The Lilies Have it Easy

Matthew 6:24-34

Harvest Sunday:  November 17, 2012

Like most people, when I was a child, too young to decide for myself, my parents chose my clothes for me.  From the pictures that we have – and there aren’t very many since I am the third child – they did a good job.  But that horrible day came…I can’t remember the exact moment, but I know it came, because I can remember one day in the store with my mom when she was telling me I had to pick out what I wanted to wear.  I’m pretty sure she even made me try it on.  I don’t think my mom did anything wrong – I guess that’s just part of the natural progression of things.  It’s just that I would have been happy – quite happy – to have never crossed that particular threshold.  I’d have been happy to have had my parents pick out my clothes for me forever.

I’d have been happy to never cross that other, related, threshold either.  The one where you go from your parents choosing each day what you will wear, to you having to pick out clothes for yourself every single morning.  At a pretty young age, though, I had figured out how to game the system on both counts.  I just decided I would wear sweats – sweatshirt and sweat pants – every day.  Socks, tennis shoes, and I was set.  This killed a couple of birds.  First, shopping was a breeze – did I need black, grey, or blue sweats was all I had to figure out.  And of course, dressing each morning was easy – black on Monday, Wed., and Friday; grey on Tues., Thurs., and Sat., and my nice blue sweats for Sundays. J 

Then came the day…I must have been in early high school:  my mother handed me a credit card and said, “Kirsten, you have to go shopping, you have to spend $100, and you are not allowed to get any sweats!!”  Now it still took a little while longer before she could force me to wear any of these great, non-sweat clothes …but in the end, she must have figured something out, because there are pictures of me from high school in which I’m wearing jeans and button down shirts.

When I went to college, it was a glorious day.  I figured out I never had to shop again.  As long as I didn’t change size, I was fine.  But one weekend, I went home, and ever the typical college student, I brought my laundry.  My mom was helping me get my clothes from the car, and she stood at the trunk, looked into one of my clothes baskets, and sighed a very heavy sigh.  Then said, “Kirsten, your clothes are ….,” well, let’s just say her description of my clothes was not g-rated. 

To this day, I hate clothes shopping.  Hate it.  I also hate figuring out what to wear every day.  Any nice clothes or outfits I have I were undoubtedly given to me by someone with far more fashion sense than I have – which, if you haven’t guessed by now, is pretty much everyone.  I hate that I have to remember what I wore two days ago, so I don’t wear it again.  I hate having to match clothes.  I hate having to figure out what shoes go with what pants.  I hate that it’s apparently not cool to wear things with holes or stains. 

What, you might be asking by now, is my point?  My point is this:  Those lilies have it easy.  Don’t worry about clothing, Jesus tells me.  Look at the lilies.  They don’t have to do a darn thing, and they are clothed more beautifully than any human in the history of the world.  When I’ve gone the no worrying route on the clothing front – the one where I just buy and wear sweat pants – people do not stop their car when they pass me, get out and admire my beauty.  Instead, they look at me and say, “Kirsten, your clothes are….,” well, you get the point.  The lilies have it easy.  Never once have they had to step foot in a Younkers, or the hell that is a department store dressing room. 

Okay – I know.  This is poetry.  It’s not really about Younkers, sweat pants, or dressing rooms.  But, still, I take issue with Matthew and his sweet story of the lilies who have to do not one thing and they are cared for by God, created to be beauty itself, nourished by the ground they are planted in, no need to wander in search of food or water.  Best of all, no brain.  Consider the lilies, Jesus tells us, they don’t worry.  Of course they don’t worry.  They have no brain.  If God is going to give me a brain, then God does not get to tell me to not worry.  Period.

Am I right?  Isn’t this a frustrating passage, to say the least.  Don’t worry about your life.  Don’t worry about what you will eat or drink or wear.  At BEST this is annoying.  I’m human.  I have needs.  There are things I have to do to meet those needs, and sometimes that means I’m going to worry.  At WORST, this is grossly irresponsible and cruel.  I’d like to see Jesus sit down among children in parts of Africa whose stomachs are distended from hunger and say, “don’t worry about your life, what you will eat or drink.” 

In fact, I have grown to resent this passage, because too often I hear it referenced in a bumper-sticker-like way, telling me and others that the Christian faith can be summed up in a Bobbie McFerrin song from 1988:  Don’t worry, be happy.   

I don’t know if Jesus “worried,” in the 21^st century sense of that word.  I don’t know if he had sleepless nights, or felt anxiety in his chest, or if he stewed about things over which he had no control.  But, I don’t think that has anything to do with what he’s saying here. I do think he longed for a world where people didn’t have to worry about where their next meal was coming from, or how they would keep their children healthy and warm.  I think Jesus longed for a world without cruel distinctions, or illnesses that made people outcasts.  He longed, in short, for the realm of God.  In the realm of God, people are like lilies planted in a field.  Without having to strive for it, they have what they need to live, love, and flourish. 

This passage this morning comes in the middle of the famous “Sermon on the Mount.”  The sermon on the mount is not really about individual instructions.  It’s not really about how I can personally be saved.  This sermon is a vision of a new world – a new way of being with each other as community – the vision and instructions are communal.  In this world, which he calls the realm or kingdom, of God, those who are hated and reviled are blessed.  The meek, the merciful, the peacemakers: these are the ones who serve as models for the rest of us.  In the kingdom of God, retaliation is not the order of the day.  In the kingdom of God, not only are you to love your neighbor, but you love your enemy as well.

