The Hebrew Scripture has 613 commandments in it. Most of us only know about 10, and even then, we have a difficult time remembering all of them. Thankfully, the Gospels have Jesus reinforcing only two. To love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself. That’s easy to remember and hopefully leads us to better relationships with God and every other person in our lives. But there are other commandments which Jesus says which we either choose to ignore or have such a difficult time living, that we don’t even bother to try.
The Gospel lesson for today comes at the tail end of the Sermon on the Mount. Most of us have some idea as to its beginning, Blessed are the poor in spirit… blessed are the meek…blessed are the peacemakers… Then there’s that wonderful part about being the salt of the earth and the light of the world. These parts make us feel good about who we are as disciples of Christ. We tend to forget about the latter parts, because they’re much more difficult to understand, and even harder sometimes to live.
The commandment that Jesus offers us today is, in my opinion, one of the hardest things a follower of Christ can attempt to live out. What is this commandment? It comes from verse 25 and continues at verse 31. Jesus says, “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink: or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food and the body more important than clothes?... So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first God’s kingdom and God’s righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”
That’s tough. In fact, most scholars and preachers do a very good job of deflecting the point of what Jesus was saying. They say “Jesus' challenge is (also) not a mandate for stupidity and irresponsible planning. It is about having a clear goal and setting up the path in a way that takes us there and not down the side alleys of spending too much time thinking about ourselves”[1] This type of thinking allows us to still be members in good standing in the church of consumerism and keeps us from living in the Kingdom of God which Jesus calls us to.
Instead, our “middle-class culture always wants it both ways on almost everything; a little of this and a little of that; a world of both-and. That’s not Jesus’ instinct about the kingdom. His view is that it’s either-or. Don’t even try to live it otherwise.”[2]
This passage then, is really about stewardship and in fact, it would be extremely easy to link what Jesus is saying to giving of our money in order that it no longer control us. While this is true in some senses, I believe it misses the point of what Jesus wants us to hear. If we only focus this on clothes, food and money, “we subtly succumb to the illusion that we are the only sufficient stewards, not an invisible God. Life in the kingdom demands that this be reversed.”[3]
In fact, a couple of chapters later, we see the disciples succumbing to the same illusion. Shortly after the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus sends out the 12 to drive out demons and perform miracles. Upon their return, we get to read the story of the feeding of the 5000. The disciples want to send the crowds away because they are thinking about stewardship. They could not afford to pay for meals for so many people. Can you imagine Jesus smacking his head when his disciples mentioned that? Why are they still worrying about where their food will come from?
In fact, it seems to me that we in our contemporary church fully live within that model. We worry so much about our own stewardship of the things God has blessed us with, that we tend to forget the stewardship of God, who provides every basic necessity. Seeking God will lead to miracles, worrying about how you will pay for it will lead to disappointment.
I’m sure all the trustee’s right now are shaking their heads and thinking I have no idea what I’m talking about. Even though Jesus says that when we seek first the kingdom of God and all of the other necessitates will be given to us (v 33), “we know that our money problems will not all be solved by an unquestioning confidence in God. Even Paul, whose confidence in God was unbounded, often went hungry and without shelter (2 Cor. 11:27). What Paul learned from his deprivations was that God was greater than his needs (Phil. 4:11, 13).”[4]
Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, we cannot simply learn about what Jesus is talking about. We must live the experience. When you are thinking about having your neighbors over to your home for dinner, but have put it off because you haven’t got food which is going to show off your talents in the kitchen; Jesus says, thank God for the peanut butter and jelly you’ve got in your pantry and have them over anyway. The fellowship is much more important than the food. It is putting God’s righteousness as your first priority and your own worries and desires second.
Putting your own desires second is not exactly the easiest thing in the world to do. Sometimes it produces amazing miracles, and other times, miracles which are less than exciting. Two weeks ago, I was Sunday night and the Flyers were playing the Penguins in the conference finals. I had preached a sermon earlier that day, which for some reason tired me out more than normal, and all I wanted to do was sit and watch the game in peace. I picked a seat which didn’t have anyone around me, and the only thing on the bar was a bill for someone’s tab. It appeared that I wasn’t going to be bothered there, so I sat down, ordered some food, and began watching the game. About five minutes into the game, I found out why there was a bill in front of the seat next to me. The drunkest guy in the bar was outside having a cigarette and had decided to stumble back inside and where does he sit? Right next to me.
