November 19, 2006
25“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? 26Look 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?
27And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?
28And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field,
how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, 29yet I tell you, even Solomon
in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. 30But 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? 31Therefore
do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What
will we wear?’ 32For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and
indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.
33But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all
these things will be given to you as well. 34“So do not worry about
tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is
enough for today.
I’m about to spell out the obvious, one of those truths that everyone
knows, but the holidays, what we are in the midst of and what we have to
look forward to during the Advent and Christmas season, is one of those
times of the year where the stress and strain of life really start to show in
us. I don’t know about you, but this is NOT the time of the year when I
gracefully glide through the days. Sometimes a source of that stress is
having to make our annual trek back to our hometowns, or gather with
far flung family in our homes, where we get to be back in the presence of
our families for the first time in perhaps twelve months. These family
visits and gatherings can be an incredible source of stress because they
tap into the past that we often think we have left behind. All of sudden,
emotional stuff we left behind somehow comes back and we think and act
like we’re 12 years old again!
But as much as family is a source of stress and sometimes just feels
like an obligation that must be attended to, family is also where we learn
some of our better qualities, and as a Southerner, I think one of the
qualities that was drilled into me by family was always to express
gratitude. I didn’t grow up as a young child in the South, but both of my
parents are from that region, actually from Mississippi, and so social
manners, and especially the magic phrase, “thank you” was something
that both my sister and I were told to say at every imaginable turn.
“What do you say?” my mother would say in a polite but stern voice, if I
somehow forgot to say the magic words, “thank you.” And if you are like
me and had that experience of being drilled with that expectation of
saying “thank you” to everyone, you probably still say “thank you” to
everyone and everything. And speaking of “everything,” I have even, in
my most thoughtless moments, thanked an ATM machine. But I suppose
the gift of cash is something to always be thankful for.
But this can be a thoughtless act, you know, this habit of saying
thanks everywhere and for everything, and it a habit that its sometimes
seeps into our thanks to God—we say what we have been taught say,
even in our spiritual lives. In our prayers and in moments that call us to
be thankful in worship and in life, we just say the words, and we may
even know the truth behind those words of thanks, but I wonder how
many of us are really are thankful for the things we have at this moment,
the gifts of friends and material things, even for stress-giving,
challenging, oh-so-difficult family members? What would it mean to be
good with the life, the material things, the people, that we have right
here, right here before us, within our hands at this moment, rather than
wistfully wishing for yet more—more stuff, more cash, a bigger home, a
better relationship with friends, family, spouse, more excitement—what
would it mean to be to take Jesus’ words that we heard seconds ago
seriously, I mean, REALLY seriously?
But its hard thing to do, to be in the present, and to give thanks for
what we have right now, rather than worrying what we may or may not
have later in the week, or later in the month, years, whenever. I think
this is especially hard for us when it comes to material things, because in
our culture we are so defined by what we have, by what we possess, or
what we don’t possess. There is a wonderful scene from the movie CIVIL
ACTION, the movie version of John Grisham’s novel about a lawyer who’
s brings a lawsuit against a large corporation that has been polluting the
environment, causing damage to the people around the environmental
waste. But Grisham’s lawyer can’t financially compete with the
corporation’s lawyers and their endless resources of cash and time, and
so he and his law firm eventually go bankrupt, even as he continues with
his valiant effort to get the firm to pay for the damage they’ve done to
God’s earth and to God’s children. The lawyer eventually ends up in
bankruptcy court, and he is telling the judge that all he has left at this
point in his life is the fourteen dollars in his wallet, and a portable radio.
The judge just responds in amazement, and then he says something to
the effect of: “Where are all the things that you should have accumulated
in your life that give you your identity, your place in this world?” I think
that what that judge said speaks exactly to the way most of us think of
things—they identify us, they define us—successful, not successful—
people, including many of us, if we were to be completely honest with
each other, really believe that to have more stuff is to have more
happiness, that it really somehow marks us as winning or not winning in
this world. And so when we’re asked to give thanks to God for what
doesn’t seem like enough, it’s a stretch for us, and we do what I do
sometimes when I mindlessly thank the ATM—we just say “thank you”
because we’re expected to say “thank you,” even though we’re honestly
not very thankful because what we really believe is that what we have is
not quite enough. We actually do believe the judge in CIVIL ACTION,
our stuff defines us and our fear is that this lack of less stuff than our
neighbors really does define us as a being a loser.
I also wonder if part of the reason its so hard for us to give an
authentic and heartfelt “thank you” to God for what we have at the
moment is because we forget something—something Jesus point to here
in this passage from Matthew. In this piece from the sermon on the
Mount, Jesus challenges us keep our eyes focused on what we have and
not to worry about we do not have—“don’t worry about what will or will
not greet you tomorrow,” Jesus says, “about the stuff and relationships
and jobs you may or may not have tomorrow.” Jesus points us to the
simple fact that what we are worrying about, primarily stuff about what
the future is going to hold, was and is and will always be a gift from God.
It has always been and will always be, a gift, and here, we’re challenged
by Jesus, with what I imagine to be a frustrated tone in his voice, we are
asked to acknowledge that truth by doing something extraordinary, which
is to quit worrying about what is ultimately in the hands of God. In fact,
we spend a lot of time worrying about tomorrow’s gifts, don’t we?
Tomorrow clothes, tomorrow’s food, tomorrow’s paycheck, rather than
saying THANK YOU for the gifts we’re holding in our hands right now,
right here. It’s like having all these gifts of friends and stuff and family in
our hands, but instead, we ignore the present gifts and keep looking to
the future, wondering what kind of gifts we’re going to be given in some
distant time in the coming days, weeks, years ahead.
