Luke 12:22-31
August 8, 2010
He said to his disciples, ‘Therefore I tell you, 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 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 can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? If then you are not able to do so small a thing as that, why do you worry 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 clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you—you of little faith! And do not keep striving for what you are to eat and what you are to drink, and do not keep worrying. For it is the nations of the world that strive after all these things, and your Father knows that you need them. Instead, strive for his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well.
Our passage reminds me so clearly of something that happened back in 1993. It was a time when I, and a bunch of other people, had to decide whether to let go of our worries and trust God, or hold onto our worries and let go of God.
At the time I had been ordained already for four years, and about three months earlier I had made the decision to quit working as a pastor so that I could devote myself full-time to finishing my Ph.D. at Duquesne University. The program I was studying in was really the one program, the Institute of Formative Spirituality, that Duquesne University was known for all over the world. It brought a lot of prestige to the university, and we were all very proud to study there. The students came from all over the U.S., Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia, representing many different denominations and traditions. All had come to Pittsburgh to study in the area of spirituality.
There was one major problem with the institute. If you look at the other graduate programs at Duquesne University, especially the MBA program and the law school, they generated money. Typically the alumni of those programs gave back a lot of money to the school after graduation, especially those that ended up in high-income careers. And Duquesne was interested in programs that generated revenues. Unfortunately, the Institute of Formative Spirituality, since it was educating mostly priests, pastors, and religious sisters and brothers, didn’t produce high-income graduates. Graduates of the MBA and law school contributed thousands and millions to Duquesne. Graduates of the Institute of Formative Spirituality contributed hundreds. From the school’s perspective, the decision was easy no matter how much prestige the institute gave them. They decided to discontinue the program in order to expand the pharmacy program.
We had heard rumors that the program was in peril, and then one week we were all invited to a meeting with a dean. Most of the students were there, and the meeting began awkwardly as the dean was introduced. Standing slowly, and beginning with words of thanks and appreciation for all we had done, and the value the program had had for Duquesne for many years, he then told us that the program was in peril and that the program was going to close down in the next few years. Basically, classes would end by 1995, and the Ph.D. students would be given till 1997 to finish their dissertations.
The students, whose anxieties were now leading to anger, peppered him with questions: “How can you do this to us? We’ve all made so many sacrifices. What are we supposed to do? How do we make plans for ourselves? What good is a master or doctoral degree from a program that doesn’t exist? Why didn’t you tell us this could happen when we applied.” The dean tried his best to answer everyone, but it was obvious that this was a hostile crowd.
The reaction we all had was a natural one. We had made all sorts of plans for our future. We had spent thousands of dollars on tuition, books, and the rest. And we had committed countless hours to study and prayer. What was it all for? How dare they ruin all our carefully laid plans?
Then God broke into the meeting. Keith Barron, one of our professors, stood up and said something that has stuck in my mind ever since. He stood before us and said, “You know, this is where your faith gets tested. You’re all worried, but I want you to listen to this passage of scripture.” He then read our passage for today: “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life…” Afterwards, he said, “God is going to take care of everything. God didn’t lead you here to then let you down. God had a purpose for you in bringing you here, and God still does. So don’t get consumed by worries. Just trust that God will take care of you.”
Keith was 100% right. In the end, God did take care of us. Eventually, they did close the program, but everyone in the program received their degrees and are now making a difference in the world. Keith had been right. In the end everything worked out for everyone. We worried so much, though, because all our plans looked like they were about to crumble.
I learned a big lesson that day. I learned that if you really want God in your life, you have to lay a foundation for God, and calm surrender is the key. The degree to which we surrender our worry and let God in is the extent to which God can work in our lives to do wonderful things.
Let me shift gears for a moment because I want to talk about letting go of worry in a different way. You wouldn’t know this about me, but I’m an expert fire-maker, and I’ve learned that building a fire is much like building a passion for God. I am an excellent fire-maker. Building proper fires is so important to me that I’ve told my wife, Diane, that I have only one demand when it comes to buying a home. It must have a natural fireplace. No gas jets or artificial logs for me. I want a fireplace where I can build it, stoke it, and grow it. In fact, one reason we moved to where we live now is that it is a place surrounded by woods. I love to cut down dead wood and trees, chop them up, and burn them in our outdoor fire pit.
I learned how to build fires as a teen in summer camp. I was sent every year for eight weeks to a camp in New Hampshire, and one of the tasks we had to learn was how to build a fire. We were taught how to build one using only one match, and after we succeeded, we then had to learn how to build it in the rain, which mean huddling under a poncho while a counselor sprayed a hose over us. What I learned is that to build a good fire, you have to start with very small kindling and build up from there.
Many people can’t build adequate fires because they start out too big. They put large logs over newspaper, and then wonder why the fire fizzles. To build a good fire you have to patiently start small. If you use crumpled newspaper as a base (at camp I had to use pine needles), you start by putting a layer of really small twigs—the smaller the better—atop the paper. Once the fire gets going, you place finger sized twigs on top. Once that starts to burn, you build around it log cabin structure (some like to build teepee styled structures, but I like to build it cabin-style) using twigs the width of our wrist. Then, as that begins to burn, you place normal sized logs atop the cabin structure, topping it all off with a roof of larger logs. There are small variations on this, but basically if you do it this way, you eventually get a roaring fire. To keep it going, you have to stoke it and put new logs on, while maintaining that cabin structure, to some extent.
