Don’t Worry

“Don’t worry” is a message in the series “Good counsel for a good life,” preached Aug. 11, 2019, at Edgerton United Methodist Church, Edgerton, Kansas, by the Rev. James Hopwood; from Luke 12.22-34.

I find this to be one of the most challenging passages in all of scripture. It’s one that some preachers and commentators approach wearing tap shoes so they can make a pretty show of dancing around it. I hope I am not doing that this morning.

You may have thought that you were challenged by last week’s reading, where Jesus cautioned against greed, and said, “Your life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.”

That’s challenging enough. But in today’s reading he continues meditating on our attitude about what is enough and what brings us true security. He has shown us that neither money nor possessions offer us security. Instead, they provoke the very opposite in us. They inspire insecurity. They inspire fear.

Today he essentially says, as that Bobby McFerrin song has it, “Don’t worry. Be happy.” Well, there’s more to it than that, and that’s where the challenge comes in. We live in a world of much worry and unhappiness. To get to a world of less worry and more happiness, we need a revolution in attitude. We need a complete change of mind. What we need to do, Jesus tells us, is learn to rely on God rather than on our own strength.

It is a learning process – and a long one involving many false steps forward and many tumbles backward. That’s how we learn, though, isn’t it? Through trial and error, mostly through error. It’s often said that success rarely teaches you anything, but mistakes offer major learning opportunities. I don’t know about you, but I’ve had plenty of learning opportunities in my life, and I continue to have them. God can use them all to tutor us to rely on God’s grace instead of our own insight.

I’m not sure I can begin to adequately imagine a state of non-worry. It may be close to what the Hindus and Buddhists call nirvana, which is a state of enlightenment that liberates you from the cares of this world.

Maybe it’s not that the worries of the world go away. Maybe it’s that we simply no longer worry about them. The difference is inside us. It’s not that we cease to care about our troubles or the troubles of others, or that we cease to fight evil and work for good. We still care deeply, and we still battle for God and for good. But we no longer suffer from anxiety about these things. We leave the outcome in God’s hands, confident that God will handle it.

Today’s reading is a continuation of the story we considered last Sunday about the rich fool. He thought the answer to his anxiety was bigger barns for storing his riches. He stored up treasure for himself, but was not rich toward God or neighbor, and he lost it all.

“Therefore,” Jesus begins. That’s the hinge that unites these two sections of scripture. That’s the setup for this lesson. “Therefore,” Jesus tells us, “do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear. For life is more than food, and the body is more than clothing.”

“Consider the ravens. They neither sow nor reap, yet God feeds them. Consider the lilies. They neither toil nor spin, yet how magnificently they are clothed.

“Can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? If you can’t do such a small thing as that, why worry about the bigger things?”

This is hard for us to hear, but it was probably harder for Jesus’ original listeners. Many of them were tenant farmers. They had been forced into debt and then forced off their land by the rich. Now they live day to day, working for a wage so small it could barely feed one person, let alone a family. Their lives are full of anxiety. Some days they simply do not know how they are going to survive.

“Don’t worry,” Jesus tells them. How can they not worry?

I once was acquainted with a woman named Lorenza Smith. She was United Methodist clergy at the time. At her urging, her bishop in Southwest Texas appointed her to minister to homeless people, and so she did for several years, living on the streets as a homeless person.

She says there wasn’t a single moment of a single day that she didn’t think about where she was going to find food and shelter, where she was going to find a restroom, where she was going to get warm or cool off, where she was going to find a comfortable and safe place to sleep, where she was going to find a place where she could just relax and try not to think about things, and so on.

She tried to trust God that everything would be OK, but she could not shake the anxieties of her situation.

You’ve got to care. That’s part of the point Jesus is trying to make. If God takes care of the birds and the flowers, won’t God take care of you, you of so little faith?

Nor can any of us escape the anxieties of our situations. And it’s not escape Jesus is talking about. Not worrying about something won’t make it go away. Jesus is not telling us to cease caring about how things work out. That’s the attitude personified by the character of Alfred E. Neuman of Mad Magazine fame. His motto: “What, me worry?” No, he’s not one to worry about someone else. His is the attitude of the rich fool.

