Matthew 6:25-34
July 3, 2011
“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? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, 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, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. “So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.
Do you remember the song by Bobby McFerrin, “Don’t worry, be happy?” It came out in 1988, and it made lots of people happy. Bobby McFerrin is a jazz vocalist, meaning that he creates music a cappella and by himself. What’s amazing is that listening to him, he sounds like full jazz band, yet he’s producing all the sounds himself. He’s quite amazing. The song, and especially the video that accompanied it, became a phenomenon. If you want to see it again, or if you never saw it, go to YouTube and see it. It’s wonderful.
The video also is appropriate for this morning because it seems like it captures perfectly the message of our passage for this morning. Who could argue with the idea of “don’t worry be happy?”
The fact is that so many of us worry, and for good reason—there’s lots to worry about. We worry about our finances. We worry about our kids. We worry about our parents. We worry about our bills. We worry about our debt. We worry about the nation’s debt. We worry about terrorism. We worry about crime. We worry about our weight. We worry about our age. We worry about our work. We worry about our health. We worry about our future. We worry about our past. We worry about death. We worry about what happens after death. We worry about our lives and about what’s not happening in our lives. We worry about what people think about us. We worry that people don’t think enough about us. And on and on and on and on and on…..
Worry is our constant companion, and that makes it hard to live a life of “don’t worry, be happy.” Human worrying isn’t a new thing. It was a constant companion in Jesus’ time, too. In fact, they had a lot more to worry about. Well, perhaps not more, but the worries they had were more life-threatening. They didn’t just worry about their health. They worried about things that we take for granted. For many, a broken bone, a prolonged illness, a loss of a job, or a major injury could make the difference between subsistence and poverty. We take for granted much of what they feared. When we get bronchitis, we go to the doctor for treatment. Back then, illnesses like bronchitis could lead easily to death and impoverishment for the grieving family. An infected finger could lead to amputation. Their worries were real worries.
Jesus knew that people had so much to worry about. Yet Jesus’ response to their and our worries hasn’t been “don’t worry be happy.” His response is “don’t worry, be faithful.” He’s saying that the answer to our worries isn’t denial or repression of the real facts of life. A real response to worries means turning to God in the face of them.
What Jesus is really talking about is restoring balance to our lives. He’s recognizing that the reasons we end up with so many worries is that our lives get out of balance. And the fact is that most of our lives are out of balance.
For example, I believe that one of the most evil ideas Americans every created and subscribed to is the idea of 24/7. It is incredibly alluring to show how committed we are to our work by saying that we are available 24/7, but that availability really doesn’t make life better. In fact, it makes life terrible because it creates unbalanced lives. And much of American life has become unbalanced. It doesn’t take long to see examples of how systematic our unbalancing act is. Look at our federal budget. It’s not only unbalanced, but it is persistently unbalanced, and we’re locked in dissonant wrangling over it. Our politics is unbalanced. We don’t work together. Instead, we have a culture that is invested in being Republicans or Democrats over being American. Many of us are unbalanced in our work and home lives. And we have this obsession with thinking that acquiring more wealth can bring more balance. But having grown up in incredibly wealthy areas like Sewickley and the Mainline of Philadelphia, I’ve noticed that greater wealth brings about greater imbalance. Many people with great wealth live lives that lead to great spending. They have the same problems we do, but on a larger scale. They spend their money on bigger things than we do, so their greater wealth becomes consumed with more expensive houses, cars, activities, and baubles.
Jesus preached balance. His life was a testimony to balance. Of course, in the American interpretation of the Gospel, we turn him into an energy dynamo, always doing, doing, doing. We see him teaching here, preaching there, healing everywhere. We think he was a guy on the go with no place to rest his head. But that’s because we read the gospels with a 24/7 mindset. Read it more closely. Jesus taught, and then went off by himself to pray. Jesus preached, and then went off with his disciples on retreat. Jesus healed, and then went to a mountain to spend time with the Father and the Spirit. Whenever Jesus was on the go, he later retreated for a time of recollection, reflection, and relaxation. He was balanced.
I’ve learned from Jesus that life is like a tightrope, and that balance is the key. It is hard for us to walk that fine line of being involved in life and taking time for ourselves, for our families, and for God. It’s hard for us to walk that fine line between work and play, time with others and by ourselves, activity and rest, self-focus and other-focus, world-focus and faith-focus. Most of us would rather gravitate toward ones side and not the other, but when we do that we don’t move forward. We fall off the wire into a safe-feeling net that leads us to become stagnant, causing our lives to become complacent.
To live in balance means to walk that tightrope of life by living life from a center that lets us live calmer, more grounded lives, and more compassionate lives. It means getting enough sleep, trying to eat what’s healthy and not too much, drinking in moderation, balancing work/home/play, exercising, reading, resting, relaxing, and praying and reading scripture—being intentional. Being intentional means making decisions intentionally to live a life of balance, no matter what we face in life. It means “Don’t worry, be faithful.”
The key to all of this balance is not trying to do everything, but trying to let everything come out of God at our center. When we live life by placing God at the center, it makes all the difference in the world. The question that I’d like you to reflect on this morning is this: What kind of balance do you have in your life?
Amen.
