This week we continue our series of Gospel readings from Matthew’s account of the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew doesn’t give us any clues as to how many people were gathered on that mountainside to hear Jesus preach, but it probably was a big crowd – possibly thousands of people. For this short period of time they left their everyday chores and responsibilities behind to focus only and entirely on the words that Jesus spoke. But when He was done speaking, they would have headed to their homes and the realities of living 2,000 years ago. The realities of life in ancient Palestine, when just surviving and getting by from one day to another certainly was far more difficult that anything that we have ever experienced. You didn’t stop at the grocery store to buy your food – you had to grow it. You didn’t just buy a loaf of bread – the day began with the women grinding the grain and baking the loaves that would be eaten that day. You didn’t just turn the handle of a faucet to get water – you walked to the town well and carried water back to your house.
It was a hard life, made even more difficult by occasional droughts and failed crops and severe famine. Made even more difficult by invaders like the Romans who made life almost unbearable with their demands and their cruelty and their crushingly high taxes. If you got sick there were few physicians, no hospitals and an overall medical care that could best be described as primitive. The average life expectancy here in Illinois is approximately 78 years; in Jesus’ time, the life expectancy of a resident of Israel is estimated to be no more that 45 to 50 years. Infant mortality rates were sky high.
Obviously, the people who heard Jesus preach the Sermon on the Mount had plenty to worry about. So Jesus wasn’t speaking just in generalities – He clearly was addressing a matter of daily concern – when He said: “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? … And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? … Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.”
But what about us – here, today, in the United States of America? Do our Lord’s words mean anything more to us than just a generalized statement about not worrying? Have we as a nation advanced so far, at least economically, that these are no longer issues we even have to think about? I think you know the answer, because the sad reality is that our lives are often filled with worry. Last week Sharon and I visited our shut-ins, and almost every one of them mentioned some kind of worry or concern about finances, about just getting by. When you live on a small fixed income, a $300 bill from the power company is devastating. Pana water bills have soared during this past year. The price of gas jumped by thirty-two cents on Wednesday morning, and there are predictions that it could cost more than $4 a gallon by summer. Prescription medicine costs continue to go up and up. Going to the doctor or the dentist can cost hundreds of dollars; going to the emergency room can cost thousands, even tens of thousands.
This morning we hear Jesus telling us to stop worrying. But when He says that, what does He really mean – what does He expect us to do? Is He saying that we don’t have to budget or we don’t have to save or that we don’t have to be careful how we spend our money – just put it on the credit card and figure out how to pay for it later? Or could it be that Jesus really wants you to reexamine your life? To ask yourself that hard question: “Who – really – is my God?” Is it the God whose loving care is beyond question? Or is it the god of my own choosing?
At no time on the history of the world has a nation and a culture enjoyed the sumptuous lifestyle that we collectively enjoy right here and now. Sure, some have more than others – but can any of us honestly say that we don’t have enough, that we don’t have what we truly need? We have so much stuff that we sometimes confuse our needs with our wants. We convince ourselves that we must have things that we really don’t need. We convince ourselves that we just couldn’t operate without a cell phone – but we used to get along just fine without them. We convince ourselves that we can’t survive without cable or a satellite dish for watching a big-screen high-def television – but years ago we were satisfied with one or maybe two stations that we watched on a small black-and-white TV screen. I remember how happy I used to be to have a dial-up internet connection, but today we have been spoiled by high-speed broadband and DLS internet connections. Could you survive without your smart phone or your iPod or your GPS or your microwave oven?
Jesus tells us: “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.” Jesus was dead serious here, my friends; you cannot serve two masters. Yet Satan tempts us to believe that we can. We have this constant temptation to try to walk a tightrope, balancing our desire to serve God with our desire to serve ourselves. It’s almost like we’re praying, “Lord, I’ll love you with all of my heart and my soul and my mind. But please don’t ask too much of me. Don’t make my life too uncomfortable.” And that’s not really a prayer to God – it’s nothing more than a bargain with the devil.
Jesus gives us a solution to this dilemma, but He doesn’t give us the easy answers we might want. He doesn’t give us a tidy list of the things we ought to have and then ask us to be satisfied and not to want or worry about anything else. What he says is less specific but far more sweeping in scope. Jesus tells us to completely reorder our lives. “But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you,” He says. We are to have just one master – and to seek all good things from Him.
Where – and how – are you able to do that? Where do you go except to those places where our Lord has promised to be? You go to His Means of Grace, by which he gives the righteousness that becomes our righteousness. In other words, to have one master and to seek all good things from Him means that we will first seek the very life of God that was poured out for us on the cross for the salvation of the world. We will seek first the one thing needful, the living and abiding Word of God, the Word by which He reveals His love for us. We will seek first the Word made flesh, the very body and blood given to us in the Lord’s Supper.
What Jesus intends is for our lives to be so completely reordered that we look only to Him, precisely so that we can be free from the worries of this life. Remember what Jesus says. Seek Him first and all of these other things will be added to you – will be given to you. That doesn’t mean that all of life’s challenges and troubles will just disappear. There may very well be times when there isn’t enough money at the end of the month to cover all of the bills. When that happens, decisions – often hard decisions – must be made, taking a good hard look to decide between the things we need and the things we want.
Jesus told the crowd: “Look at the birds of the air … your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?” When we first seek God’s kingdom and His righteousness, then what we come to see is that all of the things Jesus is talking about are the very daily bread for which He has invited us – commanded us – to pray. We receive this daily bread solely from His hand. Sometimes it may be much and at other times it may be little, so we learn to receive that daily bread with thanksgiving – as a pure and free gift of God – thanksgiving directed toward the giver of those gifts.
In the final analysis, that is the very nature of our God. He is the giver God who gives us what we need to sustain this body and life. He is the giver God who gave the life of His own Son for the forgiveness of our sins. He is the giver God who continues to give His blessings and His life to you, with grace so overflowing that your cup will never be empty. As He reminds us: “But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all of these things will be added to you.” That is the love of our giver God. And His promise.
Note: This sermon has been freely adapted from a text that originally appeared in Concordia Pulpit Resources.
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