I do everything in my power to give off a vibe that said I don’t want to talk to anyone. I didn’t take my eyes off the screen, I kept my arms crossed and I tried my best not to laugh when my drunken neighbor started getting into a funny conversation with 3 people on the other side of the bar.
But it’s not like this guy didn’t try to get me to talk. He asked me my name, shook my hand, but I was a stone wall and he moved on. For the next five minutes, this guy was verbally beaten up by the three men and somehow, the drunk guy started talking about the Tet Offensive and Vietnam and how these guys had no idea about anything and ended up getting quite upset. The bartender came over and yelled at the guy, but it really didn’t help. And all I can think to myself is, didn’t God know that I wanted a nice quiet night of watching the Flyers?
Then out of no where, this drunk guy mentions Hosea 4:6. Which is “My people are destroyed from a lack of knowledge.” Right after he quotes Hosea, which is a fairly obscure book in the Bible, he turns around and asks me what I do for a living. Still not wanting to talk to the man, I tell him I’m a preacher, hoping that would scare him off. Unfortunately, that was an invitation for him to have a conversation with me. He ended up doing most of the talking. In his drunken speech, he told me a lot of information about himself, and what I needed to do in order to become a good preacher. Some of the stuff was good information, other was complete nonsense. Then, about 45 minutes later, he starts talking about King David. How he sent the husband of the woman he lusted after off to his death and how God still said that David was a man after his own heart. My drunken conversation partner realized how profound God was and just left the bar. He was in such sheer amazement of the character of God…
Well, I watched the last few minutes of the second period and decided to leave for home. I had too much excitement for one night. After I closed the door to the bar, I turned around to see the drunken man sitting on a bench. I had to walk by him as I headed for home. As I walked by him, I noticed that he had urinated all over himself. He was wearing a grey t-shirt and it was quite noticeable. At this point, I took pity on him and tried to say goodnight. I then realized he was talking to God. Well, he stopped that conversation and began talking to me again. He kept poking me and eventually he grabbed my hand. He said that he wanted to pray. He took my hand and put it on his chest, about 3 inches away from the stain on his t-shirt. He was holding on to my hand pretty tight and began praying. I was holding on tightly too, but only because I didn’t want his hand to slip down a few more inches. Shortly after that, he finished his prayer, I said goodbye, went home, and used a lot of anti-bacterial soap to wash my hands.
It was not the relaxing night I had hoped for, but I went to bed, wondering how I was going to tell my friends what had happened to me. I told some people over the next few days, and at that point, it was nothing more than a gross story about the drunken guy at the bar. Well, I went back to the bar a few nights later to again watch the Flyers. I sat down in the same seat, although this time there was no bar tab next to me. Sometime after the first period, the man arrived, slightly more sober than he was the last time we met.
He asked me if I understood that it wasn’t him talking to me that night. That he was just a messenger. We spent another hour talking about how he spent time in prison, how he had prostate cancer, how he didn’t expect to live much longer, but that he felt God was keeping him alive because God still needed him. He told me that he sure as heck hoped that I wasn’t the last thing God needed him for and that he didn’t ever want to see me again in this bar. I have yet to go back to the bar, but that’s only because the Flyers lost the series.
Perhaps my story doesn’t illustrate my point as much as I had hoped, but to me, I realized that when I want God to give me the night off and some time to relax, I am not seeking God’s kingdom first. Luckily, God’s kingdom found me that night in the form of a person who really wasn’t hoping to be the messenger. The moral of the story is that we really do need to always be seeking God’s kingdom, even when we don’t feel like it.
[1] First Thoughts on Year A Gospel Passages from the Lectionary. Pentecost 2. William Loader. http://wwwstaff.murdoch.edu.au/~loader/MtPentecost2.htm
[2] Matthew 6:24-34. By Mark Labberton. http://www.goodpreacher.com/shareit/readreviews.php?cat=12
[3] Ibid.
[4] Douglas R. A. Hare. “Matthew: Interpretation: A Biblical Commentary for Teaching and Preaching.” John Knox Press. Louisville. 1993. Pg 75, 76.
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