Cathedral Sermons
5th Sunday in Epiphany, Sunday 7 February, 2010
Reading: Matthew 6:25-34
The Sermon on the Mount is one of the best known New Testament passages, and therefore contains some of the most well-known of the teaching of Jesus. Some regards it as a New Testament parallel to the Ten Commandments of the Hebrew Law, containing as it does the essence of the teaching of Jesus. One commentator has described it as embodying a Christian counter-culture in the way that it sets out the kind of living required of those who give themselves over to the reign of God introduced by Jesus into the world.
It is hard to escape the radical nature of what Jesus says in these chapters. It is easy to explain it as the kind of hyperbole which Jesus sometimes uses in parables and teaching in order to make a point, or as a kind of metaphor to draw attention to a general principle. And while that may be true in places, it is clear that on the whole Jesus intends his followers to understand this teaching in a more literal way, even in an era when we treat the idea of literalism with an element of suspicion.
So when Jesus teaches that having been struck on one cheek, we ought to turn the other also, I do not think that he was referring to unkind remarks made about us as the phrase is often used today, but to a literal violence that may be done to those who stand for what is right.
And when he teaches love of enemies, and prayer for those who are persecutors, he really is making a call to non-retaliation towards those who seek our harm; that in all situations we should be people who seek the good of others.
The proclamation at the end of the first chapter of the Sermon on the Mount, to be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect, really sets the benchmark for the kind of living sought in those who have become part of God’s kingdom and who now share the task of making the kingdom’s presence a reality in the world.
So the passage we have heard tonight which deals with anxiety. We imagine that to be a modern phenomenon, especially in relation to material and financial security. We usually imagine that life in the past was much simpler – the less there was available to people, the less they had to worry about. They didn’t have to be concerned with soaring Auckland property prices that might make ever owning a home seem impossible. They didn’t have to wonder about what might happen to government superannuation schemes in the future and how old we might have to be before we are able to start receiving it.
But in fact the anxiety was the same even if the context was different. The gaps between rich and poor existed so that Jesus could point to the generosity of the widow giving her mite on the one hand, and tell warning parables about the rich man building his store houses to protect his wealth on the other. The message about anxiety in relation to financial security would be the same for both of them.
And yet it has a particular slant towards those who are already well off. The passage begins with “therefore”, and years ago when I first learning the art of interpreting Scripture one of my teachers told us: “Whenever you see a therefore you have to ask what it is there for”. And that means going back a verse or a paragraph to identify why this conclusion is being drawn. Jesus has just been warning about the dangers of trying to serve both God and wealth. “You will end up serving one and hating the other”. On that basis, Jesus therefore tells people not to worry about your life, what you will eat and drink and wear and so on.
It is of course an entirely irresponsible course of action to which to call people. The Retirement Commissioner may not agree with Jesus on this point. And probably neither would most of us. We know the importance of planning for the future, of providing for future security for ourselves and our families, at the very least so that we are not a burden for others.
But Jesus is not suggesting a profligate approach to life, spending what we have with no concern. Instead he is telling people not to value their possessions so much as to worry about them. The essence of life is about more than these things, and drawing lessons from the world around him, he points to both creatures and flowers and their expression of the care of God through the natural laws which God has put in place to sustain them.
The focus of life for the followers of Jesus is to be the kingdom of God and its righteousness. If there is to be any striving in life it should be for this and not for material gain. And as we hear those ideas we are again taken back to earlier sayings of Jesus in his sermon about laying up treasure in heaven where neither moth nor rust can consume, not thief break in and steal.
The concern then is for the kingdom and how our lives can be used in its service, and how what we have can be used for the good of others. Our attitude to these things becomes expressive of our love for God. And furthermore, in a simple dose of good common sense, we are reminded that worrying cannot add a single hour to the span of our lives. Most people would agree that a disposition to anxiety is in fact more likely to subtract time from us. As someone once wrote: “Anxiety is the rust of life, destroying its brightness and weakening its power. A childlike and abiding trust in Providence is its best preventive and remedy.”
These lessons can be carried into all the spheres of our living. We must not be anxious about the outcome of the issues of life that are important to us, in a way that holds on to one solution as the only right way forward. Instead we should be passionate in our engagement with all of the issues, caring deeply about their outcome, for that is what it means to strive for the peace and justice that are the hallmarks of God’s kingdom. But in doing so we must act with love and compassion, for those are marks of the kingdom also, and say as much about the presence of God’s reign as do the outcomes. But in it all we must maintain an openness to others and to God’s unexpected solutions, for in the end this is a passage about faith, about trust in the purposes of God and God’s love and care for us, for all people, for the whole of creation.
Let us then live hopefully, and trustingly, and in a way that demonstrates that we are people whose lives are given over to enabling the reign of God to be made real through us.