It’s a profoundly comforting thought, but many people don’t accept it. Our national anxiety level approaches the panic point. How do we deal with our anxieties? The leading cause of death of Americans younger than 50 is drug overdose – and two thirds of those deaths are from opioids.

We live in a society that believes there is a pill for every problem – and if there isn’t, there should be. That attitude is encouraged by the drug companies, of course, and by the insurance companies, which will pay billions of dollars for pills but hesitate to cover real remedies.

Speaking of hot, not to mention wet, the weather patterns are weird and unpredictable. Everybody knows that if we don’t change our ways, even worse days are coming because of climate change – but the Alfred E. Neuman in the White House and his shady minions are in full-force denial, for the same reason that the drug and insurance companies push pills. It’s good for their business.

What have we got to be anxious about? We’re in the midst of multiple trade wars that threaten to cripple the world economy, and threats of shooting wars are mounting in multiple hot spots, not to mention the daily carnage of shootings on our city streets.

Opioid addiction typically starts out as a prescription for painkillers after surgery or an accident. Then the painkiller becomes a recreational drug. That’s how we describe it, though there’s nothing recreational about it. The drug is an anxiety suppressant.

Still, polls show that the greatest contributor to our national anxiety index is as old as the hills: We’re worried about paying our bills. That brings us back to the issue of money and possessions.

I read a story the other day about a fellow named Doug Lynam. He grew up in a rich family where money was used to manipulate and hurt others. He tried to escape the clutches of money, first by becoming a Marine, then by becoming a monk. But money woes followed him. After he had served in a Benedictine monastery for 20 years, it went broke. Imagine the irony: You live in voluntary poverty and you still can’t pay your bills!

In his life experiences, Lynam says he learned that selfish materialism is destructive and extreme poverty is painful. He sought a middle way and found a new calling. Now he helps people manage their money so they can afford to retire.

“Building wealth ethically isn’t about being selfish,” he says. “It’s discovering the joy of using money to make the world a better place without compromising your financial future.” **

That sounds exactly the opposite of what Jesus says, but I’m not sure it is. Jesus says, “Sell your possessions, and give alms.” He is not – at least not here – telling us to sell everything we have. Rather, he’s telling us to lighten the load of possessions we carry, and to share what we have with those who have less. The goal is not to impoverish everyone but for those of us who have more to live with less so that those with less can have more.

The Apostle Paul traces this attitude back to the formative days of Israel. He points to a scripture that promotes fair balance, so that the one who has much does not have too much, and the one who has little does not have too little. (2 Corinthians 8.15, quoting Exodus 16.18)

The scripture he quotes is from the story of the gathering of manna during Israel’s long wandering in the wilderness. God provided the manna every morning, and families were told to gather as much as they needed, but no more, because any extra would become infested with worms and rot. It’s an experience many people have had with wealth and an abundance of possessions. Get too much, and it rots.

The question is not, “How much do you want?” The question is, “How much do you need?”

I don’t think Jesus is telling us to stop saving for a rainy day or putting some aside for the kids’ (or grandkids’) college fund, or anything like that. He’s saying, don’t be anxious about these things, for anxiety leads to greed, and greed will enslave you. God has set you free, so live in freedom from worry, but don’t be a hoarder. Share generously what you have so that others who don’t have as much will have less to worry about.

Be thankful that you don’t have to be anxious about your next meal, or where you will lay your head at night. Be thankful that you’ve got plenty of clothing already, and you don’t have to spend major amounts of money on fashionable duds because it’s expected of you in your profession or social circle. Be thankful that you have enough, so you needn’t be anxious about how you’ll eat or what you’ll wear tomorrow. Be thankful for what you have, and enjoy the warm feeling such gratitude gives you.

Finally, Jesus says, “Your heavenly Father knows your needs, so strive for God’s kingdom, and your needs will be given to you as well as God’s kingdom.”

Here is key to it all. “Don’t be afraid,” Jesus says, “for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”

What is God’s kingdom? The gospel of Matthew sometimes calls it “the kingdom of heaven,” and that gives some people the idea that the kingdom is a reward that comes in the afterlife. But Matthew isn’t talking about the next life. He’s talking about this one.

