Worth the Worry: 8th Sunday after Epiphany

Matthew 6:24-34

A few weeks ago, I said I was looking forward to the “teaching” season of Epiphany. How much are you all looking forward to Jesus’ teaching after weeks of hearing:

How blessed you are when people persecute you for Jesus’ sake:

How it is better for you to enter the kingdom of heaven with an eye torn out rather than going to Hell with both eyes:

How if someone slaps you on the right cheek, you should offer them your left?

And this Sunday, you might wonder if Jesus is parroting Bobby McFerin: Don’t worry / Be happy. Is that the Gospel? Is it Good News to be told that all your worries are a sign of your insufficient faith? Well, don’t suppose for a second that Jesus never worried. “Father, if it be your will, take this cup from me...And the sweat poured from his brow like drops of blood.”

So Jesus worried. But He knew what was worth worrying about. Two Sundays ago, I said that Jesus understood that sometimes a mental therapist needs to shock her patient with his worst fear in order to dispel it.

Today, Jesus is doing something similar. He says something that makes no sense. It makes no sense not to worry about the necessities of life. That is, unless your eyesight of life’s necessities is too near sighted, unless you spend so much time worrying about the daily concerns of life that you lose focus of those necessities of life that, if you’re not careful, you won’t see until it’s too late. Jesus isn’t saying never to worry. He’s trying to refocus our worry.

Why do we worry? We worry when something we thought had under our control turns out not to be under our control at all. In our constant worry, that which we thought we controlled turns out to have control over us.

“You cannot serve God and Money,” Jesus warns us. That’s Money with an uppercase “M.” Money is not a thing. It is a force in our lives with such power that it might as well be a person with a name. How much of our attention, our effort and our worry do we give to Money? How much energy do we sacrifice to Money to the point of exhaustion, only to not be able to sleep because Money won’t let us?

Or maybe it’s Fame with an uppercase “F” that you think will make you feel like you’re on top of the world. Or maybe it’s Knowledge with an uppercase “K” that you suppose will give you control over those around you if you think you know more about them than they know about you, or can beat them in an argument. Whatever we end up serving rather than God begins as an assertion of control. But in the end, we become slaves of that which we would control.

So what should we worry about? God’s dominion and God’s justice. If we say we believe in one God “the maker of heaven and earth,” then can we follow that through to accepting that God is in control, of us and this world? Can we trust that whatever trouble befalls us today, God will hold our hand as we pass through that trouble?

What we need, more than food, clothing and protection, is to know that our lives have a purpose and meaning which outlives them. Each day has enough trouble for us to take to our heavenly Father in prayer. And the Father of us would rather we come to him with our insecurities than pretending we’re not really afraid.

Go to him in prayer, and start looking at the world through his eyes. You might find your problems are not so large compared to the sufferings of those around you. Of course, you’ll never see as far as God can see. But God has a purpose for each one of us. Our lives have a meaning that may take years for us to understand. But seek his purpose for your life, and along the way you will find that your life has a meaning which makes the worries of today so, so small.