Joel
2:21-27, Matthew 6:25-33
November
25, 2018
Thanksgiving
/ Christ the King
We have heard a couple of Bible
passages that sound so attractive that they are almost unrealistic. Jesus says,
Look at the birds of the air, consider the lilies of the field. They don’t
do anything and God takes care of them.
And then the prophet Joel declares,
Don’t be afraid, O soil. Do not fear, you
animals of the field. O children of Zion, be glad and rejoice in the Lord your
God. You will have plenty to eat. All shall be provided for you.
There’s no question why these are
the texts selected for a celebration of Thanksgiving. They state that the world
is in good hands. Everybody will be OK. God provides what the world needs. There
is no reason to worry. Don't you worry about a thing.
It’s a beautiful vision, so
beautiful that it’s difficult to keep it in focus.
Just over a week ago, a foot of
snow fell on a Thursday afternoon. I was catching a ride back from an
appointment from Binghamton and my driver barely got us home. Knowing that we
needed some gas for the snowblower, and that I have new tires on my car, I
decided to take a quick trip down the hill and fill up the tank.
At the bottom of the hill, the cell
phone rang. My wife was stuck in a snowdrift on the way home from work. It was
in the Notch between the mountains, at rush hour, and nobody was going
anywhere. “Can you come and get me?” she asked. Without thinking, I replied, “I’m
almost there.” Well, little did I realize how terrible it would be, or that she
would cross the road on foot, hop over the highway divider, and slide into my
slowly moving car, nor that it would take us over another hour to get home.
Now, Jesus can say, "Stop
being anxious," but he never drove through a winter storm in the mountains
on slippery tires. Surely I can stand here today and say, "God was with me
somehow, as I drove through that storm." But frankly, if I had the choice,
I would have preferred to be sitting at a hot tub along green pastures, by the still
waters, getting my soul restored.
Christ’s invitation is so
appealing: consider the lilies, look at the birds. But we get so easily distracted.
Or we turn aside because of whatever else is laying heavy on our minds. Either
way, anxiety creeps in. Anxiety is a constant companion that never leaves us
alone.
Jesus says, "Don't get worried
about anything. Have no fear of life or death. Trust God and let go of
everything else." Easier said than done.
Nature is his sermon illustration. The
birds of the air don't worry about anything. Looking at the lilies of the field, he quips,
Ever notice how they don't fret about how they look? It begs
the question: why do we worry so much? Why do we worry about such little things,
such temporary things?
I don't know, but we certainly do
worry. Let's see a show of hands: how many of you have had to wait up until a late
hour for one of your kids to get home? How many are still waiting?
As one of those kids, I would get
so angry when I would come home on a college break, go out until the wee hours.
When I sneaked back into my parents' house, my mom would be sitting in the Lazy
Boy chair with a cold cup of coffee, snoozing with one eye open. Dad was
upstairs, sawing wood, but Mom was half-awake with worry. "Is he OK? Is he
lying in a ditch somewhere? Was he wearing clean underwear?" It made me
angry, and Mom said, "Just wait until you have kids of your own."
Well, I don't know what the problem
is. I’m not going to let my kids date until they are eighty-five years old. I'm
worried about them. Maybe you should too.
Jesus says, “Cancel your ongoing subscription to anxiety.
Chill out and look at the birds." It sounds so peaceful,
but we must to remember that Jesus got killed for talking like this. He spoke
not only to affirm life under God's protective custody, but to confront the
prevailing views of how to run a world.
When Peter Gomes was the preacher
at Harvard University's chapel, he tells about speaking at the commencement for
an exclusive girl's school in New York City. These were able, aggressive, and
entitled young women, and he rejoiced with them in their achievement.
He spoke on the words where Jesus
asks, "Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?
Therefore, do not be anxious about your life." It seemed an appropriate
message and all the graduates smiled upon him.
During the reception, however, one
of the parents went up to Gomes with "fire in his eyes and ice in his
voice." He told the preacher that, frankly, his sermon was full of
nonsense. Peter said, "The message didn't originate with me; it came from
Jesus." The parent looked at him and said, "It's still
nonsense." As the man went on to explain,
"It
was anxiety that got my daughter into this school, it was anxiety that kept her
here, it was anxiety that got her into Yale, it will be anxiety that will keep
her there, and it will be anxiety that will get her a good job. You are selling
nonsense."[1]
In a town like this, we know a lot
of people like that prep school father. What binds them together is the consistent
message by which they live. The message goes something like this:
• If
you want to get ahead in the world, you have to carry a lot of anxiety with
you.