The kingdom of God can also be called the reign of God, the rule of God, the dominion of God. It’s not a geographic location or a place in future time. It’s a way of living where God’s people rely on God’s providence rather than on their own strength. It’s a dominion of love, where human hearts have been liberated by God’s love. And, despite some evidence to the contrary, we believe that the reign of God is growing and will keep growing until God brings it to fullness.

We need a revolution in attitude. We need a complete change of mind. We need to learn to rely on God rather than on our own strength. God can teach us the way. Jesus invites us to place ourselves under God’s liberating rule of love.

Because of God’s liberating rule, you are free not to worry. Because of God’s liberating rule, you are free not to be anxious about your life. Because of God’s liberating rule, you are free to generously share what you have to improve the lives of others. Because of God’s liberating rule, you are free to trust God, not worry, and be happy. So, just do it.

Amen.

** “Building Wealth with a Higher Purpose,” Kiplinger’s Personal Finance, July 2019, 10. Ron Lieber, “The Monk Who Left the Monastery to Fix Broken Retirement Plans.” The New York Times, June 9, 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/09/your-money/monk-who-fixes-broken-retirement-plans.html. See also douglynam.com.

Who’s Welcome?

Hats off to the teachers in Lee’s Summit, Missouri, who pushed back at being required to attend a meeting at an anti-gay church.

Thanks to their protest, administrators moved the meeting to a neutral site.

The church’s website proudly proclaims that “homosexuality is a perversion of God’s natural order of one man for one woman.”

The church’s pastor says, “We welcome everyone.”

Really? Even those you say are perverts?

Is there a sign in front of the church saying, “Perverts welcome”?

Really, how much of a “welcome” can a homosexual expect at a church like this?

I would change the church’s proclamation to read: “Anti-gay evangelicalism is a perversion of God’s intent for Christianity.”

Invest Well

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A message in the series “Good counsel for a good life,” preached Aug. 4, 2019, at Edgerton United Methodist Church, Edgerton, Kansas, by the Rev. James Hopwood; from Luke 12.13-21, commonly called the story of the rich fool.

Oh, no, you’re thinking, he’s going talk about how we’re too attached to money, or how we have too many possessions. Well, whatever he says, I’m not giving up my Patrick Mahomes bobblehead!

No more than I will part with my John Wesley bobblehead!

Actually, what I’m thinking about today is investment strategy. My question is: Are bobbleheads a good investment?

This is another message in the series Good Counsel for a Good Life. It’s based on stories by and about Jesus while he’s making his last journey to Jerusalem.

He is teaching one day when someone pops up and says, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.”

If you’ve ever been involved in an inheritance dispute, or know someone who has, you know that it’s among the most bitterly contested and hurtful experiences a family can endure. Jesus has no intention of getting involved in this one, especially when the man tries to triangle him in public against his brother.

“Friend,” he asks, “who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?”

Then he moves directly to the heart of the matter, which is at the heart of so much human heartbreak and misery – and that is greed. “Be on guard against greed in all its forms,” Jesus says, “for your life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.”

It doesn’t? Somebody ought to tell the advertising industry! Billions of dollars are spent each year to convince you that you are nothing without the right possessions, and your greatest possessions of all are your health and your beauty. Even if you die tomorrow, you want to make a gorgeous corpse that will be the envy of all your friends.

You can’t take it with you. We all know that. You’ll never see a hearse pulling a U-Haul trailer chock full of items necessary for the afterlife. But you will occasionally hear about the guy who’s buried with his T-Bird. Talk about greed! No one else will ever get any use or pleasure out of that car. Fun, fun, fun till daddy takes the T-Bird away!

To illustrate the problem of improper attachment to mere stuff, Jesus tells a story. Of course, he does. He loves to tell stories.

It seems that a rich man’s land produces a bumper crop – so much grain that he doesn’t know where he’ll store it all. So he thinks to himself (happily, Jesus takes us inside his head) – he thinks to himself, “I know what I’ll do! I’ll tear down my barns and build larger ones, and then I’ll have plenty of space to store all my crops and all my other stuff.

“And then I’ll say to my soul, ‘Soul, you’ve got it made! Time to relax, eat, drink and be merry.’ ”

But God has other plans. He says to the rich man: He says to the rich man: ‘You fool!’

