Sermons

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No Worries
June 5 , 2005
Sermon Series on the Gospel of Luke
Pastor Dan Baumgartner
Luke 12:22-34

Once a year I get together with my covenant group, a group of four of us who went to seminary together. We read a couple of books ahead of time, we meet for about three days and talk and pray and play bad golf and tell bad jokes and laugh a lot.

Last week we met up on Whidbey Island. One of the books we read was Shaped By the Word, by Robert Mulholland. It’s a book on “spiritual formation,” a phrase we hear a lot these days. Mulholland describes spiritual formation as “the process of becoming more like Christ.”

He says that all of us, regardless of who we are, are being spiritually formed. It’s just a question of what is forming us. Are we being conformed to our broken world…or to the wholeness of Christ? What is forming us spiritually?

Each Sunday when we settle in to read the sermon text, whoever is preaching walks over and lights a candle. And then we invite you to stand for the reading of the gospel.

We do these things to remind us that we are issuing God an invitation. We are inviting God’s holy scripture to form us.

We are saying “no” to all of the different things in a broken world that would form us in other ways. We are choosing to be formed by the Spirit speaking through God’s word.

Lighting a candle and standing are simply tangible reminders of that choice.

Last week we read the passage immediately before this one, in which Jesus was talking to a large crowd. He told the story of the rich fool who accumulated so much he had to build bigger barns just to store it all.

We spent quite a bit of time talking about our own lives, and the accumulation of things, the kind of greed that has to do with acquiring things without considering what we actually need…or what others around us need.

We talked about how the preoccupation with things tends to isolate us from other people, and get in the way of our relationship with God.

And finally we talked about what an immense challenge this is in living in American culture, which finds great solace and security in things.

I don’t know about you, but that was a passage that hit pretty close to home for me.

I talked to a number of you this week who found it rather disturbing. I did. I went home and started making a list of things I need to let go of. It was a long list.

So after a week of wrestling over this, I was looking forward to Jesus moving on to other things this Sunday! But not a chance. Jesus stays right on the exact same topic.

True, we could have skipped over this in our journey through Luke. But it seems to me that maybe there is a reason Jesus continues to talk about it. Perhaps there is more for us to deal with. Maybe we’ve only scratched the surface.

Max Lucado tells a wonderful story of taking his three year old daughter Andrea, to SeaWorld, and finding the plastic ball pit. You’ve seen them, some drive-ins have these play areas just absolutely filled with lightweight plastic balls, bright-colored, red, green, yellow balls. Parents sit outside “the cage,” and children (if they fit under the height restriction) can go in and just have a blast with thousands of balls, digging, burying, throwing. They come up to the waist of little kids like Andrea.

They are meant to be so much fun, but Andrea had trouble right from the start. As soon as she walked into this pit, she filled her arms completely with balls. It would have been hard for her to walk through the pit anyway, but she could have done it with her arms empty and spread out to help keep her balance. With her arms full, she didn’t have a chance. Down she went, practically buried under bright colored balls and unable to stand up.

Jesus tells his disciples,

“Do not worry.”

Now he speaks not to the large crowd, but to his close followers.

“Do not worry.”

Worry about what? Why not worry? What do we do if we are stuck worrying? These are the three things I want you to watch for this morning.

Jesus says, “Do not worry.”

What do you worry about?

Some of us barely sleep at night. We are a nation of sleep disorders. What keeps us awake? We’re maybe over stimulated. Certainly over caffeinated. We worry about tasks, jobs, having too much to do, about how our children are growing up, about whether we’ll get married or not. We worry about the environment, about the war, about the disintegration of the family, about terrorism.

There’s a lot to worry about. How can Jesus so flippantly say “Don’t worry?”

In the last 10-15 years, the Disney movie The Lion King, and the extravagant Broadway play that came from it made famous another slogan: “Hakuna Matata.” I checked in with a Kenyan friend, and it really and truly is a Swahili phrase that literally means “there are no concerns here,” or “no problem,” or “no worries.”

The way the characters in the movie and play sang it and used it was that when a situation felt too overwhelming or out of their control or difficult, they’d just throw up their hands and say “Hakuna Matata.” No worries. “A problem-free philosophy,” says the song.

When Jesus says “Do not worry,” he is not saying “Hakuna Matata.” He was not talking about just general anxiety. He was talking specifically about worrying about things.

Possessions.

He was talking about his disciples (us) worrying over whether we’d get enough. Worrying about food.

• Worrying about clothing.
• Maybe worrying about bank accounts.
• Insurance policies.
• Cars.
• Retirement plans.
• Being anxious about whether we’ll have enough.

Life is far more than that, Jesus says. Life is about more than just getting by, more than hoarding, hiding behind things.

Three-year old Andrea, buried in the plastic ball pit with her arms full started to cry. “Andrea,” her dad calmly said, “let go of the balls and you can walk.” “No!” she screamed, wiggling and struggling and failing to get up. Dad said again, rather calmly “If you let go of the balls, you’ll be able to walk.”

