Just over one week ago was the anniversary of the death of my best friend. My friend was born with a genetic disease for which there is still no cure. It meant that he was born with a death sentence that hung over him every day of his life. It meant that during his life, there were many things he could never hope to do or accomplish.
For the last year of his life, there were many weeks when his health was so poor he could not leave his home. Many days in those weeks, I would call him in the evening and he would confess that I was the first human being he had talked to all day. But he would still tell me that any day he woke up still breathing was a good day.
There have been in these last few weeks days when I wake up tired, overwhelmed by my mother’s illness, drained by the activities of home, church and community and I remember that line: ‘any day I wake up breathing is a good day’. But I say it this way, ‘Any day I wake up breathing and knowing that God loves me is a good day’. And hopefully, if I can be faithful to the grace God has given me, I am thankful – and everything else is gravy.
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But sometimes being thankful seems like a hard thing to do. How can we be thankful when we live in a world where a young man of 22 with a wife and child at home dies in a war overseas? When a doctor who should be helping soldiers in crisis instead opens fire on them? How can we be thankful when everywhere we see people living in poverty, in sickness, alone and lonely? How can we be thankful when every time we turn on the evening news, we hear of robberies and murders and people abusing their spouses and their children? How can we be thankful when we see people, especially people who call themselves Christians, who should be acting with love and instead are acting with cold indifference?
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Has the world gone mad? Has God gone crazy? Is God powerless to stop all the wrongs that are in the world? Will evil win out in the end? Do we really have anything to be thankful about?
The answer is, ‘Yes! We do’. In this morning’s scripture we read: Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But 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?
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Of course, we don’t want to think of ourselves as having only ‘little faith’. We want to think more of ourselves than that. When we read through the entire Sermon on the Mount, of which this is a part (it started back in chapter 5), there is much to challenge us. Blessed are the poor in Spirit. We are the salt of the earth. Jesus’ teachings of turning the other cheek, marital fidelity and loving our enemies challenge us in our relationships with other people. This current state of affairs causes a degree of pause when we read a passage like this one from Matthew.
But this teaching challenges us at our very core: don’t worry? Rely on God? These words sound impossible to follow. ‘As Ulrich Luz has put it, when interpreted in a superficial manner, this statement could only have been written by a single guy living a carefree life on the beach in sunny
Perhaps what Jesus is saying to those original hearers, and to us today, is that all those material things we chase after are not so important after all. If seeking after God and God’s righteousness come first, there will be plenty of room for everything else.
Jesus does not call us to abandon all, empty our retirement accounts and move into the woods, but we are each called to abandon excessive worrying that can so fill our lives that we find ourselves separated from God.
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The birds of the air are fed by the providence of God – although sometimes we humans participate materially in that – the lilies of the field don’t worry either – and I know more than a few people who materially participate in that, too. But just as the birds Jesus talks about are not the ones we keep in cages, so the flowers Jesus is talking about are the ones we don’t cultivate – the ones that just grow – out by the lake – out by the side of the road – along the edges of the pasture.
They don’t work at being beautiful – they simply are. The rich and famous, the celebrities parading down the aisle of the academy awards can’t hold a candle to them. We know this is true because how many painters have immortalized them on a canvas? What kinds of scenes adorn most of our calendars? When we look out the windows of our homes, what are we most anxious to see?
But here is the point, in this vast expanse of earth, in the wonder of the galaxy, in the inconceivable vastness of the universe - God has everything well in hand. After all God created everything that is, certainly we can trust that God – whom we know has all power, has not let go of being the divine self.
Jesus himself – a small town boy – sees everywhere around him the continuing work of a loving parent who sees to it that the sun comes up every morning, who brings the rain in due season, watches the seasons change and grass and flowers grow, bloom and die – and cares even about that. God has care even for things that are here today and gone tomorrow.
So why are we worrying about things that don’t last and don’t matter? Does worrying about them make us happier? Does concern for things beyond our control give us long life or peace in our souls? Yet the world is obsessed with getting more – Jesus himself says: ‘For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things.’ Those who don’t know the love of a God who is concerned with wildflowers – those who forget that even the very hairs on our head are numbered (a feat more difficult on some heads than others) – worry about things they cannot change and spend their lives rushing about in continuous anxiety rather than resting in grateful thankfulness. Because ‘indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.’
‘Worrying about what to eat and drink and what to wear, Jesus tells his followers, is for those who don't know that God cares for them, and for those who strive and worry as if there is no God. But you are different, Jesus tells us. You know that God has brought you thus far. Why, then, do you worry? Doesn't God know your needs?[2]’
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Has not the God of the universe, delivered the Israelites form bondage in
Yet, if God knows we need all these things, if God sees all that happens in the world and cares about it, how is it that evil exists in the world? So how do we reconcile the power of a loving God and a world that is not full only of good things? Has God turned the divine back on the world?
Is God the cosmic watchmaker who created the universe, wound it up to set it in motion and sat back to see what would happen? Is God not sufficiently powerful to ‘fix’ things?
Is God an evil taskmaster putting us through our paces and daring us to step off the right path? Is God perhaps a mischievous demigod like ‘Q’ of Startrek fame – entering the time-space continuum only long enough to cause trouble?
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Thankfully, no. A friend of mine has a bumper sticker that reads ‘Evil thrives when good men to nothing’. Of course every time I see it I want to run over with a magic marker and make it read: ‘Evil thrives when good people to nothing’ because there is a kernel of truth in that even if the bumper sticker itself is a bit biased.
God, when creating all that is, was gracious enough to limit the divine self so that we humans could have a part in redeeming the world. The end of this morning’s scripture portion says to ‘strive first for the
People of faith are called to understand that that the things we can see are not worth all the effort most of us give them. When we look at the world through cosmic eyes, we will see that all things are proceeding to the end that God has planned since the beginning of time. When we look at the would through the eyes of faith, we see a loving God always working on the sidelines – always present, always calling the shots, always leaving it up to us to work the plays, always urging us to the goal – the goal of eternal life – participation in the new creation - and not just for us, but for the entire creation.
In Romans Paul writes that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains, waiting for the new Heavens and the new earth.
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When Jesus urges us to ‘strive first for the kingdom of God and its righteousness’ we are being urged to resist evil, flee from the evil one, do justice and mercy, comfort the sorrowful, visit the sick, care for the old – all the things that Jesus himself did while he walked the earth – and we are assured that ‘all these things will be given to you as well.’
This then is the basis of our thankfulness – a loving God who calls us to seek the
What more can we ask for? After all each of us woke up breathing this morning and knowing that God loves us – everything else is gravy.
Amen.
