May 25, 2008
Edwards (Knox) United Church
Second Sunday After Pentecost
Matthew 6:24-34
Read the passage: The Message or The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)
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The Rev. Dr. George Hermanson
Everyday we hear on the news, or read in the paper new things to be worried about. It is the economy. It is crime. It is terror. It is the environment. It is about the health of the church. It is about families. There is so much confronting us that some have given up watching the news or reading the papers. Yet, the worries slide in. The anxieties are there.
Anxiety can freeze us- make us fearful about the world around us. This fear creates a climate of threat, of seeking vengeance. Our anxiety is made more real when we realize we cannot control the future. Yet there are all sorts of gurus who offer us quick solutions to our fear, bromides that feel good in the moment but never solve the existential anxiety we carry around in our bodies.
One of the responses that worry creates is, we seek false comfort and easy solutions to hard problems. We can fall into optimism which does not lead to hard thinking about the causes of our anxiety and covers them up cotton candy ideas. And as cotton candy, they do not satisfy and our anxiety increases One such popular book is the Secret which suggests that we if only think positively, then things would turn around. The problem with such half truths is that it victimizes us - it makes us the creator of reality and that if our life is not happy we are defective. It does not take into account that there are events that happen to us that we do not control. Wishing for a new car does not place it in our driveway.
Yet we do know our attitudes and values matter in how we deal with the events of the world. To be passive is to allow negativity to take root. We know that interactive reflection on the issues around us helps arrive at solutions to the problems we face. But it is not a matter of optimism and that each day we are progressing to a better world. The attitude we need is to realistically face our fears and seek collective solutions to address the root causes of our fears. Thus attitudes matter in how we solve our worry.
Here we have in Matthew a series of responses to the beatitudes where Jesus had taught the basic values that will help us face our worries. The Sermon on the Mount describes an alternative world view and ethic than that which is offered by “the World.” The world view Jesus taught was one based on humility, love for justice, and peacemaking in the face of great opposition. It is a call to a higher righteousness than that which is offered by those in power. Jesus repudiates retaliation and revenge and says to "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you."
Our text is suggesting a world view that leads to peace - to right relations - and that attitude will help us deal with anxiety. Anxiety is an early warning system that something has gone wrong with the world, with our attitudes, and the text takes seriously the disconnect we feel and the disconnect created by our world views and offers a new understanding of the meaning of control and power. The text begins with an understanding of a intimate relationship between God and creation, that there is a divine guidance in life and we are called to embody that relationship in the way we treat others.
Our text makes it clear that there are, metaphorically, two spirits at work in our world. And it is clear that we cannot serve both. This, though, is not to be world denying. It is not a rejection of the issues of life, but a call to engage the issues of life from the perspective of the aim of God.
One spirit is the spirit of our age. It is based on such ideas as the one who has the most toys wins - that the world is divided into winners and losers, and the winners deserve what they get. Even in ideas that seek to humanize us, we see hints of this. For the Secret is to have the attitude of a winner and that will create positive outcomes. So embedded in positive thinking are the values of the spirit of our age - power is control and domination, which issues in winner take all.
This spirit of the age is seen in how we treat the reality of terror. We demonize the other and this justifies state terror in response - shock and awe were the words used. If we serve the idea of power as domination, then to justify our relationships we treat others in ways that deny their humanity. The attitude of dominance places one person or a group of persons in control and they determine meaning and how the world or a family works. It is the old and mistaken idea that "father knows best."
Over against this spirit Jesus offers another vision of reality. In the text we have such lines as, "There is more to living than food and clothing, isn’t there?" Let us be honest here - it sounds nice but is it realistic? Is this really true? For don’t we have alternative stories that suggest we better work hard today for tomorrow.
Despite our modern skepticism, and how such positive attitudes have been misused, there is a powerful metaphor here. How we see the world does effect how we deal with the issues of the world.
Now Jesus is not offering positive thinking - that if we only think positivity that will get us over our anxiety. No. The text takes seriously our fear and suggests that if we understand the nature of power we will have the resources to overcome our worries.
The texts are based on understanding of the character of God. They affirm that flowing through all experience is the aim of God, the persuasive power of God. We are offered a metaphor of relationality and of intimacy. This is not a power of control but the power of love- of mutuality. God is seen as "parent" - the good parent who is loving, compassionate, committed, suffering parent whose memory of the child does not fade. God’s love is relational.
God’s power is both operative and receiving. God activity offers aims of hope, restorations, and right relationships in every moment of experience. It is God’s job to insert into every moment persuasive power as true power. And as creative love receives from the world those things we have achieved in creating a peaceful kingdom and uses that good to recreate even more possibilities of good.
The texts invite us to put on the character of God, to trust that the truth about reality is that true power is loving, compassionate, seeks justice, and operates only and always as persuasion. Power is not dominance but relationality.
To create right relationships, and to overcome our fears, we are invited to begin in the character of God - to seek God’s spirit and to join with it. This suggests two things. We can trust reality because God flows through all experience. And with new eyes based in the power of God we can see harmony is basic to experience. It is trust that empowers us to overcome our fears.
Now this is not naive for we know there are real risks and problems around us, and in our world. This is not positive thinking in the narrow sense, but an understanding that communities and individuals who see this world as holy will work to make that a reality. And communities of hope will also know not all possibilities will be achieved, and that failure does not define us. Hope defines -for we are those who are committed to the power of persuasive renewal embedded in this world. This gives us the courage for the facing of our problems. We know we are those called to nurture and care for the reality of God in order for that power to be a healthy alternative to the spirit of our age. With God we are meant to confront and transform the world.
George Hermanson
www.georgehermanson
