Isaiah 49: 8-16a
Matthew 6:24-34
I love “summer church”—these gatherings of God’s people on warm, sometimes even hot, summer Sunday mornings. The pace is slower. The mood is relaxed. Sometimes, as you’ll see this morning, the sermons are a little shorter. Even with the air conditioning, we turn our bulletins into makeshift fans in an attempt to deal with the heat and the humidity. Throughout the worship service we become aware of God and our neighbor and ourselves in new ways as we rest in the stillness of this hour.
But what to preach to a summer church—especially this summer? I talk with members and realize that while we long for rest, for stillness, for calm in our lives and in the world, it doesn’t come easily, does it? Sometimes it doesn’t come at all. Even at the height of summer when the farmers’ market brings in the bounty of nature, when it is easy for us to look at the birds of the air and to consider the lilies of the field, we can be anxious and concerned.
I don’t need to rehash all the news that keeps us up at night or worries us in the day. I do that often enough. That’s not what you came here for this morning.
I don’t need to rehash the news.
What I need to do this morning is remind you of the good news that we encountered in the scripture lessons today. What I need to do is invite you into the rest that those words offer us.
We got some help with that from our soloist this morning. Loralyn sang “Like a child I am at rest…” Perhaps for a few minutes you were able to take her advice when, with words and melody, she invited us “Be still…”
Those songs reminded me of the story in Anne Lamott’s small book from a few years ago, Operating Instructions. It is Lamott’s journal of her son’s first year. As the year progresses it also becomes a journal about her best friend’s discovery of and struggle with breast cancer.
If you’ve ever read something by Anne Lamott, you know that her being a rather straightforward and energetic Christian means that she uses a lot of language that I probably shouldn’t use in the pulpit.
But she tells this story about a friend, also named Anne, who took her own two-year-old up to Lake Tahoe one the summer. They were staying in a rented condo by the lake. And of course, it’s such a hotbed of gambling there that all the rooms are equipped with these curtains and shades that block out every speck of light so you can stay up all night in the casinos and then sleep all morning.
One afternoon Anne put the toddler to bed in his playpen in one of these rooms, in the pitch-dark, and went to do some work. A few minutes later she heard the baby knocking on the door from inside the room, and she got up knowing he’d crawled out of his playpen.
She went to put him down again, but when she got to the door, she found he’d locked it. He had somehow managed to push in the little button on the doorknob. So he was calling to her, “Mommy, Mommy,” and she was saying to him, “Jiggle the doorknob, darling,” and, since he was only two years old, he, of course, didn’t speak much English.
After a moment, it became clear to him that his mother couldn’t open the door, and the panic set in. He began sobbing. Anne ran around like crazy, trying everything possible… Finally she did the only thing she could, which was slide her fingers underneath the door, where there was a one-inch space. She kept telling him over and over to bend down and find her fingers. Finally, somehow he did.
So they stayed like that for a really long time, on the floor, him holding onto her fingers in the dark. He stopped crying. She kept wanting to call the fire department or something, but she felt that contact was the most important thing.
She started saying, “Why don’t you lie down, darling, and take a little nap on the floor?” and he was obviously like, “Yeah, right, Mom, that’s a great idea, I’m feeling so nice and relaxed.” So she kept saying, “Open the door now,” and every so often he’d jiggle the knob, and eventually, after maybe a half an hour, it popped open.
Lamott concludes: “I keep thinking about that story, how much it feels like I’m the two-year-old in the dark and God is the mother and I don’t speak the language. She could break down the door if that struck her as being the best way, and ride off with me on her charger. But instead, via my friends and my church and my shabby faith, I can just hold onto her fingers underneath the door.”
She concludes: “It isn’t enough, and it is.”[i]
“My soul is calm and quiet,” says the psalmist. “Like a child in its mother’s arms.”
In these days that can often seem dark, in these days when we can at times feel cut off from all that is good, in these days when we wonder what this world is coming to, the strong Mother God seeks to comfort us, her children.
So it is good to hear Jesus call those who seek to follow him to a non-anxious way. Yes, we know all the reasons why this is such unrealistic advice.
But as you listened carefully to what Jesus says, you probably started to get the sense that the call to trust in God’s good care does not exempt us from working or keep us from having property. Jesus speaks to people who sow and reap and store, people who toil and spin—that is to people like you and me.
The call to not worry about our lives does not take us out of the world, but rather immerses us in the world—so that we might more fully love our neighbors and care for the poor, and seek peace and justice.
When Jesus urges us to consider the birds of the air and the lilies of the field, he is asking us to do just that—consider. We are not called to become flowers or animals, but to take into account God’s providential care for all creation as we face all that worries and perplexes us as we live our very human lives.
We don’t take the words of Jesus in a legalistic or literal manner. Because of that, we can hear in them a deep understanding that life does not consist of sowing, reaping, toiling, and storing alone. To an extent that most people in the world cannot imagine, we do not need to worry about what we will eat, what we will drink, or what we will wear. All these things have been given to us. And so, as Alexander Solzhenitsyn suggested, “The meaning of earthly existence lies, not as we have grown used to thinking, in prospering, but in the development of the soul.” We are challenged to go beyond our worries toward a life that matters.
Jesus tells us today’s trouble is enough for this day. Deal with what you can and face tomorrow when it arrives. It’s not that Jesus was a positive thinker or naïve about what could happen. Jesus wasn’t one to sugar-coat any situation. He knew what was in the human heart. He knew the real possibilities of evil and misfortune.
But he also had a deep and abiding sense of the loving care of God—and commended that trust to his followers.
This is not the same as “don’t worry, be happy.” This is living in the midst of tragedy and trial with the awareness of the good that is available to us and of the good that we can do.
This is living with an awareness that there is a power at loose in the world that is greater than our work and greater than our worry. If we want to use religious language, we would call that power the Spirit of God.
So while we often ask: “What will I do when . . .or if . . .?” While we often ask, “What will I do next?” We might be better off to ask: “What can I do now?” remembering the Jewish proverb: “If you can do nothing, you need do nothing.” We are called to act when we are able—indeed, to do all that we possibly can—and we are invited to abide in God’s care at those times when nothing can be done. As is has been suggested, we should act as though it all depends on us and we should pray as though it all depends on God.
“Tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.” We worry and fret. Jesus focuses our attention on what we can do in the present moment—and on what God is able to do when we can do nothing.
In the greatest adversity, when God seems silent or absent, God is still at work in the world and in our lives. In a world that moves toward death and despair, resurrection turns us in the direction of life and hope. This faith in the God revealed through Jesus Christ leads us to hope and to act for the good in all the adversity of life.
Take a few minutes today—and if you can, take a few minutes each day to rest, to rest in the care, the love, and the strength of God. You can do that. You can do that for a few minutes. The world and all its troubles will wait while you rest, while you are comforted like a child
In the days ahead when you wonder: “What is the world coming to?” Consider.
Consider, yes, the birds of the air and the lilies of the field.
And from that place of rest, out of that deep consideration, rise and go into the world in peace, in strength, in hope.
What is the world coming to? If we listen to Jesus and follow in his way, we begin to see that the world is coming to whatever we make of it.
[i] Anne Lamott, Operating Instructions, pg. 219-221.