The Enemies of Gratitude, Part 2: Worry

Philippians4:1-9

A few years back, I heard a radio program on the topic of things children worry about. Children do worry about serious things, real things; but they also spend a lot of time worrying about things that strike us as – well, kind of cute. When I was a child one of the things we worried about the most was quicksand. We thought about quicksand all the time – what it would be like to get stuck in it, how you might be able to pull yourself out of it. We played games that centered around quicksand – if you got caught in it you were out. Back in the 60’s, quicksand was big.

But kids don’t think about quicksand anymore. These days, or at least a few years ago when I heard this program, the greatest worry for kids is zombies. Kids, apparently, spend a lot of time thinking about zombies – like what would happen if you got caught by one, how you would be able to save yourself from a zombie. Kids watch movies, read books, and play games where zombies are at the center of it.

I sometimes wish that quicksand and zombies were all we had to worry about, but of course there is so much more. A few days ago, I wrote about the shooting scare at the homecoming dance last Saturday night. The fact that nothing happened at the dance, that it was a false alarm and there was no gun, couldn’t prevent the rise in anxiety in our community. The mere fact that we thought for a minute something horrendous had happened got the notion stuck in our imaginations, and we couldn’t stop thinking about all the terrible things that could happen in the future.

And, of course, it didn’t help that Monday morning we woke to the news that the worst mass shooting in our nation’s history had occurred in Las Vegas while we were sleeping. All the things that could happen become even more real. So what if nothing happened this time? That’s irrelevant. The point is something could happen, something might happen next time.

This is the culture of fear and worry we live in. It is a serious problem for Christians to deal with. Paul tells his readers in the letter to the Philippians not to worry about anything, which might sound like a flimsy response to a very robust problem. How do you tell someone not to worry when there is so much to worry about?

How can we not worry about the state of the world we live in? How do we not worry about the constantly ratcheting up level of violence? According to the New York Times, we have had 521 mass shootings over a period of 477 days – that is, on average, more than one mass shooting per day in our country.

How can we not worry about the violence that overwhelms us, that runs rampantly through our cities and towns, our schools and workplaces and everywhere people gather together? Who among us is foolish enough not to worry?

To say “don’t worry” in the face of such horror is like saying stick your head in the sand. Close your eyes and stop your ears, and say “LALALALALA, I can’t hear you,” until the bad things go away. To say “don’t worry” is tantamount to encouraging irresponsibility. That’s what we think.

There is, on this topic, a great deal of tension between what we read in the scriptures and the way we experience life in this world. According to the gospel, Jesus teaches his disciples to not worry about food, clothing, or what will happen tomorrow. Paul instructs his readers in Philippi to not worry about anything. And we just find this hard to take seriously.

When you think about it, even though they say “don’t worry,” neither Jesus nor Paul lived their lives as though they, themselves, did not worry. We don’t see them sticking their heads in the sand; we don’t see Jesus and Paul putting their hands over their ears saying “LALALALALA I can’t hear you.” When they are approached by someone in need, someone suffering, we don’t ever find Jesus or Paul saying, “Talk to the hand, ‘cos the face don’t care.”

And so, we are challenged to reconcile this puzzle: neither Jesus nor Paul, in their own lives, ignored the suffering, the violence, and the dangers around them; neither Jesus nor Paul shied away from dangers to their own lives. Jesus waded into every conflict that came his way. Paul did, as well. Paul wrote this letter from a prison cell, knowing his life might very well end soon. How can they say, “don’t worry?”

I think we sometimes think that when they say “don’t worry,” they didn’t really mean it. Because, how could they? How can you care and not worry?

Yet the problem is not really a conflict between these two ideas of worrying and caring. The problem may actually lie in our failure to understand these words about worrying.

The gospel of Jesus Christ does not teach us to ignore the world around us and all that is wrong in it; the gospel does not tell us to shut out the world for the sake of the purity of our hearts and minds. The gospel of Jesus Christ, the gospel that Paul lived and suffered and died for, tells us to approach the pain of this world, to look into the eyes of the suffering. But to do it from the solid, firm foundation of our faith in the strength of God’s promises and love.

