Sunday, February 27, 2011

Worried (Matthew 6:24-34)

If you’ve been following the news, you know that, in the middle east, this is a time of revolution. People in Egypt, Libya, and Bahrain are tired of their old kingdoms. They’re tired of being oppressed and denied freedom. They desire something new.


In the first century, things weren’t so different. Well, they didn’t have facebook and twitter to aid their revolutions. But people did live under an oppressive regime: The kingdom of Rome – the kingdom of Caesar, the kingdom of Herod.

Responses to this kingdom of oppression varied. Zealots wanted to fight. Essenes wanted to retreat. Pharisees wanted a restoration to holiness, hoping that God would take notice and intervene. Herodians saw accommodation to the empire as the best choice.

The life and mission of Jesus of Nazareth was all about the kingdom. Jesus was a revolutionary. His mission was to announce that a new kingdom, the kingdom of God, had arrived.

From the time he was born, he was thus perceived as a threat to King Herod. The magi didn’t help things much when they knocked on King Herod’s door and asked where they could find the king of the Jews; but Jesus didn’t keep things a secret when he himself began travelling throughout Galilee, proclaiming that the kingdom of God was at hand.

But what is the kingdom of God? Jesus told numerous parables that portray what the kingdom of God is like. He also described it in great detail in the Sermon on the Mount, which has been the focus of our scripture readings these past few weeks.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus talks about those who are blessed in the kingdom of God: the peacemakers, the poor in spirit, those who hunger and thirst for justice. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus describes the power by which the kingdom operates, the power of love. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus talks about how those who live in the kingdom are to love even their enemies. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus talks about how those who live in the kingdom are to go the extra mile, to do not only what the law requires, but more.

Unlike the Zealots, Jesus does not want his followers to take arms against the kingdoms of this world. Violence has no place in the kingdom of God.

Unlike the Essenes, Jesus does not want his followers to retreat from the world, but rather, to be a light to the nations.

Unlike the Pharisees, Jesus does not care about a restoration to rituals of holiness if those rituals and that holiness do not concern themselves with justice for the poor and equality for all God’s people.

Unlike the Herodians, Jesus does not see accommodation as the best choice. The arrival of God’s kingdom really is a radical revolution, a complete turning away from the kingdoms of this world.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says that, in order to live in God’s kingdom, you must free yourself from worries and anxieties. We create so many worries for ourselves. One would think that people living in the richest nation on earth wouldn’t have worries, but obviously, we do.

I sometimes wonder what it would be like to live in a developing country, with nothing more than the basic necessities of life, or perhaps not even having that, and to somehow get a glimpse of what life is like in the western world. It would seem to me that a person living in mud hut in the desert, lacking in food, having to walk a mile or more to fetch water, might say to himself, “if I only had a roof that didn’t leak, and clean drinking water close-by, and a garden where I could grow some vegetables, then all my worries would disappear.

But then, what if such a person does find himself with all these things and more, living a typical American lifestyle? All of a sudden he is worried about his mortgage and his credit card debt, and the fact that the power steering has gone out on his car. His kids complain that his clothes are out-of-style, and he doesn’t think he can afford driving lessons and insurance for them. His taxes are due. He has a cell phone but doesn’t know how to use it, a DVD player but doesn’t know how to program it, and his next-door neighbor has convinced him that the water from the tap – something he could only dream about in his previous life – isn’t good enough, and he needs to pay to have bottled water delivered to his home.

So he finds himself overwhelmed. He’s confused. And he’s worried; worried about so many things. The roof is good, the water is right in his home, and he even has a garden, not to mention a whole supermarket two blocks away, and yet he lies awake at night, filled with worry and anxiety.

You know, I think that when Jesus advised a certain rich young man to sell all he had and give the money to the poor, he didn’t just say that for the sake of the poor. I think he gave this advice for the rich young man’s own benefit.

The rich young man was so worried and so anxious about so many things. Jesus looked at him and said, “what kind of a life are you living? Why are you doing this to yourself? You could be free, and yet you are held captive by all your worries about money and possessions. How is that contributing to your life? It isn’t! It’s detracting from your life! So get rid of it!

Jesus says that no person can serve two masters. If all your time and energy is being spent on maintaining your house, your possessions, your finances, then it’s clear who your master is.

A person whose life is filled with worries about money is not living in the kingdom of God. It is harder for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for such a person to live in God’s kingdom.