Strong language from God, right?

‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And all of your stuff, where will it go, whose will it become?”

“So it is,” Jesus concludes, “with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”

Adam Hamilton, pastor of Church of the Resurrection, cautions you to realize that sooner or later, all of your possessions will wind up in somebody else’s garage sale. Unless some of it happens to land in a museum or in the trash, all the possessions you cherish now will be sold for a pittance in a rummage sale.

Your most beloved stuff may be passed down for a couple of generations, but then one of your descendants will say, “I tired of looking at this junk,” and away it goes.

Well, didn’t you do the same with that hideous vase that was lovingly left to you by your Aunt Matilda? It’s her you want to remember, not the vase, and the vase does not inspire good memories.

Have you ever wondered why some homeless people are constantly pushing around a shopping cart with all their possessions piled onto it? It’s because they have no place to keep their stuff that’s safe from theft. So they have to keep an eye on it at all times. They’re homeless, see. One definition of a home is a place to stash all your stuff.

Some of our homes aren’t big enough, so we rent storage units, and when those are full, we rent bigger storage units. We take comfort knowing that it’s there, though sometimes we have to drop by just to make sure it is, in fact, still there, and someone hasn’t run off with it.

There is said to be big money to be made buying the contents of storage units that have been abandoned. You bid for the contents sight unseen, so you never know what kind of trash or treasure somebody may have left behind.

There are two counter-trends today. One is the tiny house. There are projects in Kansas City and elsewhere to build neighborhoods of tiny houses for homeless veterans. It’s an innovative and humane approach to a national problem.

Meantime, a surprising number of people are abandoning the sprawling suburban manse for a tiny house on a tiny lot. How tiny? Some houses are smaller than 400 square feet. That’s smaller than most so-called “studio” apartments. Forget about the bobblehead collection. No room for it here!

Some tiny houses are built on trailers so they can be moved easily when the scenery in one spot gets boring. (I wonder why they don’t just buy a camper?) Some tiny homes are even made from recycled shipping containers. Go over to the Intermodal and pick out your new home! If you don’t want to remodel it yourself, you can even buy one premade on Amazon.

The other counter-trend is decluttering. The queen of this is Marie Kondo, whose Kon Mari method has swept the world. Go through everything you’ve got, she says, and ask yourself, “Does this make me happy?” If a possession doesn’t bring you joy, pitch it.

It’s an interesting philosophy, and I’m sure we could all benefit from trying it out. My wife, Linda, and I are constantly playing this game. We have accumulated far too much stuff, and we need to get rid of much of it. My idea would be to back up a trailer and start throwing stuff in. Linda wants to be more methodical about it. Methodical is too slow, I say. Get rid of it now, and be done with it.

I’m at the age when I’m ready to engage in what’s called “Swedish death cleaning.” Basically, it’s getting rid of all your excess stuff so your kids won’t have to do it when you die. Tell them you’re doing it now, and they’ll thank you for it, now as well as later.

Theoretically, all this effort gets you down to only possessions that you admire – comfortable and attractive furniture, good books and music, some artwork that delights you, maybe a few tools you enjoy using. You want to get down to things that are useful and good for you. But this is a purely materialistic approach to life, isn’t it? It ignores an important question: Can things really make you happy?

Jesus says your life does not consist in the abundance of possessions. But don’t we spend most of our lives in pursuit of more possessions? Possessions are like money. Apparently you can never have enough. It’s more, more, more till your creditors take the T-Bird away.

I think there are three basic attitudes toward money. Poor people are afraid they can’t get by with the little they have. Rich people are afraid that they’re going to lose the pile they have. People who are neither rich nor poor are afraid to get comfortable with what they have because they know how hard it is to get and how easy it is to lose.

Notice that these three attitudes have a common denominator, and that is fear. We think that money will give us security, but no matter how much of it we have, money never provides security. In fact, money creates insecurity. Money creates fear. Some of us are more comfortable than others in our fear, but we’re all afraid.

Jesus would say that your life does not consist in the amount of money you have in the bank, or invested in stocks, or stuffed in an old sock, or buried in the back yard, or wherever you keep it. Sure, money can make life a lot easier in many ways. But remember this: Jesus, who was probably the most joyful person who ever lived, was dirt poor all his life, and at the end all he possessed was what he wore on his back.

