The text this morning is from the Gospel according to Luke, the twelfth chapter:
And he said to his disciples, “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, nor about your body, what you will put on. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds! And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? If then you are not able to do as small a thing as that, why are you anxious about the rest? Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass, which is alive in the field today, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you, O you of little faith! And do not seek what you are to eat and what you are to drink, nor be worried. For all the nations of the world seek after these things, and your Father knows that you need them. Instead, seek his kingdom, and these things will be added to you. “Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give to the needy. Provide yourselves with moneybags that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.Thus far the text.
My dear friends in Christ,
Abraham feared that God wouldn’t fulfill His promise to Him, that he would be the father of many nations, that his descendants would be numerous, so he took matters into his own hands and tried to give himself descendants through his wife’s servant. Cain feared that God couldn’t fulfill His promise to redeem him because the Lord accepted his brother’s sacrifice and not his own so he killed his brother in order to make himself the only person offering a sacrifice, acceptable or not. The unbelieving world feared their own mortality and so they lived so riotously that God decided to destroy the whole world and only preserved Noah and his family.
Fear can be a remarkable thing. If you’re in the middle of the woods at night with your children and you hear a low growl behind you, fear transforms you into a superhero, ready to defend against the wolves that would eat you all. Fear makes you take a step back from the ledge. Fear makes you slow your car down when the car in front of you starts weaving. Fear can be a remarkable thing.
But it can also be a telling thing. That which we fear can be our god. If we fear that we won’t have enough money to make it through the month, and because of that, we get anxious and troubled, we start thinking fanstastical thoughts about how to make a little more, how to get away with skimming some from others, our fear reveals that money is our god. If we fear that we cannot live without our spouse, and because of that, we get anxious and troubled, we start calling them every hour, making sure they’re alright, tracking their movements, tracking their eating or exercise, trying to eek out every ounce of life they have, fear reveals that our spouse has become our god. If we fear that our needs won’t be fulfilled, and because of that, we start scheming how to use people for our own ends, whether that be power or sex or control, fear reveals that we are our own god.
Fear can reveal who our god is. Fear is actually quite useful for us, as Christians. If we know that fear can reveal these things to us, we can hear the condemnation of the Law, Thou shalt have no other gods before me, and we can repent and be forgiven. But, if we let that fear run our lives, it reveals, if not to us, then certainly others, that we don’t trust our God enough to have Him fulfill His own promises to us.
Jesus says not to be anxious about your life. Life is more than the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the place we sleep, the stuff we have. Life is more than that. After all, the birds don’t have those things, and yet they are satisfied. You don’t hear a bird complaining about its nest or its food supply. It just goes out and does it. But, more than that, the raven has food, it has a nest, and still we look at the raven and see that we have so much more life than a bird. Why should we worry about the stuff that even the birds have? That’s not what makes up life, anyway.
Life is more than the stuff we have; life is the fear of God. And what is the fear of God? Certainly it’s being afraid of Him, afraid of His holiness as you are a sinner, afraid of His righteousness as you are evil, afraid as of His power as you are weak, afraid of His control as you are powerless. But the fear of God is also reverence and awe. It’s honoring Him as Lord, it’s looking to Christ as the Savior, it’s knowing that He is good when we are not, He is loving when we are not, He is merciful when we are not. The fear of the Lord is fear, but it’s also love. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Being anxious about the stuff you have is what the foe, the devil would have you do. Being anxious about stuff is a distraction, tearing you away from what God would have you do and know. Being anxious about stuff is not wisdom in any kind of way. It puts its place above Him, turning you away from His desires and promises for you. Worrying about stuff means you fear its loss and not God Himself. It means you have no life.
The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, and that is the stuff of life. Food, shelter, clothing, all that stuff will be given to you for as long as you need it in the amount that you need it, not because you earn it, but because God gives it to you. But, life, life is a precious gift, for life is given from the hand of God in order that you might fear Him, see Him, live with Him. Life is only found in the kingdom of God, not in the reign of Satan.
After all, if we are worried about things, does it really do anything for you? I guess it’s true that if worry could add an hour to your life, it might be worth it, but even medical studies show that anxiety and worry actually have a bad effect on you. We’ve known that for 2000 years and science is just catching up to it. Worry and anxiety can shorten your lifespan, and more that, take you from actually living in this beautiful world that God has given us. We want our years extended, and we want to engage with people and with the world while we’re living in it. Anxiety and worry take that away.