• If
you want to be successful, you have scramble to get up the ladder.
• If
you want the good life, you must work without ceasing and bear the burden of
much stress.
• In
short, anxiety is good. It is both a good motivator and a necessary companion for
anybody who wants to get ahead.
There are a lot of people who
believe that kind of stuff. Maybe you are one of them. In these words from the
Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is striving to puncture our ongoing illusion that
life is ours to manage and control. He pushes us to look beyond ourselves and
see God.
That’s precisely the issue. Have
you ever considered how much time we spend thinking about ourselves? Did you
ever realize how much emotional energy we burn up by hovering over our own
circumstances, fretting over other people, worrying about things we cannot
control?
In his commentary on this passage,
Tom Long points out that Jesus is trying to get us to trust God. He's not
telling to dig in and try harder. He's not saying, "Listen, you need to go
for it, reach for it, scramble for it, work for it." Oh, no.
Look at the birds
of the air.
They are constantly flitting around, looking for food, and they find it. There
is a necessary striving in life; you have to go looking for things. But it's
there. That's the point. What we need has been provided.
My wife takes this to heart. When
the weather turned cold, she went out and bought a lot of bird seed. Certainly God
provides -- and maybe God needs to provide through you and me. We can participate
in the work of providence, especially if we've been given the resources.
Consider the
lilies of the field. Here today, gone tomorrow. They are beautiful in
their time, not because they worked at it or worried about it. They were
beautiful because that's how they were created. God said, "Let there be
lilies," and then God said, "Look how pretty they are!" From the
time they were seeds, all the lilies had great potential. With a proper amount
of nurture, sunshine, and rain, their beauty breaks forth. They don't need any
makeup. They don't hustle around trying to prove anything. They are beautiful
because God made them that way.
As somebody once reminded me,
"We don't put a ribbon in a young girl's hair to make her pretty. We put a
ribbon in her hair because she is pretty."
Look at the birds. Consider the
lilies. The Greek words in the text are strong, energetic verbs. Look, really
look! Pay very close attention. We spend so much energy striving, working,
hovering, as if that's going to improve anything. But the birds and the lilies
live in a different world, "a world where God provides freely and
lavishly, a world where anxiety plays no part, where worry is not a reality.
Jesus invites us to allow our imaginations to enter such a world, to compare
this world with the world in which we must live out our lives."[2]
All of this, I think, prepares us
for providence. If our hearts are open, we see God gives us a beautiful world,
continues to provide whatever is essential, and promises to complete and
fulfill all life through no authority of our own. God provides. God is so
securely in charge, so powerfully in control, that even God can kick back and
keep the Sabbath.
Look at the birds of the air. Stop
and really look, and look behind them to a God who provides in secret. In the
words of John Calvin,
When
the light of divine providence has once shone upon godly (people), they are
then relieved and set free not only from the extreme anxiety and fear that was
pressing them before, but from every care.... Ignorance of providence is the
ultimate misery; the highest blessedness lies in knowing it.[3]
This is the blessed truth: God
provides what we need. We pray for daily bread and God is under no obligation
to give us cake. We receive the bread we need, with enough to share. That may
be how God provides for others – by giving to them through us.
We are reaching the point where the
preacher must stop and the poet takes over, and then we are left to decide
where and how we are going to live. The poet, in this case, is Wendell Berry, a
Kentucky farmer, and the poem is called, "The Wild Geese." He’s
riding through the woods one day, and it strikes him how much has been
provided:
Horseback
on Sunday morning,
harvest
over, we taste persimmon
and
wild grape, sharp sweet
of
summer's end. In time's maze
over
the fall fields, we name names
that
went west from here, names
that
rest on graves. We open
a
persimmon seed to find the tree
that
stands in promise,
pale,
in the seed's marrow.
Geese
appear high over us,
pass,
and the sky closes. Abandon,
as
in love or sleep, holds
them
to their way, clear,
in
the ancient faith: what we need
is
here. And we pray, not
for
new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet
in heart, and in eye
clear.
What we need is here.[4]
[1] Peter J. Gomes, The Good Book: Reading the
Bible with Mind and Heart (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1996)
178-179.
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