The Battle Primeval – Don’t Worry Be Thankful

PREACHED ON THE SUNDAY BEFORE THANKSGIVING, November 18, 2018

Scripture readings: Psalm 104:1-24; Luke 12:22-34

A woman was at work when she got a call from her babysitter. The sitter told her that her daughter was very sick with a fever.

A Few Family Photos Over the Years

So, the woman left work, and raced to the drugstore, to get some medicine for her daughter. When she got back to her car, she found that she had locked herself out. She ran back into the store, and she called home, and she told the babysitter what was wrong, and the babysitter told her that her daughter was getting worse and that, maybe, she could get a coat-hanger to open the car. The store-clerk gave her a hanger and she ran back to her car.

She was panicking now. She suddenly realized that she had no idea how to unlock a car door with a coat-hanger. She prayed desperately for God to help her.

Suddenly a beat-up old car, covered with bumper-stickers, pulled up next to hers. Out came this hulking-bearded guy, with tattoos, and a biker’s jacket, and a skull rag on this head.

He asked if he could help. The woman told him about her daughter and her keys: “Can you use this hanger to unlock my car?” And he says, “Sure thing!”

In a few seconds, he gets the door open. The woman jumps on him and hugs him tight. Tears running down her smiling face, she says, “Thank you, sir! Thank you, sir! You’re such a nice man!”

The guy says, “No ma’am, I’m not nice at all. I just got out of prison this morning. I was in for car theft. I got released just a few hours ago.”

The woman laughs, and cries, and hugs him again, and prays, “Thank you, Lord! Thank you for sending me a professional!”

OK, the verse we read from Luke don’t have the word “thanks”. Jesus is talking about worry. Actually, he’s talking about the antidote, the treatment, for worry. Worry is one of the enemies of thanksgiving. We, on the other hand, seem to have designed our special Thanksgiving Day to be full of stuff to worry about: perfect travels, perfect timing, perfect meals, and no family feuding.

Thanksgiving Day is the celebration of being people whose very nation is built on the heritage of giving great thanks. The Pilgrim’s experience taught them to think of their presence in this land as a divine miracle, and that the Native Americans were a part of that miracle, and the Pilgrims shared that celebration day with them. At least that’s what they say. They must have done something right that day. Plymouth Colony never fought the Native Americans and never needed to.

What if we thought that our presence, here in this land, was not our own doing, but a miracle from God, so that we didn’t have to worry? If you know that you are living a gift from God, you worry less and give more thanks.

So, Thanksgiving is a celebration, and you can’t celebrate when you’re worried. You might be able to fake a smile, but you’re not really celebrating. You can’t.

One of the treatments Jesus prescribes for worry is to think, and to think again. Jesus names this kind of thinking: “consider”. “Consider some things.” “Consider the ravens.” “Consider the lilies.” Considering has something to do with how you think, and how you see.

Worry doesn’t start with a feeling, and neither does thanks. Worry and thanksgiving come from a state of mind, from a way of looking at your surroundings and your life.

Jesus says, “Look around you.” And it’s true that Jesus is being selective in what he wants you to look at.

Jesus points to the grass of the field. Well, you can walk out into some field in the spring, and you can enjoy the fragrance and the wildflowers; but you could also choose to think about snakes in the grass. In a cow pasture you might choose to worry about other things hidden in the grass. Maybe you ought to take it all in, but don’t let the snakes and the cow patties make you worry and forget about the wild flowers of the field.

Jesus says, “Look at the world around you.” Look at how things fit together. See how they work. See how everything has a place. There is beauty. There is order. There is precision. There is design. This world is a work of art created by God. And you are a part of it. You also are a work of art.

Here is something we can see more than ever before, through the gift of science, which reveals more and more amazing things every day, things that cannot be explained. Oh, science can explain a lot: how it works, a bit of how the whole thing is inter-related, what it’s made of. But science can’t really explain why everything is what it is; at least not in terms of purpose: past, or present, or future.

Look at your hands. When I was in high school a girl once told me that I had nice hands. Of course, they’re getting wrinkled now. How complicated they are: and the feet, and ankles: so many little bones. And the skin: how different it is on the tops than it is on the palm and soles. Each person who has ever lived has a unique set of fingerprints, and probably toe prints, too.

Yet, if you looked inside your hand, at one, single cell; and if you were able to see what goes on inside that cell, how it’s fed and renewed, you would see a process that was just as beautiful as anything you could see with your naked eye, or more so. Then, if you could look deeper into that cell if, you saw the atoms, and the subatomic particles, and the pure energy making everything work by its attractions and repulsions, and how it was all like some faint cloud, maybe a shining mist interacting with other shining mists, which are each other.

There’s no end of design: no end of beauty. Infinite skill! Infinite wisdom. Infinite care. Not so much because they have no end, but the end disappears into the heart of the artist where they came from.

Jesus says: consider, look, think, wonder. If you are still worried, think again.

There’s a word called “providence”: Such a fancy word, and not just the name of a lot of hospitals. It has to do with God: with God providing. The teacher J. Vernon McGee had a definition of providence. He said, “Providence is the means by which God directs all things – both animate and inanimate; seen and unseen; good and evil – toward a worthy purpose, which means His will must finally prevail.” Put more simply: God, in his love, does what’s best for us, and gives us what we need. Thanksgiving comes from thinking, considering, and seeing this.

Another treatment for worry is to consider that you are important, that you matter, that you matter more than the birds and the grass. You are the objects of God’s faithful care and love.

Some people have trouble with this; and there are lots of reason why this is. Some people have been told they are worthless, or else they’ve been shown this through others mistreating them, or abusing them.