In a world of uncertainty, this is where our trust lies.

I have lately been reflecting on the question of what it means to be the church in the world these days. I think it is an important question. How does the church respond to violence? How does the church respond to suffering? Is our response any different from the world’s response? This seems to me a critical question. Is there any real discernable or practical difference between what the church teaches and what the world teaches?

Because if there is no difference, then I don’t know what we are doing and why we are here.

The world says we should be afraid. The world tells us every day that we are surrounded by danger. The world tells us that violence is the language that is most effective. The world tells us that is unfixable.

But, as Christians, our confidence comes not from the world’s ability to fix itself, but from the power of God we know through Jesus Christ. We are at grave risk of losing sight of this important truth. If we reject these words of scripture that say to us, “Do not be afraid; do not worry,” we are allowing the world to set the terms. But when we put our trust in God, we redefine the terms in the light of God’s truth. This is our strength; this is our power.

Last week we talked about nostalgia, looking backward, dwelling on how much better life used to be. It keeps us from appreciating the gifts that are available to us here and now. Nostalgia can make us feel angry about having lost something we imagine as having been wonderful, ungrateful for all we do have. Worry is similar, in that it keeps us from appreciating the present by fixing our attention on some imagined future – all the terrible things that might happen if we are not careful. And worry, too, can lead right into anger about the unfairness of things, anger at the people and things out to get us. It’s an ugly and dangerous rabbit hole we can send ourselves tumbling down, living in fear.

For another perspective that might be helpful, allow me to turn for a moment to the gospel according to Star Wars, wherein the wise Jedi Master Yoda said, “Fear is the path to the dark side.” Fear will lead us into actions that will cause more harm, less good.

But we need not live in fear; we need not worry. If we plant our stake firmly in the good news of Christ, we have this strength that will give us a strong alternative to worry and fear. This is what our faith gives us to work with.

We are not asked to turn away from the unpleasantness of the world. We are not asked to ignore the suffering around us, and we are not asked to take up the false narrative that nothing bad will ever happen to us. We are asked, simply, to let our thoughts and actions be guided by the love of Jesus Christ.

And to stand firmly on the hope that living in the light of God, each day, in all our encounters, will bring God’s realm that much closer. Each act of compassion, each time we refuse to let fear rule our lives, each time we step aside from anger, we bring more light to the world we live in. This, we are sure to find, is something to be truly grateful for.

Photo Credit: By AnemoneProjectors - Peter O'Connor (talk; Flickr) - Quick sand, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=43521955

The Enemies of Gratitude, Pt. 1: Nostalgia

Exodus17:1-7   

I read an article not too long ago written by the novelist Michael Chabon. He said all his life he has been the dutiful boy who will sit and listen to the old folks. He will listen to the stories of the old uncles that nobody wants to listen to anymore. He will patiently explain the mysteries of the newfangled world we find ourselves in and agreeably listen as they explain how much better it used to be. As a child at family gatherings, he would endure all the questions they wanted to ask and he would politely listen to all their advice and cautionary stories, long after all the other kids had run off to play.

As an adult, he still does that – he’s the guy who listens to all the old stories about how wonderful life used to be, even branching out beyond his own family. At a wedding or a Bar Mitzvah, he is likely to be found sitting with somebody else’s Uncle Jack, patiently hearing the stories Uncle Jack’s own family long ago grew weary of.

Maybe it’s out of a sense of empathy, because he knows that, someday, he might very well be an Uncle Jack himself, looking for somebody, anybody, who will listen to him. That might have something to do with it. But he doesn’t say that. He wants us to know that, really and truly, he likes hearing the stories. He doesn’t mind the nostalgia.

Nostalgia is something that has a bad rep, but it’s not all bad, is it? It feels pretty good. There is in it the fleeting sense of some lost beauty in the world – the wistful memories of childhood, a remembrance of youthful nights with friends, laughing together. It’s an appreciation and a longing for something wonderful that will never be again.

And because of the fact that it will never be again, there is a sadness in it too – the sadness of loss. And sometimes the sadness about loss turns into something else: anger, resentment, bitterness. Nostalgia can easily turn sour.

