The Need-not-itudes Sermon on th

The Need-not-itudes

Sermon on the Mount # 11 a sermon on Matthew 6.24-34 by David C. Mauldin Westminster Presbyterian Church, Mobile, Alabama

I attended a small, Christian liberal arts college with a good program for preparing for ministry. We had mandatory chapel services, and in the spring ministry students would preach. I still remember the sermon my friend Brad Garner preached on this passage. He said the Sermon on the Mount begins with the Beatitudes. Then Jesus says, “You have heard it said … but I say to you.” And we might call those the Do-not-itudes. This passage, however, is the best of all—call it the Need-not-itudes. You need not worry. You need not be anxious. Brad was a good student and would have made a fine minister, but a terrible experience in the church where he did his internship soured him on the church, and he chose a different vocation. The bitterness of that disappointment has stayed with me. So today’s title may be a bit cheesy, but I wanted to honor Brad.

The Need-not-itudes … I like the tone of that; and tone is everything in this passage. For behind the words on the page is the voice of Jesus, and if you do not hear the lightness in his voice and see the smile on his face, you do not yet understand. We often think of the cross and Gethsemane and the temptation of Jesus and imagine him to be a man of sorrow, always serious, stern, bearing the weight of the world’s sin every moment. There is truth in that, but it is only half of the whole truth. Jesus noticed the birds and the flowers (even if we do not), and he saw in them evidence of his Father’s loving care. Jesus enjoyed a good meal with friends. When a person like Zacchaeus met Jesus and changed his life, do you think Jesus didn’t celebrate? He tells us the angels in heaven celebrate when even one sinner far from God returns home. Imagine his joy. I am not saying Jesus was a wild and crazy guy, although his enemies accused him of being a glutton and a drunkard. I am insisting that he was a happy person, someone who appreciated the little signs of God’s love we can find all around us if we take the trouble to look. In the first century, the Greco-Roman worldview that most everyone held, the Jews being a notable exception, saw this world as a prison of suffering to be escaped if possible. All the pagan philosophers and religions shared this bleak assessment. Jesus saw life and this world as good. Life and the things that sustain it are gifts from the Father, and the Father loves us. Jesus was not unacquainted with sorrow and suffering, but he nevertheless was a joyful person.

In this passage, Jesus invites us to be like him. Would he preach this if he did not also live this way? His disciples would have seen through such hypocrisy in a minute. This is so, so very important. Why? For two reasons: first, what Jesus demands from us in this passage is not easy. And it is a command. “Do not worry … do not be anxious.” He says it over and over in the imperative mood. Without a good role model to show us how, we might not be capable of obeying. You need to hear his laughter, feel the sense of assurance you get when he is near, to know what he says is possible. We do not walk beside him in Galilee, but we have the gospels and we have his Spirit living within us if we belong to him. He speaks from experience. We can trust him because we see the result in him.

Second, it is important that Jesus lived and taught these things because if anyone else in all of history—anyone else, no matter how respected or esteemed—had said this, I would simply dismiss it as pure bunk. Do not worry? Nonsense! I grew up learning how to worry. If we didn’t have something to worry about, we got worried that we were overlooking something. How in the world can you stop worrying? If you command yourself not to worry, the most likely result is that you will add to your other worries the concern that you worry too much. Plus, give me one good reason not to worry. The birds of the air and the flowers of the field? They don’t have a mortgage. Aren’t there birds that starve to death? We know there are people who do. I am a person. I don’t want to starve. Most likely I will not, but I also do not want to get hurt in a car accident, get cancer, or suffer heart disease. Those are very real dangers. Given all the uncertainties of life, I’d say worrying makes a lot of sense. Granted, worrying doesn’t do a bit of good. I cannot by worrying add a minute to my life or a dollar to my wallet. And it may do harm. I could speed the onset of heart disease by living in constant stress. But even if I wanted to stop worrying, how could I? Is it even possible?

It must be, because Jesus said it. Do not consider these teachings apart from the teacher. The person behind them means everything. He knows from experience, and he alone has access to the reason we should not worry and the key to unlock our cell. This reason, this key, is his Father.

Let’s turn our attention now to the text to learn how Jesus would have us live. He gives us a command that is an invitation. “Do not worry” is a command in the same way “give me your hand” is a command when a coast guard helicopter is rescuing you from the roof of a flooded house after a hurricane. Can you imagine a coast guard officer dangling out of a helicopter on a wire saying, “If you think you might like to, and if it happens to be convenient, you might consider giving me your hand”? Nonsense. When the peril is great, a command is given: “Grab my hand!” Jesus is doing the same thing, and the danger he would rescue us from is grave and terrible.

