The Rev. Dayle Casey
The Chapel of Our Saviour
Colorado Springs, Colorado
May 25, 2008
Proper 3-A
Isaiah 49: 8-18
1 Corinthians 4:1-13
Matthew 6:24-34
“No one can serve two masters,” Jesus warns. “Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money. Therefore, I tell you, do not be anxious about your life. Do not worry about tomorrow, about what you will eat or drink or wear, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. So do not be anxious, O ye of little faith. Your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”
Hard words. Hard words to hear when war is draining billions of dollars a year from the nation’s economy. Hard words to hear when the stock market has gone south and seems poised to stay there permanently. Hard words to hear when many on their way to work each day are wondering whether the gas they charged at the pump on Monday will be covered by the paycheck they’ll receive on Friday. “Do not be anxious about your life.” How is a parent with a son or daughter in Iraq to receive such words? How are these words to be received by this year’s graduates who are unable to find a job, or by the people in Windsor who had their homes or businesses blown away on Friday, or by the poor old woman at the pharmacy counter who is counting her change and trying to figure out how to buy both prescriptions and food to sustain what health remains to her?
But here they are this morning, these hard words of Jesus, just in the nick of time on this Second Sunday after Pentecost, in the Year of Our Lord 2008, just when we need to hear them most.
We hear these same words of Jesus each year on Thanksgiving Day, which is another day like today, a day for remembering who we are, and for remembering that there is nothing we have that we did not first received, for we are the beneficiaries of a good and providential God.
“Look around you,” the writer of Deuteronomy encourages the people of Israel, and us, on Thanksgiving Day “Look around at all you are and all you have, and remember that it is all gift. Remember that it is the Lord your God who brought you out of slavery in a foreign land, and not you yourselves. Remember that it is the Lord your God who has given this good land to you.
“Look at all your fat cattle, look at all your silver and gold and china, look at your elegant and powerful automobiles and your fine house, larger than you need, larger, maybe, than you can even pay for. Look at all the food you have to eat, food not made by you or Par Avion, but grown from the good land that God has provided. Consider yourself and your intelligence and the fine clothes you wear, all of it, even your very life, gifts to you from the Lord you God.
“Remember all this, and give thanks and praise to God for it. For the day you forget and begin to say, ‘Look at me and at all the great things I have done and made,’ on that day you will surely die.”
Every Lord’s Day is a Thanksgiving Day, a day for remembering the gifts we enjoy from a providential and loving God and for remembering that the only appropriate response to a gift is gratitude. So this Second Sunday after Pentecost, like Thanksgiving Day, is a day when Christians cannot help but gather at God’s house for prayer, and for remembering that when it comes to being well off, blessed by God, even the very poorest among us here in this good land is a king compared to most in the world.
We haven’t begun, in our country, in our day, to understand what it means to be poor. The horrible face of poverty, the horrible face of starvation and despair, is so vividly before us in much of the world – in Sudan, for instance, in Haiti, in India. The stink of real poverty is all around us in great parts Latin America and in other areas of Asia and Africa, where worrying about which dress among dozens to wear to the party, and wondering whether to have beef or chicken for dinner tonight, and deciding which house to vacation at this summer are seen as luxuries only kings enjoy.
So maybe that’s why these words of Jesus fall where they do, near the end of the best known of all Jesus’ sermons, the Sermon on the Mount, which begins, you’ll remember, with Jesus reminding us that it is the poor who are blessed, for the poor know their need for God. And because they know their need for God, the kingdom of heaven is theirs.
And maybe that’s why, throughout his sermon, Jesus reminds us that if we don’t keep our eye on the prize, if we don’t keep our eye on the Giver and keep our hearts in gratitude mode, then we’re likely to miss the kingdom. Maybe that’s why he reminds us that if it’s blessedness we want, then it’s God’s kingdom we must seek. Maybe that’s why he reminds us that earthly wealth and power do not lead to God’s kingdom, but that right relationships with God and with one another, coupled with trust in a good and providential God, do lead to his kingdom.
Blessed are the poor in spirit, Jesus reminds us, because they know their need for God. Blessed are the meek, the gentle, the merciful, the pure in heart and those who make peace. Blessed are you when you keep God’s law and do no murder, whether with a knife or a gun or simply with hatred or spite or arrogance or indifference, which are just other ways to murder your brother in your heart. Blessed are you when you are faithful in all your relationships, beginning at home. Blessed are you when your “Yes” is “Yes” and your “No” is “No,” so that others may count on your word. Blessed are you when you do not seek an eye for an eye, but turn your right cheek to him who strikes you on the left. Blessed are you when you offer your coat to him who asks only for your shirt. Blessed are you when you love not only your neighbor, but also your enemies, and when you pray for them, and when you give to those in need.
