Sunday, February 27, 2011

Clouds of Worry (Matthew 6)

Delivered at Church of the Good Shepherd on February 27, 2011.

A running theme over the last few weeks, mainly thanks to Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, is how we can be fools for Christ. How the wisdom of the world just laughs at us—stupid little Christians, and yet we know God's wisdom may sound like foolishness to the intellectuals of our world, but it's so much higher than anyone can really understand, and we cling to God's wisdom, having faith that it is the best wisdom.

We've also talked about asking Jesus to replace an aspect of our sinful nature, like anger or lust, with one of his beatitudes, like meekness or purity of heart. This wisdom of the world thing—this being fools for Christ thing—is all about combating the ultimate deadly sin, the one that caused Satan to fall, the one that caused Adam and Eve to fall, and we see it throughout the Bible, messing things up, and we see it throughout history messing things up—pride. Pride is directly linked to us thinking we are better than we really are—in God's eyes—and with our neighbor. We think we are better than our neighbor. Thank God I'm not like THAT person, we say. We fill our heads with worldly knowledge, not to understand God more, but to lord it over our neighbor. Our thirst for education and academia is almost solely based on us feeling—and actually being—better than our neighbor.

Like I said, we touched on this a few sermons back, but when I read this in Psalm 131 I thought to myself, this subject will never be over. Here's what I read: “I do not occupy myself with great matters, or with things that are too hard for me.” That line in Psalm 131 just goes against everything we are taught from childhood, doesn't it? From birth we are told to seize the day—Carpe Diem—and take what we can and better ourselves so that we can succeed and the world will be our oyster, even if you don't like oysters, there it is! There's the brass ring! Go get it!

There's a famous quote by Eleanor Roosevelt that has always stuck with me, because I tried with all my might to believe it was true, it sounds so intellectual: Small minds discuss people, average minds discuss events, and great minds discuss ideas. It made sense on the surface, even from a Christian perspective: small minds discuss people—that makes sense! Gossip and talking about people behind their backs—that is such a small-minded thing to do. You're trying to tear others down, right? Events—yes! Much better! Talking about history and world news is very intellectual. It lets everyone know that you are up on what is happening and that you have an informed opinion on world events. You can look back at history and see where we've made the same mistakes before—so maybe you can help prevent them from happening again. Now, Ideas! Now we are talking the best topic of conversation! Here is where we get things done! Here is where we change the world for the better! Here is why we go to college to learn, and why we become reporters and politicians and filmmakers and novelists and philosophers—to make the world a better place!

When I think about making the world a better place, the first thing that pops into my head—for some reason—is the tower of Babel. I think that they were trying to make the world a better place too. Throughout history we have people coming up with ideas to change the world, and almost across the board they have made things worse—not better. Karl Marx had an idea to make the world a better place. He even targeted the sin of greed. His idea was to overthrow the rich rulers and let the poor working class run things. What better idea than that? What compassion! He worked out a scheme for building a perfect society where the working class ruled—because they've been oppressed so long, they know what its like, so they'll be fair! Look at all the great things that have happened from that! Look at all the dictatorships! Look at all the people killed! Look at North Korea, Cuba, Soviet Russia. How ironic that when the working class takes over a country, the first thing they do is to kill all the intellectuals—and it was their idea in the first place!

Friedrich Nietzsche, the philosopher, came up with the idea of the Superman, the next phase in human evolution. What a great idea—especially when we realized that we could help evolution along with eugenics. We could breed out the undesirables and the ethnic groups we didn't like, and when that wasn't fast enough, we would just slaughter them, either fully grown humans in places like Nazi Germany or when they are still in the womb like—everywhere else in the world! Wow, that idea hasn't gone away!