When we hear biblical passages like these, the tendency is to think of them as nice thoughts, as if Jesus maybe didn’t really mean for us to take them literally; or we think that Jesus was employing a bit of homiletical hyperbole, exaggerating in order to make his point.

But I don’t think he was.

After all, he himself lived this way. He had no home to speak of, very few belongings, and thus very few worries. His only real concern was God’s kingdom.

The earliest believers, as recorded in the book of Acts, gave away many of their possessions, and shared what they had in common. They did not live in palaces.

When one group of Christians would use their wealth to prepare fancy celebrations of the Lord’s Supper – celebrations which the poorer members of the community could not afford to contribute to – they received a harsh chastising from the apostle Paul. He said that when they came together to eat the Lord’s Supper, it wasn’t really the Lord’s Supper at all, because some stuff themselves with food while others go hungry.

By the way, I myself have a long way to go when it comes to overcoming worry. I do worry. I do have anxiety. But I’m working on it.

I’ve been pretty successful at resisting the temptation to get a new car. I’ve realized that the only reason I want a new car is because other people think I should have one. I’m actually quite content without it. I have fewer maintenance bills, fewer taxes, lower gas bills – have you seen the price of gas lately? I’ve learned that the rising price of gas is only half as worrisome when you only have half as many cars.

What do you worry about in life? What is your main concern? How much time to you spend worrying about it and other things in your life? How does that compare to the amount of time you spend worrying about/thinking about the kingdom of God?

As we’ve read over the Sermon on the Mount in worship – a little bit each Sunday – we skipped over the part where he teaches the disciples to pray; the part where he provides a model for prayer which we call the Lord’s Prayer. The first half of the prayer talks about God: “Your name be holy, your kingdom come, your will be done … on earth as it is in heaven.” And the second part is about the ones praying: “Give us this day our daily bread…”

Remember the manna in the wilderness? There was enough, each day, for one day’s use. God didn’t want the people to worry about tomorrow. God wanted them to trust God for tomorrow, and to worry about only today. Give us this day our daily bread.

“Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” Jesus really is talking about money here. If you owe someone money, they are, in a sense, your master. And if you lived in the first century and you couldn’t pay your debt, then they really did become your master as you would be forced into slavery to pay off your debt. On the other hand, if someone owes you money, then you are in a position over them. Forgive them their debts, so that you and they can be equal.

“Lead us not into temptation.” Specifically, the temptation to do violence in order to get what you feel you need to have, whether it be something physical, like land or money or property, or something else, like revenge. Even though others had much more than he did, Jesus didn’t see anything belonging to someone else that he felt he had to have. He believed that he had all that he needed. So when Satan tempted him in the wilderness with all the wealth of all the kingdoms of the world, Jesus could resist that temptation. He already had everything he needed.

Seek first God’s kingdom! Get rid of your worries! This is not light stuff, and it’s not an easy teaching, certainly not for 21st century Americans. It is, in its own way, revolutionary.

What’s more, it’s a message that applies not only to individuals, but also to the church as a whole. The church has long been criticized for being too conforming to this world. That criticism has been leveled against the church in nearly every century, all the way back to the time of Jesus himself. The church, like the Herodians, is too accommodating. The church, like the Pharisees, is too concerned with laws and rituals and doctrines, because it’s easier to talk about those things than it is to deal with real issues of peace and justice.

Conversations have been taking place lately within the Disciples of Christ about the need to get the word out that mission is more important than anything – especially buildings. One press release stated that physical assets need to be leveraged for the sake of mission, not for the sake of maintaining other physical assets. Our General Minister, Sharon Watkins, has said that she gets asked so often about the future of the church, but that what she wishes people would start asking about is the mission of the church.

The church itself is worried about too many things. If only we could focus on the one thing that’s important: the kingdom of God. If only we could do that, Jesus says, then everything else will fall into place.

This is a hard teaching for me to wrap my mind around. The life that I feel Jesus is calling me to live is in so at odds with the life that the world is calling me to live, that I have trouble figuring out where to begin.

But then I walk someplace that a few years ago I would have driven to; or I pass by that sale item that I really don’t need; or I choose to spend one hour picking up trash or visiting a neighbor or mentoring a child instead of wasting that hour watching commercial television;… and I think, perhaps there’s hope for me yet. Perhaps there’s hope for all of us, to live that life to which we are called.

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