Of course, the problem is that the future is something that is hidden
from us—the best way I’ve come up with trying to explain it is that the
future is hidden from our view by something like a wall of some sort, a
wall that just represents the reality of what we cannot know in this world.
So often in our lives we put down the gifts we have in our hands right
now , right here, the ones we have in our grasp now, and we spend a lot
of time and energy trying to get a ladder so that we can see peer over
the top of this wall that blocks us from knowing our future, this wall that
will never allow us to do that, never allow us to see over it. And the truth
of the matter is that the wall never comes down until the future is right
before us, until the future becomes the present for us, until “later”
becomes “now.” What we have in our hands, the gifts of this moment,
are what we are called to give thanks for, even as we are tempted to put
down those present gifts down in our so futile effort to use those hands
to climb up that wall so we can get a glimpse of a future we don’t yet
know. You know, I think God wants us to be present with the here and
now, the wonder of this moment, and we are called to entrust the future,
whatever should greet us on the other side of that wall, we are asked to
entrust it to God. What if we took this passage seriously and said to
ourselves, “What I have is what I have, and it what’s I’m supposed to
have at this moment. I will give thanks for the car that I have NOW, not
the one I want, I will give thanks for the job I have NOW, not the one I
want, I will give thanks for the parents I have NOW, not the ones I wish I
had.” This is where our heart and our words come together—when we
decide to give thanks for what we have right here and right now. We
know the future will meet us and that future will be a gift, just like the
present is, just like the gifts of this moment are. It is what we have right
now that calls us to remember that God holds the future in God’s
hands. It is a reminder that God has given us what we needed, even at
this moment, and surely God will give us what we need for the future.
Frederick Buechner, one of the great preachers of our time, tells the
story about trusting God with a future he cannot he control, and he
cannot divine, even with his worry about what will happen next in his life.
He writes: “I remember sitting parked by the roadside once, terribly
depressed and afraid about my daughter’s illness and what was going in
our family, when out of nowhere a car came along down the highway with
a license plate that bore on it the one word out of all the words in the
dictionary that I needed most to see exactly then. The word was
TRUST. What do you call a moment like that? Something to laugh off as
a kind of joke life plays on us every once in a while? The word of God? I
am willing to believe that maybe it was something of both, but for me it
was an epiphany. The owner of the car turned out to be, as I’d
suspected, a trust officer in a bank, and not long ago, having read an
account I wrote of the incident somewhere, he found out where I lived
and one afternoon brought me the license plate itself, which sits propped
up on a bookshelf in my house to this day. It is rusty around the edges
and a little bit battered, and it is also as holy as relic as I have ever
seen.” (Spiritual Literacy 46)
That is a hard thing, of course, to trust, to believe that God safely
holds the future in God’s hands, and it is especially hard for us right
now. Its pledge time for us in this congregation, and as the pastor of this
place, I’ve got to actually believe those words when I hand in the financial
part of the pledge today. It’s more than last year, and yet it’s realistic for
our household—we all have to determine what we can and cannot do,
both in terms of time and money, and sometimes it means more and
sometimes it means less, for each of us. But this coming year, in our
household, we might have to thank God for less, for not having as much
we did this year, and that is a difficult thing, because I am one of those
folks, who secretly believes the judge in the movie CIVIL ACTION—I am
what I have, and I am what I don’t have. But that is not true, of course,
not according to the text before us this day. Tomorrow, and every day of
this coming year, we will have to look to the lilies of the field to remind us
to trust the God who cares for them, and because God’s for the little
creatures God has created, God most certainly cares for us. Of course,
that is what we do every time we pledge our time and money to the future
of this church—we trust that God will be present in the future as much as
God has been present in the past, and how God has surely God is
present to us at this very moment.
But the greater challenge is to give thanks for the gifts of these very
moments—this spouse, this friendship, these children, this mom and
dad—and to give thanks for the gifts of what we have materially at this
moment—this job, this car, this house—all of it, is what we are called to
give thanks for, right here, the gifts right here before us. Tomorrow’s
gifts will be given to us tomorrow. Choosing now to give thanks for what
we have now is our great challenge, but in doing so we open ourselves
to the God who is working within us through the gifts that we have been
given at this very moment—the job we have now, the friends we have
now, the housing we have now. It is the gifts of the moment, the ones
right here before us, the friends, the family, the material possessions we
have, that God is using RIGHT NOW to bring about the dominion of God,
the kingdom of God. It is through the gifts that we have with us at this
moment that God is bringing that divine dominion to life within you and
me and within the larger world. It’s not that that the future gifts don’t
matter—it’s just that those gifts are not the ones God is using right now
to create something new inside you and me. Those gifts will be given
later, to be used later in God’s reworking and remolding of us and the
larger world—and we have to trust God for what we cannot see and we
cannot control. It is the present gifts that we are called to pay attention
to—the gifts of the moment, the gifts of the right here and right now.
So, may we gather those gifts, those gifts of the present moment that
have been given into our hands, the gifts we’ve sometimes put down,
trying instead to peer into a future that we do not hold, may we gather
those gifts of the moment, of the present, and raise that song of thanks
to the God who has given us everything and to the God who will continue
to give us everything we have. The gifts we have at this moment, this
very spot in time, right here before us in our hands, every one of those
gifts is God’s pledge to us that God will remain faithful to us, and to my
future and your future, and our future as a community of faith. Thanks
be to God, forever and ever. Amen.