Therefore, concludes Jesus, don’t store up for yourselves treasure on earth, thinking that such treasure will bring peace and the blessedness. It won’t. Earthly treasure is subject to forfeit, subject to thieves and rust and corrosion, here today and gone tomorrow. “But store up for yourselves treasure in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” And there, with treasure in heaven, will you find blessedness and peace, the bounty of your Father’s kingdom.
Nowhere, either in his Sermon on the Mount or elsewhere, does Jesus pat us on the back and say, ”Everything will turn out all right.” Jesus knew that things do not always turn out “all right.” He tells us to expect, and even rejoice in, persecution for following him. Nowhere does he say that we should not enjoy a meal or two each day; he tells us to pray for our daily bread.
Nowhere does Jesus say that we should have no clothing, but he does suggest that we consider the lilies of the field and birds of the air and how magnificently God clothes them, so that we might be aware of the difference between what is truly needed and what things are the objects of mere desire. Jesus does not teach that one should not work for a living, or save prudently, or think about the future, but he does teach that the accumulation of wealth and things does not ensure peace and blessedness. And he does suggest that what causes a lot of our anxiety is our trying to keep up with the Joneses, even when we don’t really want, and certainly don’t need, what the Joneses have.
Nowhere does Jesus say that earthly wealth is bad or that the rich are evil, but he does warn that treasure on earth can be a spiritual trap, that earthly wealth is amnesic, that it can cause us to forget that there is nothing we have that we did first receive, can cause us to forget that all things come from God, not from our power or strength. And he does teach that because all that we have comes from God, it is to be shared, not hoarded, and to be used for kingdom living. And Jesus does teach that kingdom people work for right relationships between ourselves and our neighbors and friends, and even for right relationships with enemies, and that they give generously with open hands and grateful hearts.
And that is why Jesus says that the man who doesn’t know what to do with all his wealth except to build bigger barns to store it in is a fool. Because earthly wealth is subject to forfeit the moment a thief breaks in and steals it or the moment the rich man dies, whichever comes first. And that is why he warns that it is hard for the rich to gain the kingdom, harder than it is for a camel to get through the eye of a needle.
All this teaching about the spiritual trap set by earthly treasure is the context in which Jesus tells us this morning not to be anxious, not to worry about tomorrow, because Jesus wants to point us to kingdom living, to trust in God and to gratitude. Hunger and thirst for righteousness, he says, and you will be filled. Be merciful, and you will be offered mercy. Be a maker of peace, and you will be called a child of God. Seek the kingdom of God among your friends and neighbors, and even among your enemies, and God’s kingdom and everything you need will be yours as well. Trust God, he urges, because trust overcomes anxiety. That, friends, is the positive bottom line of Jesus’ sermon – that trust in God overcomes anxiety. So gratitude and trust are the reason for the words we’re going to sing later this morning:
Now thank we all our God,
with hearts, and hands, and voices,
who wondrous things hath done,
In whom his world rejoices;
who from our mother’s arms
hath blessed us on our way
with countless gifts of love,
and still is ours today.
Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.
Now, if you’ll allow me, I must make a confession: There is perhaps no text in all of Holy Scripture that I, myself, need to hear more than the one we hear today. Why? Because I am a worrier. I sometimes lie awake at night thinking up things to be anxious about. I’m pretty sure some of you do that, too. So please know that today, as on every Sunday, I’m preaching to myself, every bit as much as to you.
A friend of mine, a recently-retired priest who was for ten years rector of a large, wealthy, rather tony parish in Dallas, tells a story about a woman who seems to have received Jesus’ promise and good news this morning as a genuine comfort in her life. The story is actually about two women, and I’ll leave it to you to decide which one the story it about. Maybe it’s about both. Maybe it’s about you and me.
“Several years ago,” my friend says, ”I made a number of calls on a certain parishioner at the Church of the Incarnation where I was Rector. She had fallen down the stairs shattering her leg. Then, home from the hospital with crutches and a cast, she fell again, this time breaking her arm. Home once more, and unable to care for herself, she fell out of bed while her aide was out of the room. This time she broke the wrist of her other arm. So there she was in the hospital with casts on three limbs and propped up in an elongated wheelchair. When I arrived she was looking pensively out the window with tears in her eyes. She turned to face me and, for the first time in weeks, I saw just a hint of her old, familiar smile.
“’Feeling a little better today?’ I asked. ‘I don’t know about that,’ she said, ‘but I was just sitting here worried about everything and having quite a pity party, [when] I got a major attitude adjustment.’ ‘How so?’ ‘Well,’ she said, ’the cleaning lady was just in here a while ago and, as she mopped the floor, she sang a little song. It wasn’t very Episcopalian music, I guess, but it spoke to me so much that I shivered.’ ‘What was the song,?’” my friend asked. “She whispered the words prayerfully through her tears: ‘One day at a time, sweet Jesus, one day at a time.’”
Trust in God overcomes anxiety. To be in the hands of a providential and loving God is to be secure. That is the promise and the good news of Jesus today, so “let the day’s own problems be sufficient for the day. One day at a time, sweet Jesus, one day at a time.
In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.