Sermon May 25, 2008 Consider the Lilies

Isaiah 49:8-16a: The passage from Isaiah is about God's promise of redemption from oppression and captivity. The prophet proclaims that God will not turn away from God's people. Suffering and oppression may be the present experience, but joy shall be restored to God's people.
49:8 Thus says the LORD: In a time of favor I have answered you, on a day of salvation I have helped you; I have kept you and given you as a covenant to the people, to establish the land, to apportion the desolate heritages;
49:9 saying to the prisoners, "Come out," to those who are in darkness, "Show yourselves." They shall feed along the ways, on all the bare heights shall be their pasture;
49:10 they shall not hunger or thirst, neither scorching wind nor sun shall strike them down, for he who has pity on them will lead them, and by springs of water will guide them.
49:11 And I will turn all my mountains into a road, and my highways shall be raised up.
49:12 Lo, these shall come from far away, and lo, these from the north and from the west, and these from the land of Syene.
49:13 Sing for joy, O heavens, and exult, O earth; break forth, O mountains, into singing! For the LORD has comforted his people, and will have compassion on his suffering ones.
49:14 But Zion said, "The LORD has forsaken me, my Lord has forgotten me."
49:15 Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show no compassion for the child of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you.
49:16a See, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands.
Matthew 6:24-34: The Gospel Lesson offers words of encouragement expressed in a portion of his Sermon on the Mount. Jesus says: don't worry. If you put God first, the rest will fall into place! No need to worry, really, because of the bounteous provisions of a loving and caring God. Jesus evokes images from nature to drive home his message about God's love and care for us.
6:24 "No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.
6:25 "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?
6:26 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?
6:27 And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?
6:28 And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin,
6:29 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.
6:30 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?
6:31 Therefore do not worry, saying, 'What will we eat?' or 'What will we drink?' or 'What will we wear?'
6:32 For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.
6:33 But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
6:34 So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today's trouble is enough for today."
Consider the Lilies
By Bonnie Boyce
Don’t worry about tomorrow. Don’t worry about what to eat or drink or wear. Don’t worry. To that I feel like saying, “Thank you Jesus, obviously you weren’t living in a more than $4 a gallon of gasoline world!” I don’t know why it is that sometimes I feel like picking a fight with Jesus. Am I the only one here in this room with this problem? Don’t worry…the effect of global warming and deforestation is killing off about 40 species of plant or animal life a day and Jesus tells us not to worry? The wars in the Middle East are killing approximately 100 human beings a day due to violence in Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel and Palestine and Jesus says, “Don’t worry, be happy.” Thousands of people in China have lost their lives in the recent earthquake, historical buildings destroyed and some of China’s infrastructure crushed leaving those survivors in very precarious and life threatening circumstances. Don’t worry? Cyclones and tsunamis in former Burma, or Myanmar have left hundreds of thousands homeless and hungry and killed almost 100,000 people. Don’t worry? Not to mention our own tornados, family problems, health problems, economic problems and the rising cost of oil. Was Jesus’ world just so much better off that he could preach this don’t worry message in his longest sermon in the New Testament? Actually, Jesus was preaching to a group of peasants who were barely able to have enough food to feed their families due to taxes and frequent droughts. Was Jesus out of touch with reality or does his message to not worry have some real spiritual significance for us. His message must have had significance for the disciples. Otherwise, why was it even written down?
While holding the tension of Jesus’ message to not worry and the reality of our global and personal problems this week, interesting insights began to emerge for me. Rather than lay them out in a neat theological package, I thought I would share with you some stories. This past Friday, while putting together the bulletin, I realized I did not have a hymnal at the house, I wanted to find out whether or not we had a copy of the meditation hymn “On Eagle’s Wings” at the church and also wanted to grab a book titled “Jesus’ Plan for a New World” a book by Richard Rohr on this Sermon on the Mount. Instead of hoping into the car and using more $4 gasoline, I asked David if he would be interested in biking to the church and back. He was and we did!
This is what I noticed while biking along the way there were the sounds and sights of the birds chasing each other, the rustling of the swollen creek by St. James Memorial, the flag blowing in the breeze under the Arc de Triumph commemorating Memorial Day. I noticed people walking hand in hand as they strolled the nature path. And even though the air was moist with a light drizzle, I enjoyed the feeling of being, of simple sheer existence and the joy and beauty of creation. On the bike, there were no worries, only a sense of the goodness of creation and a particular gratefulness for the ability to self-propel on a bicycle. As soon as I arrived at the church, the worrying came back. Was the song in one of the hymnals? Call Craig. Get the hymn numbers in the bulletin. Grab the book…now where is it? If you have seen my office you surely understand why I might not be able to put my hands on a particular book right away! I found it. And we put our helmets on and started back home.
