Hilton Head Island, SC – June 25, 2023
The Chapel Without Walls
Luke 12:16-21; Luke 12:22-34
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text - “Instead, seek his kingdom, and these things will be yours as well.” Luke 12:31 (RSV)
Chapters 5 through 7 of the Gospel of Matthew are universally known as the Sermon on the Mount. Almost nothing from those chapters appears in Mark, and absolutely nothing in John. However, Luke does have much of this material in several places in his Gospel, and much of it is in chapter 12, mid-way in the Galilean ministry instead of at its beginning. Curiously, Luke says that when Jesus said these things, He was standing on a plain by the shore of the Galilean lake rather than on a mountainside overlooking the lake.
Well, whenever and wherever Jesus was when he preached this sermon, it has many statements which sound either very much like the twenty-first century or very much unlike it. "Do not be anxious about your life": there is a great deal of anxiety which characterizes our lives. People worry about the economy, their investments, their health, the war in Ukraine, political issues, the climate, artificial intelligence. You name it, and somebody is worrying about it. But, as Jesus said, can any of us by worrying add a single hour to our span of life? In fact, anxiety and worry are major factors in shortening life. Overtime worrying can guarantee us an early grave. Besides, said Jesus, if flowers are clothed in as much beauty as we see in them, will not God also clothe us?
But let's be honest; doesn't this sound just a little too unworldly? Who really lives like that? Who can live like that? Who can be so sanguine about God's care of us that she or he is never concerned about making ends meet or having enough in retirement to keep going or wondering if your children or grandchildren are getting along all right? "Don’t seek what you are to eat and drink, and don't be of an anxious mind": is Jesus really serious about that? If we don't worry about ourselves, or at least if we don't have a proper concern, who will? Is it not our responsibility to take care of ourselves? "God helps those who help themselves"; we have heard that so often we imagine it must come from the Bible --- which it doesn't.
But the issue is "proper" concern, isn't it? What constitutes a proper concern? Isn't it proper to work hard and make plans and to save up for the future? Surely it is. But how hard, and how many plans, and how much to save? Do we overdo it? That's a question, but it isn't exactly rhetorical, and I'll give you my answer to it; yes, we do overdo it. We all overdo it. No one always "underdoes" concern for the world; no one always "overdoes" concern for the world; but everyone sometimes overdoes it, which is why Jesus talked about it so much. We get too hooked into the world for our own good. "The nations of the world strive after all these things," Jesus said.
Well, we're human, and if we're honest with ourselves, we do strive above and beyond the call of duty much of the time. Hilton Head Island is a hotbed of strivers. Most of us had to strive before we got here, or we wouldn’t have gotten here. This is a community of world-class strivers.
However, I suspect Jesus would ask where it has gotten us. Has our seeking after the things of this world, has our very worldliness, really gotten us anywhere? Are we better off than those who are less affluent? Are we happier or more contented or more spiritually adept or stable? Or, do we have an underlying current of anxiety and ennui and discontent, simply because we have been such obvious strivers?
What is it that causes some of us to question whether what we have always done is what we should always continue to do? Why does our excessive worldliness sometimes turn us away from the world? Why, as St. Augustine said, are our hearts restless until they find their rest in God? And if the pace of our lives gets us down, even in retirement, is the pace really worth it? Might Jesus not be absolutely on target? Strive first for God's kingdom and His righteousness, and all these other things shall be yours as well! If we do that, and it works, might we discover that true Christian unworldliness is really worldly, that that kind of worldliness is what worldliness is supposed to be about? Is deliberately removing ourselves from the cares of the world the best way not only to survive but to thrive in the world? Might we get the most out of life when we learn not to hang onto it at all, but to let it go and to go with the flow, the divine flow?
"Sell your possessions, and give alms. Provide yourselves with purses that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail." The best way to live in this world is to place our ultimate trust beyond this world. When we disengage from the world, then we can truly engage with the world. Until we do that, we shall forever be chained to the world.
