Sunday, 8 March Seeking the Messiah. Matthew 6:25–34
The conflict between living in this moment enjoying life, and planning for the future has been a constant source of difference between my wife and me. I don’t mean conflict – we haven’t squabbled about it very often – just a difference. We approach life differently, largely because of our backgrounds, but also perhaps just our different personalities.
My wife was a child of an immigrant family. They landed in Australia from Holland after the Second World War with four children, ten pounds in money and six suitcases. Her father was a carpenter who, although he was a very good carpenter, was often out of work after a job ended. My wife remembers that they were often down to their last two shillings (20cents) for the family to live on. My wife's memory of family life is of constant conflict about insecurity of work and money, of buying broken biscuits and cracked eggs to save money, and her father being hounded out of the house by her mother to find a job.
My family was also a blue-collar family, but my father had a regular job with reliable wages. He was never out of work in my whole life; indeed, he worked at extra jobs to make more money for his family. We weren’t rich by any standard, but my mother never had to look in her purse to find the last shilling, wondering if she should spend it.
My wife’s default is to plan everything to the last detail. Even today, when we really don’t need to, she checks the bank account figures almost daily just to reassure herself it’s all OK. My default is to reckon that it’ll all work out in the end – don’t worry too much. We've both worked hard – we’ve got savings – we’ll be all right. If we didn’t love each other a great deal, and if we hadn’t learned to be patient with each other, it would be a recipe for serious conflict. But we’ve somehow managed to work it out.
Is this what this passage is all about? Getting the right balance, planning enough to be responsible, while still taking enough time to smell the roses? Not being greedy, being content to be poor? Most people, I think, read it this way.
My wife and I have always lived frugally, saving and never wasting our money. To this day, much of the furniture in our house is second-hand. We buy carefully, and it looks good, but it’s mostly someone else’s leftovers. I’ve picked up other people’s rubbish left out for the Council clean-up trucks scores of times because I reckoned I could fix it up with a few clever repairs and a lick of paint. Such items became our children’s prams, strollers, toys and bikes, our small items of furniture, and bits of pieces that came in useful in the garden.
I can build anything with timber or bricks or concrete – we’ve rarely hired tradespeople – and my wife can make anything out of fabric or small amounts of food. We have learned to live cheaply but well. We have a lovely house, but we bought it cheaply in a cash sale in a globally-stressed market. We’ve never wasted money on expensive cars or holidays. We’ve bought and sold a dozen houses in our lifetime, trying to make a little more money on each one, having improved it ourselves with careful hard work.
But what does Jesus have to say to us in this reading? Is he saying that we were wrong to be so careful about saving and building for the future? Does he want us to throw all caution to the winds and just live life to the full, carelessly not worrying about the future?
I think we have to be careful to locate this reading in its first century setting. Just to transplant it straight into the 21st century West isn’t fair to the passage, and it is likely to lead to poor social results. We live in an age of buy-now, pay-later credit cards and personal loans. Reading this passage as a licence to live profligately, without careful financial and career management is a short path to financial ruin.
How would Jesus’ hearers have heard his advice?
Well, first, we need to recognise that this passage is still in the context of the Sermon on the Mount. It is an instruction about what it is like to live in the kingdom of heaven, not how to manage your finances in the modern 21st century West.
In the kingdom of heaven, we don’t focus on material goods. We focus on heavenly treasures which we read about yesterday. We learn to bow down to the one, true God, not the God of Mammon, or unbridled capitalism. We live for the weekly eucharist and daily servanthood to God, not the end of year sales at fashion outlets and new car dealerships.
When the daily worship of Jesus is our focus, we will find that our devotion to fashion brands, or the latest YouTube sensation, or the latest social media hot topic issue somehow just fades away. This ‘instruction’ of Jesus about ignoring the daily patterns of life is not so much a how-to-live instruction as it is a how-you-will-find-you-want-to-live description of life once we have set our affections on the One Thing that matters most – service to God.
Second, the hearers of this in first century Palestine mostly lived agrarian lives. They grew much of their own food and made much of their own clothing and furniture. Their financial success did not depend on saving for retirement or keeping their job. It depended on seasonal regularity of sun and rain, peace from war or social violence, and freedom from government interference. These all share one very important common factor:
They were all beyond any individual person’s control. The fact was that they could not actually do anything about those risks. Jesus was not telling them to not worry about those things they could actually do something about, but rather to not worry about things that they were powerless to affect. In this kingdom life, they were to trust that God could, and would, look after them when those things which were beyond their control occasionally went pear-shaped.
How different is that from reading this passage as 21st century Westerners?!?
Jesus is not telling us not to worry about getting a good education, finding and keeping a good job, and maintaining a clean house and tidy life! Those things are not his topic at the moment. From other scripture, we can imagine that if were asked, he would say, ‘Yes, of course you must do those things. That is what is called responsible living. Now grow up and stop asking me silly questions!’
He is telling us that in those matters over which we have no control to live carefree lives – he can be trusted, as our heavenly Father, to love and care for us in just the way that we need. Will we die? Yes. Will we have accidents? Yes. Will some of us get cancer? Yes. But it’s OK. We may weep for a while, but he knows, and he cares, and all things will be well.
Prayer: Oh, I needed that lesson, my Lord! I tend to worry about stuff that is beyond my control. Thank you for the reassurance that it is OK to plan and prepare and be responsible for the things that I ought to manage. Help me, please, to hand over to you the things that are beyond my control. Help me to stop worrying and start praying. Amen.
