“Great Value”

August 22, 2010

Luke 12:22-31

It’s good to be back after a vacation that was a restful and renewing change of scenery and activities. I want to thank Diana Coberly for preparing and leading worship on the last two Sundays and for preaching what I heard were very good sermons. Along with many others I appreciate Diana’s presence with us while she has worked in the Clinical Pastoral Education program over at UIHC. As she finishes that program and prepares, most likely, to leave Iowa City, I was happy to have her filling the pulpit in my absence.

By coincidence, on the past three Sundays The New York Times ran some articles and letters that addressed the demands on ordained ministers and our need for vacation time. So I felt as though my time off was, as they say, “ripped from today’s headlines.” Maybe you saw some or all of these. Strange topics for the Times, I thought. Still, I was thankful that this congregation was about as far as you can get from the “bad examples” in the Times and all the more appreciative of ministering among people who, in addition to everything else, care about the health and well-being of your minister.

As it turned out, when I got to my study this past Monday morning I found that we were having some problems with our internet connection. So my first day back I had no access to email, no ability to check websites. It was wonderful! It was like getting an extra day of vacation—I recommend it to all of you!

I did, of course, come back from vacation just at the time when Iowa City puts its nose to the grindstone and its shoulder to the wheel once more. Last Thursday the elementary, junior high, and high schools began classes. It is quite apparent that our neighbors next door and across the street begin the fall semester tomorrow. Even if your life doesn’t follow the academic calendar, late August and early September usually mean that our “To Do” lists are getting longer, our schedules more crowded. All downtown appearances this morning to the contrary, we are not in an endless summer beach party.

I came back as Iowa City gets to work. I came back as we continue to walk with Jesus on his was to Jerusalem as told in the Gospel of Luke. And as I have several other times, I encourage you to read through this entire gospel—as many others are doing or have done this year.

As we get going we hear Jesus tell those who would follow him: “Do not worry…Do not keep striving…”

What?

While those words seem appropriate for a sunny mid-July afternoon, they feel somewhat out of place for this morning as we’re gearing up and getting ready to go.

After all, people come to Iowa City in order to strive—to study hard, to learn to think or play an instrument or act or write better than when they first arrived. Parents send their children off to school saying: “Pay attention. Do your best.” But “Don’t worry?” And again, if school isn’t on your mind today—my guess is that you probably have something—or several things—that you feel are worth striving for or worrying about: a project at work, a patient’s diagnosis, your own health, the needs of a client.

It’s difficult if not impossible to stop worrying simply because someone—even Jesus—tells us not to worry. The story is told of Dostoyevsky challenged his brother to not think of a white bear, leaving him puzzled and confused. Try it yourself—you’ll be thinking of white bears for the rest of this sermon—maybe for the rest of the day. Suppression creates the very preoccupation it tries to avoid. So when someone, even Jesus says, “Don’t worry”—well, you can guess what’s going to happen.

We recently heard of another way to get beyond worry.

The news came this week of a letter that John Lennon wrote to an English folk singer in 1971. That was the year that Steve Tilston gave an interview in which he expressed his worry that financial success might impair his ability to write songs. After reading the article Lennon sent a hand-written note to Tilston in care of the magazine that published the interview advising: “Being rich doesn’t change your experiences in the way you think. The only difference, basically, is that you don’t have to worry about money—food—roof, etc. But all other experiences—emotions—relationships—are the same as anybody’s. I have been rich and poor and so has Yoko,” Lennon wrote, concluding, “So whatya think of that?”

Steve Tilston, now 60, only found out about the undelivered letter five years ago. As he said, “I was never really able to test this theory out.”

Don’t worry—be rich.

Which in a sense we are. We live in better homes than Solomon could have imagined. We are dressed in better clothing. Our simplest smart phones give us instant access to more knowledge than Solomon—if not more wisdom.

Even at the height of summer when we are surrounded by the bounty of nature, when it is easy for us to look at the birds of the air and to consider the lilies of the field, we can become blinded by the myth of scarcity. A volatile stock market, an unstable world, our unique individual worries can constrict us and keep us from experiencing life as it truly is in the freedom and security of God’s love.

Worry does little for us. It doesn’t increase our height or our length of days. It doesn’t write the paper or finish the project. But if we can’t eliminate our anxiety, perhaps we can at least be aware of it.

As the world around us ramps up and gets going, Jesus invites us to pause just a little longer—if only for these few minutes this morning—so that we can put our work and our lives into a larger context and rest in God’s love and care for us.

Then we can hear—as if for the first time, or maybe actually for the first time—that wonderful question Jesus asks those who would follow him, even us: “Of how much more value are you?”

This is where listening to Jesus today gets both difficult and important.

It’s easy to hear this simply as a little self-esteem pep talk—not that most of us couldn’t use a little more self-esteem. But if that is all that we are able to hear in these words we will miss something more.

Jesus is speaking not so much about our own self understanding as he is about God’s love for us. Looking with us at the birds and the flowers, Jesus invites us to consider God the Creator.

We are God’s treasure. This is not meant to disparage the rest of creation or minimize our stewardship of the earth, but to encourage us in our daily living. For there are times when fear and failure will press in. There are times when self-doubt will seem the soundest approach to take.

At such times the words of Jesus ask lovingly: “Are you not of greater value?”

That question carries with it the judgment of God in the most welcome sense of that phrase.

You are of great value. These are the words to remember when it is three in the morning and the worry that plagues you does not cease. These are the words to remember when your music does not sound as you imagine it should, when the needed inspiration does not come, when the project falls apart, when the relationship crumbles. These are the words that invite us to rest even as we give all that we have and all that we are to our families and our friends, to our community and our work.

This is to say, these are words to carry with us in the year that stretches out before us with all its possibility and danger.

God’s judgment has come and this is it: you are of great value.

With this in our minds and in our hearts we can hear again the words of Jesus: “Do not worry…do not strive.”

Of course we do. And we can no more control our worry and anxiety that we can our breathing. Worry comes unbidden as does the restoring breath.

But Jesus invites us as the much valued creatures of the Creator to recognize the care that we receive, the abundance in which we live, the wealth that is ours.

It is good to plan, to succeed, to do well. We know that the life of faith looks toward the future. Good stewardship of all that God has given requires that we plan. And certainly we cannot be generous unless we first earn.

So it is that Jesus does invite us to strive—to get up and get going—but to strive for what he called the “realm of God.” God’s realm is the image of that place, that time, of peace, of justice, of right relationships, of love, of beauty.

God’s realm is not here—but we move toward it in this place in these days.

God’s realm is not here—and yet from time to time we recognize that it is here among us. And when we strive to think more clearly, to create beauty, to extend welcome and compassion to others, to love deeply—we are striving for the realm of God.

We look to the future that God is opening up. We are invited to set aside the arrogant thinking that sees life as in our hands alone—to recognize that it is in God that we live and move and have our being.

Life is fragile—we know that. Accidents happen, illness runs its course, bodies fail. For all of our progress, all of our focus on security, and all of our planning, however, the fragility of life continues to be a part of our daily reality. An awareness of this fragility can lead to fear and to envy—the outlook that having is the same as being.

And yet, an awareness of the fragility of life can also lead to a deepening sense of grace—God’s care for creation, and for us, in our prosperity and in our adversity.

We work. We strive.

We succeed. We fail. We strive.

Slowly the realm of God becomes more visible among us.

Slowly we see the wealth that surrounds us, the grace that sustain us.

Through it all remember: you are of great value.

You are of great value.