We human beings so easily take the good things our Creator gives us and put them in his place. Jesus is continuing down the track he started last week when he talked about our treasure. “No one can serve two masters,” he begins. And we think, “Sure, that’s obvious. Where is he going with this?” Then he hits the punch line: “You cannot serve God and mammon.” And we think, “What’s mammon?” Mammon is an Aramaic word. Jesus spoke Aramaic in everyday conversation. Whether he knew Greek or not is a matter of scholarly speculation. Probably he knew some; most everyone did. But his cradle language—the language he used with his friends and fellow Jews—was Aramaic. The New Testament was written in Greek, but occasionally an Aramaic word is preserved from Jesus’ original teaching, as it is here. Mammon means “money” or “wealth,” but it carries a strong negative connotation, like the English word lucre. Have you every heard of lucre that wasn’t filthy? The same holds for mammon. Mammon is money when it crawls out of its rightful place in the universe as a helpful tool for sustaining human life and tries to ascend God’s throne. … This is bold teaching. Jesus says you cannot serve both God and wealth. One of them is bound to be a mere tool that you use. You can’t desire both God and wealth. For me this is a frightening teaching. I am not rich by the standards of our culture, but by the standards of the whole world I am. And I have more than many in our community. Prosperity is a spiritual danger. If Jesus were merely saying, you can have all the stuff you want as long as you love God more, I would rest easier. I don’t think he is saying that. He teaches that if you love God you cannot love money or the things it buys at all. You will of course have some money—some will have more and others less—but you must never see it as anything more than a tool for doing the will of God.

The first word of verse 25 is the most important in the passage: “Therefore.” You cannot serve God and wealth, so what can you do? You can stop worrying. Writing about this passage, the great theologian Karl Barth talked about “the dissatisfied man who necessarily becomes his own slave and lives in bondage of his need of security” [Church Dogmatics, IV.2, pp. 470-471]. That’s an odd way to put it, becoming your own slave, but that is what it amounts to when you serve wealth and security rather than God. Into this unhappy condition, Jesus’ invitation comes like a fresh wind, showing us a new and different way. We need not be slaves to fear and anxiety. We need not pursue more and more, always to discover more is never enough. We can choose God and trust God. Serving God means we are free from the old anxieties. Jesus does not simply tell us not to worry. He gives us an alternative that makes it possible: trusting God.

Jesus issues four commands in this passage. The first is in verse 25: “Do not worry.” He offers three reasons. First, the birds. They do not plant, harvest, or store; but our Father in heaven provides for them. How does this help me? As I was praying through this passage, I asked myself a disturbing question: Could I preach on this passage in the poorest slums of Rio? I am not sure. But I know Jesus could, so any problem must be with me. This liberating command is definitely Good News for the poor. You do not need money if you have God. But what about people living in abject poverty, where children do starve to death? I know God loves those children. How can I square Jesus’ simple trust in God with the hardest facts of life?

Victor Shepherd, a Presbyterian pastor and professor in Toronto, once preached a fascinating sermon defending God against the defamation that he has failed to provide adequately. In it Shepherd pointed to statistics about the amount of food produced in the world. It is more than adequate to feed even the gigantic population earth now has. Why then do people starve? It must be our fault. Evil within human hearts and social structures gets in the way. Maybe too many people serve mammon. This helps, but it does not solve the problem. Can we trust God to overcome such evil and care for us? Every Christian knows God will come through in the end. Barth also said that death is the root of all anxiety, and that now that God has taken death away as an object of fear by raising Jesus from the dead, what do we have to really be worried about? Still, I am prone to worry. God will raise me from the dead on the Great Day of Resurrection. Between now and when I die, however, I prefer to live indoors, eat well, and not suffer painful illness. God does not guarantee those things. Instead he promises that his grace will be sufficient for me.

The second reason Jesus offers is the flowers of the field—not just lilies but also the crocus, the anemone, and the gladiolus—for you flower people. I probably do not need to say this, but just in case … Jesus is not telling us to be like the birds and the flowers. He merely uses them to demonstrate God’s loving care for his creatures. We all know someone who follows Jesus’ teaching about the birds and flowers too literally: They neither toil nor spin nor gather into barns. And consequently they show up at your door hoping you will co-sign a loan for them. Jesus is not saying we should not work or save or plan for the future. God gives you the ability to earn a living (or provides for you somehow), and he expects you to be wise and faithful with what you have. Use your abilities and your money to be faithful to him. Be generous. He will care for you. Don’t love your money, even a little. But don’t be so unconscious of it that you spend it foolishly and end up in debt or distress, not because God let you down but because you were foolish.

Jesus gives a third reason: Worry does no good. We know that. By itself it is not enough, but when we see it skipping along holding hands with his teaching about God’s fatherly care, we know there is a practical alternative. The things of this world can get in the way of our love for God. We do not even have to own anything. Desire for and anxiety about the things of this world also get in the way. Jesus sets us free by offering us his simple trust in God as the antidote.

Jesus gently chides his disciples in verse 30, calling them “you of little faith.” We know he means us too. We care about the wrong things and worry ourselves to death because we do not trust God enough.