She struggled to her feet, took two steps and fell again, crying. Dad was no longer calm. “Andrea, just let go of the balls!” From underneath the sea of plastic came the muffled voice: “No!” She had what she wanted, and she was going to hold onto it even if it killed her.

What do you clutch? What do you hold onto? Jesus said “Do not worry about what you will eat or wear.” There is more to life than that.

I don’t think Jesus was saying “Don’t plan, or plant or reap.”

I don’t think he was saying to all of us “Quit your jobs and manna will come down from heaven like in days of old.”

But he is saying “Don’t worry over the things that want to possess you.”

It must have been an issue for the disciples. Jesus keeps saying it,

“Don’t worry. Don’t worry.”

It must be an issue for us. Why do we worry about things?

It may be because we have some wrong ideas of what God is like.

• If God is absent from the world, then all I can depend on is myself. And I’m going to grab ahold of everything I can get.

  But God is not absent.

• If God cannot be trusted, then it is up to me.

  But God can be trusted.

• If God does not love me, then I must find my value somewhere else. I know. I’ll get more things and build a bigger barn.

  But God does love me.

Jesus says “Look at the birds. Look at the birds, the ravens.” It’s fabulous! They don’t work a field, they don’t have barns to store things in for a rainy day. God just has it set up so they get what they need.

I never thought I’d be a bird person. In fact, I could never understand why anyone would ever do something like go birdwatching. But over the years as we’ve spent a lot of time on Whidbey Island, I’ve had a conversion experience. I am absolutely fascinated by the variety of birds. And I learn important things from them:

a) Bald Eagles- teach us to pay attention.

I was no more than 10 feet away from two of them this weekend. They were so big that I started fearing they’d swoop in and pick up our black lab Lucy and carry her away like the winged monkeys in the Wizard of Oz! But eagles see everything, even if it looks like they’re not paying attention, they are paying attention.

b) Osprey- live life with abandon.

Osprey go fishing in the bay. They circle above the water perhaps 40-50 feet up in the air, and when they spot a fish within range, they tuck their wings and plummet in an absolute cannonball into the water as though they had absolutely no regard for their bodies, grab the fish and fly away.

c) Heron- show us patience.

At sunset out on the beach, these big awkward, cranes fly in. They go out into the shallow water, and stand on those ridiculous pipestem legs. And they hold still. For a long, long time they don’t move until you wonder if they’re plastic like the pink flamingos in your neighbors yard! Waiting and waiting for just the right time to move to get dinner.

Such amazing, diverse, wonderful creatures. Yet none of them store up…rather, Jesus says, God feeds them. Takes care of them. They get what they need. And you, (disciples), You are worth so much more than these birds!

In other words…don’t you think you could depend on God too? Don’t you think God will take care of you?

And the same with the beautiful flowers, the lilies, and with the grasses of the field clothed by God with a beauty and majesty that gold and silver could never begin to match. And God cares far more for you than for these.

Don’t you think you can depend on God? You can trust God.

Henry Nouwen once talked about how hard it is for us to trust. One reason, he thought, was that we have mistaken what God’s promises to us actually are. We get all distracted by thinking that comfortable living or nice things or perfect health are part of God’s promises to us and we get confused when they don’t happen. But what Nouwen says God actually has promised is:

• his presence with us.
• that he will give us what we need the most.

Don’t worry about the things, Jesus says. Not because generally you can’t do anything about it (hakuna matata), but rather because specifically God can be trusted.

When we get overworried about our future, we tend to focus on things…and miss God. Anybody can do that. That’s what “the nations” do, Jesus says. That is, those who do not know God. They worry about what to eat and drink and they worry, but you are to be different. Your life should look different than the world around you.

If you want to strive for something, Jesus says, strive for kingdom things:

• feed the hungry
• care for the poor
• house the homeless
• befriend the lonely
• point people towards a God who loves and cares for them...who can be trusted.

We’re almost done. But what do we do if we’re stuck? What is the remedy for a life of building bigger barns, of striving after our security? What helps us when we’re trusting in what we’ve accumulated instead of trusting in God?

Jesus is pretty clear. Painfully clear. Start giving it away.

“Sell your possessions, give alms.”

When I read this, I thought, “Surely Jesus means to give us a more sophisticated answer than that.” But it’s painfully simple.

Give away. Let go.

Meanwhile back at SeaWorld once more, Andrea absolutely is unable to relinquish what is in her hands. All she has to do is release the balls. But she can’t do it. The only thing that can help her now is to be rescued by her dad.

With a sigh, he wades into the pit under the wrathful stares of the other parents (who know parents aren’t allowed in the pit). He physically unpries Andrea’s fingers from the balls, and sets her back down, suddenly calm and happy to be able to walk and play.

May God help us to be people who trust him enough to open our hands as well…and live with no worries. Let us pray.

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