Hilton Head Island, SC – January 26, 2020
The Chapel Without Walls
Matthew 6:19-24; Matthew 6:25-34
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – “Therefore, do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day’s own troubles be sufficient for the day.” – Matthew 6:34 (RSV)
The fifth through the seventh chapters of the Gospel of Matthew are what the Church has always called the Sermon on the Mount. The Sermon on the Mount is what the ancient rabbis would call pilpul. That word connotes stringing beads. You take two or three beads of this color and string them onto the thread, and other beads of other colors or sizes, and so on, until the whole string of beads is finished in the way originally intended. The subjects Jesus addressed in the Sermon on the Mount, like the multicolored beads, are not necessarily related one to the other. But when they are collected together, they make an outstanding statement about how God wants us to live. That is why more people recall more verses from these three chapters of Matthew’s Gospel than any other large compilation of verses from any other Gospel. As they say in the Sunny South, “This will preach!”
One thing which speaks most powerfully to our time is the two passages from Matthew 6 which were read earlier this morning. Key statements in these passages are these: “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth” (6:19); “You cannot serve God and mammon” (6:24); “Do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink” (6:25); and especially our sermon text, “Therefore, do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day’s own troubles be sufficient for the day” (6:34).
You and I probably know no one like most of the people whom Jesus addressed in the Sermon on the Mount. Nearly all of them were subsistence workers. That is, they earned enough money only barely to eek out a living. They lived in homes which were little more than hovels, they scarcely had enough to eat, and when they did find work, which was not often, they had to depend on the generosity of landowners who might or might not treat them fairly when it came time for them to be paid. They were people who, quintessentially, didn’t have two nickels to rub together. They were, in the vernacular of the day, the Am ha-Aretz, the people of the land. And they probably represented 90 to 95% of everyone then living in the region of the Galilee. In 1st century Judea, the Have-Nots outnumbered the Haves by an enormous percentage.
So why would Jesus warn them about laying up treasures on earth, or about trying to serve both God and mammon (meaning money, wealth, assets), or about not being anxious about their lives? They couldn’t lay up treasures, because they had none! Who worries more about tomorrow than people who know that tomorrow may be even more sparse than today?
There are a small ethnic group of people in northern Tanzania who are called the Hazda. Their existence is sustained solely by being hunter-gatherers. The Hazda do not farm anything, nor have they ever. They pick berries and dig up roots and hunt animals. When there are no berries or roots or animals, they might go hungry. Writing about them in the National Georgraphic, the writer Michael Finkel said, “The Hazda do not engage in warfare. They’ve never lived densely enough to be seriously threatened by an infectious outbreak. They have no known history of famine; rather, there is evidence of people from a farming group coming to live with them during a time of crop failure…. They enjoy an extraordinary amount of leisure time. Anthropologists have estimated they ‘work’ – actively pursue food – four to six hours a day…. No Hazda adult has authority over any other. None has more wealth; or rather, they have no wealth. There are no social obligations – no birthdays, no religious holidays, no anniversaries…. There are no wedding ceremonies. A couple that sleeps at the same fire for a while may eventually refer to themselves as married. Most of the Hazda I met, men and women alike, were serial monogamists, changing spouses every few years.”
Further, says Michael Finkel, the Hazda have no notion of the future: none. One of them was a man named Onwas. The author wrote, “Onwas, as he repeatedly told me, doesn’t worry about the future. He doesn’t worry about anything. No Hazda I met, in fact, seemed prone to worry. It was a mind-set that astounded me, for the Hazda, to my way of thinking, have very legitimate worries. Will I eat tomorrow? Will something eat me tomorrow? Yet they live a remarkable present-tense existence.”
The Hazda have no apparent religion. There are no priests or shamans or medicine men. They do not believe in life after death. When anyone dies, there is no big fuss. They dig a hole, and place the body in it. There is no funeral, and no grave marker. A generation ago, they didn’t even dig graves. They left the body where it was, and the hyenas would come to eat it.
