"Putting Love First”

Sermon February 27 2011
Isaiah 49:8-16a
Psalm 131
1 Corinthians 4:1-5
Matthew 6:24-34

My mother often worried about me, especially when I was in college and seminary because I didn’t seem to be too concerned about my money. She worried about all of us, but of course I heard more about how I worried her. She worried when I didn’t know what I wanted to do after college. And then when I started seminary, she worried because I was going into ministry. And I worried, worried about money, career, love, college, seminary, career and life in general. But worrying about it—my mother’s worry or mine—didn’t change the situation. So, I guess what I’m telling you is that I worry and I think it’s hereditary.

And I’m not the only one. Even when people don’t say the word, I know people worry about all kinds of things. Every night Carl and I worry about what we’re going to have for dinner—not that we don’t have food, but such a variety that we can’t decide. But both of our families have had times when they did worry about food and where it was coming from. I’ve wondered if I was going to have rent money, car payment, etc.

And in the midst of my worry, I’m not thinking about the abundance of the world that God created and how God provides what we need—somewhere it’s available—but really what I’m worried about is the money I have or don’t have. Does that sound at all familiar? I thought so.

Jesus’ audience weren’t immune to worry either—and in their world, life was much more precarious. He begins by stated clearly the source of worry, “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.” Wealth or the lack thereof is the worry. Our security seems to lay in wealth of one kin or another. If we’ve got it, we want to protect it. If we don’t have it, we seem to think it will fix everything. Wealth and security are linked to kingdom in Jesus' time. Security came from a powerful king and the means to acquire wealth (and that kind of security) came from a stable kingdom.

Living in a modern, democratic society, we can hardly imagine the emotion impact the word kingdom (a word Jesus uses over and over). And in Jesus’ time, and long before the time of Jesus, one had to have the protection of living within a kingdom to even survive. As we read scripture and read of the people God chose stepping away from the protection of a kingdom, what we’re really reading about is people stepping away from known order into possible chaos and it took tremendous faith to do that. Abraham left a kingdom or city state called Ur to follow the promise that God gave him. He left with wife and household and walked into the unknown trusting only in God’s promise. When the Hebrew people left Egypt and slavery they left the only life they’d ever known. Even when the Israelites left Babylon (which had become Persia) to return to the Promised Land, they left order to return to land of chaos. God’s are often found leaving the security of an established authority and trusting God to take care of them in some other way and in some other time.

In Isaiah, the people of Israel are going to come home after years of exile—God’s children were coming home. For some of them, Babylon or Persia, was the only home they’d ever know. For some of them, even if they did remember Zion or Jerusalem, they thought God had abandoned them to their captors. Though the prophets had never stopped telling the of God’s love and when, finally, they were seeing the possibility of going home, they still found it hard, as we do to trust that God is leading us to a place called home. But Isaiah evokes God’s ultra maternal care, “Can a woman forget her nursing child or show no compassion for the child of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you.” Wherever we go and have gone, God has never abandoned us. Though we die, we are accompanied to our last breath and beyond by the one who has given us life and death and life again.

God accompanies us into places and times when we feel like the bottom has dropped out of our world—or the order has disappeared—or when despair or depression seems too much. God accompanies us and calls us to faith, even when and especially when there’s nothing left to rely upon.

As we live in a culture and nation that enjoys incredible prosperity compared to many places in the world, one of our greatest temptations is to give our loyalty to the concrete and obvious benefits of that culture and nation. Instead, we are called by Jesus to give our loyalty first to the realm that God is building and to the righteousness that God calls us to live. Other things will fall into place—in some way—according to God’s intentions.

Whenever I begin to consider the difficulty in relying on God—without compromise—a scene from a movie flashes in to my mind. In the 1977 made for TV movie Jesus of Nazareth, there is a scene in the Jewish Council or the Sanhedrin where the leadership were discussing Jesus. Most of them were concerned that Jesus was stirring up chaos too much and the Romans were beginning to notice—they wanted to prevent the Romans from crucifying thousands of Jews on the walls of Jerusalem and other places as had been done before there and in other lands. Some might have been greedy for the relative power
their positions gave them under the Romans, but others (like Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, mentioned in the gospels) seemed to be sincere leaders of God’s people. Whoever we are we often walk a fine line in our person loyalties and priorities for attention, time and resources.