Jesus is painting a picture that is more beautiful than any painting of a huge field full of lilies.  Human beings living with one another in such a way that no one has to strive for their daily food, no one has to worry about losing their land, no one has to worry about being “religious enough.”  The only thing people have to strive for is, as he puts it, the kingdom of God and God’s righteousness – God’s way.

Lilies need the ground and the dirt, the sun and the rain, to survive without striving.  People need community – community based on compassion, justice, peace, grace, and love.  That is how people grow and flourish – by being planted in communities based on God’s priorities.  If we strive for that kind of community…seek only the realm of God: then all these things will be given to you as well…no one would have to worry about their lives.  As easily as the lilies flourish in their fields, humans would flourish in the realm of God.  We would have what we need to survive. 

Without a community of people who care for one another, we do not know how to survive.  I don’t read this passage as a commandment to all individuals to “stop worrying.”  Instead, I read it is saying when people have to worry, that is a sign of something amiss.  It’s a sign that we have been uprooted from God’s intentions and God’s created order.  We have been taken from our field. 

The only difference between the lilies and humans seems to be that lilies don’t destroy their own field.  We do.  And it seems like one of the ways we destroy it is through love of mammon – wealth.  Through striving for individual gain or security instead of striving to create a field where anyone who is planted will flourish.

In his book, “The Working Poor,” David Shipler gets to know a number of families who struggle on the edge of poverty.  He looks at what factors lead people to never ending cycles of poverty and pain, and what kinds of things actually pull people out of a life of poverty into a life where they do not have to worry about mere survival.  His is not a research book – so his conclusions are based on observation and experience.  But what he decides is that the most important factor in whether or not people flourish is how good their networks of support are.  In other words, those who are – for example – a part of a faith community, or who have reliable friends or extended family fare much better than those who don’t.  It’s not a matter of intelligence, luck, work ethic, worldview, even education.  Those who are rooted in a community of love are better able to weather the storms that come into all our lives. 

I watched a video this week called “What is poverty?”  It’s a brief clip of a Brazilian pastor named Claudio Oliver answering that question:  What is poverty?  In the end, he said poverty is not just, or even primarily, lack of money, food, clothing, housing, healthcare.  Poverty, he said, is lack of relationships.  Now, he wasn’t some kind of out of touch, sentimental, privileged guy.  This wasn’t a sweet hallmark notion that friends are better than money.  He was pointing out the harsh reality that lack of resources could be a problem for anyone.  What makes someone poor is living in a world where you have to worry about whether or not, when you lack food yourself, you will have people there to help you and feed you when you need it.  If you don’t, that’s what leads to lack of resources – to vulnerability and at times death.

No matter how hard we strive, no matter how much we plan or save or whatever, a hurricane still might come and put us out of our home.  No matter what our best intentions, no matter how smart we are, the economy still might crash and leave us without a job or the ability to pay the bills.  Life is unpredictable.  We can’t plan for every contingency.  But, if we spend our time and energy building the community that Jesus envisions, planting ourselves and each other in fields of love, compassion, and justice, when those things happen, we will be as taken care of as the lilies are in their fields.

I have spent the week being somewhat irrationally giddy about the harvest dinner.  Now, I know this is a luxury I have because I do not have to be in charge.  It is a lot of work for the deacons.  It takes planning and cooking and people do, I can tell you first hand, worry about it.  Will there be enough food, will people like what’s there, will we have enough tables set up, who will cook the turkeys?  It is not a worry free endeavor.  But, for me – a non deacon – the harvest dinner is a taste of the kingdom of God.  That may sound overly dramatic, but let me explain.

I began working here in the middle of August, in 2005.  Three months after I started, I attended my first harvest dinner.  By then, I knew enough of this community to know it is not perfect, but that at times it is a sign…a taste…a glimpse of the realm Jesus envisioned.  And the harvest dinner was like a multi-sensory manifestation of that.  The sound, the smell, the taste, the feel, the sights…it’s all still with me.  I felt, to put it simply, at home at that first harvest dinner.

I’m not saying we are unique, or special – in fact, thank God, we are not.  And I’m not saying that only churches can be places that reflect the realm of God – thank God, that’s not true either.  But I do think we are trying to be a community based on God’s values, and that means, hopefully, people among us do not have to worry about whether someone will be there for them if the bottom falls out.  People do not have to worry that they are responsible for themselves and all their problems.  People do not have to worry that their neighbor cares more about mammon than their well being. 

The fact that people worry about the harvest dinner is a sign that people are striving not for wealth, but for the realm of God.  It’s a small thing: the harvest dinner.  I get that.  I know we fail each other sometimes.  I know some of you have had times of genuine worry and did not feel the church there for you.  But, I imagine Lydia, through all her senses today, experiencing the glimpse of God’s realm – even if she can’t put it into words yet.  I’m hoping growing up here will help her to not have to worry about striving for survival.  I’m hoping that she learns to worry about how to create a harvest dinner more than her own personal wealth.  I’m hoping she learn to create a harvest feast in the world, that others need not worry.

In fact, I’m hoping all of us experience this – and continue to strive for the realm of God.  The lilies have it easy.  I pray that our world becomes the field God intended for us so all human beings may have it that easy some day.  Amen.