But one of the weird things about nostalgia that we have to acknowledge is that it often distorts the past. Like how when we were kids we had to walk five miles to school, and we were better for it. Five miles. Through a blizzard. Uphill. Both ways.

In our memories, our accomplishments were more accomplished. Our values were more valuable. Our commonsense ways of doing things were just more … commonsense. In our memories, everything was better back then.

There are psychological explanations that aren’t too hard to understand. Our memories are selective; we are just more likely to remember the good things. We aren’t trying to deceive ourselves, but we actually try not to remember many of the bad things, because they can be painful. It’s normal for the past to take on a softer focus, a rosier glow.

But our nostalgia really gets amped up when the present is uncomfortable, when the future is uncertain. Hence, we have the peculiar complaints of the Israelites in the wilderness. It was only a short time ago that they were praying to God to be released from bondage. And now they are looking at Moses with accusing eyes and asking why he has done this to them. It’s remarkable.

One thing I want to say about their complaints is they are good at it – complaining. If there is such a thing as a creative complaint competition, they could definitely be contenders. My favorite is when they say: Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us, bringing us out of Egypt?

When they got panicky, they seemed to remember a different experience in Egypt than the one they had actually endured. They reminisced about sitting around their pots full of meat, eating all they wanted. Their heads were full of memories of meat and fish, cucumbers, melons, leeks, garlic and onions!

Slavery never looked so good.

And that is the danger and the harm of nostalgia. As they stepped into an unknown place and an uncertain future, they pined for a gauzy, prettied-up version of the past. They remembered the best snippets of what it had been like, excising all the pieces that didn’t fit this rosy narrative – and there were a lot of pieces that didn’t fit. They turned their faces to this fictionalized memory of the good old days in Egypt. And as long as they were fixated on that past it was impossible for them to see the present into which God was leading them.

True, that this present where God was leading them was a wilderness. Yes, we do have some sympathy for them. Imagine being led away from the only home you ever knew, by a man you barely know, into a harsh land you know not at all.

Yet, as long as they are looking back they cannot live into the future.

We live in a time not too different from this wilderness period. We face, every day, an uncertain future about the church. We have worries about declining attendance, the aging of our congregations, shrinking financial resources. We see around us churches closing and we are wondering what it means for the future. In a sense, we are in our own wilderness.

So, we look back at the good old days, when the sanctuaries were full. We look back to when the churches were full of children, the offering plates were full of envelopes, and the pulpits were full of – men. And we remember a time when children were taught to pray in public schools, when the laws kept businesses closed on Sundays, and schools wouldn’t dare schedule an activity on a Wednesday night because that was church night. We look back wistfully at a time when the church held power.

A few of our elders and I were at a workshop recently where the leader asked us a question: How many of you think your church’s best days are behind us? Many raised their hands. Then he asked this: How many of you think God’s best days are behind God? Not a hand was raised. So doesn’t it seem to make sense that if our interests are aligned with God’s then our best days are ahead of us?

We wish we could go back to what seems, in our recollections, like a better time. It’s hard for us to imagine that God is leading us into a better future. Even seeking to trust in God, we sometimes give in to despair.

But, sometimes you have to spend time in the wilderness to really begin to see things clearly. To see that we needed to shed some of the old complacency about our faith to experience it in a new, authentically spiritual way. To see that perhaps God is calling us to worry less about our Christian privilege and more about compassion and justice for all.

Nostalgia can be a destructive power for the church, just as much as it can be for our nation, just as much as it might be in our personal lives too. Nostalgia, by pulling us back in the past, steals away our joy, which can only be found in the here and now.

Did you know that this generation of Israelites, the great complainers, never made it to the Promised Land? Perhaps because they were too nostalgic for the past, they couldn’t see the gifts God was placing before them. That is too easy to do. May you not let nostalgia get the better of things.

May you see the past for what it was – both good and bad, and past. May you live in the present, where Christ is with you. May you step into the future in trust. May you live in gratitude for what was, what is, and what will be.

