Do not Worry about Tomorrow

(Isaiah 49:8-16a; Matthew 6:25-34)

Jesus said, ‘So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.’ (Matt 6:34)

We all know the saying, ‘practice what you preach.’ And we also know the counter adage, ‘don’t do as I do, do as I say.’ Both point to something important in human life.

This is certainly true of formal preaching; this stuff from the pulpit. A long debate has run in the church about how holy a preacher needs to be to do the job. On the ‘practice what you preach’ side are those who argue that unless a preacher actually lives out the claims of the gospel in their lives, their preaching will be a sham. A betrayal of the message at the core. Because the gospel is precisely the call to commit our lives to God as revealed in Christ, if we spout that from the pulpit, but don’t live it, our words are empty and offensive.

But on the ‘don’t do as I do, do as I say’ side, are those who point out that the gospel is grace, not works; the gift of God, not the achievement of human beings. A preacher can only point to Christ, never to him- or herself. Preaching is only possible because of the same grace that all of us require. We are God’s children because God loves us while we are yet sinners. Not because we are worthy and therefore deserve God’s love. It is just because the preacher cannot control this gift that preaching is possible. Not a righteous person exemplifying the truth; but a forgiven sinner pointing to the source of grace. Don’t do as I do, but do as Christ gives, is the message.

Well, the church has tried to hold this paradox as best it can. Outright rouges in the pulpit are not good news and we need none of them. But preachers who claim too much for their own holiness are likewise sus. We need to find some way between the two.

And all that because of the today’s text. Jesus said, ‘so do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own.’ These words are at the heart of his great sermon on the mount. So as a preacher I must draw attention to them. But I confess I find them hard to live. I’m a worry-wart. Tomorrow bugs me. I find myself anxious about all the things Jesus says here not to worry about: food, shelter, clothing, money, health, death, the family, and so on and on. If this is a word of the gospel, and it is, I need to say, don’t do as I do, do as I—or rather as Jesus!—says.

I am somewhat comforted by the fact that far greater Christians than I have struggled with this. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who wrote one of the best commentaries of all time on the sermon on the mount, when he gets to the words, Do not worry about tomorrow’, says: ‘either that is cruel mockery for the poor and wretched, the very people Jesus is talking to who, humanly speaking, really will starve if they do not make provision to-day. Either it is an intolerable law, which they will reject outright; or it is the unique proclamation of the gospel of the glorious liberty of the children of God.’ (Cost of Discipleship, 158).

We can see the mockery side easily. And we don’t need to be poor and wretched to do so. If we don’t concern ourselves, and seriously, with the economic realities of life: food, housing, work, clothing, life and death, we will suffer the consequences. These things don’t just come to us. We have to make them happen. And it is a worry at times. And I do. Worry, that is.

But can we see the other side: can we see these words as a ‘unique proclamation of the gospel of the glorious liberty of the children of God’, as Bonhoeffer puts it?

A couple of simple points to begin: These words of Jesus are first of all down-to-earth. When all is said and done, we human beings only have this day, the now; and we only have this place, the here to live in. I can’t live in London in the 18^th century; or in Sydney next month. I can imagine what life might be elsewhere and on another day. But I can’t live it. I have a friend who is very good on this. If I get all in a knot over some looming issue, he says: ‘is there anything at all you can do about it right now?’ ‘No,’ I say, ‘there isn’t.’ ‘Then stop worrying,’ he says. ‘You can’t alter anything now. So wait until it comes—if it comes—and then deal with it as it is, not as you imagine it might be.’ That’s good advice. Worrying about what I can’t change only makes my life worse in the only place and only time I am in, here and now. ‘Today’s trouble is enough for today’, as Jesus says.

Second practical point. Why do I worry about all these things? I think it has to do with fear. I fear that what might come at me from the future will hurt, destroy or diminish my life. Hunger, homelessness, and sickness are threatening. If these things happen I am in trouble. Worry is the emotional signal that I fear my life is vulnerable. I cannot control the forces that shape history. Food, housing, health depend on a huge net work of things: people, climate, politics, earth, money, work, and so on. And it can change without consulting me. Fear in the face of this uncertainty may galvanize me into action. But it can also weigh me down, weaken my resolve, entice me to hide away; and in so doing miss the challenge of new possibilities. Worry can kill off hope before it has a chance to be born. ‘Consider the lilies of the field,’ says Jesus; ‘they neither toil nor spin. Yet I tell you, even Solomon, in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.’ In short, ‘where’s your faith?’ Trust life more, and fear life less, like a lily or a sparrow. Worry won’t change things that go wrong for us, so why indulge it? But worry may well make us miss some wonderful things life could offer if we were more trusting. So again, why indulge it?

But, if Bonhoeffer is right about these words being a unique proclamation of the gospel of the glorious liberty of the children of God, they must mean more that such common sense wisdom.

I think it has something to do with where our heart lives. Jesus contrasts worldly cares for food, shelter, clothing, health and so on with what he calls the ‘kingdom of God’. ‘Strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness,’ Jesus says, ‘and all these things will be given you as well.’ So it seems to do with priorities of intention and trust. What do we give ourselves to as the basic concern of life? It’s not that worldly cares and possessions are of no significance. Jesus own ministry was precisely given over to clothing, healing, helping, and sheltering the poor and needy. So it’s not that these things don’t matter. But that they do not give us our true home, our eternal raiment, or our final health. Those final securities are not in worldly possessions, but in God’s love.

I have experienced this most powerfully in being with people who are dying. Death is a process in which bit by bit we lose control of everything. The things we looked to previously to give a sense of security, control and well being—home, money, job, status, friends, spouse—are all now being wrenched from us. We are left facing … what? … the void? darkness? nothingness? … the love of the eternal God? If death is the void, then we are right to worry about tomorrow; because tomorrow the void may open its jaws for us. But if in the end we meet the eternal kingdom of God, these other things, though they may now be taken from us, do not give us meaning and security. God does. And because God is in Christ, and because Christ is the one who speaks these words, we know God is for us and not against us. And therefore nothing can separate us from the love of God. Not even death. And so it is not just because worry is a bit futile, or worry can make us miss good things in life. Finally it is because of God’s grace—God’s ‘I am with you and for you’—that Jesus says, ‘do not worry about tomorrow’.

But death highlights what life entails. Worldly cares and possessions are not our final security in death. So neither are they in life. And yet that is exactly what I find hard to see. It so often looks to me as if everything depends on this job, or this house, or this investment, or this relationship. And much does. But not everything. The final truth depends on God: on the gift of creation (after all God made us not we ourselves); and on the gift of redemption (we are brought to an eternal home because of God’s grace not because we made it happen by our own efforts).

Which brings us back to the start: ‘practice what you preach’; or ‘do as I say, not as I do’. Yes, we need to take responsibility for our worldly well being, do it, don’t just talk it. But no, we don’t control the security of life. God does. And we can only trust ourselves to God. This is Jesus’ word to us, and this is Jesus’ life with us.

‘So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.’

Graeme Garrett

Canberra Baptist Church

Eighth Sunday after Epiphany

27^th February 2011