Trinity 15 – Behold the Lillies!

Galatians 5:25-6:10       St Matthew 6:24-34

 

Behold the lilies of the field…

 

In this season of Trinity we are moving ever more deeply to understand our souls and to understand them in the light of God’s promises that we are inheritors of the kingdom of heaven.

We are being asked to look not just at our outward actions, but at the very thoughts of our hearts – what is going on in our inner dialogue with ourselves – something hard to see, unless we take time to turn and reflect.  We are asked by Jesus, to purify our intentions, our innermost motivations, so that we can be inheritors of the kingdom of heaven.

These readings are counsels of perfection.

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Our Gospel this morning, is from near the end of the Sermon on the Mount.  Jesus warns us:

No one can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or he will be devoted to the one, and despise the other.  You cannot serve God and money. (Greek Mammon – worldly wealth)

Jesus is not saying that wealth is necessarily bad (though it is a great danger – elsewhere he says it is more difficult for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven that for a camel to go through the eye of a needle).  Jesus is not saying we shouldn’t try to work or seek to fulfil a career.  He is saying, don’t trust in it, don’t serve it as if it is your master.  He wants us to look within and clarify the thoughts of our heart to be sure that the God we serve is the one who will give us life, not sap it of all strength.  It is God who will give us true and lasting joy, not fill us with anxiety and ultimately disappoint us.

There is a certain fickleness about worldly wealth.  We can try to do everything right in the world, and then there is always something beyond our power that can change – nations can go into war, a nation’s economy can go down, there can be a banking crisis, economic times rise and fall and rise and fall. We can seem to have everything going right and then weather intervenes, or an earthquake, who knows?

In the ancient world the Romans sought to have good fortune by worshipping lady Fortuna – in fact the largest Temple ever built by the Romans was to this fickle goddess just outside of Rome.  Boethius, a 7^th century Christian theologian, placed her under God’s Providence – blithely and blindly turning her wheel just when things seem to go well then something bad happens.  It was a way of describing and warning us not to trust in earthly wealth, but to look higher.

Consider Israel.  We’ve been reading about the Northern and Southern kingdoms of Israel in the daily readings over the past two months.  It was Solomon’s son, placing a too high burden of tax on the 10 northern tribes, to sustain the lavish kingdom his father Solomon had built up, that caused the split between the North and the South.  When things seemed to be going well financially, the hearts of the people forgot about God, they began also worshipping false gods and all collapsed around them.  The Northern Kingdom Israel, was destroyed by the Assyrians in the 8^th century BC and the people exiled.  Then the Southern Kingdom, Judah, was destroyed by the Babylonians in the 6^th century and the people exiled.  This removal of the protection of God was seen as a punishment, but also it was a grace, to wake them up as no other disaster could, by stripping them of everything, literally everything, and leading them away from the holy land into captivity.

We are to establish our lives on something more sure, something with absolute stability – as Jesus concludes his Sermon on the Mount, we are to found it on nothing more solid than on Jesus Christ Himself, the Rock.

Our happiness, Jesus says, must be placed in what is eternal, in the true God.

“You cannot serve God and Money.  Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, or what ye shall drink; nor about your body, what you will put on.  Is not the life more than food, and the body more than clothing?”

Jesus is aiming to strip away by his words our anxieties about everything that is not of ultimate importance.  How much of the anxiety that you have this morning is related to your financial situation?  how much of your anxiety this morning relates to things beyond your health, your food, drink and clothing?

But even these most basic things, our health, or having enough food and drink and clothing can be a concern.  And yet…Jesus says don’t even worry about them!  Surely this is remarkable!

Jesus wants us to think about and to put our whole trust in God’s providence – that he will provide for us all that we need.  And to prove it Jesus gives us these powerful images from his Creation:

“Look at the birds of the air, they neither sow, nor reap, nor gather into barns; and your heavenly Father feeds them.  Are you not of more value than they?”

Serve God, seek the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and we will have enough to eat, even if it means we need to ask others for help sometimes – that is a part of his providence.   And God will satisfy our need for food not only for our body but also our souls – Jesus says, “My flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.” [Jn 6:55]  Trust in God to provide, says Jesus.

“And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?” 

This one is a little harder.  Trusting in God about our health.  God would have us seek the advice of doctors and also to take care day to day to see we sleep enough and treat our bodies well.  But ultimately, our life can be taken from us at any time.  The number of years we have on earth is not ours to decide.  Here perhaps more than any other area, we must trust ourselves to the One who created us and sustains us daily and trust in His promise that he has prepared a place for us, eternal in the heavens, that is much better than this.

By being anxious, we will only take away from the life we have here.  Trust in God to provide an eternal home, says Jesus.

“And why are you anxious for clothing?  Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow?” 

Jesus knows we need clothing, but we’re not to worry about it.  Think about what we want in our choice clothing?  Privacy yes, to be warm enough, but is it also to have a sense of dignity and self worth.  To be attractive to others.  To feel good about ourselves.  God will adorn our souls with beauty when we serve him and seek holiness of life, and that beauty will make us attractive.  And it comes about naturally…

One commentator has said…

“As the beauty of the flower is unfolded by the Divine Creator-Spirit from within, from the laws and capacities of its own individual life, so must all true adornment of man be unfolded from within by the same Almighty Spirit.” (Alford.)  As we align our lives with Christ, as we look at Him, we become more like Him, and there is no greater beauty.

The lilies “they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon (the wealthiest man ever in Israel) in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.  But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith.”

Our desire for clothing, is it not a desire ultimately to be clothed in immortality?

St. Paul says

“while we are still in this tent we groan, being burdened—not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.”  [2 Cor 5:2-4]

Jesus is saying we must give up the idea that our happiness or self worth lies in the accumulation of possessions.  Or that our dignity lies in what we wear. Or that our health is something that is ultimately in our hands to ensure.

We are promised by Jesus this morning, that every time we give up these anxieties through trusting in God, our minds are opened to new possibilities of what we can do to love God and our neighbour with all that we are.

The Epistle is about putting our energies not into accumulating material wealth, sowing to the flesh, but to put our energies into “doing good”, to “do good to everyone”, that is, sowing to the Spirit.

Our ancient Collect, the prayer connected with these readings, in the second part asks God to help us to seek what is truly profitable – again it is language we normally think of as related to financial gain, but Jesus will have us refocus on what is spiritually profitable.  And another preacher, Isaac Williams, has noted that the first line of the Collect this morning – “Keep, we beseech you, O Lord, your Church with your perpetual mercy” – in the Latin original is actually – “keep us with your perpetual propitiation”.  What is God’s perpetual propitiation but His Son’s “once for all sacrifice for us” – which He eternally pleads to the Father for us?

We are here because we have chose this morning, to spend the first few hours of this new week to come to Church – and in doing so we are seeking first God’s Kingdom.  We are taking the opportunity this morning to sow to the Spirit.  Let us prepare our hearts and minds to present Christ’s self offering for us, and then to receive His Body and Blood given for us.  Jesus promises us that:

• This spiritual food, before all other food, restores and sustains our souls in our earthly pilgrimage.
• This spiritual clothing, before all other, clothes us with the righteousness of Christ – the most beautiful garment.
• This spiritual remedy, preserves our bodies and souls to everlasting life.

Why are you anxious?
Look at the lilies of the field…
Look at the birds of the air…
And let us behold Christ Himself.

Amen +