It’s difficult to step out and away for the surest things in life, relying instead upon the promise of a seeming ethereal realm of God—this kingdom that Jesus preached and lived. It’s hard and I don’t know anyone who does it or did it perfectly—except Jesus. Yet, we aren’t supposed to worry about that so much either—just do it to the best of our God-given ability.

Whether we’re looking at the life of the peasant listener in Jesus’ time—the slave of ancient Israel—or listening to Jesus’ words now it’s still takes continuous attention and intention to keep love as a priority in
the complexities of life.

Jesus holds up a way of looking at life that might hold the answers, even in our complicated times. “Look at the birds of the air . . . Consider the lilies of the field . . . they neither toil nor spin and yet . . .” Jesus
isn’t advocating giving up on working, on purpose or on effort and yet we are called to realize that God has provided enough already in this world. We might have to move the food, clothing and shelter around a little bit, with love as that priority, to satisfy each one’s real need, but God’s creation is abundantly and fertile enough to feed us all.

Despite the differences between our world and that of the peasants in Jesus’ homeland, we still struggle to live according to the priority of the love of God’s kingdom without serving two (or more) masters. I
know that I struggle and I worry and I don’t think I am alone. I may not worry about amassing wealth, where I am, but I still am concerned with success and status sometimes. And I don’t worry much about the rise of the chaos of anarchy and violence, I do get a little fearful when I think about giving up all of my trust to God and only God. In my heart I know I can do that, but I always seem to keep a little worry for myself, just to be on the safe side.

But I do see that living according to the way that Jesus revealed in his life—the love that God pours out on us all—means living toward a world free of hunger, thirst and exposure to the elements. God’s kingdom isn’t so much about where you live—or even where you’ll end up—it’s about living toward God’s intentions for the world.

This isn’t new, and it’s probably not over—so in our desire and purpose of living toward the realm that Jesus has announced and inaugurated—we continue to move closer to the rhythm of life that Jesus desired for us and that which God has blessed us.

One writer’s reflection on this text winds up this way, “Don't worry about your life, says Jesus. Don't be afraid. Isaiah acknowledged that the exiles felt "forsaken and forgotten" in their exile to Babylon,
and so he reminded them of the God of "comfort and compassion" (49:13–14).” He continues, “In my better moments, I resonate with the farmer-poet Wendell Berry (born 1934) and his poem The Peace of Wild Things. Berry echoes the words of Jesus about the worries of life:

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
The world can be wild, but Jesus says that under the care of
his Father it can nonetheless be a place of peace.” [1]

As we have explored our discipleship with Jesus Christ, we can recall the journey through the Sermon on the Mount that Matthew reveals to us in Jesus’ teachings.

Through the Beatitudes,
we have immersed ourselves
in the extraordinary and wise ways of God,
and received a glimpse of a vision that is
both beautiful and terrifying in its implications.

In Jesus’ teaching of law and life,
we have immersed ourselves
in the extraordinary and wise ways of God,
and discovered all that we are
and all that God calls us to be is restored in beauty.
We have learned from Jesus how to fulfill boldly
the law of love from the heart.

As Jesus’ taught us who we are and who God loves,
we have immersed ourselves
in the extraordinary and wise ways of God,
and were encouraged to expand
love’s possibilities into the far flung universe.

And in Jesus words of serenity,
we have immersed ourselves
in the extraordinary and wise ways of God,
and make the loving ways of God
our ultimate goal and our greatest loyalty.[2]

In our walk of discipleship, let us be trusting, hopeful and full of God’s beautiful vision as we enter more closely into God’s will for us all. To God’s glory, one God evermore. Amen.

[1]http://www.journeywithjesus.net/ February 27 2011
[2]Seasons of the Spirit, February 27 2011, congregational life, Response.