And he said to his disciples, “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, nor about your body, what you will put on. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds! And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? If then you are not able to do as small a thing as that, why are you anxious about the rest? Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass, which is alive in the field today, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you, O you of little faith! And do not seek what you are to eat and what you are to drink, nor be worried. For all the nations of the world seek after these things, and your Father knows that you need them. Instead, seek his kingdom, and these things will be added to you. “Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give to the needy. Provide yourselves with moneybags that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. Luke 12:22-34

 

            I was listening to the radio the other day and I heard one of the funniest commercials.  It took place in some kind of class where a professor or teacher was trying to get his students to understand the concept of trusting one another.  He said to the one young woman in his class, “Now I want you to stand on the edge of this table and close your eyes. Then I want you to simply fall back into the arms of your partner.  Don’t worry about a thing.  You’ll be safe.”  So you hear the squirming for a moment and then with a big sigh you hear “Whoosh!” as she falls backward.  Then you hear a big “Thunk” as she hits the floor and a scream of agony.  In the background is a young man’s voice, “Oh.. was I supposed to catch you?”  The comment of the announcer comes on:  “Don’t you wish you had a better partner?”  and a final pitch for the bank or the firm being advertised followed.

            A lot of us believers struggle with the same idea of trust.  We worry that we do not have a good partner in life and that God will not live up to all of His promises.  The Lord can tell us again and again if not a sparrow falls to the ground without Him knowing it would He not catch us before we hit the ground because He is our Father and loves us?  But we worry and we have our anxieties about all kinds of things in life.

            In fact, last week’s sermon and this week’s sermon seem to focus upon two of the worst sins that even believers fall into.   Last week we heard Jesus in the words that precede our text today tell us a parable about a rich yet foolish landowner.  This landowner could not sleep at night because of his desire to accumulate more and more things.  But in the end as he is planning on his retirement and his desire to enjoy life at last after a lifetime of accumulating and working and stressing out that very night his soul was required of him by God.  And we learned of the foolishness and emptiness of a life spent in the pursuit of things and in getting more and more of this world’s possessions when God is not given any attention at all.  Well if last week told us God’s advice on the vanity and foolishness of the next technological thrill or the next all encompassing material possession we think we need today we look at the flip side thanks to our Savior.  It is the focus our lives can take when it comes to worrying about the things we do have and losing the things dearest to us and wondering if we are going to ever have the things in life that will truly make life good for us.

            What do I eat?  What do I wear?  How much longer will I live?  The Lord Jesus reminds us that God knows the answers to all of those questions and He also reminds us that in the end these are not the biggest questions in life we should be asking.  The Lord with His kingdom has given you and me so much more than clothing and food which wears out and which sustains us for a while but then we get hungry again.  Like last week Jesus reminds us all that if our greatest treasures in life are these things we would do much better to sell these things to acquire the real treasures which are the heavenly ones.

            But as I said, we fall into the sin of worry.  A lot of people forget that at its heart worry is a sin.  It is sort of like complaining or wasting time, we tell ourselves.  Sure we shouldn’t spend our moments doing these things… but are they really sins?  Is worry a sin?  Let me first give you an idea of what the Lord means today when He uses the word “anxious” in our text.  It comes from the Greek Word “Merimnao”.  (I tell you this because it is important and help us to understand but also to impress Vicar Kolonich that I use the original languages of the Bible when I work on a sermon!!!)  I love the one definition of this word where the dictionary I consulted said that Merimnao involved the “cares of life that disturb sleep from which refuge is sought in love or drink and which only death can end.”  Now that’s a real encouragement.  It is the kind of worry that make us run into crummy relationships where we often sacrifice our morals and standards, it drives us to drink, it makes us stay awake at night and in the end without the love of Jesus the only thing that ends it is death! 

This word for anxiety appears a number of times in the New Testament.  To young husbands about to be married who are sweating up a storm wondering what in the world they are getting into St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 7 said for the Holy Spirit: “I want you to be free from ‘anxieties’”.   In Philippians 4:6 St. Paul went on to tell each of us from the Lord, “Do not be anxious for anything.”  He encouraged us there instead to pray and to let our requests and desires be known to God.

            And St. Paul knew what he was talking about.  If there was ever a saint of God who could have spent his days wondering where God was at times because of the circumstances in his life or spent his hours worrying about his future it was St. Paul .  Arrested numerous times for his faith, beaten and flogged more than once, stoned by others who hated his message, arrested and left to rot in jail for months upon months, sent by ship to Rome to face trial only to suffer shipwreck, to be chained to two Roman soldiers in four hour shifts hour after hour, and to eventually die for the name of Jesus – this is a man who might have said, “God, you sure you know what you are doing?” But Paul always believed and trusted in the Lord who called Him and if he ever had worries and anxieties that drove him to the brink of giving up you never read about them in the New Testament.  Paul knew He had a Father in Heaven who called him through Jesus Christ His Son to an adventure that would last far beyond the worries of one particular day or time in his life.

            Jesus said not to worry about anything because you have a Father in Heaven and your Father knows all the things you need and He knows them better than you do.  And God is the kind of Father that does not grant every single wish of ours because God is not just a Genii in the bottle or some kind of Santa Claus.  But if He doesn’t grant every wish to end every situation that tries our souls He does grant freedom from care when it comes to those things.  One of the things I have truly missed these last twenty plus years in my life is the chance to talk to my father.  There were so many things in the years now past where I wished I could have had the advice of my Dad or even the chance to just ask him about things and how he made it through.    But I have a Heavenly Father Who knows me so well and knows my future. So do you.  And He is always there for us.  So why do I worry?  Why do you?