The second command Jesus gives in this passage is … “Do not worry.” He repeats himself, but he offers a new reason. “The Gentiles seek or desire all these things.” A Gentile, of course, is anyone who is not a Jew. Jesus was a Jew and so was his audience. More importantly, for our purposes, Gentiles are those who are not God’s people. The Sermon on the Mount is about what it means to be God’s people. The Gentiles are those who do not know God. They are not salt and light. We Gentile Christians who have been grafted into God’s people are not this sort of Gentile anymore. We are now part of God’s people. And God’s people do not live the way everyone else does. Everyone else may make financial security their highest goal, but we cannot. God’s people are different, and it shows in many ways. Chief among them should be how we think about and use money.

Jesus encourages us that our Father in heaven knows our needs and will care for us. Jesus teaches that God is close to us and caring. He is not distant from his creation, so high and exalted that he cannot be bothered by such mundane concerns as food and clothing. He is the creator, the giver of all good things. He has filled the world with good things to meet our basic needs and give us a bit of joy. C.S. Lewis argues in The Problem of Pain that God does not give us the security we long for because if he did we would quickly turn from him to the things of this world. Instead God gives us enough happiness and comfort and delight to let us know he is there and that he has something better for us down the road. We get signposts, pointing to our true and highest joy, which can only be found in God himself.

Nevertheless, I don’t want you to miss the important point that the things of this world are not evil in themselves. Some religions think that way. Not Jesus. When a Christian receives something good, even something small like a nice hot cup of coffee (if you like coffee), he or she recognizes it as a gift from God, thanks God for it, uses it for the purpose God intended, and enjoys it. God gives us good things in order to sustain us and show his love for us. We honor him with it when we direct our love and desire to him, use his gifts according to his will, and share what we have with others. Jesus is not saying we should despise food and clothing. Rather he wants us to trust God for them.

Jesus issues a third command: “Seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness.” A promise is added, “And all these things will be added to you.” How can you stop worrying? Direct your concern to what really matters: the Kingdom of God. If your most passionate desire is to love God and live as a kingdom person (as Jesus teaches in the Sermon on the Mount), you would discover that a lot of things you think are worth obsessing over really aren’t. The kingdom is your purpose. It is your destiny. It is what matters. Everything else, even the essentials of life, are secondary. You know Jesus would say something like this. He went to the cross for the kingdom.

At last we reach the fourth command: “Do not worry.” Four commands and three of them are the same! Once again, Jesus gives a reason: “Tomorrow can worry about itself. Today’s troubles are enough for now.” I also like the line: “Worry is the interest you pay on tomorrow’s troubles.” I think I got that from the wall at Wintzell’s. Again, Jesus is not saying don’t plan for the future. He just wants to set us free from anxiety about the wrong things. Live in the present moment. Seek God’s kingdom every day. Plan for the future but do not make it your treasure. Do not, out of concern for your own future needs, neglect to share with others today. Even the most hardened skeptic can agree: Today’s trouble is enough for today.

I want to end by sharing with you a funny story from a book called The Best Things in Life, by Peter Kreeft. Kreeft is a professor of philosophy at Boston College, and he likes to write books in which Socrates shows up and asks people questions. In this book, Socrates shows up on a college camps and begins asking students questions about life.

Socrates encounters a student and asks him what he is doing. The student replies that he is reading. “Why?” asks Socrates. “So I can pass an exam.” Why do you want to do that? “To get a degree.” Why do you want one? “So I can get a good job.” What is a good job, and why do you want one? “To make lots of money.” Why do you want lots of money? “Everything—for example, having a family.” What is the biggest expense in raising a family? “Sending kids to college.” Why do you want to do that? “So they can get good jobs.” When Socrates points out that the student is arguing in a circle, the student adds, “I also need money for my own good.” What is your own good? “The good life, fun and games.” If what you want is leisure to have fun, why not have fun now, instead of studying? The student explains about “delayed gratification.”

Socrates then pushes him deeper. A thing may be good for itself. We call this an “end.” Or it may be good for something else. We call this a “means.” Happiness is an end. We want to be happy for the sake of being happy, not in order to do something else. We might want success or fame as a means to happiness.

So what is money? Money is a means to some other end. What end? The student mentions buying a house and a car. Socrates asks, “Are the house and car ends or means?” The student decides they are means. To what? A place to live. A way to get around. For what purpose? For what end? And there the student realizes he has a problem. He has no clue what is living for. He wants money as a means to get the good things in life, and he wants those things … why? What is the greatest good? What is the chief end? That student will be a long time reaching a conclusion, but Jesus suggests the answer to us in today’s passage. Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. That is why we live. We can trust God to take care of how we live. All the things people chase after, they are merely tools. For what? Few stop to ask that question, and fewer still have the answer. Once you know it, you can stop chasing. Stop worrying. Stop obsessing. You need not do it. Jesus sets you free. Amen.

rev_mauldin@yahoo.com
February 11, 2007

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