Second Sunday after Pentecost
May 25, 2008
Sermon by Pastor
The Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew. (Matthew 6:24-34)
[Jesus said to the
disciples:] "No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate
the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the
other. You cannot serve God and wealth.
“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? Look 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? And can any of you by worrying add a single
hour to your span of life? And why do
you worry about clothing? Consider the
lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you,
even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field,
which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will God not much
more clothe you—you of little faith? Therefore,
do not worry saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will
we wear?’ For it is the Gentiles who
strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you
need all these things. But strive first
for the
“So do not worry
about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.”
The Gospel of the Lord.
Please join me in prayer.
Our loving and gracious God, on this beautiful holiday weekend, we are
aware that your mercies are new each day. Grant us a sense of wonder and praise,
that we might receive them.
Amen.
The text for today’s reflection is taken from Jesus’ own
reflection on the Sermon on the Mount. “Consider the lilies of the field; they
neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you that even Solomon was not arrayed like one
of these. Look at the birds of the air,
consider the lilies of the field.”
And then that great line at the very end of the text, "So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow
will bring worries of its own. Today’s
trouble is enough for today." So
on the very same Memorial Day weekend that we honor those who have served our
country, our text invites us to consider the beauty of this day, to rest from
our worries, allowing us on the Sabbath to bring worship and wonder together,
and embrace the mystery of it all.
What did you or I ever do to merit such a beautiful
summer day in
It promises to be one of those weekends when author
George Elliot’s observation comes true, that if we are truly alive and
attentive enough we should be able to see the grass grow and hear the squirrel’s
heartbeat; when we find hope again—in a seemingly hopeless world heading for
economic and military disaster—in accomplishing small garden tasks, remembering with
British author Virginia Wolff that you
don’t have to spray the whole side of the house just to water a single rose
bush. Imagine that. The seeds of hope can be found in watering
and caring, as the creator does, for just one solitary rose bush. And so it is here on this holiday weekend, on
this Sabbath, where we bring worship and wonder together, and in so doing we
find the seeds of hope at a day to let go of our worries.
I know what I am going to do today. Before I head over to my sister’s backyard
for an extended family gathering and cookout, I’m going to take my daily
creation theology ritual of a walk, walking my golden retriever along the
parkway. The thing that I always first
notice about Marcella Rose is her absolute delight and enthusiasm at the
littlest things: finding the leash, finding the door, and then the perky prance
down the alley, around the corner. It is
as if she is seeing the birds, the squirrels, the other puppies that we have
met a thousand times, for the very first time each time.
I love to go down the parkway because I love to see so
many signs of wonder, so many people enjoying the simple signs of
creation. It is the most noncompetitive
sight in the city. No one is trying to
take anything from anyone. And only on
the swings at the park across the way is someone trying to rise higher by seeing
someone else slow down. And everybody—the dog walkers, the moms with the
strollers two‑by‑two, the Frisbee players, the softball players,
the families sitting on the blankets on the grass, with picnics under the
weeping willows along the creek—everyone is receiving something, like a
renewed sense of physical and spiritual well-being. It’s coming from everywhere, the sense of
well-being, from the sky and air, from billowing clouds and singing birds; it’s
coming from the gentle sounds of the creek, from the sounds of the ice-cream
truck. But most of all, this sense of
well-being is coming from the people themselves, from each other, because they
have time for just a day to let go of their worries and be with one
another. And it is all free. The heavens are telling the glory of God. And we are once again reminded that, with the
old church father Iraneous, the glory of
God is a human being fully alive.
And so we observe the best of our creation theology on
these holiday weekends when we pause for a moment to let our worries go by and
to put it together on the Sabbath, bringing worship and wonder together, so
that mystery and gratitude might not escape us.
Now, I am one who does believe that the agnostic and the
atheist deserve a place at the table, along with the practicing Buddhist, the
practicing Jew, the practicing Christian, Hindu, Muslim, and Lutheran. But so often when you ask the atheist to
describe the God they don’t believe in, they generally describe an all-powerful,
way-out-up-there, detached, omnipotent, boring, loveless and lifeless god that
you wouldn’t trust or believe in either.
But on a glorious day like today, worship and wonder and
the very best of creation theology start from the at least sneaking suspicion
or maybe even firm conviction that there must be something more. Both worship and wonder recognize that
mystery is a fact of life, that time, fresh air, space, life itself, like God,
are wonders and miracles in and of themselves.
Worship and wonder recognize that if we do not look for something above
and beyond us we soon sink to something below and beneath us.
And so we need worship and wonder and days of rest, we
who subordinate our lives to our jobs and thereby condemn our soul, we who
forget the one who drew our attention and yet today draws our gaze to consider
the lilies of the field and the birds of the air.
This nation that refuses to recognize our mutual
interdependence, fragility, and vulnerability, humans with the earth and the
earth with all its creatures; this nation that refuses to recognize our mutual
vulnerability with other nations and peoples of the world, and even consider
such acknowledgment to be simply loss of nerve; this nation and every nation
that tries to go it "Lone Ranger" in this world today is in need of
worship, to bring us to our knees before a creator on whom we depend, and a
sense of wonder, for it is in the God of all creation that we move and have our
very being.
A final purpose for worship and wonder then is that
worship and wonder carry us into wanting peace and shalom, in Hebrew
terminology, for the whole human race and all of creation.
Such a longing is not a pressure but always a
possibility for those who trust that the spirit of God is already moving and
transforming in ways we do not yet know.
And even if today we cannot afford to be optimistic, we can
realistically be persistent, knowing that if at regular intervals we take time
to worship and wonder with God, that we will be able to sing with Isaiah:
“Those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength;
they shall mount up with wings like eagles;
they shall run and not grow weary;
they shall walk and not faint”;
knowing, trusting that on a marvelous, glorious weekend
like this one that your creator and mine asks us simply to be, to consider the lilies of the field, to look at the birds of
the air, and to simply be radiantly, beautifully, and gracefully friends of the
creator.
Amen.