The God who cares for the birds and flowers also cares for you! The antidote to worrying is remembering what God has done in the past and trusting God to be faithful in the future. Here’s the sermon for Christ the King Sunday, November 21, 2021.
With Thanksgiving this week, we’re going off-lectionary and today’s readings are Joel 2:21-27, Colossians 2:6-15, Psalm 145, and Matthew 6:25-33. For background on Joel, I found helpful and highly recommend Luther Seminary’s Enter the Bible project.
To start off today, I want you to think of something you’re worried about. I won’t make you share it with anyone, but think of something that’s on your mind, something you can’t let go of, some worry or concern you’re carrying with you.
Were you able to think of something? Got something you’re worried about?
Well, then you all fail at following Jesus’ instructions. I just read the verse that says, “Do not worry.” So, stop it! Just stop worrying!
Don’t you wish it were that simple? If that worked for you, talk to me before you leave. I want to know how you can just stop worrying on command, because I think “Do not worry” is one of the more annoying commands Jesus gives.
Because there’s a lot to worry about. I could give you a whole list of examples, like pandemics, and holiday travel, and climate change, and family members with chronic diseases, but you just thought of your own worries—you don’t need my list.
We have twenty-some people joining our congregation this weekend as new members, and I don’t want to mislead them. Joining a church community does not solve all the worries you have in life. We all know that being baptized, being a Christian doesn’t automatically make everything better. In fact, in a sense, publicly declaring that you are part of a church commits you to more worries.
I don’t mean worries like serving on church council and committees (because now you’ll be eligible to do that); I mean that in joining a church, you’re committing to care for your neighbors.
Following Jesus involves caring about the things Jesus cares about, loving neighbors because they’re neighbors, because they’re made in the image of God, which is great, except sometimes it can be a lot to hear about and care about other people’s problems. Sometimes we people do our best to be unlovable. As a pastor friend of mine put it, people can be very “peoply.” But being part of a church community means caring for neighbors.
Two of the lines in the promises our new members are affirming today are to “serve all people, following the example of our Lord Jesus, and to strive for justice and peace in all the earth.” If you’ve been confirmed in this congregation or you joined as an adult, you’ve made those promises too. So, if you didn’t have enough to worry about before, you should also worry about justice and peace in all the earth.
But, Jesus says, “Do not worry about your life, what you’ll eat or drink, or about your body or your clothes.” Just, don’t worry about it. So annoying!
But then Jesus gives some more practical instructions, and it turns out he has some reasons to back up this command. Look at the flowers in the fields. “Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.” Birds and flowers are useless and irresponsible. They don’t worry about anything, and yet God takes care of them.
So what Jesus is saying here, is that if God cares enough, if God has enough bandwidth to pay attention to things like grass and flowers and birds, then you can trust God is also paying attention to you, you who are made in God’s image, you who are claimed by God as God’s own beloved children. You, Jesus says, who are of much more value than any bird or flower.
The opposite of worry is faith and hope. And faith and hope come from looking at what God has done in the past. God has brought you this far. God has given you life.
So, if God has been faithful before, and God promises to continue to be faithful, then we can trust God to keep God’s promise. God is not done with you.
Again, that doesn’t mean the worries go away. God’s promise is not to make life easy, but to be with you when life is hard.
The book of Joel is a good example. I suspect you probably haven’t read the book of Joel recently, but if you want to, it’s very short, only about three or four pages.
Joel is written during a plague of locusts, and things are really bad. People are despairing, worried about starving. There are verses like “The vine withers, the fig tree droops. Pomegranate, palm, and apple—all the trees of the field are dried up; surely, joy withers away among the people.”
Cheerful, right? Things are bad. People are wondering if this plague will ever end, and if it does, what the future will look like. They’re wondering if God is still with them, or if God’s given up, or if maybe God doesn’t have the power to help. Any of that sound like it could be relevant today?
Then, starting in verse 19, just before our reading, God responds to the people’s worries. And God says, “Do not fear…be glad and rejoice, for the Lord has done great things!…I will repay you for the years that the swarming locust has eaten…you shall eat in plenty and be satisfied, and praise the name of the Lord your God, who has dealt wondrously with you.”
In the midst of the crisis and the doubt and the worry, Joel says to look at what God has done before. Remember how God has been faithful in the past. Look around you at the beauty of the world, the goodness of creation. Look at your own life. Count your blessings and give thanks for them.
That’s what the holiday this week is all about, right? Our Psalm today’s all about that too: “All your works shall give thanks to you, O Lord, and all your faithful shall bless you” speaking of the glory of your kingdom and telling of your power.
And more than just looking at the physical evidence in creation, look at what God has done for you personally. Remember how God has claimed you, how God has redeemed you. As the Colossians reading says, “When you were dead in trespasses,” when you were stuck in the pit of sin, hopeless, unable to pull yourself out, before you could do anything to save yourself, Jesus died for you.
You are forgiven. The record of your sins, all the law’s demands for punishment and vengeance are set aside, nailed to the cross, put to death. Gone. Wiped away. And God has made you alive with Christ.
Our call as followers of Jesus is to trust in God, rather than to worry. Trust in God comes from seeing what God has done, hearing the stories of God’s faithfulness over and over. Faith is trusting that Christ is king, that God is on the throne, trusting that the God who has acted will continue to act, that God who has promised to be faithful will continue to be faithful. Trusting that God is with you in every moment and stage of life. God knows our worries. Jesus says our heavenly Father knows all the things we need.
May we give thanks for what God has done for us, trusting that God will continue to faithfully bless us with all that we need for life—life in this world and for eternity. And in gratitude for what God has done, may we use our blessings to bless others.
Strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. God is faithful. Thanks be to God.
Amen