In the modern world there are isolated individuals who never worry about anything, but no advanced society has the collective mindset of the Hazda. The same was true in Jesus’ day as well, I suspect. Nearly everyone tried to store up enough food and other commodities so as to avoid being concerned for the future. It has been characteristic of every society since the evolution of agriculture ten thousand years ago or so. It is prudent to plan for the future, we think.
The Hazda of Tanzania might be able to live with no thought for tomorrow, but no one else can. Still, Jesus was urging us to have more of the Hazda outlook and less of the outlook of the 1st-century Am ha-Aretz or the 21st-century middle-class Americans.
However, it was not prudence Jesus was calling into question in the Sermon on the Mount. Rather it was rampant acquisitiveness. He was decrying the accumulation of what the late comedian George Carlin in his comic routines frequently called “stuff.” Stuff can be anything: clothes, books, knickknacks, collectible items, bulging closets or pantries, foodstuffs, lawns that are too big, houses that are too big, cars that consume too much fuel, liquid assets, illiquid assets, cold hard cash --- anything. None of us lives a subsistence existence, and we don’t know anyone who does. We all have enough stuff. We have more than enough stuff. Therefore Jesus is surely talking to us, to you and me.
Many people have no qualms about the amount of stuff they have. They have it, and that’s that. Nobody is going to call them to task for it, not even Jesus. But there are more sensitive souls who are faced with ethical quandaries about their stuff. Should they sell a house that is larger than they need and buy one which is more commensurate to their needs? But if they do, will they lose money in the sale of the bigger home and pay through the nose on the purchase of the smaller one? And if so, is that wise; is it prudent? Would God approve their throwing away money? Should they buy a hybrid car in order to use less gasoline, and thus do their very small bit to slow climate change, if in fact the climate is changing? And again, they will have to pay more for the hybrid, and get less for the gas-guzzler. It’s a puzzlement, isn’t it?
Nevertheless, Americans seem to acquire more stuff per capita than just about any other people on the planet. Our homes are bigger on average, our closets are fuller on average, our garages are more stuffed on average, than those of any other people on earth. Local nonprofit thrift stores operate very successfully because we are overstuffed with stuff. We throw away more stuff as garbage than anyone else. Our Mount Trashmores are rising higher and higher. Occasionally they catch fire, as we learned locally recently. In northern climes, some Mt. Trashmores have been turned into ski hills. However, some of them have also been tapped for methane, which is turned into energy, which is good. American landfills produce megatons of methane which can be utilized to make electricity; three cheers for us. But American cattle also produce megatons of methane which can’t be used; maybe we won’t get three cheers for that.
As a segment of the population, only the elderly seem conscientiously determined to cut down on the acquisition of stuff. However, they do it for a reason. They are trying to avoid being anxious about tomorrow in a very specific way. They know that the more stuff they have, the more difficult it will be for their children or others to dispose of their stuff when their need for all their stuff has disappeared altogether, along with the elderly themselves. Why buy a new shirt or skirt, or purchase a very expensive bottle of 1959 merlot, or some very green bananas, when you might not be around to wear or drink or eat your purchases? That is true elder-prudence.
Twenty years ago or so there was a bumper sticker which declared, “Stuff Happens.” The “Stuff Happens” declaration has a double meaning. It was intended to mean that bad things, things over which we have no control, happen, so get used to it and live with it. But it also unintentionally refers to the main thrust of this sermon. Stuff happens; it accumulates; it increases. The longer we live, the more stuff most of us acquire. Either we are just subconsciously avaricious, materialistic, and greedy, or we have not learned how to become a more conscientious supplier for the Bargain Box or Litter Box or whatever. Too much stuff happens to too many of us. We become weighed down by our stuff.
