I had an ironic start to my week. I got into the office on Monday morning with the sense that I needed to get things organized. I need to get all my ducks in a row; make sure I’ve got things in hand; don’t miss a beat; be on the ball; anticipate, build, extend, head off, work, work, work, grind, grind, grind. For therein is my worth and value: producing so others can see my labour. So I sent out a lot of emails to people trying to organize various things logistically, among those people, our wonderful administrative and chancel team. About 15 emails later I got a call from Trish, which - as God was likely laughing - I missed because I was literally juggling multiple things in my hand and hit the wrong button on my phone. So to voicemail I went and heard: “I’ve got everything organized.” Here’s the truly humorous and ironic part given our Gospel reading for today: Trish had just returned from a Thanksgiving luncheon with Anne when she got my call.
"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? … But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” Indeed, Lord, indeed. I highly doubt I am alone in my quest to organize work and life into a neat and orderly set of tasks to be completed that can demonstrate my worth and value. I see it around me everywhere. Friends taking on work and jobs that consume them. On the one hand the work is exciting. The chance to make a difference or make more money or chart a new course or break new ground as a minority in one’s field is incredibly enticing. It offers challenge, independence, prestige and the hope that one is making a difference in the world. It can also offer the promise of more money, more power and more control over one’s circumstances … at least at first glance. I see my friends with young children getting them involved in all sorts of activities trying to open them up to potential opportunities, interests, and explore where their gifts are; I sometimes wonder if the kids are busier than I am!
The pace of life and work seems frenetic. I have seen relationships strained, where partners end up feeling lonely and isolated and trapped within a relationship that has grown cold with distance and resentment and I’ve seen them break and fall apart in the midst of this frenetic pace. I’ve seen people burn out and not just leave professions, but end up feeling scattered like grass in the wind, not sure which way to turn. I’ve seen children end up exhausted, burned out, throwing tantrums and even getting into trouble with the law because they feel they cannot uphold the standards or the pace of opportunity their parents want them to experience.
As I’ve watched this unfold with so many of us post-covid I have prayed about what God means when he says to us: “don’t worry about your life and how you’re going to survive. Seek first the kingdom of God and all of these other things will be given to you.” This confirms God’s word to us in Psalm 127: “Unless the LORD builds the house, its builders labor in vain. Unless the LORD watches over the city, the watchmen stand guard in vain. In vain you rise early and stay up late, toiling for food to eat for while they sleep he provides for them.”
I do not believe God is telling us not to work, or that if we don’t work, he’ll give us food and shelter. After all, God’s people labour in various ways in order to provide for their families and their people as we read throughout the Scriptures: and this is ‘good to God.’ In fact, he puts Adam in charge of the farm so to speak, right at the beginning. Rather I think Jesus’s words to us are getting at something the majority of us hold in common, something at the root of our frenetic pace of life: we have been taught and conditioned by our society to see our capacity to survive, and so our value and worth in being able to secure our survival, in achieving status in the things we do and accomplish; in the work we produce; in the checklistable things we can draw a line through at the end of the day, and in the power and control that we believe provides us with money and freedom to do with our bit of spare time, those things that we have been conditioned to think of as freedom. Jesus’s words though, “do not worry,” aren’t about being a type B personality or just being chill. They’re actually a challenge to us: I think he’s saying that in running to do something, we are actually, in fact, running from something. We’re running from the fear we have, the worry, the anxious toil of thinking that God does not love us; that we are not enough; that our faith is not enough; that we must save ourselves because somehow we might be left behind. We need the back up of works, just in case our faith is discarded by our maker and we truly do have to make ourselves.
This is a truly heavy load to bear. Because we’re actually right: no matter how hard we labour, no matter what we build, it will fall down, fall apart, fade away, be absorbed or changed over the decades and centuries into something we wouldn’t recognize were we to see it thousands of years later. Which of us with our toil can add to our lives, or to anyone else’s? Seek first the kingdom of God. That is, recognize that you are infinitely valuable, quite apart from your work, from what you produce or accomplish or have, from who you can make happy, or whether you can get everything right, simply because God made you. So whether you’re old or young or sick, or incapacitated, you are infinitely valuable to God, or you wouldn’t exist. Start there. Start with the faith that this is the truth: no matter what anyone thinks of you or what you think of yourself, you are infinitely valuable because God made you. If that is the case, if you do not have to anxiously toil to prove your worth or value to God, or to anyone else, if God has already given you life and life eternal, then our question here becomes not - how can I prove my value and worth in accordance with the standards of my culture and society, or my family, or the expectations my parents had for me. If it is God who feeds me - this creature that he has made - what might he have made me for? How might I let go of bowing to all the expectations I’m surrounded by so I can be enrobed in God’s own purposes? AMEN
コメント