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Eighth Sunday after Epiphany

February 27, 2011 (Year A)

Preached at St. Paul’s Brookline

Brookline, MA

The Reverend Jeffrey W. Mello

Isaiah 49:8-16a

1Corinthians 4:1-5

Mathew 6:24-34

Jesus tells the gathered crowd not to worry.  Don’t worry about what to wear, or what to eat.  Don’t worry about your life.  Don’t worry about tomorrow.  Don’t worry, Jesus says.

It seems like such trite advice.  It sounds like Jesus is preaching from an ivory tower completely out of touch with the realities of the people to whom he is preaching.  These were not the wealthy members of the larger community seated around Jesus.  These are folks who had reason to worry about what they would wear, and where their next meal would come from.  They had reason to worry about their lives for they were the outcasts of society, and if they didn’t worry about their lives, no one else would either.

So I wonder how Jesus’ words were heard by the gathered crowd.  I wonder, as they watched the elite and the wealthy pass them by without so much as a glance, I wonder if Jesus’ words seemed like so much easy advice from an itinerant preacher.

Jesus’ words do not sound any more comforting to me set in today’s context either.  If they are aimed at the poor of our world, they seem to ring hollow.  Easy for me to say from this pulpit that the poor of the world should give up worrying about how to feed their families, how to access health care, how to provide shelter from the elements.  Saying, “Don’t worry, God will provide” is easy advice from someone who doesn’t have such worries.

And if Jesus’ words are aimed at us, the relatively comfortable in the world, then they aren’t all that difficult instructions after all.  Don’t worry about what you will eat, don’t worry about what you will wear.  Well, I don’t really.  When I do worry about these things, it isn’t whether I’ll eat, but what I feel like eating at that particular moment.  Italian or thai?  Salad or sandwhich?  Cook at home or eat out?  And it isn’t whether I’ll have something to wear, but whether it is current, if it fits me just right, and if it goes with what else I’m wearing.

Okay, Jesus, I won’t worry so much.  Because, in reality, I don’t really have to.  Not really.

I think Jesus’ words in today’s gospel are to be more than admonishment to the rich not to be preoccupied with the concerns of being wealthy (which car to choose, which house to buy); and I think they are to be more than empty promises to the abject poor (don’t worry, be happy).

I think they key to Jesus’ words, where their power rests, is in understanding them not so much as a means to an end, but as the means and the end.  Putting God first in our lives isn’t only how we get to the Kingdom, it is the Kingdom.  And the Kingdom, the Dream of God for the world, is just the thing for which his followers are aching.

Jesus knew that those who were listening to his words would have to work to put food on the table, and clothes on their backs.  He knew that they would have to be careful about how they lived to avoid persecution.  Jesus knows the lives of his followers.

He isn’t telling them to stop working or doing whatever they needed to do to take care of themselves and their families.  He’s talking about priorities.

He’s talking about the choice of what to seek first – God’s dream for us, or the world’s expectations of us.

For if we choose to seek the world’s approval, we will always need to catch up.  We will always have to worry because who we are and what we have will never be enough for the world.  Ever.

But if we seek serving God first, if our first priority with each day is to help bring about the Kingdom of God in this life, well then we have nothing to worry about.  We’ve got everything we need for the job.

What’s more, when we understand that God has given us everything we need to do God’s work in the world, we can understand not only where we are going, but how we are going to get there.  In practicing putting the Kingdom of God first, we live into the Kingdom of God.  It is the means, and it is the end.

Jesus’ audience for the sermon on the mount was a mix, we believe, of his disciples and, more importantly, would be disciples.  Outcasts and the marginalized gather to hear what this rabbi has to say about their place in the world.  They are the ones to whom his whole Sermon on the Mount is addressed.  He begins by blessing those who have come to hear what he has to say.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, the persecuted, and the meek.  Blessed are those who mourn, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.  These are not theoretical groups of people. That’s who Jesus is talking to.  The marginalized gather to hear more.  “Blessed am I?”  They wonder.  “Tell me more.”  And Jesus does.

This group listens to Jesus as he turns their place on the margin of society into their greatest gift.  Their lack of social standing becomes their greatest advantage in living into God’s dream for them and for the world.  As they sit and listen to Jesus, I imagine the “in crowd” walks by them, talking busily about what they are planning to serve at their banquet that evening.  They talk incessantly about what they are planning to wear, they fret over the guest list and all they feel they must do to hold on to their place in society.

The crowd following Jesus would love to have such problems, they think.  Until Jesus teaches a new way.

“You are enough,” is Jesus’ message.  You do not need to worry like they do.  God has given you everything you need to be who it is God made you to be.  You have everything you need to bring God’s kingdom into the world.  You are enough.  You do not need to worry.  Worrying is for those who seek the world’s approval.  Seek the worlds appeal and you will never be enough.  Seek the world’s approval and you’ve got plenty of reason to worry.

But if you want God’s approval you can relax.  You already have it.  If you want enough to do God’s work in the world?  Relax, you already have everything you need.  Like the lily, like the bird – you are enough.

And we are enough.  Just how God made us, we are enough.  If we could stop worrying about whether we have enough; if we could stop worrying if we are enough, we could turn our full attention to being all of who God made us to be, and making the world the place God created it to be.

The amazing thing about this is that, if were we were all able to live fully into this reality – that we are enough to be who God made us to be and we have enough to do the work God has given us to do in the world, if we really believed that, and if we could let go of all our worry that we didn’t have enough then there really would be enough for everyone.  If we could let go of needing more, then maybe the poor really wouldn’t have to worry about where their next meal would come from.  Because they would have enough, then, too.

The way to make God’s dream for the world a reality, I guess, is to start living as though it already is.

If enough of us let go of the worries of the world and instead seek God’s dream for the world, in seeking God’s dream, it just might come true.

© 2011 The Reverend Jeffrey W. Mello