Jesus isn’t saying don’t work for a living. He’s not saying don’t take trips to the grocery store. He’s not saying don’t save up to furnish your home, or even to buy a home or a car. He’s not saying walk around naked. After all, even Jesus wore a robe out in the world. Instead, what He’s saying is don’t worry about these things. God will provide. I know that sounds trite, although we all do tend to say it to people suffering lack in this world when we run out of anything else to say. But that doesn’t make it any less true. God will provide. And He’s even given a gift to the world to provide it to people: the Church.
When we live as the Church, we help those around us in need. It might mean that we help those in the community, and that’s a good thing to do, but it especially means that we help our brothers and sisters in our faith community when they are in need. That way, when the struggling single mom comes into our midst and is part of our family, we help her find the clothes she needs for a job interview, the coats her kids need for the winter, the bread to put on her table. She doesn’t need to fear not having these things, God will provide… through you.
And that’s truly living, isn’t it? Providing selflessly for others, for their sake, and not your own. Giving of yourself to take care of them. After all, you’re taken care of, now you can help others. The Lord loves to give you the stuff that you have, and all He asks is that you steward it well.
Jesus says you are more beautiful than even the flowers. One of the most amazing things I ever experienced is the sense of wonder as I stood on Mount Rainier looking at the beauty of the wildflowers growing on her slopes. You can’t see it from sea level; you have to drive up the mountain. And you step out of your car into Paradise. That’s literally the name of the area. You walk up the trail, come around the curve, pass the gray rock face sticking out of the ground, and with a snow-capped backdrop, there are fields and fields of beautiful wildflowers growing all around you. Every color you can think of, none of it clashing. None of it ugly. And the Lord says, rightly, not even Solomon could match its beauty. And it’s true. But, for all the beauty of the field, the Lord find even more beauty in you. He chooses to see you as beautiful through His Son, and so gives you every good gift.
Last week, we talked about that idea, that the good gifts our Father gives us are indeed treasures. We should hold them dear because they are gifts from God Himself. He gives you all good gifts because He loves you. He asks you to steward them because they are His. When you dad stayed up all night assembling your first bike, he gave it to you with pride and love. He wanted you to use it and take care of it. And when he saw you throw it the ground and leave it behind, not using the kickstand, not taking care of it, he came out and took it away until you could use it properly, because it’s His.
Our Lord will do the same. He has seen how we use His gifts in this world. He’s seen how we use our money, our time, our science, our sexuality, our power, and He is coming to take it all away from us. He’s seen that our hearts have made His stuff our gods, supplanting Him and His authority. He will take it all away. But He’s not coming out of the house, storming after you to give you a whooping. He’s coming to take these things away because none of these old gods are able to stand in what He’s doing next. It’s like your dad came out, took your bike away and then gave you a brand new Tesla. God in Jesus Christ is coming. He will destroy all the old gods you’ve made for yourself and will give you Himself forever.
The stuff we’ve worried about for so long is gone. Instead, He gives you true life, life eternal, forever. He gives you that which life is, the fear of God. He teaches you to trust in God alone. He teaches you to rely on Him fully. He is teaching you this now, even though you often act like the fifth-grader who just doesn’t care and so disregards everything the teacher says, and He will teach you fully in the life to come.
You see, the stuff that we think life is made up of, that’s not what God has promised. God promised Abraham that he would be the father of many nations, and so He became, giving birth to thousands and millions of people of faith, the same faith that Abraham has, the same faith you today share. Abraham finally trusted in God, and it was credited to him as righteousness. God promised Cain that if he would sacrifice from the heart and not from the work of his own hands, God would find that acceptable, but Cain wouldn’t accept it even though Abel did. God promised the world that He would destroy them if they persisted in their wickedness, and they wouldn’t trust Him and so sent themselves so far down into the abyss of sin, that they drowned under miles of water.
The promise of God to you is the same, that you can be a child of Abraham, that your sacrifices are acceptable to Him through Christ, that when you repent you will be forgiven, that you will have life eternal if only your faith is in Him. And the promises God makes to you are yes and amen in Christ. Christ is the one who has made them happen. Christ, through His perfect life, death, and resurrection has made a way that God would fulfill His promises to you. Through Christ, you have been given faith. Through Christ, your prayers and offerings please God, even bringing a tear to His eye out of joy. Through Christ, righteousness has been granted to you through His blood and forgiveness has been won through His death. Through Christ, eternal life is given for you have been placed into His body, which has been resurrected from the grave.
The promises of God are fulfilled and will be fulfilled through Christ. What else do you need? Why should you worry? God has always made promises to His creation. Why would we think He’s going to stop with you? In Christ, we have all that we need. We have forgiveness. We have life. We have salvation. Have no anxiety, for these things are yours now and forever in the kingdom of God. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Now may the peace of God which passes all human understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord! Amen.
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