Becoming available to God, and building a passion for God, is very similar to building a fire. If we are going to really build a passion for God, a passion that really allows God deeply into our lives, we have to start small by giving God our small worries. I think that most people try to start too big, and that’s why their faith struggles. They wait until they are facing a major crisis, and then try to give it to God, but they can’t. The faith needed for that is too big. When issues are that big, our worry and anxiety become so big that we have a hard time letting go and letting God. The key is building our faith like a fire, which means learning to let go of our worries and turning them over to God by starting with the small worries of life. Nothing’s too small. Learn to give over the little things. Then build up. Start giving God the bigger things. Pretty soon, you can learn to give over to God the big things in life, and they don’t come back.
The secret of our passage is that when we learn to live life by doing our part, but then giving God our worries and the responsibility for the results, life gets better. We discover how to live anxiety-free lives that build God-full lives.
When I think of people who started small in giving their anxieties to God, which resulted in being able to give God worries in the big things of life, I think of one of my faith heroes: the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. One of the sad things about remembering him and his work is that many people today forget that he was a pastor. They see him as a Civil Rights leader, but they fail to recognize how much his faith and Christianity shaped him to do what he did. He was shaped by his Christian upbringing. He was shaped by Scripture. He was shaped by great Christian writers such as Reinhold Niebuhr and Tolstoy. He was shaped by Gandhi and Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. Without these influences, he never would have led such a great movement that changed this country in radical ways.
What most people don’t know is that King’s part in this movement almost ended as it was beginning because of his anxieties. He didn’t want to lead this movement. In fact, he was reluctant to even go to Montgomery, Alabama. He first became pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church to get out from under the shadow of his father, Martin Luther King, Sr. Martin Luther King, Sr. was a powerful and popular preacher in Atlanta, and Martin Luther King, Jr. needed to go somewhere else to find his own voice and his own ministry. Montgomery was far enough away culturally and geographically for him to do that.
He became the leader of the Civil Rights Movement slowly by getting involved in the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955. Rosa Parks, a black seamstress in Montgomery, boarded a bus and refused to walk to the back of the bus after being ordered to do so by the white driver. In those days, blacks were forced to sit at the back of the bus. The response of the driver and others led the black community to initiate a bus boycott. In looking for a leader, the other pastors and civic leaders chose King. Still, he was reluctant. The main reason he ascended to the leadership was that he was young, just in his late twenties, and he was willing to say yes to organizing things. An older, wiser pastor would have said “no.” King really didn’t know what he was in for. Over time, the death threats against his life grew, and they made him nervous. He realized that at any moment, he could be taken from his wife and toddler daughter, or they could be taken from him, through violence. He became fearful and doubtful. Should he continue? Was it fair to his wife and family?
It was as he struggled with his anxieties that he sought God’s voice and call in prayer. Let me share with you what he says in his book, Stride toward Freedom, about how he heard God in prayer. On one particular night, he received a death threat on the phone from a stranger saying, “Listen, nigger, we’ve taken all we want from you; before next week you’ll be sorry you ever came to Montgomery.” This threat was different from all the others. It somehow seemed more like a promise than a threat. King struggled to sleep that night. He says, “I got out of bed and began to walk the floor. Finally I went to the kitchen and heated a pot of coffee. I was ready to give up. With my cup of coffee sitting untouched before me I tried to think of a way to move out of the picture without appearing a coward. In this state of exhaustion, when my courage had all but gone, I decided to take my problem to God. With my head in my hands, I bowed over the kitchen table and prayed aloud. The words I spoke to God that midnight are still vivid in my memory. ‘I am here taking a stand for what I believe is right. But now I am afraid. The people are looking to me for leadership, and if I stand before them without strength and courage, they too will falter. I am at the end of my powers. I have nothing left. I’ve come to the point where I can’t face it alone.’
“At that moment I experienced the presence of the Divine as I had never experienced Him before. It seemed as though I could hear the quiet assurance of an inner voice saying: ‘Stand up for righteousness, stand up for truth; and God will be at your side forever.’ Almost at once my fears began to go. My uncertainty disappeared. I was ready to face anything.” He had found his call through prayer.
What made this prayer and his experience so profound was that a week later a bomb was thrown onto the porch of his home, almost killing his wife and child. Instead of being gripped by fear, King became more resolute. He felt God’s presence in his life, telling him that God would be with him no matter what. He heard God’s call, and this call made it possible for him to follow God not matter how difficult and dangerous the task ahead was. King had been struggling to give his worries to God in much smaller things all along. In just following a call to be a pastor, he was giving anxieties over to God. So when it was time to give something big, like whether to stay in the movement or not, he had built up the ability to give over those worries. And in experiencing God as he gave over his worries, he was able to let go and let God throughout the rest of the movement. Many people have reported that in the last six months of his life, before being shot in Memphis, he spoke openly about his acceptance that he would probably be assassinated soon. And they remarked that he never seemed to be afraid. He had learned the secret of our passage. King had a passion for God, and the true kindling for it was his surrender to God of all his worries.
If you want to really form a passion for God in your life—if you really want to experience God in your life—it begins with surrendering you worries. It’s never easy to do this, and the moment we give God our worries, we generally get them right back. It’s what I call worry echoes. We give our worries to God, and then they come right back to us. But if we keep giving them over, like an echo, they will diminish. Also, when I say we surrender our worries I don’t say that we sit back and do nothing. We do. We do our part, but surrendering our worries lets God do God’s part.
For today, learning to let go of your worries is enough. Come back next week and we’ll learn more about how to build a passion for God that makes a real difference in life.
Amen.
