V for Vanity

Sermon, Part 14 – Anxiety and Wealth

September 7, 2011 at 11:46 pm (Theology)

Today we continue with Jesus’ discourse on the use of wealth in the Sermon on the Mount. Last time we saw Jesus speak about the vanity of relying on wealth and desiring it as your greatest treasure, and the resultant miserly heart you would have. He concluded by saying that, “You cannot serve two masters. […] You cannot serve both God and money.” He now continues on in a similar vein:

“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? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? 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 seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.” [Matthew 6:25-34]

This entire passage is basically an application and discussion of Jesus’ previous conclusion that you cannot serve both God and money. With the assumption that you have decided to serve God (since money is transitory and unpredictable, and serving it will make you stingy), the application is more meat about what that means.

The previous section dealt with desiring money and treasuring – avarice, if you will. This section deals with something that I think is much harder to deal with – security. We are anxious because we are insecure, because we don’t know where our next job is coming from, or which way are relationships are going, or where we’ll be in 3 months, or how we’re going to pay off our student loans, or even how we’re going to feed or protect our family. These, at some level, are all basic needs of ours – financial, relational, physical. And that is why anxiety is so hard to get out of our mind. It doesn’t bring up a red flag when it happens because it comes so naturally to us, and is an internal, mental phenomenon (though it exerts itself in numerous ways through our minds).

Jesus takes two primary tacks at anxiety. The second, lesser one, is simply a practical point on anxiety: worrying doesn’t make anything happen. Practically, it does nothing for you or anyone else (other than raising your stress levels and blood pressure). As Jesus says, “which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?” And I think we know this – that we really shouldn’t worry – but that doesn’t mean we can implement it in our actions. And it may feel ‘good’ to worry, or at least keep our minds busy for a while, or give us something to chat with someone else about. But there is a far better way.

Being anxious about food and clothing is reverting back to our old manner of life – that of serving our possessions. We found security in our possessions when they were there, and became anxious about them when they became uncertain. But you are no longer serving money, but serving God. And as servants get what they need from their masters, so we no longer get what we need from money, but from God.

Jesus’ primary point is that if you are serving God, then not only is being anxious about money fruitless, but actually shows that you lack faith. You are doubting that God will give you what you need. But this is ridiculous – if you are God’s servant, then he has every reason to give you what you need so that you can do well in your service of him.

Jesus uses the metaphors of birds and grass to speak about food and clothes, to demonstrate the faultiness of such thinking. God feeds the birds of the air, and he clothes the grass of the field. Now this is not to say that the birds do nothing but sit in their nest and wait for manna to fall from heaven – but that God has provided them with ways and means to acquire their food. And while the grass doesn’t toil or spin, it does grow – it isn’t completely passive either. So we must not fall into the trap of thinking that we should be waiting around for God to act. But we are of greater value to God than birds or flowers, and will feed and clothe us as well. We should not be anxious and worry about how we will get these things. We should instead focus on our serving of God – for that will give us the means to get what we need. If we fall back to relying on wealth, will God give us our needs, or will he allow our wealth to fail us that we might turn back to Him?

The Gentiles seek after these things: food, drink, and clothing. These are some of the basic essentials of life, though they also are the bases for many kinds of gluttony and elitism. The Romans of the time of Jesus (the primary Gentiles in view) certainly had their ideas of fashion and parties and the purgatorium (which they used to multiply their pleasure). The followers of Jesus are not to be like this. As we are not to treasure and stockpile these things, but instead be generous to others, we are not to be anxious and run after them. They are necessities, but our needs are now being met by God, who knows very well what we need. Remember in Jesus’ prayer the line, “give us our daily bread” – i.e. our bread for today, our bare necessities. That is all we need ask for. But we are to ask in faith and hope, not in anxiety and doubt.

So what does it mean to ‘seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness’? Clearly seeking the kingdom of God and his righteousness is about the same thing as ‘serving God’, which introduced the passage. Certainly this can include nearly all of the Sermon up to the this point. It involves our moral actions; it involves how we relate to God in giving, fasting, and prayer; going further back, it involves Christians being in the world, allowing their light to shine, and enduring persecution. It involves proclaiming the ‘blesseds’ that Jesus did to the crowds, as well as healing the sick and giving to the poor. But it does not end there.

Jesus elsewhere says, “my bread is to do the will of him who sent me [the Father]“. So when he prays, “give me my daily bread”, immediately before he prays “Your will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven.” Asking for our daily bread is more than asking for our ‘needs’, but also asking for how we would serve the Father today. From following the Father’s will, Jesus was sustained, and that is what he is saying here – we will be sustained by God when we seek his kingdom and his righteousness. The key is to ask in prayer – and then listen with the expectation that he will answer us.

We must not expect that all of our ‘wants’ will be met, but only our needs – and only as they are needed to serve him. Sometimes in our service of God it is necessary to go hungry, to give away our clothes to the poor [see St. Francis of Asisi], or even to die [see Jesus]. We should not mourn when we do not have what we consider to be necessities – but look to God and ask for “our daily bread”. And listen. Perhaps the word will be to act sacrificially, or to endure evil.

One helpful part of this line of thinking is Jesus words: “is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?” We may think that we need food and clothing, and without them we will lose our lives and our bodies. And while this is true on the surface – we will physically scar, waste away, and die – there is something bigger here. Life in the kingdom of God is bigger and fuller and richer – more life-full. We may give our bodies and lives to death, but God will not forsake us. Something much bigger is at work here. The treasures of the kingdom endure, and what are those treasures but the people of the kingdom? In seeking the righteousness of God, as the crowds sought the righteousness of Jesus, we seek to enter into His kingdom – and Jesus pronounces us “blessed”.

Jesus closes up by saying, “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.” This does not mean that we should not plan for the future – certainly we should. But we should not worry about it, and we should plan as God directs. We can only act in the moment, in the present. To focus on the past or the future is pointless. The best result for the future will occur when we put everything into the moment at hand. That is where God directs us – in our current steps. Once again returning to Jesus’ prayer: “give us our daily bread” – give us our bread for today. It is a prayer for the day, for the moment. It isn’t focused in trying to predict every possible future occurrence. We simply aren’t made for that. We need to allow God to direct that – we must focus on the needs and work of the current day. It has sufficient trouble for itself. There will always be more than we can give to the current moment, so let’s focus on just giving everything. In the service of God.