What did the rich man get wrong, and what do we so often get wrong as well?

Is there anything wrong with being happy when you have a bumper crop? Certainly not.

Is there anything wrong with trying to find a good way of storing the grain from that bumper crop? Certainly not. Letting it go to waste would be poor stewardship.

Is there even anything wrong with tearing down old barns and building bigger new ones? It might be more efficient to simply build some new barns rather than demolish perfectly good ones and replace them with bigger ones. But this is hardly a capital crime.

Where does the rich man go wrong?

Is it when he says to his soul, “‘Soul, it’s time to relax, eat, drink and be merry.” Some people find it hard to accept that notion, but it’s biblical enough. “This is the gift of God,” Ecclesiastes 3:13 says, “that all people should eat, drink, and enjoy the results of their hard work.”

So what’s the problem? Simple. It’s greed. The rich man is focused totally on himself. He cares neither for God nor for neighbor. He stores up treasures for himself, but he is not rich toward God, nor toward his neighbor.

Jesus steers us another direction. He says: “Stop collecting treasures for your own benefit on earth, where moth and rust eat them and where thieves break in and steal them. Instead, collect treasures for yourselves in heaven, where moth and rust don’t eat them and where thieves don’t break in and steal them.

“Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Matthew 6.19-21, Luke 12.34)

Where’s your treasure? Where’s your heart? What’s your lifetime investment strategy?

You can surround yourself with stuff, the collection of a lifetime. Or you can invest your life serving God and others. You’ll find some satisfaction with your stuff. It’s OK to eat, drink and be merry. But these things aren’t what’s most important. What’s most important are the relationships of your life. People are your treasure. People are where your heart should be, not stuff.

What do people always say when their homes and all their possessions are swept away by flood, fire, or tornado? “Those are just things. They can be replaced. Thank God no one was hurt.”

Your friends and your loved ones are worth far more to you than your bobblehead collection. When you invest in people, rather than stuff, you’ve made an investment in heaven. Invest well, Jesus says, and you will reap a bountiful return.

Amen.

Missing the Point

In an open letter to Asbury Theological Seminary, 70 alumni or current students recently called on its leaders to repent of the harm they have done to gay and lesbian people and stand in solidary with them and others who have been marginalized by the church.

Timothy Tennent, Asbury president, replied with a letter that sounds sort of sympathetic until it gets to the last paragraph. There, Tennent bemoans the “deeper issue,” which he says is the authority of Scripture. In its fighting over sexuality, the United Methodist Church is experiencing “a crisis of biblical authority,” Tennent contends.

It is disheartening to see a church leader so entrenched in ideology and so out of touch with reality. We are not fighting over the authority of Scripture. We are fighting over an interpretation of Scripture. By claiming that the fight is over authority, Tennent and other “conservatives” claim that everyone who disagrees with them denies the authority of Scripture. That is simply not true. The claim is as arrogant as it is false.

When so many of the combatants in this fight miss the point so thoroughly, it’s no wonder we can come to no resolution.

Silence is Enabling

I do not intend to respond every time Donald Trump masturbates on Twitter, but his racist tirade against four women of color and escalating race-baiting require a response from every Christian and every responsible American. Silence is enabling. We must object loudly.

For the Christian, racism is sin. All humans are created in the image of God, and Jesus calls us to treat others as we want to be treated ourselves.

“Send them back!” his followers chanted at a rally last week. Trump calls these people “patriots.” They are not. They are white nationalists. The two are far from the same.

As historian Jill Lepore says, patriots are those who love their country. Nationalists are those who hate people from other countries. Patriotism is love. White nationalism is hate. Racism is hate. Jesus calls us to love, not to hate.

The elevation of love and eradication of hate is not a political issue, certainly not a partisan issue. It’s an issue of basic morality.

Most of our problems as a nation are spiritual and cultural in nature, and they will be solved only through spiritual and cultural transformation.

No, we don’t need a “revival.” You can’t revive what’s not there. We need a conversion from hatred to love. If the American experiment is to survive our generation, such a conversion is the only chance we’ve got.