Now the sun was out. We took the old road instead of Madison from 14th Street. The sweet smell of the honeysuckle and the smell of wet dirt and cut grass filled the air. I noticed some lilies blooming, irises to be exact along the edge of the road by someone’s home. That image of lilies blooming in their glorious purple, yellow, gold and peach colors, in spite of my person worries, my global concerns, my obsessions about the bulletin reminded me that ultimately I am not in charge here and no amount of worrying is going to change that. On the bike nothing except the beauty of creation and the focus on the moment had my attention. Even David must have been enjoying himself and the scenery from behind me because he yelled out at one point, “You look like a flying nun!” My light rain jacket was unzipped and fluttering behind and beside me. Indeed it must have been an interesting sight. Consider an old woman in a raincoat on a bike…
Consider the lilies. Maybe that is not such a bad idea after all. There was an old movie, Lilies of the Field, in which Sidney Poitier landed an Oscar-winning performance for his portrayal of Homer Smith. Homer was a handyman who traveled about looking for work and living out of his car. While he is traveling through the Arizona desert, his car overheats and he stops for water. On that fateful day he met a group of German nuns who had fled Eastern Germany in order to serve God in the US. The nuns are convinced that Home had been sent by God to help them build a chapel. Of course, Homer had no intention to do anything more than obtain water for his car. As the movie progresses Homer is shown fixing a roof leak, doing other odd jobs for the nuns until finally he is building a chapel. Homer evolves from primarily being concerned from getting paid for jobs and living out of this car into a man with a larger vision of serving God and community, even a community of which he appeared to have no connection.
At one point in the movie, Homer is trying to get the Mother of the order of nuns to pay him for his work at which point, she pulls out her Bible and reads to him these verses from Matthew’s Gospel. Consider the lilies of the field and how well God takes care of them. Surely God cares for us as much as the birds of the air and the lilies of the field, the Mother remarks, hastening Homer’s transformation from self-worry to selflessly giving of himself to a community in which his service truly is invaluable and his gifts are cherished beyond any monetary compensation.[1]
Attending to the lilies of the fields and the birds of the air does have the capacity to restore in us a sense of appropriate priorities. Attending to nature can lead us on a journey of discovery, which unfolds in different ways with different people. Jesus message appears to have a strong sense of what we all must ultimately accept, that we are not in control here. Just as the lily fades and withers so too will each of us sitting here, but hopefully not any time soon. This reality is not meant to sound macabre or unduly morbid. But simply to point us back to the priority of today
Each morning on awakening, I have gotten into a ritual of listening to the birds, and giving thanks to God for another day. I lie there listening to the birds chirping and imagine they are making their nests and tending to their chicks, while I am listening to them, I try and catch the threads of the dreams from the night before listening to what God has whispered into my ear through my night’s sleep. This week’s dreams seemed to have a lot of animals in them. In one of my dreams a man is carrying a puppy and carefully lays it down while we talk. When we are ready to leave the man bends down and the puppy rolls back into his arms and is gently carried away.
Consider how God cares for the puppy in my dream, carrying the animal in His arms. Consider a nursing mother, the book of Isaiah suggests, how compassionate she is to the child of her womb. But even she may forget compassion, but, I the Lord, says God will never forget. Consider the lilies of the field, even the wealthiest such as Solomon in all his glory cannot adorn themselves in such beauty. Consider the birds of the air, who provides for them? Does not God give them provisions for their needs, how much more does God care for us?
Perhaps contemplation on our dreams, on the beauty of the lilies and the resourcefulness of the birds that awaken us each morning offers us the needed time for reflection on the goodness of God in order to help us have the needed energy to do something about the troubles in our world. Worrying may not add a single hour to the span of our lives but necessary attention and response to the pain and suffering of the people in our world and the condition of our environment is attending to God’s kingdom. Jesus’ message to not worry does not leave us off the hook for our responsibility for caring for the earth and Her people. Jesus’ message offers us the opportunity to remember whose we are and that we are to first “seek the kingdom.”
So if you see me staring out the window or sitting on the front porch scanning the pansies and watching the birds do their thing, know that I am simply meditating. I am trying to be as attentive to the way in which God is working in me as well as in all of creation. But today, I think I will go home and refill the hummingbird feeder. Pinch some pansies, and maybe go for a bike ride with Peter and David. I think I will try to pay special attention today to the cardinals, robins, sparrows, blue jays, and Eastern starlings sing and make their living and hopefully I will learn something mysterious from them, like their instinctive knowing when it is time to gather up and fly away home.


[1] Lectionary Homiletics, April/May 2008, p. 60-61.

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