People who are genuinely content with whatever they have are worldly in an unworldly way. Have you known people like that? I have; not too many, maybe, but certainly some. If they have little, fine, and if they have much, fine. But they know that whatever they have all belongs to God anyway, so they don't get worked up about it. What difference does it make, they ask themselves? We are all God's children, and no one is any more a child of God who has more than anyone who has far less. God doesn't care much, if any, about how much we have, but He cares a whole lot about how much we are attached to whatever it is we do have. If it matters more to us than He matters to us, God is greatly concerned, because He knows that makes us into miserable creatures.
"Ah," you say, "but we can't just turn our backs on the world! It would be un-Christian to do so!" And so it would. But what does it mean to be unworldly Christians in the world? Does it mean that we should strive to make the world Christian? Yes, to the degree that we truly understand what "being Christian" is, we should do that. Does it mean we must create Christian nations? Absolutely not; that is a fruitless and hopeless enterprise. The notion of a Christian nation is a dubious, and probably a dangerous, idea. Often the people who clamor most for a Christian nation are those who are the least Christian in their actions, because they act as though everyone must believe as they do in order to be acceptable, either as Christians or as citizens.
The kingdom of God is not where people know what to do for God; it is rather where people first know what God has done for them. Unworldly Christian worldliness means to live in the world without either selling out to the world or buying into it. Since it is God's world anyway, we should let Him do with it whatever He wants, and just go along with His program as best we can.
Now I know there is more to it than that, that if anyone accepts what I just said uncritically, that person could quickly become appallingly apathetic, never lifting a finger to improve anything. I'm not suggesting we should withdraw from the world, or attempt to ignore or negate it. We live in the world, for heaven's sake; quite literally it is for heaven's sake that we do live in the world. We are the stewards of creation; we are the primary ones in charge of this comic corner of the cosmos. That is one of our main jobs.
Nonetheless, we can get so wound up with or bogged down with or consumed by that responsibility that we lose sight of how God wants us to live in the world. We cling too much to too many things, I think. We need to let go more, and then we will have more. In her book Every-Day Religion, Hannah Whitall Smith wrote, "How many lives are marred and made miserable by the selfishness of some relative or friend, who, under the plea of exceeding love, will not allow the least liberty of action of the loved ones.... Surely such a course, however it may be disguised, can spring from nothing but pure, unadulterated selfishness. The law of love can never be a cherishing of self at the expense of the loved ones but must always be the cherishing of the loved ones at the expense of self."
To love the world, we must let go of it. To love anyone in the world, we must let go of that person. To love the self too much is to love the world too little, and to love either the self or the world too much is to love God and others too little.
When I was a boy in school, one of my brothers, who was seven years older than I, took a particular liking to a song which was popular at the time. I have never forgotten that song, because it was Ray who liked it so much. It was sung by a group called The Cowboy Sunday School Choir, and among other verses it had this one:
I know a man, rich as a king,
Still he just won't give his neighbor a thing;
His day will come, I'll make a bet
He'll get to heaven, and here's what he'll get ---
And then the refrain:
A rusty old halo, skinny white cloud,
Robe so wooly it scratches;
Rusty old halo, skinny white cloud,
Robe that's all done up in patches.
When we clutch the things of the world too hard, they somehow manage to slip from our grasp. If we learn to give up the world, we can become very worldly in a very healthy and helpful way, but if we cling to anything or anybody too firmly, the world will become an albatross around our necks.
If we cling too strongly to self -- self-pride, self-worth, self-preservation -- we will become slaves to the world. But if we give up ourselves, and let go of everything we hold most dear, we will obtain an unworldly worldliness.
"Do not worry about your life.... Don't keep striving for what you are to eat or drink.... Strive first for God's kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well." There has always been a persistent worldliness in the world. Occasionally the world has known unworldliness. Better still is unworldly worldliness. I think that is what Jesus urged us continually to seek. In it, alone, shall we find peace in this world.