SERMON: Sunday February 27^th, 2011: 10 am

Readings: Romans 8: 18-25;  Matthew 6: 25-end

NOTHING TO FEAR

What do you tend to worry about ?  Perhaps you have money worries, about making ends meet or planning your family’s future. Perhaps you have persistent problems with your house, or your car – things that keep going wrong and occupy your thoughts. Perhaps you have to cope with a difficult relationship at work, or elsewhere, which preys on your mind. All these worries are concerns of the present time which extend like tentacles, into the future.

As a boy of around seven, I got a bit of a reputation as a worrier. I was a rather serious and intense child who wanted the re-assurance that everything was going to be all right, and free of pitfalls and danger.  So much so that one of my teachers gave me a copy of a poem entitled Nothing to Fear, which I kept for many years and found something of a comfort. What the poem pointed out was that anxiety and fear make you look inwards, and can eat away at you. And in time, I came to study our Bible passage from Matthew, which has become one of my favourite passages, because it has a poetic beauty, and is full of wisdom and hope. Verse 27 says “can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life ?”   In fact the medics tell us that if you are preoccupied with worries and anxieties, you are more likely to shorten your life. And there is a proverb in one of the Books of the Apocrypha, the Book of Sirach (30:24), which says: “Jealousy and anger shorten life, and anxiety brings on premature old age. ”

The remarkable thing is when I have had to face some of the more severe times of testing in my life, I have found, perhaps to my surprise, that I have worried less about the emerging future. I have found myself discovering a strength beyond myself, putting the situation in God’s hands, praying that Christ who bore so much for all of us would help to carry my burden. And that prayer has been answered, though often not in the ways that I had expected.

Our gospel passage from Matthew comes straight after Jesus’ teaching on material needs and possessions, and both passages emphasise the need for right priorities, and the need to trust God for our daily requirements. There is a similar passage in Luke, which interestingly comes after the parable of the rich farmer, who decided to build big new barns for his crops, and died the same night. The lesson is that we need to trust God, and not what we have amassed.

Our reading from Matthew draws lessons from God’s bountiful provision for his natural creation. The simple analogy with the birds and flowers is a picture which is worth a thousand words, because it points to God’s care of his people, and sets out the basis for our trust in God. The point is that God, the author and sustainer of a lavishly beautiful universe, can be trusted to meet his disciples’ needs. It makes us think of the Lord’s Prayer when Jesus teaches us to pray for our daily bread – the food to equip us for our spiritual journey.

The idea of trusting God for everyday provision already existed in the Old Testament, in the provision for the Jubilee year, which is described in the Book of Leviticus, where Israel is called upon to depend on God’s providing hand during the Sabbath year when the fields lay fallow. In the Exodus tradition, the people of Israel followed Moses into the wilderness without asking about provisions for the journey – and they received manna from heaven. And then the Psalms encourage us to an ordered and untroubled rhythm to our lives: Psalm 127:2: “It is vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives sleep to his beloved.”

And the call to faith in God’s provision is a significant theme in the New Testament epistles, for example, in 1 Peter 5:7: “Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you.” But the special perspective of our gospel passage from Matthew is that being free of worry is seen as an essential part of being a Christian disciple.

But isn’t our gospel passage from Matthew a bit irresponsible, when it tells us not to worry about food, or drink or clothes, when these are essential ingredients of everyday life ? Isn’t it just too idealistic to talk about God providing for the birds of the air, when all creatures can be the victims of natural disasters? And as for Jesus saying “do not worry about tomorrow”, this seems to go very much against modern management theory about the value of forward planning.

To answer these questions, we need to explore the deeper meaning and the underlying purpose of the Bible text. In verse 33 we are told to strive first for the kingdom of God, and to seek his righteousness, and this will condition our whole outlook. It’s not that we shouldn’t care about our food and our clothes (and I have to say that I enjoy good food and nice clothes!). But seeking God’s kingdom will put our attitude to material possessions into the right perspective. It’s easy for things to become ends in themselves - homes, cars, hobbies, sport, money, or even motor bikes ! Worrying about them simply puts these things on higher pedestals, so that we end up idolising them. And anxiety saps our Christian discipleship.

And it’s important to remember the original context of the gospel passage. Jesus’ closest disciples gave up much in order to be with him and to share his work of proclaiming God’s kingdom. Their ministry as disciples was costly.

The disciples became very aware of God’s providential care.  The birds and flowers that inhabit these verses are powerful symbols of God’s care; and these beautiful symbols of creation draw us away from our frantic pursuit of life’s accoutrements to a more serene vision of God’s bountiful care in the natural world. But this doesn’t mean that we are passive observers. Though this life is transitory, we are responsible for the stewardship of that which is entrusted to us, as long as we remember who entrusted it to us.

We should look to God’s provision for nature – for the birds and the flowers – and then reflect on how he provides for us. But not all birds are adequately fed and not all lilies reach their fullest beauty. Droughts and other catastrophes cut short the lives of birds and flowers as well as the lives of humans who trust in God, and some of these events are caused by humankind’s abuse of God’s creation.

Nevertheless, we see the prospect of our beautiful but fallen world returning to wholeness and to a time when disasters will be no more. Our passage from Romans speaks of the earth groaning with birth pangs as creation is renewed and reborn. It also speaks of the sufferings of the present time as not worth comparing with the glory to come. Liberation from corruption and death has begun, but it is not yet complete.

There is something of a dilemma in the gospel passage from Matthew, and the passage from Romans, and that is whether we are to live in the present, or live for the future. I think the answer is both. As Christians we have to live in the space between the Already and the Not Yet, between the resurrection and the restoration of the world at the end of time, between the first fruits and the harvest.

However confusing and contradictory the present may be, the future will give it meaning. Christ’s ministry, death and resurrection signal the coming of God’s kingdom, but the kingdom will not be fully realised until Christ comes again in glory, when all will be made new. So we are to live in the present, working for righteousness, but keeping in our sights the time when creation will be renewed, as the whole world returns to the creator, free of blemish. We must commit our very best to the here and now, whilst keeping the confident hope that all will be well in Christ in the time to come.

Julian of Norwich wrote a reflection that I think may help us to understand the inherent tension between the now and the not yet of life, and between the preoccupying detail and the greater pattern.  Julian concludes the reflection by saying:

“The trouble is this – the range of our thinking is now so blinkered, so little and so small, that we cannot see the high and wonderful wisdom and the power and goodness of the blessed Trinity. And this is what the Lord means when he says: “You shall see for yourself that all manner of things shall be well.” It was as if the Lord said “ Have faith, and have trust, and at the last day you shall see it all transformed into great joy.”

Amen

DMW/27/02/11