that we are taught to worry, we are taught that what we need is scarce and we have to do what we can to ensure we "get our share". These passages remind us that what we have is the result of abundant gifts. These passages call us to reflect on the difference between worrying over the world's scarcity and rejoicing on God's abundance.
And what better message is there on Thanksgiving weekend? If we stop worrying so much we may see the world differently. When we see abundance instead of scarcity it enables us to see what we have to share with the world. It enables us to practice better stewardship of what we happen to have…. In the end worry is a variant on fear, and fear is the opposite of faith.
When writing this, I had Bobby McFerrin’s now famous song “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.” echoing around in my head. I think at this point in time we say to ourselves “if only if it were that easy.” When Jesus says to us “do not worry about your life… or what you will eat or drink or wear.” We often respond by saying “easier said than done!”
But then Jesus really does give some practical advice. He doesn’t just uses the birds of the air or the flowers of the field as theoretical examples… by stopping and observing them we get a sense of how they experience God’s abundance simply by being what they are. Over the past several weeks, I could look out my office window and see any number of squirrels gathering up acorns, running up and down tree limbs and chasing each other. We know the squirrels are gathering up food in anticipation of winter… but get this… the squirrels aren’t worried about whether or not they have enough. They don’t spend their time counting up what they have, and fretting over what they don’t. They simply go about their business gathering up what the trees have happened to drop. They’re not worried about it, at all… they’re simply partaking in the abundance of God’s creation.
Maybe that’s the lesson we really need to consider this Thanksgiving. Shut the TV off… turn off the computer… bury the Blackberry under a pillow… set down the newspaper… spend time with friends and family. If we get a moment, look outside, consider the birds and the flowers, and we might just get what Jesus was trying to say.
Amen.
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