This
is Thanksgiving week: a time when Americans pause to consider our blessings and
give thanks. My Facebook page has been filled all month with people taking time
for a daily message of gratitude.
This is a great exercise. My preaching
mentor, Fred Craddock, tells us that the text we read for today reminds
us “that gratitude is not simply a generalized orientation but is properly gratitude
to God who provides for our needs, relieving us of a consuming anxiety about
material things.” (Matthew 6:24-34 from The Message Paraphrase for
those following along from afar) Simply put, when we are grateful, we trust
God, and we don’t stress out so much about material things.
It’s
interesting that Thanksgiving comes right before Christmas, the most
materialistic holiday of them all. We go crazy at Christmas buying stuff for
one another, and truth be told, buying stuff for ourselves. We just can’t
resist those sales. We get caught up in our dependence on material things as a
way to feed our hunger, right after we have celebrated Thanksgiving, a time to
give thanks to God for simple blessings in life. How I wish we could continue
the theme of Thanksgiving through the season of Christmas! To be grateful for
the blessing of Jesus and to simply give thanks to God for this miracle.
But we
human beings do not seem to be able to stay in this attitude of gratitude for
long. We fall into another mode of operation. Rather than trusting in God, we
begin to worry. We worry that we don’t have enough. That we’re not safe enough.
And after all there are plenty of things to worry about, aren’t there?
A Gallup poll taken last March gave us
a list of the top 10 things that Americans worry about:
11)
The availability and affordability of
healthcare
22)
The economy
33)
The possibility of future terrorist
attacks in the U.S.
55)
The size and power of the federal
government
66)
The way income and wealth are
distributed in the U.S.
77)
Hunger and homelessness
88)
Crime and violence
99)
Illegal immigration
110)
Drug use
As I reflect on this list I see that at least half of them
have to do with money. We worry about money A LOT. Amen?
Our text for today shows that Jesus
knows us pretty well. Because when he
was preaching to the people, he showed that he understood that they worried
about money. He said, “You can’t serve God and money. Because if you love one
you’ll end up hating the other one. Adoration of one feeds contempt for the
other one.”
This is why. When we serve money, we
don’t have room in our lives for God. We put our trust in money. We begin to
think that if we just had enough money we would be happy. But enough is never
enough. We always want more. Our thirst for money and material goods is
insatiable. But Jesus comes along and turns our thinking upside down. Or
perhaps, he turns it right-side up.
Jesus says:
If you decide for God, living a life of God-worship, it
follows that you don’t fuss about what’s on the table at mealtimes or whether
the clothes in your closet are in fashion. There is far more to your life than
the food you put in your stomach, more to your outer appearance than the
clothes you hang on your body. Look at the birds, free and unfettered, not tied
down to a job description, careless in the care of God. And you count far more
to God than birds.
Jesus says that if we make God the most important thing in
our lives, we won’t worry so much about all that other stuff. We’ll have the
food we need and clothes to wear. But we won’t care if we have the latest
fashions. There is more to life than designer clothes. You see, when we love
God, we will be concerned about the things of God: loving other people, showing
compassion, and doing justice in the world. We will be so laser-focused on
making this world a better place for everyone, we won’t have time to worry
about what’s in fashion or what we are lacking.
We spend
so much time trying to get ahead and Jesus says: “What I’m
trying to do here is to get you to relax, to not be so preoccupied with getting,
so you can respond to God’s giving.”
This is the week of Thanksgiving. It is not a time of getting stuff
(even though the retailers want you to rush on to Christmas shopping) but it is
a time of giving thanks and a time of responding to God’s giving to us. God
gives us so much but we have to pay attention in order to see it. We have to
slow down and open our eyes.
God
wants us to pay attention to the beauty that God has given us. Consider the
wildflowers. Jesus says: “If God gives such attention to the appearance of
wildflowers—most of which are never even seen—don’t you think God will attend
to you, take pride in you, do the best for you?”
Imagine
that there are fields of wildflowers in this world that no one will ever see
but God. Can you imagine that? Just
pause for a moment to think about that. Such beauty and no human being will
ever see it. And still it has value.
How
much more value do you have to God? God loves you and wants you to have an
abundant life, but we spend our lives worrying.
I
will confess that I have been heartsick this week worrying about my son who is
sick. I was writing this sermon about how we should not worry and I was worried.
All I could do was worry about Jamie. How crazy is that? Of course it’s human
nature. It’s hard for a mother not to worry about her sick child. But you see,
when we trust in God, then we give our worry over to God. We let it go and we
give it to God. Because God is the one who will care for us through anything. God
will sit with a mother who has a sick child. God will comfort me and comfort
Jamie and God will see us through.
What
do you worry about? Do you worry about money? Chances are, that is high on your
list. Do you worry about basic needs? Do you worry about safety? With the
recent terrorist attacks and heightened alerts, some of us are more concerned
about safety than ever. Do you worry about the future? Do you worry about the
relationships you have with people? Perhaps you worry about work. Or you worry
about your children, or your aging parents. There are so many things to worry
about. The list goes on and on.
Here
is the truth. Worry does not change anything. It just drags us down into
negative thinking. Negative thinking is a spiral. Once you get caught in it,
you go down and down. And then it’s like someone has to throw you a lifeline
and pull you out of your own negative thinking. Negative thinking and worry
just pull us away from putting our trust in God.
But
friends we want to be drawn to God. We want to live in God’s sphere of
influence, being showered with God’s blessing. We want the Holy Spirit to
infuse everything we see and everything we do. We want to walk as children of
the light.
Jesus
put it this way in the scripture:
“Give
your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up
about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever
hard things come up when the time comes.
Oh, how often do we worry about what
MIGHT happen. We play out the worst case scenarios in our heads (worse still
when you are a trained contingency thinker like Kurt). We can sometimes cause
the worst to happen just because we are thinking about it so much. But Jesus
says to stop this way of thinking. For example, my son is sick. I could be
thinking about all the possible horrible things that could be wrong with him,
even though the doctors have ruled out the really bad stuff. This kind of
thinking does not help me and it does not help Jamie. I need to focus on
trusting that he is going to get well soon, and putting my resources into that
future.
Jesus
says, don’t worry about what might happen. God will help us with whatever hard
things will come up when the time comes. Again, we need to put our trust in
God.
What
I like most about this scripture is this. Jesus says: don’t worry, instead pay
attention to God. Look around. Use the beauty of God’s creation as a reminder
that God is always with us. Look at a newborn baby and be reminded that God
brings new life to any situation. Look at the wildflowers in the field (OK you
may have to go buy some after this snow), the birds in the air. God takes care
of them and God will take care of us.
So
in this week of Thanksgiving, pause to give thanks. Don’t get caught up in your
worry. Focus on your blessings. Pay attention to the beauty God has given to
us. Amen.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment