What Me Worry?
Posted by Fr.Stace on May 26th, 2008 filed in The Rector's RuminationsProper 3
Matthew 6
An ancient rabbi said, A man should always teach his son a simple task, and let him pray to Him to whom riches and possessions belong, for there is no craft wherein there is not both poverty and wealth; for poverty comes not from a man’s craft, nor riches from a man’s craft, but it is all according to his character.
Our gospel is part of the best sermon ever recorded–Jesus sermon on the mount. In the SM Jesus tells his disciples what the kingdom of God is about. It is for the poor of spirit, the meek, the merciful, the peacemakers. It is an upside down kingdom.
We often romanticize this passage. We picture Jesus preaching on the green grass with people listening like hippies, flowers in their hair and nodding approvingly. But to have this picture in mind is to miss the starkness and the desperation of many of Jesus’ hearers.
Life in the ancient world was different even than the most difficult situations even in our modern urban environments. There was limited water and means of sanitation. People and animals lived piled one on top of the other.
Matthew, more than likely, was written to a church or churches in Antioch. Scholar Rodney Stark describes ancient Antioch this way, ‘Tenement cubicles were smoky, dark, often damp, and always dirty. The smell of sweat, urine feces, and decay permeated everything. Outside, on the street, it was little better–mud, open sewers, manure and crowds. In fact, human corpses–adult as well as infant–were sometimes just pushed into the street and abandoned.’
Jesus’ original hearers living in rural Galilee did not have it any easier. It was an agricultural, hand to mouth existence. Peasants owned no land. Speaking of ancient farmers, one scholar says, ‘What they [could] produce from the land [went] for food supplies until the next harvest, feed for their work animals, extra seed for next years crops, and enough to sell or barter for other necessities.’ Yet any surplus was under heavy taxation and it is no surprise that there were constant revolutions and zealot uprising in protest of the oppressive Roman Empire and of greedy landowners.
It was to this environment that Jesus gives his Sermon on the Mount. It was to people who, understandably, had every right to worry about tomorrow.
What about our world?
We live in a world of prosperity even with our economic challenges. But anxiety and worry are also part of our lives.
A couple of years ago Time magazine’s cover story was on anxiety. Time journalist Christine Gorman writes, ‘It’s 4am, and you’re wide awake–palms sweaty, heart racing. You’re worried about your kids. Your aging parents. Your 401k. Your health…Breathing evenly beside you, your spouse is oblivious. Doesn’t he or she see the dangers that lurk in every shadow? He must not. Otherwise, how could he, with all that’s going on in the world, have talked so calmly at dinner last night about flying to Florida on vacation.’
What is different about today’s environment is that we have so much access to information. We are globalized and aware not only of our problems, but that of the whole world. We live in a world of tragedy, terrorism, war, potential genocides, cyclones, earthquakes and tornadoes, and that’s just the last couple of weeks.
An example from across the world. Merna Chamoun, 15, an Iraqi refugee in Jordan hopes to settle in Germany or the US. She left Iraq 2 years ago. Why? “On her last day of school, a bomb exploded in the school five minutes after the students were dismissed. Students ran away in fear as the glass shattered from the explosion. The church she attended in Baghdad (Chaldean Catholic) was bombed twice and she could not go to church.” So she fled.
We could go on and on. But we want to bring things to our level. Our worries. Our fears.
We could talk of the whole concept of anxiety psychologically. We could talk of the health problems related to worry and anxiety.
Or we could talk about Jesus.
25″Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? 26Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?
God knows our needs and our anxieties. He feeds the birds of the air, he clothes the lilies of the field. Most of us do not have to think about food or clothing. Why then do we worry.
I do not think that Jesus is naive about 1st century Galilee or our world. He knows that there are countless difficulties in front of us and behind us.
What snares us, though, and what prompts Jesus’ words is our tendency to get caught up in things that do not matter at the expense of things that do. ‘Wherever your treasure lies, there will you find your heart.’
The kind of worry that Jesus refers to is a concentration on what we do not have and what we are afraid to lose.
Jesus’ words about the eyes is a fascinating metaphor. The eyes are the key to ones heart. In other words, what you look to and look at for happiness is a reflection of what is inside. Do we have eyes full of envy for what we do not possess? Are we constantly looking for what someone else has and obsessing about what we do not have? Often we are like the flies on the screen door. Those who are inside want outside and those who are outside want inside.
Jesus says do not look to what others have. Be content. Seek the Kingdom.
Secondly, Jesus warns about being afraid to lose what we do have. ‘Do not store up treasures…do not build bigger barns…don’t work for what rust and moths destroy.’
I mentioned once that I was having a conversation with Fr. Daniel from Sudan. Fr. Daniel is a missionary priest who goes back and forth from the US to Sudan to plant churches and build schools. He lives in Omaha and, like many African priests in the US, he relies on support from various places.
I asked him what he did about his pension and his retirement. He said, ‘you Americans are always worried about retiring and what you will do when you’re old, but God has given me work to do today. All I can worry about is today.’ Sounds familiar.
There is one of many starter castles in our neighborhood that has been on the market for quite a while. It is a beautiful house–with five bedrooms and eight, yes eight, bathrooms.
We want bigger barns so that we can have eight bathrooms. I’m guessing that the people who have families big enough for 8 bathrooms could never in a million years afford to live in it.
Barns, barns and more barns. For stuff we can do without. So why are we afraid to lose it? ‘All things come from thee, O Lord, and from thine own have we given thee.’
Every good and perfect gift comes from the Father of lights, says James. Nothing belongs to us, all is his.
Lastly, the heart of Jesus’ message is, ‘seek first the kingdom of God, and all these things will added to you as well.’
Jesus’ primary teaching was the kingdom. His focus was that, the reality of God’s realm in Christ was invading our realm. The kingdom of heaven is at hand–suddenly upon you.
The deepest fears we have, the most profound anxieties, the things that keep us up at night are passing like the sunset to give rise to the Sun of righteousness, Jesus. ‘Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.’
Faith in Jesus ought to be an antidote to fear, but it is not an exemption from suffering. However, if we really, deeply, felt and understood Jesus’ teaching about the kingdom, we would have one characteristic that no other philosophy or ideology could ever have. That characteristic is HOPE.
Jesus gives us hope. Without him our world is war, genocide, illness, natural disaster, etc. after another. But Jesus gives us hope that the darkness is clearing away and beyond that darkness are people whose treasures and hearts are set on Christ; like John, these people are at the table, leaning at the breast of Jesus, close to his heartbeat.
Cast your cares on Christ. Do not worry, for beyond the darkness is a manger, a mountain called calvary and an empty tomb. Beyond the darkness a kingdom has broken all other kingdoms. Beyond the darkness is Jesus. Beyond the darkness there is hope.
Let us pray:
Come, O Spirit of God,
and make within us your dwelling place and home.
May our darkness be dispelled by your light,
and our troubles calmed by your peace;
may all evil be redeemed by your love,
all pain and suffering of Christ,
and all dying glorified in his risen life. Amen.