This is a sermon that I think many of us need to hear on occasion, regardless of our financial status. And it seems like people enjoyed it today. So bring in your pictures and stories or email them to me so we can see God's love in this world.
Enjoy!
Do not worry! Do not worry! How are we not suppose to worry? In fact I know very few people who have not worried at some point over the last 3 years about their jobs and their home. In the midst of a recession with the highest unemployment rates during the majority of our lifetimes, we have worried that our job will be next. As companies instituted wage freezes, furloughs and even pay cuts, we have worried if we would have enough to pay the bills in the short term, or we have worried that the next step our employer will take would be to make job cuts. We have even seen some of our fellow congregation members directly effected by lay offs. And Jesus is telling us not to worry.
As we have seen for sale signs go up in front of homes in our neighborhood and stay up for months later and as we have heard news on the television, radio and internet about home foreclosures, we have worried about our own property values. And when you compound that with the fears over our jobs possibly getting cut, well then our home might be the next to be foreclosed. And Jesus is telling us not to worry.
And as we have received our IRA and pension statements and seen the amount decrease drastically as the DOW and NASDAQ indexes dropped remarkable over a short period of time just a few years ago, we have worried about our retirement. Will we be able to retire when we originally planned or are we going to have to work an additional 2…5…10 years in order to recoup enough money in order to survive retirement? It is no wonder that people are now more afraid that they will outlive their money than they are in dying. And yet Jesus is telling us not to worry.
Just hearing that we aren’t suppose to worry makes one want to worry even more.
So what are some of the things you worry about?
We live in a world of scarcity. There is only so much money, so much time, so much stuff that we can acquire. And when we live a lifestyle of worry, we become obsessed with the idea of if we have enough and who has more than us. Do we have enough money for retirement? Are we making enough money to live a good life? Do we have enough time to get everything done?
When we live with a mindset of scarcity not only are we worried about having enough, we are also worried about having the best. And companies are helping us buy into this idea. Best Buy recently launched a buy back program where they will buy back your electronics when you want to upgrade to the latest and greatest. This isn’t for if your laptop, tv or phone dies and you need to replace it but when you want to upgrade to the newest technology, because as most people can tell you, with technology, anything over 6 months old is ancient, even if it still works properly. This is the same idea behind leasing a car, because it is easier to upgrade.
Yet here is Jesus telling us not to worry, to not worry about what we will wear, what we will eat, and what we will drink. And I’m sure if he was talking to our modern society, Jesus would include that we should not worry about where we will live, where we will work, what technology we will have and how much time we will have.
Jesus is telling us not to worry because God does provide. Most people, if prodded, has a story about when they stopped worrying, how God then provided. For me, one of those stories is here, this place. After two failed attempts at being assigned to a synod so that I could start interviewing at churches, I eventually stopped worrying about it. I realized that I had an okay job, Bob was enjoying grad school and would just wait until the next assignment date. I wasn’t going to give up but there was nothing I could do about at the moment. It was shortly after I came to that conclusion, that someone from the synod office called me about starting an interview process here.
See I want to make a disclaimer about what Jesus said. Our gospel starts by saying that you can’t serve both God and money, and Jesus says not to worry. But Jesus does not say not to plan. And aren’t those completely different things? And the gospel ends by Jesus telling us not to worry about tomorrow for today’s trouble is enough for today. And yet part of today’s work is to prepare for tomorrow, everyone knows that if you do not work today, you will not eat tomorrow.
There is nothing we can do if our employer decides to lay off our entire department. But we can be a good employee so that if we do get laid off, we have a good relationship with our past employer in order to have a good reference. It is pointless to worry about how we did on that test, but if we studied so that we did our best, we at least know we were prepared as well as we could have been. We may worry about paying for our retirement, but we can set aside money and invest wisely now so that we do have money later and along with that realize that we are doing what we can now, and worrying about it and checking our IRA daily is not going to do much to help us.
As a congregation, we can worry about what money is left in the bank from the sale of the old parsonage and live in fear that we only have X amount of time left (which by the way that date changes every time I hear it). But then we are giving into an idea of scarcity, there is only so much time left. And we begin to become inward focused, worrying only about ourselves and the amount of time we have left. And there will never be enough time and enough money. I know of one congregation that has an endowment that will be able to pay for their entire annual budget for 20 years and yet they are still worried that 20 years is not long enough.
Instead Jesus is asking us to live with a different economy. Not one based on money, but one based on God’s love. And God’s love is abundant! Every parent I know who has more than one child agrees that when their second came along, their love for the first child was not divide between the two, but instead they all of a sudden had more love, their love wasn’t just added but multiplied or increased exponential. This is what God’s love and an economy based on God’s love is like. When we stop worrying and start living in an economy based in love we start realizing how much we are given and are able to do so much more than when we live lives based in scarcity and worry.
As a congregation, we can instead look at the bottom line and think of how wonderful it is that we know we will be around for at least the next 3 to 5 years and think of all the wonderful things we can do in that time. With God’s guidance we can do great ministry. We can reach out to the people of this community, this country and this world to show God’s love to them. We can plan ahead for that ministry to happen both in the next few years and beyond. And we can stop worrying about if there will be enough time and instead realize that God will provide it.
But it all starts with us as individuals. First we have to realize that God’s abundant love is already at work in this world. So let’s start by me asking, where do you see God’s abundant love in this world?
Now I have some homework for you. Throughout Lent I’m going to ask you for pictures and stories of where you see God’s abundant love in this world. Go out, take pictures, cut them out of the newspaper, print them off the computer, email them to me if you need to. Write down and tell stories about how you saw God each day and bring those stories in. And I’m going to put them up, we are going to see through each others words and eyes, where we see God and where we see God’s love. And through these pictures and stories we will realize that we have more than enough and can stop worrying.
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