Sermon Title: "Today's Trouble Is Enough For Today"
Date: February 27, 2011
Minister:  The Rev. Charles Ensley

Lesson:  Matthew 6:24-34

Each day when I open the newspaper, I scan the front page for news and then read the obituaries to see if any persons—nationally or locally—have died.  I read the comics at breakfast and then turn to the advice columns.  Some people sure have a lot of worries, ones they seek some help to solve. 

Last Monday’s Dear Abby had a letter from “Needs a Resolution,” a woman in her mid-30s whose stepmother—the only mother she’s ever known—is clinically diagnosed with a paranoid personality.  She is suspicious, spiteful, and vindictive.  The writer wonders if there can ever be a good relationship.  “I feel if my mother doesn’t love me, how can anyone else?”

Dear Abby responds, in part, that she ought to see a licensed psychotherapist to discuss her feelings, then states “The fact that she couldn’t love you does not mean you are unlovable.”

Tuesday’s column brought a letter from “Scared,” a woman with three children.  Her husband lost his job and they are now living in their car.  While he’s working again, it will be a while before they can afford an apartment.  “Do you think we should stay at the shelter until we can get a place, or until we can get a hotel room?”

Dear Abby wisely responds that checking out the shelter and what kind of accommodations they offer is a “better, safer environment for [three small children] than five people sleeping in a car.”

Tuesday’s Ask Amy column posed this question from “Confused”:  When she was 18, she made her boyfriend wait several months before sleeping with him.  Now 22, and on the brink of a new relationship, she wonders “Is it a sign of immaturity if I make a guy wait a longer time than the couple of dates they’re used to waiting now?”

Ask Amy responds in part:  “Sex is not a game, and ‘making people wait’ is not necessarily a gauge of maturity.  … In my experience, people often regret having sex.  They seldom regret waiting to have sex.  Your only job is to always act according to your own values.”

If you are like me, you probably read those columns and sometimes think the answer is very clear to any rational person.  Other times, a true conundrum is presented and you can understand why the writer is rightfully confused and seeks an opinion from a non-involved person.  Surely a family with five persons sleeping in their car has something to worry about.  Surely those who unwittingly got caught in sub-prime mortgages and lost their homes to foreclosure and face bankruptcy have things to worry about.  Surely a person with a medical malady waiting to get an appointment to find out treatment options has something to worry about.

It might help us to better understand today’s portion of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount if we realize that Jesus’ own disciples were among the hearers—those who had left homes and families to become, like Jesus, traveling teachers.  Surely they would worry about where their next meal was coming from, or where they would lay their heads that night.  In Matthew’s Gospel, these words also address the post-Easter situation of Matthew’s own church, where most had not taken the disciples’ radical step of voluntary poverty.  For the first time, Matthew uses the words little faith, and adopts it as a favorite expression applying to the disciples.  It affirms that they have faith, but that their faith is hesitant and needs reassurance.  Jesus tells them not to worry, not to be anxious; that the one who calls them to this radical style of life is also the Creator who lovingly provides for the whole creation, including birds of the air, lilies of the field and crops to be harvested and crushed into flour.

So often today’s text is used to advance the notion that you cannot serve both God and wealth, or mammon in earlier translations.  It has been used to deride the rich and their lifestyles, implying they cannot possibly be faithful to God if they have wealth.  The text really is addressing those who mistakenly confuse these necessities of life—food, clothing—with the purposes of life.  Such persons—whether wondering if their clothes carry the right label, or where to even find clothing—they are consumed with worry.  Six times in eleven verses the word worry appears.  Jesus’ command is to instead “strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you as well.” (6:33)

Jesus takes note of those who worry too much, for it takes their focus away from more serious things.  In Luke’s Gospel, he visits the home of Mary and Martha.  While he is teaching, Mary sits at his feet listening intently, while Martha is busy in the kitchen cooking up a storm.  When she complains to Jesus that her sister has left her to do all the work, and appeals to him to direct Mary to help, Jesus answers her:  “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing.  Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.  (10:41-42)

There are limits to what we can control in our lives—no matter how much “worry” and effort we devote to overcoming them.  Mark Twain famously said, “I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.”  Three centuries earlier, the 16th century French philosopher Michel de Montaigne offered a similar declaration:  “My life has been full of terrible misfortunes, most of which never happened.”

There are things that can consume us with worry if we do nothing about them.  They can cloud our future, like the woman who wondered if she will ever be loveable after growing up with an unloving and spiteful stepmother.  If she doesn’t get help to find ways to deal with this worry, she will carry it the rest of her life and cut herself off from the possibility of ever entering a loving relationship.

But sometimes we take on worries about things way down the road that may never happen.  My mother died five years ago from complications from Alzheimer’s.  If there is a genetic component, will I be afflicted with it too?  Certainly I’ve thought about this.  Yet there is very little I can do other than to watch my cholesterol, exercise both my brain mentally and my body physically, take out long-term health care insurance, but, most important of all, go on living my life to its fullest without trying to project my condition two decades down the road.  I take to heart Jesus’ statements in today’s passage:  “…can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? … Today’s trouble is enough for today.” (6:27, 34)

Commenting on today’s Matthew 6 passage on worry, Mike Breen and Walt Kallestad write in their book The Passionate Church (Colorado Springs: Cook Communications, 2005, 52-53):  “How do we build a life that is not based on worry but founded on faith?  This verse illustrates the importance of planning.  Planning is built around a vision.  We plan to attain something.  Jesus tells us to make plans to seek his kingdom and his righteousness.  Righteousness means right relationship.  Making plans on the basis of the kingdom, in right relationship with God, means the worries of tomorrow need not dominate us.  God will take care of everything—including us!  This is the essence of our vision:  to make Jesus the true Lord of our lives.”

Jesus says we don’t have to “worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own.  Today’s trouble is enough for today.” (6:34) What we can do is recognize that God, not property or wealth, is our master.  God is a master whose care and provision warrant our love and devotion, rather than hatred and disdain.  Faith as trust in God won’t call forth life’s necessities out of thin air, but it will direct us toward a just vision of life in which we have what we need rather than being enslaved to worrying about what others have.