            You really want to know where the sin of worry comes from?  A lot of us think it comes from fear – and to some extent it does.  But here is a thought for you.  Worry also comes from pride;  and that is not so hard to see if you think about it.  Pride is always at the root of putting your own life and your own concerns and your own need to direct your life ahead of God doing it for you.

Pride makes you worry that the promises of Jesus are not enough.  Jesus has said that if the lilies of the field are clothed by God in garments richer than that of King Solomon and Jesus said, “How much more will he clothe you” your worry is really saying, “I don’t believe you, Jesus”.  Pride makes you think that you know better than God about how your life should go.  The Lord once said, “I know the plans I have for you.” (Jeremiah 29:11)  But worry says, “He doesn’t know what He is doing;  otherwise you wouldn’t be in this mess you are in.”  Pride makes you seek your own kingdom, not His.  How well I remember one day when I went home and complained to my wife because that very day a family here at St. Paul’s told me they had a job transfer to Ohio and would soon be leaving us.  I was bitter and upset because I hate losing families.  But as my wife said, “Hey, they aren’t leaving the kingdom of Jesus Christ .  They are just leaving your kingdom!”  And I hate it when she is that way.  I hate it because she is right.  My pride was making me worry about things that were in God’s hands, not mine.  And pride says that your purpose in life must be something other than the one Jesus has for you!  So you worry about where you are going and why you are where you are and why in the world does my day have to be this way and my week have to be this way and my month and year and will it ever end!”  I truly believe that pride and not just fear is the sin at the root of worry and anxiety.  It is why Jesus could end this text by reminding us that the treasures we claim in life are really the places where our hearts can be found.  Pride transports our hearts to treasures other than God – treasures of our own making.

            St. Peter once wonderfully said to all of us, “Cast every anxiety of yours upon Him, because it matters to him about you.” (1 Peter 5:7)  St. Paul once said,

“He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?” (Romans 8:32)   How can we worry about a loving God who cares for us when for our sakes He allowed Jesus to go to the cross for us? You matter so much to Him that Jesus went through Hell itself for you.  He went through your hell and all that sin and wrong earned for you.  And I know I don’t have to worry because of one truth that nothing and no one and no worry can ever change:  Jesus Christ is risen from the dead.  Jesus lives, the victory is won.  Now if He did all that for me and all that for you I am now going to turn around and worry about whether I’ll have enough to pay the electric bill?  I don’t think so.  If He died for me and died for you and rose again to crush death under His feet nailed to a cross for me I’m going to worry about that illness I have or even cancer or even heart disease.  I don’t think so.  When Jesus Christ reestablished your and my relationship to God the Father and erased every broken facet of it for now and eternity so that God the Father only has love and joy over you and can say of you as He once said to Jesus: “With you I am well pleased” – I’m going to worry about that relationship on earth that went sour or whether I’ll ever get married or ever find the right girl or the right guy?  I don’t think so. 

            This is a wonderful truth for the Lord’s Vicar to hear on this day.  If there ever was a man probably tempted to have at least a little worry and anxiety on this day it would have to be the Vicar.  You know you’re ready.  The Seminary has done a good job of getting you to this point.  But imagine that 1000 mile journey from St. Louis to New England that occurred this week and the thoughts that must have filtered down onto Route 80 in the middle of Pennsylvania .  “Am I really ready?  Will they like me?  Will they accept my family?  How are they going to treat Josiah?  Is Pastor Yeadon really the ogrelike tyrant I have heard about who eats Vicars alive?????

            Here is something that may flow right out of our text that can help.  Vicar Kolonich,  here at St. Paul ’s we love Jesus.  And you know why?  Because He first loved us.  He first so loved us.  Like you we were all the unloveable, lost in a world of our own sin and forsakenness.  You are looking at a Pastor who was absolutely and hopelessly dead in his trespasses.  And Jesus redeemed this one before you whom no one else in all of creation would ever had said deserved to be redeemed.  Because he didn’t deserve it – but Jesus loved me anyway.  And even though these people here are the finest Christians you will ever meet who show the love of Jesus far better than I could ever hope to do,  it is because He loved us.  Would you hearing that Jesus loves us, this we know, for the Bible tells us so, little ones like us to Him belong.  We are weak but He is strong,” help you in any way?  To know that all we hope to do this year is to do what the seminary cannot quite do in a classroom – and that is to help you grow that Pastoral heart you’ll need and to see with pastoral eyes – that is our goal.  To know that we want for one year to be a Church that loves your wife and your son and you too – that is our goal.  To know that we really believe with all of our hearts that all Jesus has called us to do is to “train somebody else’s Pastor” but if that’s all then that is something quite amazing for us – that’s who we are?

            Do not be anxious about your life, what you will preach, what you will wear, for vicarage is more than sermons and more than robes.  Three Hundred and Eighty Seven Years ago some people came to the shores of New England .  On the way they had the same thoughts you may have had in Pennsylvania .  “Am I doing the right thing? What will be there when we get there?  What do we do when we arrive in New England ?”  But the one thing that drove away these anxieties was the conviction that the Lord wanted them to be there and that He was with them and that He had His own unique plans for them in a new world.  Even when half of their number died in that first winter of 1620 what kept them going was the knowledge that Jesus had not left them alone.  And it is more than ironic that almost four hundred years later we still know these first New Englanders by the name: Pilgrims.  In your one year pilgrimage among us may you make the same discoveries that they did and go away above all stronger in your faith in Him as you and your family unite with our family in Jesus and you journey among these whom I truly believe in my heart at least are the finest Christians on the face of the earth.  “Fear not, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom!” Amen.