Shame, guilt, anger come from this. All of these, and more, are a kind of unsettledness akin to worry because something has gone wrong, or something hasn’t been resolved.

Sometimes the frequent defeat of our hopes, and purposes, and plans discourages us and causes us to doubt our value. Yet there are those whose lives have been marked by never having anything or any prospects, and they may have great loves, and great ambitions, and because they dare to hope, they will attempt seemingly impossible goals (which are simply about being safe, and knowing the people you love are safe, and secure, and well).

Such people may be more thankful than the richest, and the most powerful, and the most beautiful people in the world. Nothing stands between them and God.

There is something different in human beings that Jesus says is of special value. Jesus says that life is more than food, and the body more than clothes. Do you realize how strange that could sound? How can life be more than food if you will die without food? How is the body more than clothes if, outside, in Desert Aire and Mattawa, in winter, your body will certainly die without clothes?

What Jesus is saying is that there is something in human life that is not physical and not material. The word that Jesus uses for our life, here, is the word for soul. “Do not worry about your soul, what you shall eat. . . for the soul is more than food.” (Luke 12:22-23)

You are a soul. You have a spiritual life that is stronger than your physical life and accomplishes more. Jesus wants you to know that this makes you a being of tremendous worth to him. This is the Lord who so much loved your life within your body that he became human with a body of the same status as your own.

His death on the cross, that was made possible by his being one of us, is part of the treasure that makes his love so beautiful to us, and still makes us more beautiful to him. But there is something eternal in each one of you and me that the Lord Jesus treasures.

Consider this, when you think about your worries, and your defeats, and your survival. You are a treasure to others. You are a treasure to God. Keep thinking about this.

There was a girl who was asked what she looked for in a guy. Her answer was, “How he fits his blue jeans.” (Well, there are boys who look for similar stuff in girls.) These are values and expectations that won’t last, especially not long past forty.

There is something spiritual, eternal in us, that is made for everlasting life with God, made for an everlasting home. Caring about that life, in ourselves and in others, will give us values that last.

Those who know the Lord have a different set of concerns. We have our hearts set on different things. We’re motivated by different loves. To be in your garden in the morning, to look in on your children, or grandchildren, or so on, when they’re in bed (and not just to say, “Thank God they’re asleep.”), to look into the face of someone you love who is still willing to put up with you, to make something that runs well, that works well, that looks good, or tastes good, or to hear or read a word that God speaks to you…in an instant you know, at least for a moment, that your life is an awesome gift, and that you and they mean something. This is an antidote for worry.

You already know that this is part of thanksgiving. Just don’t forget it. Some people forget.

Jesus says, “Do not set your heart on what you will eat or drink; do not worry about it. For the pagan world runs after all such things, and your Father knows that you need them.”

Jesus isn’t saying, “Don’t work.” Jesus worked as a carpenter to support his mother, brothers, and sisters. When they were old enough, Jesus left that work, for something much bigger and harder, in the end.

Jesus’ work on this earth made our work just as holy as his first work creating time, and space, and the structures of the cosmos. Jesus’ work on the cross and in the resurrection enable all our work, and all that we work for, to have eternal significance.

Jesus says to work for ourselves and for others, and to work and live for bigger reasons and for bigger gifts. Live a life that’s different from what many others work for, because you know that your life, and the lives of others, is a treasure.

Jesus says, “Seek his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well.”

There was a native Christian pastor in Laos some time past. The communist government there wanted to stop him from preaching. They wanted to stop his church from meeting and growing. They sent soldiers to his house. The soldiers gathered the pastor and his family together. They held a gun to the head of the pastor’s twelve-years-old son. They told the pastor to deny his faith. But, before the pastor could say anything, the boy spoke up and said that he would never betray Jesus. So, the soldiers shot him on the spot. The same thing happened with the pastor’s wife. They took the pastor away to a prison work-camp.

Eventually, he escaped to Thailand, where he devoted himself to sharing Christ among the other refugees. Even though, by some standards, it could be said that he had lost everything he held dear in life, yet, by his standards, he had not lost everything. He followed Jesus who had lost everything for him, and who held everything the pastor held dear in his own hands.

He heard the voice that says, “But seek his kingdom, and these things will be give to you as well.” He shared this Christ with others out of a thankful heart. People who know the Lord find that their hearts are set on different things, and that they are motivated by a different love.

Jesus says, “Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will not be exhausted.” Here Jesus says: know what counts and live accordingly.

When Jesus said to cut off your hand or pluck out your eye, if they cause you to sin; he was using strong, shocking language simply to say: take this seriously or you will be saying “no” to my life.

When Jesus said to be ready to sell what you have: he was using strong language simply to say: make a real choice about where you stand. How will you live, and what will you live for, if you believe that your Father has been pleased to give you his kingdom?

What does “his kingdom” mean? A kingdom is wherever its king rules, wherever the king’s will is done. It means that you live a life in which God truly rules. God provides for you. God works with you, and in you, and through you, and around you. You live where God’s plan is at work, under God’s protection, in God’s peace.

Heaven is yours. The coming kingdom is yours.

In a very real way, God has given you his kingdom already. You have come home. You have come inside.

God gave us his kingdom when Jesus died for us on the cross. Jesus carried whatever separates us from God and each other. He carried those things on the cross. So, that separation, whether it formed a wall or a chasm, has been broken down and bridged over with the cross.

This is the same thing John was talking about when he said, “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16)

Knowing the Lord is all about receiving a gift from someone who loves you, and whose love you can trust. This is the antidote for worry. This is where real thanksgiving comes from.