Armadale Uniting Church

Sermon for 8th Sunday 

"Don’t worry, be happy"

Sermon for the 8^th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Martin Wright

Armadale Uniting Church, 25 May 2008

Matthew 6:24-34

“Don’t worry, be happy.”  If only it were so easy.  Our Lord’s teaching that we should “not worry about tomorrow” seems entirely unreasonable.  How are we supposed to not worry?  With all the demands placed on us, the many roles we are expected to fulfil?  Plenty of these demands and expectations come from good sources—our families and friends, those we are committed to; our work, which can never have enough of us.  Then there’s the various pressures of society in general, the pressure to fit in, to keep up a capable and in-control image, to hide our weakness because it’s too disturbing to share it with others.  We citizens of the 21^st century know all about worry.  So how do we not worry about tomorrow?

These teachings come from that most wonderful part of Matthew’s gospel, the Sermon on the Mount, a passage which is both deeply liberating and deeply challenging.  The freedom which Jesus holds out in his words is never bought cheaply, it always comes at a cost.  The alternatives on offer are stark—God or wealth, faith or worry—so stark that it can seem impossible to commit ourselves entirely to what Jesus asks.  For this reason many Christians have concluded that the Sermon on the Mount was written basically to guilt us, to make us realize how sinful we are and how much we depend on God’s grace.  But that misses the point. 

The sermon is addressed to “you of little faith”, a name Jesus often gives his disciples in this gospel.  Which is reassuring really, because it puts us in the same position as those first disciples—we have a little faith.  Not a great faith, but not none either; a small, vulnerable, fragile faith, which has to keep us going.  Jesus understands this when he teaches his disciples:  that to go through the world trying to follow him will make them vulnerable, open to attack from those who do not share this little faith.  In these teachings he equips us for that journey by showing us what the world would look like if only our faith were greater. 

The Jesus of Matthew’s gospel sees things in black-and-white terms, but we tend to prefer shades of grey, negotiating a middle way.  To a certain extent we can’t escape from that.  But that doesn’t mean that Jesus’ stark alternatives aren’t much more true than our own blurry way of seeing things.  If our faith were like his, we would recognize the choices before us for what they really are. 

The most exemplary Christians you meet are people who have begun to learn this:  people who manage to keep their gaze focussed pretty constantly on God.  And the interesting thing is that when you manage to keep God in focus, everything else becomes a lot clearer too.  It becomes much more obvious what things in life really matter, what things will endure and are worth devoting yourself to, and what things will just fall away and aren’t worth losing any sleep over.  “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you”—everything you truly need will be provided. 

This is basically what Jesus teaches us about wealth.  He names it for the enslaving power it is—we may think we own our wealth, but really it owns us.  Remember the story of the rich young man, whose only obstacle to following Jesus was his many possessions.  Jesus knew that he could only become free to follow him by giving them all away, but so great was their power over him that he couldn’t tear himself away.  “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also”—his vision was too clouded to recognize true freedom when it was offered to him. 

Now we who live in affluent Western cities, never mind in Armadale, are unimaginably wealthy by the standards of most of the world’s population.  And we are kidding ourselves if we think that our wealth doesn’t have any power over us.  It clouds our vision and stops us from seeing things as they really are.  On the other hand, Christians have always had some sort of wealth; even in the most idyllic image of the church, as described the book of Acts, the Christians have enough to get on with life.  They share all things in common and give away what they don’t really need, but they still provide for the essentials. 

So it becomes very difficult for us to see what sort of wealth is unavoidable, and what is enslaving.  The reason we find this hard to see is that our vision is clouded by our wealth!  And the only thing we can do to clear it up a little is to practice giving, to dispense with what we don’t truly need and give it to those who do—which in this day must mean the “third world”.  The less we hold on to, the less we might discover we ever really needed. 

It’s a similar story when it comes to worrying.  After all, what is wealth but a defence against the worries of tomorrow?  You can’t eat or drink or sleep under money.  What money gives you is the assurance that, next time you want to eat or drink or sleep comfortably, you’ll be able to.  With our wealth we provide for our retirement, our ongoing comfort, our children—our future.  Jesus’ alternative is unimaginable:  to forget about the worries of tomorrow, and trust that God will provide, as he does for all his creation. 

Now Jesus does not say that you will have no worries tomorrow.  He is much more realistic!  “Tomorrow will bring worries of its own.”  But he does say that a person of faith must not spend today worrying about tomorrow, storing up the wealth to provide us with security against an unknown future.  If we could learn a truer faith, we would be able to trust that God will provide all we truly need to get through whatever tomorrow brings, just as he is providing what we truly need to get through today—if only we have the eyes to see it! 

If we can learn to see with the eyes of such a faith, there is something else we will see too.  That we are being brought into a new tomorrow, into the first day of the new week, in which Jesus Christ rises from the dead.  When his disciples, filled with anxiety and grief at the crushing end of all their hopes, come in despair to look for his body, and find instead an empty tomb.  And when they meet their Lord in the garden, in that moment all their worries fall to the ground, and are revealed for the hollow phantoms they always were.  And there arises among them a new and shining hope, a new confidence, a new vision.

May that vision be ours too.  Let us keep our eyes fixed firmly on him who rose from the dead.  Let us lay all our troubles on his broad shoulders, and trust in him to bring us safely through today, into tomorrow.