Pentecost 2, 05/25/2008

Sermon on Matthew 6:24-34, by David Zersen

"No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.

"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? 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? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? 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? Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?' or ‘What will we drink?' or ‘What will we wear?' For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. "So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today's trouble is enough for today. (NRSV)

EMPOWERED STRIVING

Many of us can confess to being Type A personalities who strive to achieve various goals with a spirit of competitiveness, assertiveness and knowledge of time constraints. Sometimes we juggle so many goals at once that pressure to be successful overwhelms and disables us. We want to be a good spouse or a good parent. We want to keep our properties up and be respected homeowners. We want to pay our bills and taxes on time in order to be law abiding. We want to be responsible at our jobs to keep the boss happy and to justify our salaries. We want to be a good friend by keeping up contacts and assuring those close to us that we care. In short, we are a striving people. Given all the expectations that we set for ourselves it's hard to keep focused on any one thing because so many different matters invite our attention. Increasingly, we lack the power to strive as we ought.

Some of this is inevitable, but for all too many of us there are dimensions of this striving nature that create problems, both psychological and theological. When we try to focus on too many interests, we can become superficial and, in the end, miss the point of life. We don't want them to write on our tombstones, "He/she majored in minors!" Arthur Miller tells us the story of Willy Looman, in Death of a Salesman, a great American classic because it speaks to so many of us. Willy strives to be wealthy, to be successful, but in his pursuit he lacks integrity and depth. He says "the man who makes an appearance in the business world, the man who creates a personal interest, is the man who gets ahead. Be liked and you will never want." Willie's relationship with his wife, his sons, his colleagues and neighbors is superficial because everything is judged by how they measure up in impressions and in earning money. Willy misses the point of life.

From a theological standpoint, our striving to be and do so many different things places pressure on our need to earn acceptance or to justify ourselves before family members, friends and colleagues. In the long run, however, there is something shallow and dilettantish about those who constantly let us know that their idea or their party or their clothing or their children are either beyond reproach or above standard. Sooner or later such people turn us off and fall under greater judgements than we have a right to make. Religious literature from all faith perspectives has harsh criticism for people who have a need to establish their self worth at the expense of others.

Today's Gospel lesson brings us face-to-face with both judgement and encouragement from Jesus with regard to self-righteous striving. The Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) provides many judgements on self-righteous striving and the context for today's Scripture in chapter 6 focuses specifically on ostentatious striving. Those criticized are the ones who flaunt their generosity or prayers or fasting or anxieties in order to call attention to themselves.

People who desperately require attention may in fact move from one character flaw to another. In striving to be good in so many ways, we simply can't help letting others know what we have given to various charities or how many hours we have spent in prayer or how concerned we are about the problems in our world. It may all reflect our intense style as Type A personalities, but it also reveals us as people needy of other's attention and affirmation.

Addressing our striving for security

One dimension of all this that Jesus addresses in today's lesson is our striving for security, specifically the kind provided by material things. Jesus mentions the matter of food, drink, and clothing, basics in life. Watching the tragedies in Myanmar and Chengdo within the last week, we can understand how people can actually worry about whether there will be a handful of rice, a cup of water or something with which to close your nakedness or to keep you warm through a chilly night. Things we take for granted are matters of desperation in such settings like the fact that you can't drink the water because you can't boil it because there is no firewood. How we are called to be the outstretched hands of God in such situations is important for all of us see!

Sometimes it takes such situations to help us understand the foolishness of our own desperate wrestling with "what kind of restaurant shall we eat in tonight?" And "does this dress look good on me or which of these three others would look better?" Some of this ability to have so many choices is a gift of our first world standard of living and we can count it a blessing and thank God for it. A recent interview with Brian McClaren, a prolific author and spokesman for the so-called Emerging Church movement calls us, however, to move beyond mere thankfulness. He feels that too many traditional denominations and traditional Christians simply seek to donate to those who are less fortunate, perhaps minimizing the serious distance between our own situation and theirs. McClaren, and increasingly many Christians, feels that we must go beyond such minimalist charity to find ways to deal with the systemic injustice in our world and call our leaders to address international problems as priorities as great as our own personal wants and desires.

In our text, Jesus is saying the same thing. "Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness," says Jesus, "and all these things shall be yours as well." In other words, "get some focus, folks." Don't strive to do everything and don't get make the superficial matters your priorities. Strive to be involved with matters of justice and mercy, the things of God, first and foremost. If you do, Jesus assures, you will have set things in balance in the world and your personal needs will be met as well.

Understanding God's provisions for security

There is a profound theological message in all this, which is the very heart of the Gospel. It is human for us to try to meet our needs, to take care of ourselves first and to justify our selves in the eyes of our fellow human beings as well as before God. Yet this striving leads to a dead end because we never have all the food, drink and amenities that we desire and because the quality of life we consider to be of an acceptable standard does not even approach the expectations God has for us. A careful reading of the rest of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7 will make that clear.

For this reason, we need to hear the Good News that in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, God has spoken to us in words of forgiveness and acceptance, assuring us that there is now no condemnation for those who receive their life from Christ Jesus. This affirmation makes it unnecessary for Christians to strive for acceptance of any kind and frees them to love God and serve their neighbor. Or to use Jesus own words, Christians are freed to focus on mercy and justice because God's love empowers them to make such priorities first in their lives.

This is why Christians don't have to worry about orange alerts in the airport, threats of terrorist attacks or dramatic weathermen who keep us glued to the latest reports on the television. Of course, it's useful to be informed, but we do not live in fear. And frankly, we don't have to worry about what others think about our clothing, our choice of cars, our investment portfolio or the way we raise our children. People who concern themselves with what others think about such things are superficial and have not yet discovered what life is all about.

Two years ago, I spent a semester teaching at a Lutheran college on the slopes of Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. The climate was idyllic and apart from rains one could almost live outdoors. Yet, life was primitive in comparison to things we take for granted here in the U.S. I washed my clothes in a bucket and hung them on the line. Food was prepared either by boiling or grilling over an open fire. Wood was chopped for the daily fire and women put corn in gunnysacks and beat them with clubs to loosen the hard kernels from the cobs. Such experiences are life changing in a number of ways. One comes to appreciate the benefits we enjoy in first world countries, but also to believe that we dare not be narrow provincialists, but rather members of a world-wide community who seek to foster the welfare of every man, woman and child.

I wonder if it's not worth proposing that all of us need to seek similar life changing experiences wherever they might find us. I firmly believe that the first place to look is in the Scriptures themselves where we learn of the affirming love of God, which empowers us to strive for mercy and justice in the entire world. Yet there are also powerful life-changing experiences awaiting us in volunteer roles in soup kitchens and food pantries and overnight shelters, places where the love of God is waiting to affirm both others as well as us. I wonder in what settings in our congregation we could come together to talk about the life-changing experiences that have touched us and empowered us to strive for mercy, justice and peace.

I can recall reading children's stories with my own children about animals and people who found themselves in predicaments and then someone would say, "Whatever will we do?" It is a cry of desperation and there are all too many people in our acquaintance who are worried about tomorrow who say things like that. But those are concerns for children, not for us who have the potential to grow up to the full stature of Christ. We do not have to be anxious about tomorrow. Tomorrow can take care of itself. We know of the love and promises of God in Christ. For us, as the Lord's Prayer tells us, tomorrow's bread is already here today. For us, tomorrow's future is assured to us in the here and now. For us, tomorrow's work begins right here.

Prof. Dr. Dr. President Emeritus David Zersen
Concordia University Texas
Austin, Texas

E-Mail: djzersen@aol.com

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