All of these ideas that we have, these manmade solutions to our problems, come out of one thing—worry. We are constantly worrying about our standard of living and the standard of living of our children and their children, and instead of praying, we come up with some brilliant solution of our own. You can see what the great thinkers of history have given us. What do these ideas do? They help make the world a better place, right? Nope. They cause us even more worry, because a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing: it doesn't cause us to be smarter or better, it actually causes us to worry! We end up with lots of violent protesting, and the media scares us every day with doom and gloom scenarios. And we just go nuts with worry, for our children, for our extended families. We give the intellectuals more power to come up with newer and better ideas that cause us even more worry!

It's not just political ideas! See this iphone? What a great idea! What a great invention! I don't have to worry anymore! I can get my emails anywhere I go, now. If I'm sitting on the beach, I can stay in touch with the world, and that causes me more worry. Now I'm not enjoying the sun and waves on the beach—instead I'm crazy worried about that email that just came in!

Here is where we get to the words of Jesus—the perfect antidote to worry. In our gospel reading, he begins with one of the biggest man-made ideas in history: wealth. Wealth was created to fix a problem: people worrying about everything. If I have money, I have security, I won't worry anymore! What is the actual result? More worry. Clouds of worry coming in, completely darkening the horizon of our futures, until we can't see anything else. Jesus tells us that as long as those clouds are there, blocking everything with darkness, we can't see God. It doesn't have to be money. It can be anything that we put in the place of God. I talked about fasting from those controlling things a few weeks ago. Jesus is saying the same thing here.

The antidote to pride is humility. The beatitude is “blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Blessed are the poor in spirit—what does that mean? When we talk about spirit, we don't mean someone who is dejected or with low spirits, like aw, poor me! I just have no fight left! We're talking about the human spirit—gumption! You know, every other movie is about a “triumph of the human spirit!” It's a coming of age drama! It's when someone overcomes all odds to persevere and they are victorious! Rudy! They found the answer deep inside them, and they never gave up. They built their own tower of Babel and reached right up to the very heavens!

What is Jesus saying? Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are those people who are not relying on the human spirit to succeed. Blessed are those who are not proud! Blessed are the humble. They are the ones who will possess the kingdom of heaven. And that is exactly what Jesus is unpacking in our gospel reading today. Do not worry about what you will eat, about what you will wear, do not worry about money—get those storm clouds off the horizon! Those things are in the way of what you should be seeking—the kingdom of God! Seek the kingdom of God and all of those things you are worrying about now will be taken care of. God knows you need those things, and just like all of his creatures, like the lilies and the birds, he is going to provide for you. Just remove the obstacle that is keeping him from working in your life.

Jesus is saying hand over to me those worries, those ideas that you have that make everything worse, that pride, and I will replace them with my humility, my poorness of spirit. Our collect today is right on the money—no pun intended—when it says “most loving Father, whose will it is for us to give thanks for all things.” Listen to that. God gives us all things, and we don't realize that, and so we are constantly worried about our lives and our futures. Instead we should be giving thanks for all things, for everything is given to us by God. “To fear nothing but the loss of you:” God is the one thing that we need—not money or hopeless ideas about saving ourselves. “And to cast all our care on you who care for us:” which is the whole point. We stop owning our anxieties and instead give them over to Christ. He gives us his poorness in spirit, so that we can finally get ourselves out of the way and seek the kingdom of God. “Preserve us from faithless fears and worldly anxieties, that no clouds of this mortal life—there are those clouds—may hide from us the light of that love which is immortal, and which you have manifested to us in your Son Jesus Christ our Lord.” That statement needs no explanation at this point, does it?

Remember the Eleanor Roosevelt quote? “Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, and small minds discuss people?” After what we've learned about humility, let's rethink that. Here's my new take: “Worried minds discuss ideas, Hopeful minds discuss events, Blessed minds discuss people, more specifically—a person: Jesus Christ, who died on the cross in order to crucify our pride, who rose again in order to give us eternal life in him, a life without worry, without anxiety, and without mankind looking perpetually inward at ourselves, but outward to him who lives and reigns forever.

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