Jesus was warning us to avoid that. It is unhealthy to have too much stuff. It really is. It is bad for our heart and our digestive system and our blood pressure. The more we have, the more we worry about maintaining it, especially when the stuff we most value represents financial assets. Most of us are too anxious about assets oozing out into oblivion. We cannot serve both God and mammon. We really can’t. If we give more thought to our 401-K or our mutual funds or our stocks or bonds or bank accounts than we give to God and His kingdom, then we are serving mammon, and not God. Mammon, incidentally, was a first-century word which specifically meant money but generally meant stuff. We all have enough stuff, said Jesus, no matter what our circumstances. More we don’t need, even if we want it.
A book by Chris Farrell is called The New Frugality: How to Consume Less, Save More, and Live Better. “Profligacy is out. Frugality is in,” he says. If so, bravo. Another book, by Theodore Roosevelt Malloch is entitled, “Thrift: Rebirth of a Forgotten Virtue. He notes that our word “thrift” comes from an Old Norse word which means “to thrive.” If we’re thrifty, we thrive; if we’re profligate, inevitably we shall become physically and financially malnourished. Malloch says, “Thrift is positive, wise, prudential, intelligent, grateful and always self-controlled.”
I don’t think Jesus would quarrel with any of that. But I also don’t think that likely was his main point. His primary point is that we cannot be acquiescent acquirers of too much stuff and also be committed to the kingdom of God. We need to spend less on ourselves, and give away more to others. We don’t have to become like the Hazda; that is impossible in our type of world. But we must not be like prototypical Americans, who have way too much stuff for their own good.
Furthermore, we need to stop resisting increased taxes with such fierce political intensity. In an article in the journal Progressive Christian, economic ethicist Philip Wogaman wrote the following: “I’m all in favor of private philanthropy, including the work of a number of foundations and most churches. But all that added together will not solve the long-run fiscal problem nor the continuing problems facing us in health care, education, energy, and environment. Why not? Because sole reliance on private philanthropic giving allows too many people to avoid their share of the common responsibility.” Then he quotes Romans 13, where the apostle Paul said Christians are obligated to “pay taxes to whom taxes are due.” He notes with astonishment, “The political context of that affirmation of taxes was the Roman empire! How much more could such a message be delivered to Christians in a democratic nation?” Then he states that “churches need to be much more affirmative about necessary increases in taxes as a form of Christian stewardship.” Jesus would likely applaud those sentiments as strongly as most American voters would be strongly appalled by them.
In the King James Version of the Bible, Matthew 6:34 says this: “Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” I doubt that Jesus made that latter statement. “Let the day’s own troubles be sufficient for the day” seems a better translation. Nevertheless, it can actually be transmitted into evil if we spend too much of our energy worrying about whether we will have enough stuff for tomorrow, or any of our tomorrows. We will always have enough, says Jesus, because God provides more than enough to go around for everyone.
But the phrase “enough stuff” can also refer not to material realities per se but to all the disasters and catastrophes the human mind can conjure up for the future. “Do not be anxious for tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself” means that we have enough stuff to be concerned about right now, today. It is not only pointless but counterproductive to worry about things that might happen tomorrow but probably won’t. Stuff happens, but most stuff also doesn’t happen. So don’t sweat your stuff, whatever your stuff is or might be.
I remember it as though it were yesterday. We were in the basement of the First Presbyterian Church of Dixon, Illinois. I was in kindergarten or first or second grade – or probably in all three. We used to sing, “God sees the little sparrow fall, and rushes to his side/ If God so loves that little bird/ I know He loves me too/ He loves me too, He loves me too/ I know He loves me too/ If God so loves that little bird, I know He loves me too.” And, said Jesus, just as God provides for the birds of the field, so also does He provide for us.
We have enough stuff --- more than enough stuff. We have enough to do today without being consumed by what we need to do for tomorrow. Trust in God. Trust in God. Trust fully and unreservedly and perpetually in God. The kingdom of God is at hand. You can give it birth.