“More Than Food”

^{Matthew 6: 25-34               Sermon: Sept. 24, 2017}

²⁵“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? ²⁶Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? ²⁷And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? ²⁸And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, ²⁹yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. ³⁰But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? ³¹Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ ³²For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. ³³But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. ³⁴“So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.

“More Than Food”

          If you have not had the chance to read the articles in the Herald as yet, let me share with you the gist of the situation.  For the last quarter of the church’s calendar, there have not been enough funds to pay the bills.  We put a temporary fix on that with a large transfer of cash from whatever reserves we have left.  So today, we are probably okay.  But we also have holes in the roof in at least four different places, we have water coming in under the floor in the Auditorium, we have at least a dozen other maintenance projects that need to happen, and I do not know what I am missing from that list.  On top of that, summer attendance plunged, like it usually does, but this time that plunge happened shortly after Easter.  What am I forgetting?  It has been a nightmare to seek to recruit people for leadership roles or any other roles in the church, and the current Session is operating at less than half capacity. 

          So, a lot of you are probably asking, “What happened?”  Some might be asking, “How did you screw up pastor?”  or “How did Session screw up?” or “Whose fault is this?”

          Let me tell you what happened.  A disaster happened to this church.  It is strangely fitting how this is happening right now, in the aftermath of Harvey and Irma and Maria.  Images of disaster and the recovery are fresh for the looking, if we so choose.  So what disaster hit us?  Affluence hit us. 

          I think the first real experience I had with the disaster of affluence in a church was a number of years before I was ordained.  I was still a member at my home church, Metuchen Pres., and I was on a choir trip with my yet to be wife Lynn and the rest of their choir up to Montreal and Quebec City.  They are both French-speaking cities, Quebec even more so than the more cosmopolitan Montreal.  But we sang in Quebec City at an English-speaking Protestant Church, it may have been Presbyterian.  And we outnumbered the congregation about two to one as I recall.

          I had the opportunity to talk briefly to the pastor and I know a little bit about church life up there, being born and raised in Quebec.  They suffered from affluence.  There were enough investments on the books to allow them to pay for a minister on a full-time basis and to maintain their beautiful facilities.  And open their doors to groups like us.  It might have been that they had enough investment income that nobody would ever have to give to that church again.  And they would never have to do ministry except to be the Anglo church in a French city.

          Now you might argue that I am describing what could be considered ideal conditions for a church.  Imagine, never having to worry about money.  The downside of that is never having to worry about God providing for the needs of the congregation.  We were in exactly that place.  Fifteen years ago, a very generous bequest was made to the church that made it easy to do church with no real consideration to the fact that God provides in lockstep with our faith.  And here, now, we are at the disaster point because there is no money to match even the daily needs of the church, much less the repairs to this gorgeous building dedicated to God’s work, much less the work of ministry in the world around us. 

          Before somebody begins the question “Why didn’t we…”, let me answer it at once.  Because we didn’t have to.  Again, fingers can be pointed, me, the Session at the time, our benefactor.  Then there will be plenty of people who will continue the conversation with “You should have…”  I am a Rutgers graduate and people have been offering hindsight wisdom to their football team since way before I attended there.  It’s never helped their football team, it isn’t going to help us.

          Our position is far more simply defined, something like this, “Lord, it has hit the fan, what are we going to do?”  His answer is our text for today.

²⁵“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? ²⁶Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? ²⁷And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? ²⁸And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, ²⁹yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. 

          I suspect the reaction to this response is going to be something along the lines of “not very funny pastor”.  Do not worry?  If now is not the time to worry, when is it? 

          And I tell you that the time to worry is LONG past.  We do not have time to worry about the storm, it has hit and it has kicked the stuffing out of this church.  If there is a very form for “to disaster”, we have hit it as surely as a rock thrown off a cliff will hit bottom.  And the promise we have from God is that we will not founder under the weight of the disaster.  He goes on to say,

³⁰But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? ³¹Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ ³²For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. 

       For someone who has been involved in a disaster, it becomes a VERY personal thing.  My disaster is Hurricane Sandy.  I thought for a long time it was 9/11, but it wasn’t.  Because the “superstorm” was where I got up close and personal with people who’d lost everything.  And Middlesex County got off lucky compared to what happened further south.  Although I can say with absolute certainty that there is still at least one household in this city that has not recovered from that storm.

          But at that time, these very questions began the agenda, what are we going to eat, to drink, to wear, to live?  What are we going to do to get our lives back?  And they did.  It was done exactly the way Jesus describes it:

³³But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. ³⁴“So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.

          The kicker was that most of the people working for that recovery did not have the joy that I had of the ideal of the Kingdom of God, of God’s righteousness.  They did not have what I had, the hope of our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for every person.  Most of them did not have the image of a perfected world to work for, not directly.  They certainly do not know, not in a personal sense, that which Jesus did to accomplish this shot at perfection.  But somewhere in their hearts, in their minds, in their created beings, that nugget of divinity existed nonetheless and they carried on that work to help people recover, sometimes, I hate to say it, to the detriment of those who know Jesus, who live the command to strive for the Kingdom of God.

          That is a huge reason why, how many years later, I make it a part of my ministry, and the ministry of this church in our community, to be a chaplain to those who will respond first, cops and firefighters, Emergency Management and similar agencies.  Because when it hits the fan, they are going to be the ones leading the striving after God’s righteousness to make things better.

          Which is why it is so tremendously lucky that the Lord has finally made it very clear exactly where this church stands, to recover from this disaster.  Because in this moment, resources and abilities and possibilities are open to us.  This is the time for every Christian in the place to stand up and stand together and make this recovery our own.  It is the time that we lean into the resurrection faith granted by our Lord Jesus Christ and make that the model for what this church shall be as it rises up from the disaster around us.

          Because the other option is unthinkable.  The other option is to let the ship sink, to allow the last two members standing on the Session to shut off the lights as they close the doors for the last time.  That option is to let the disaster win. 

          Not on our watch.  Not if we truly believe and allow Jesus to lead us to recover from even this.

Amen