Photo Credit: By Alan Light - 1982 Consumer Electronics Show, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=44814563

God’s Economy

Matthew 20:1-16       

I was told at the roundtable this week that this is a hard parable to like. Well, I think that was Jesus’ intention; he needed his listeners to be shaken up a bit. Consider the conversations that have been going on up to this point.

It was just a few verses ago that some people brought their children to Jesus. They wanted Jesus to lay his hands on them and bless them, which seems perfectly reasonable to us. But his disciples were all into crowd control. There were so many people who wanted to see Jesus, they felt the need to prioritize. They made themselves the gatekeepers – no one could come to Jesus except through them. And as far as they were concerned, there were no children getting through to see Jesus. They were too short. But Jesus saw what they were doing and said, “Hey - Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs.” 

Then a rich young man came to him – the disciples let him through, I guess, and I don’t think it was because of his height. He wanted to know what good deeds he would need to do to inherit eternal life. Jesus said, “Well, you’re going to have to give away all your wealth,” and this young man said, “Ok, thanks,” and disappeared as fast as he could. He wasn’t expecting that answer, and now he would have to go find a second opinion.

After he goes, Jesus makes that comment about it being easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to pass into heaven – you’ve heard this one? You can tell by their reaction the disciples find this as alarming as we do. Rich men won’t get into heaven? That’s not what they had heard. Then Jesus utters those confounding words: Many who are first will be last, and the last will be first. For the kingdom of heaven is like this – and he launches into this awful parable.

If you have a bad reaction to the parable, that means it’s doing its job because a parable is meant to convict you. You are meant to feel it before you even understand what happened. With the parable of the laborers in the vineyard, you do feel it. And I think you can pin down the exact point at which you feel it.

It’s not at the point where he lines the workers up just so – the first last and the last first.

It’s not at the point where he hands each one of the one-hour-workers the usual daily wage – a denarius. Nope.

It happens right at the point where Jesus gives the first workers – those who have worked since the dawn’s early light – how much? A denarius.

Let’s note that a denarius was fair enough at the beginning of the day when they negotiated their terms. It was fair enough all day long under the hot sun. It was fair enough until that moment they saw the latecomers – the one-hour-workday folks – receive a denarius. At that point, their mental abacus started recalculating.

“Wait a minute … If these slackers get a denarius I must be getting more – maybe 12 times as much.” Suddenly, they thought they deserved much, much more.

You see, it’s not that it wasn’t enough. It’s just this ranking and ordering that we do. If these lesser folks are worth this much, I am surely worth more than I thought. If I am first, and they are last, I have something coming to me.

This idea that the first shall be last and the last shall be first really messes with our heads. It completely turns things upside down. Because we do a lot of ranking and ordering, and it confuses us to turn that upside down.

But, let’s consider the possibility that we might be thinking of this in too literal a sense. After all, Jesus spoke and taught in parables.

Perhaps he simply meant that in God’s economy there is enough. For everyone.

There is enough food and water for even the poorest. There is enough work for even the weak or disabled. There is enough time for even the children. There is enough.

Like manna that falls from the skies, the story Israel told about their sojourn in the wilderness when God was with them, God did not abandon them. In that time when they had nothing but God, there was enough. There was enough for each one, enough for each day.

The people of Israel had memories of plagues and natural disasters, times of want and times of plenty, and everything in between.  And they knew that the Lord had been with them through it all.  They knew from their experience that the Lord provides and that sometimes humans are their own worst enemies, when their insecurities and greed and jealousies get in the way of their well-being.

And they knew, just as some of us know, that when you are in your most inadequate state God is most present.  When everything else is cleared out of the way, God is there.  There is an old saying that has come up a few times recently in our roundtable discussions: God helps those who help themselves. But the amazing truth the scriptures tell is that God helps those who cannot help themselves.

The story of the manna in the wilderness is a testament of faith. The gospels, full as they are of parables like this one of the laborers in the vineyard, are testaments to faith. Our life stories, can be testaments to faith.

What does your life story look like if you tell it as a testament of faith? 

photo credit: Workers waiting for their paychecks. By Unknown Hanford employee. - Image N1D0028477 at Hanford Declassified Document Retrial System, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24363672