Epiphany 8A
February 27, 2011
Isaiah 49:8-16a * Psalm 131 * I Corinthians 4:1-5 *
Matthew 6:24-34
David M. McNair
Right after telling his followers to “Be perfect,” Jesus tells them, “Do not worry.” In fact, he repeats his call not to worry five times. Be perfect? Don’t worry? Who says Jesus doesn’t have a sense of humor?
My guess is that most of us can relate to a cartoon in a recent New Yorker magazine. It pictures a man sitting in his living room with a look of panic on his face. He’s dropped his book and his hair is standing on end. He has jumped up off the floor onto a chair, and he’s clutching his feet in a fetal position. There’s a bomb on the floor that someone has tossed through his window. Shattered glass litters the floor as the fuse burns down. In the caption, he confesses to his wife: “It’s my fault – I wasn’t worrying enough. (1)
Many days life feels like an endless string of worry beads that you can’t put down. Worries at home — a child struggling with bad grades and low self-esteem); worries at work — deadlines to meet, budgets to balance, colleagues who challenge our patience; worries about — you name it: your health, the economy, fat grams, retirement savings, college admission, aging parents, aging period, the friend who was just diagnosed with cancer, the job you don’t have or the job you might lose. Worries attend us like bees to honey.
In the face of all these daunting worries and anxieties of our lives, Jesus offers these audacious words: “Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Look at the birds of the air . . . consider the lilies of the field . . . seek first the kingdom of God."
I want to share with you snippets of letters written by Lynn’s parents who live in Charlotte to my children, Sadie and Simon, while we were living in Sewanee and I was in seminary. It will help you to know that their grandparent names are “Big G” and “Granny Duck.”
Mid-April – “Dear Sadie and Simon… I was just sitting in my little chair by the window in the bedroom and I noticed the cardinals have just started building their nest right outside the window in the azalea bush! I think I wrote you last year when they built a nest there. After it’s built, the mama cardinal mostly sits on the eggs and the daddy cardinal brings her worms and other food.”
April 21 – “Bird report: Mama cardinal is sitting on her nest. I haven’t seen the Daddy cardinal come back, but of course, I am not watching her all the time!”
April 29 – “…for a couple of days there was only one egg in the nest. This morning there were two eggs and the mama bird is sitting on them!”
May 2– “The mama cardinal is sitting on her nest day and night. Big G saw a third egg in the nest. Yesterday I watched while the Daddy bird brought the mama bird a worm…she opened her beak and he put it in her mouth! Wish I could get a picture of that!”
May 6 – “There was a third egg several days ago, but yesterday I found it lying in the grass…I can’t imagine how that happened. Anyhow, mama is sitting patiently. I am hoping to get a picture but she is very aware of any movement around that bush.”
May 13 – We noticed today that at least one of the eggs has hatched. We watched the mom feed the baby. Mom is sitting on the nest right now so we don’t know if the second egg has hatched or not. Wish you could see it.
I think Big G and Granny Duck have figured out something of what Jesus was talking about when he directed the disciples to look at the birds of the air; to consider how their heavenly Father feeds them even though they do not sow or reap or gather into barns.
Directly before Jesus instructs his followers not to worry, he makes an assertion: you cannot serve two masters … You cannot serve God and wealth.” Then, he tells them not to worry about their life or about tomorrow… “for tomorrow will bring worries of its own.”
The word “worry” or “anxiety” translates a Greek term that means “split attention” or “divided concern.” Jesus is confronting his disciples with a series of choices. A radical either/or: serve God OR pursue wealth; trust God OR fret over life’s necessities; seek God’s rule OR worry about tomorrow. He doesn’t offer compromises between the two. Our instinct is to hunt for a middle way, to assure us that we can live with divided loyalties. But Jesus leaves us with a clear choice: God OR wealth; worry and anxiousness about food, clothing, and about the future OR seek first the kingdom of God.
What the non-dual teachers like Eckart Tolle (and his book The Power of Now) and others have written about in the past decade was already clearly spelled out by Jesus. You can only live in one moment and one reality at a time. Yes, of course we are able to multi-task. This is what our cyber world demands – which is all the more reason to clearly distinguish between multi-tasking and divided thinking. To try and straddle multi-realities and have multi-allegiances’ is the way to ceaseless worry and dissatisfaction.
Jesus is endlessly trying to liberate us from what is secondary and from what doesn’t matter in order to set us free for what is first, for what and who does matter. Today matters. The gift of life present right here, right now matters. Our neighbors and the reign of God’s peace and justice matters.
We fail to heed what really matters when our attention is split… when we serve wealth above God… when we are worried about tomorrow or are consumed with anxiety. Jesus, who longs for us to have abundant life, tells us to look at the birds of the air and consider the lilies of the field to help us to refocus our attention and reorder our priorities so that we recognize the holy and precious gift present in each moment.
The Nobel Peace Prize winner and retired Archbishop of South Africa, Desmund Tutu has demonstrated to me this way of living. He was the speaker at my seminary commencement three years ago. His sermon and presence were in every way wonderful. My good friend and neighbor saw him after the ceremony in the cafeteria. He had been upstairs eating in the VIP room and was coming off the elevator into the main dining room on his way out. He had a group surrounding him that looked very official. Some of the men with him, dressed in black suits, had microphones attached to their ears like they may have been secret service people. As soon as the elevator door opened and Tutu stepped out, he noticed one of the cafeteria workers standing nearby.
Without hesitation he walked over to her, smiled brightly, held out his hand to shake hers, and thanked her for the delicious meal and for her good work. My friend said that at that point it was like time went into slow motion. Many of the other cafeteria workers had evidently watched this exchange and they instinctively began to leave their work stations and walk towards him. He reciprocated, and with a joyous grin greeted each one as if they were the most important person in the world. While some of his escorts busily spoke into their mouthpieces, Tutu went back behind the serving line and individually greeted and thanked every worker in the kitchen.
Tutu has learned well the lesson of the birds of the air and lilies of the field. I think Jesus points his disciples — and us — to birds and lilies because they bring us into the present moment and teach us to discern the larger purposes of God. They disclose something of the One who created them. Birds, lilies, grass in the fields, mountain, oceans show us that our destinies are controlled by God who stands forever.
Ultimately we cannot determine how our lives will unfold. We cannot control when we are born or when we die. The earthquake this week in New Zealand, the waves of revolution sweeping the Middle East that turned bloody and violent this week, the economic uncertainty of our local and state and nation and world economies – all these remind us of our vulnerability and, ultimately, our helplessness. In the midst of unrest and uncertainty, we reach for something to hold on to. Jesus says, trust God, your loving parent who is already holding you.
In his poem “The Peace of Wild Things” Wendell Berry echos Jesus’ advice,
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
Waiting with their light.
For a time I rest in the grace of the world,
and am free.
May we also like the cardinals and flowers in our back yards trust God, and be free. Amen.
Notes: