SPEAKER_00: I bring greetings to you from the Presbytery of East Tennessee, your 58 sister churches, our two campus ministries, and our Presbytery camp.
SPEAKER_00: It is good to be with you this morning and to be leading worship with this great group of folks who are here on the chancel with me.
SPEAKER_00: And Rachel, thank you so much for your leadership this morning as well.
SPEAKER_00: Our second scripture reading this morning comes from the Gospel of Matthew, chapter six, and we will read together verses 19 through 21, and then jump ahead to 25 and read through the rest of the chapter.
SPEAKER_00: Listen now for God's word as it comes to us from the Gospel of Matthew.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus said, Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust consume, and where thieves break in and steal.
SPEAKER_00: But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes, and where thieves do not break in and steal.
SPEAKER_00: For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or what you will drink, or about your body, and what you will wear.
SPEAKER_00: Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?
SPEAKER_00: Look at the birds of the air, they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly father feeds them.
SPEAKER_00: Are you not of more value than they?
SPEAKER_00: And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?
SPEAKER_00: And why do you worry about clothing?
SPEAKER_00: Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow.
SPEAKER_00: They neither toil nor spin.
SPEAKER_00: Yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.
SPEAKER_00: But if God so clothes the grass of the field which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will God not much more clothe you, you of little faith?
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, do not worry, saying, What will we eat, or what will we drink, or what will we wear?
SPEAKER_00: For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things, and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.
SPEAKER_00: But strive first for the kingdom of God and God's righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
SPEAKER_00: So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own.
SPEAKER_00: Today's trouble is enough for today.
SPEAKER_00: This is the word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus has upended conventional wisdom regarding blessedness.
SPEAKER_00: He has described how life in the kingdom of God is different from the kingdoms of the world, as he urged his listeners to love their enemies and pray in secret.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus also gave them a very simple but important prayer that we still say each Sunday.
SPEAKER_00: We call it the Lord's Prayer.
SPEAKER_00: And now we pick up this sermon with Jesus' continued urgency for us to seek the kingdom of God instead of the kingdom of the world.
SPEAKER_00: Treasures and worry bookend our reading with sayings that have largely become part of our cultural lexicon.
SPEAKER_00: Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
SPEAKER_00: Don't worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries.
SPEAKER_00: Today's trouble is enough for today.
SPEAKER_00: That first one reminds me of the many religious tidbits my grandmother often shared with all of her family.
SPEAKER_00: The second one reminds me of Scarlet O'Hara in Gone with the Wind.
SPEAKER_00: I can't worry about that today.
SPEAKER_00: I'll worry about it tomorrow.
SPEAKER_00: And that's the problem.
SPEAKER_00: When pieces of scripture make it into our cultural lexicon, they are often stripped of their real power and meaning and become phrases that we were used to comfort or maybe even cajole, but not to seriously and intentionally help us seek the kingdom of God as they were meant to do.
SPEAKER_00: To be fair, I understand, especially with this part of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus seems to think that life will just be so easy if only we trust God.
SPEAKER_00: The birds don't worry, nor should we.
SPEAKER_00: Treasures on earth, things like clothes and cars and retirement accounts, indeed can be destroyed or stolen.
SPEAKER_00: But they're also pretty important for living this life here on earth.
SPEAKER_00: Those treasures in heaven, love, forgiveness, grace, they won't put dinner on the table or pay the college tuition bill that's due.
SPEAKER_00: What is Jesus really trying to do here in this part of the sermon?
SPEAKER_00: How does where we store our treasures or not worrying help us seek the kingdom of God anyway?
SPEAKER_00: You know, there's another saying that's part of our cultural lexicon, too.
SPEAKER_00: God helps she who helps herself.
SPEAKER_00: Have any of you read Robin Wall Kimmerer's book, Braiding Sweetgrass?
SPEAKER_00: If you haven't, I encourage you to read it.
SPEAKER_00: It's one that I will likely reread because there are so many aha moments about life within it.
SPEAKER_00: And if you have read it, then you probably remember the many ways the author describes an interdependence of the Native American ways of life with creation, the environment, and each other.
SPEAKER_00: The ways that members of her community would come together to make molasses, I think it was, stirring pots and tending fires and eating together for days, 24 hours a day on end.
SPEAKER_00: Or you might remember about the trees that they used to make the strips to weave their baskets.
SPEAKER_00: They knew exactly how to choose the trees to be harvested so that sunlight could still come in and reach the others, and there would always be a steady supply of trees for baskets.
SPEAKER_00: Or you might even remember the nights that she and so many others of her community would go out to try and save the frogs coming out of hibernation, but needing to cross the street to go to the other side of the road.
SPEAKER_00: They wanted those frogs to remain an important part of the ecosystem.
SPEAKER_00: Reading that book, I was struck by that interdependence that the author tries hard to live within and through, versus the competition and myth of scarcity that has been the central narrative of our Western North American cultural experience.
SPEAKER_00: Our cultural experience sees the world as commodities to be exploited, with limited resources to be had.
SPEAKER_00: Competition, destruction, overuse, and abuse are part and parcel of that experience.
SPEAKER_00: Not so with Robin Wall Kimmerer's experience as a Native American, her culture gave her a different orientation to see the world and to understand our place in it.
SPEAKER_00: As she tells it in Braiding Sweetgrass, the world is full of gifts to be appreciated, nurtured, cultivated, and shared.
SPEAKER_00: And that is exactly what I think Jesus is trying to get his listeners to understand in the whole of the Sermon on the Mount, but especially here in the part we read.
SPEAKER_00: Where our treasures are stored speaks volumes about our orientation in the world.
SPEAKER_00: Are we oriented to the world's way of being, of competition and limited resources, and an I have to get mine first mentality?
SPEAKER_00: Or are we oriented to God's way of being, to the kingdom of God, where life itself is a gift, creation is a gift to be nurtured and valued and shared, where there is not a limited supply of anything, but a regenerative supply when we live in cooperation and community and interdependence with God, creation, and one another.
SPEAKER_00: When Jesus says, look at the birds or consider the lilies, he's not pointing to a naive way to be in the world.
SPEAKER_00: You see, those words, look and consider.
SPEAKER_00: We don't hear it in English, but in Greek, these are really strong verbs.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is saying, or shouting, maybe, pay attention, think about this.
SPEAKER_00: There is more to life than the fearful, anxiety-ridden cultural experience of the world.
SPEAKER_00: God has created a world that is meant to provide enough for everyone.
SPEAKER_00: Remember the manna in the desert?
SPEAKER_00: Do you remember the story of the widow of Zarephath's oil and meal that never ran out when Elijah was with her during an extreme drought and famine?
SPEAKER_00: Do you remember the little boys' loaves and fishes that fed 5,000 plus the women and children?
SPEAKER_00: Do you remember the line and the prayer that Jesus taught us?
SPEAKER_00: Give us this day our daily bread.
SPEAKER_00: You see, in the kingdom of God, we still need food to eat and clothes to wear and shelter from the heat and the cold, and we can have all of those things without the fear and anxiety of a world of limited resources and hoarding that causes us to only take care of ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: We can have all of those things without the fear and anxiety, but it requires a reorientation away from the kingdoms of the world and toward the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_00: Storing our treasures, our stuff, our power, our money in the world's kingdoms means that we put our primary trust there.
SPEAKER_00: We understand our primary identity to be caught up in what we produce, in how much we have, in how secure we may feel.
SPEAKER_00: And friends, there is no storage place big enough to help us feel like we have enough to be loved and valued and secure in the world's kingdoms.
SPEAKER_00: The more we try, the more anxious we become, the more fearful we become, and the less likely that we are to love and forgive and share and offer grace.
SPEAKER_00: But when we seek the kingdom of God and understand that our value comes from being a child of God, that we are loved for who we are and not what we do, that our primary identity is of a follower of Jesus Christ, then we have put our trust in God's kingdom and we are able to see how beautiful and how lovely and how interdependent we are with God and creation and one another, and we find rest for our weary hearts and souls.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus knows we have responsibility.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus knows that we need food and shelter and even retirement accounts.
SPEAKER_00: And he knows that God's kingdom ensures that everyone, you and me and our neighbors near and far, and creation itself will have all that we need when we live with and for one another.
SPEAKER_00: This side of the fulfilled kingdom, we know all too well that the gap between our current reality and the promises of the kingdom of God, we so we heed Jesus' advice to look and consider and not worry about tomorrow.
SPEAKER_00: Not because there isn't work to do, because there is plenty of work to do.
SPEAKER_00: Not because we can't make a difference, because we can make an enormous difference.
SPEAKER_00: We do it so that we remember to take it one step and one day at a time.
SPEAKER_00: Give us this day our daily bread.
SPEAKER_00: Gather only what you need of the manna for today.
SPEAKER_00: Take care of your neighbor today.
SPEAKER_00: Share of your abundance today.
SPEAKER_00: Then it will be as Isaiah promised.
SPEAKER_00: We will be called repairers of the breach and restorers of streets to live in.
SPEAKER_00: Friends, worry feeds the world's way of anxiety and fearfulness, causing us to hoard and to mistrust each other and to exploit creation's resources to trust the world and ourselves more than we trust God.
SPEAKER_00: So look and consider how life in the kingdom of God leads to less fear and less anxiety and more love and more forgiveness and more grace and more mercy.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus isn't offering us a naive way to be in the world here in this part of the Sermon on the Mount.
SPEAKER_00: He offers us a way oriented toward the interdependence of God, creation, and all of humanity that leads to all of us being whole and thriving and having all that we need.
SPEAKER_00: Seek first the kingdom of God, and all of these things will be given to you as well.
SPEAKER_00: May it be so.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.