Why Wait?

Luke 12: 22-34
            One of the best things about working with youth is that they ask questions out of genuine curiosity.  Adults, and I’m guilty here too, often don’t want to look like we don’t already know.  So we only ask questions rhetorically – to make a point, to challenge or provoke.  But youth ask questions because they are looking for the answers.  Now sometimes, it’s not so great when the question is “Hey, if someone were to have accidentally put cherry slurpee into the church van’s gas tank . . . would that be a bad thing?”

            But for the most part, the honesty of these questions is refreshing.  What does it mean when we say in the Apostle’s Creed that Jesus descended into hell?  How do we know when Bible stories are true and when they’re just stories?  One standout question a young woman once asked me: Am I a bad Christian because I have so much stuff?  I have piles of junk in my room I don’t use; clothes I’d never wear anymore . . . and I still spend most weekends at the mall or somewhere else looking for new things I want.  If I’m serious about Jesus, does that mean I have to get rid of all my stuff?

             I was recently talking with another pastor friend about a megachurch in his area where the preacher decided that he needed a jet.  His own private jet.  Don’t ask me why; I have no idea.  Must have been in the habit of traveling a lot for work and somehow justified to himself that having his very own jet would improve the efficiency of his mission.  His church being of the prosperity gospel persuasion – the sort of “follow God’s rules, pray hard enough, and you’ll receive everything want” theology – his approach to procuring this jet was simply to notify the congregation and hit his knees.  “Pastor’s praying for a jet!  What are you going to do about it?”  Well lo and behold, within a few months they came through and the preacher was cruising the skies in style.  And his take on the event was, of course, that this was textbook Luke 12:30-31 in action: “Don’t keep striving like a nonbeliever after the things you need, because God knows you need them.  Just have faith, be obedient, and all these things will come to you!”

             Including private jets, huh?  Yeah . . . I don’t know about that.  But now, in different ways, both the preacher and the young woman were expressing a basic truth of human nature: that we like to acquire stuff.  And for Christians, our relationship with that stuff must have something to do with our relationship with God.  But what, exactly?  One of these people seems to think it’s a simple correlation: more faith equals more stuff.  The other is worried about the opposite: too much stuff may mean her faith is suffering.  I suppose it’s too complex to be entirely one or the other, but I have to admit I was more than a little proud of my teenage friend for asking those questions.  Clearly there’s some recognition on her part that Jesus never said “Come, follow me, and I’ll load you up with presents!  Follow me and I’ll make sure your life is comfortable and convenient.”

Because, of course, Jesus’ words concerning money and material goods frequently sound more like dire warnings or seemingly impossible commands to practice outrageous forms of generosity.  It’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom.  Sell all you have and donate everything to the poor.  No one can serve two masters; you cannot serve both God and money.  Yet even if his words are difficult, the reasoning is simple: the more we have, the easier it becomes to get addicted to the sense of safety and security that wealth provides.  Like in last week’s parable of the rich fool, love of God gets replaced with love of money.  By contrast, the more we give away, the easier it becomes to accept it was never ours to begin with, that it came from God and we are just stewards.  And for all the times the gospel includes words like “don’t worry” and “do not be afraid,” it certainly seems like we’re expected to be taking some risks.

            I read a news article this week that truly surprised me (not only because of what it said but also because it was actually good news).  It was a report on something called “The Giving Pledge,” which Warren Buffet and Bill Gates have been promoting for the past year.  It currently consists of over 40 US billionaires who have promised to donate at least half their personal fortunes to various charitable causes – things like clean water, education, social justice, world hunger.  The list of donors is still growing, and there are individuals who go well above and beyond the requested 50% level.  Incredible generosity – miraculous, even.  This money will go a long way toward helping those in need.

            But without taking anything away from those billionaires who are participating, I have to say the report immediately made me think of another story Jesus told.  He reminded his disciples that while Gates and Buffet were at the temple making extravagant offerings out of their abundance, there was also a working single mother sitting in the back pew, who dropped her grocery money and next month’s car payment into the plate without a word as it was passed.  And even though according to the way the world counts things, her 200 dollars won’t go nearly as far as their 200 billion, God was more pleased with her gift because she gave it in faith.  Whatever the moguls give, they still have an absurd amount left, such that they’ll never be threatened by need or lack.  In contrast, the widow took a risk.  She never had enough to begin with, and she willingly sacrificed even that.  What she gave, she gave trusting not only that God would use her offering, but that God would not forget about her either.

  “Well, that’s great,” we might say.  “A fictional character in a parable – of course she can afford to trust God!  What about us here in the real world, with real mortgages, real budgets to balance, real retirement plans in the tank?  How do we demonstrate faith like that?  How can we do anything other than hunker down and make sure we’re taking care of our own?”

To his disciples, people no less familiar with fear, no more certain about their futures, Jesus says “Consider the ravens, consider the lilies.”  He’s not just giving a command about trust; Jesus is giving us practical advice how to do it.  The greek word translated as “consider” here is katanoēsate.  There’s a sense of weight or heaviness in the original language – “consider” is a good English rendition; an even better one might be “observe deeply” or “anchor your thoughts here.”  “Stop and smell the roses” isn’t too far off.  Jesus’ words remind us that moments of quiet, of stillness, of reflection are necessary to a life spent pursuing God.  These moments are spiritual anchors.  Even though you’re utterly caught up with concerns about work, about bills, about next week’s schedule, and the project that is due later this month – slow down!  Drop anchor here, even in the midst of this raging sea, and take the time to get your bearings, correct your course if you need to.

Maybe it’s hard to convince yourself that you can afford a break.  You think you just have to keep moving to keep your head above water.  But movement alone is not progress – it has to be movement in the right direction.  We need to spend non-anxious time in the presence of God to find that direction.  God knows there are 20 new emergencies every day.  Right now, you need to take a few minutes to breathe.  Listen to that robin’s song, check out the new blossoms in your backyard.  Let them remind you that there is an entire world outside of your little self-imposed stress bubble.  There is a God bigger than all of this, with plans bigger than any you can imagine, and – believe it or not – you are of foremost concern in those plans.  You are allowed to pause and let God minister to your needs.

Which is not, on the other hand, an invitation to run the ship aground and wait for the tide to deliver us everything we want.  A purposeful pause is a very different thing from abandoning the journey altogether.

            Forgive me if you’ve heard this one before – a small town in the valley gets a flash flood warning.  Everyone starts evacuating, except for one man of humble and steadfast faith.  As neighbors scramble into their cars and onto the roads, he calmly watches from his front window.  Soon enough the water has covered the street, and a fire truck comes by.  The people shout to the man in his home to come out and get on the truck with them and be rescued.  He answers, “Oh don’t worry about me.  God will take care of me.  You go on ahead.”

            The water keeps rising.  The man goes up to the second story and keeps watching out his window.  A rowboat comes along and the people all shout for the man to come out and get in and be rescued.  “Oh don’t worry about me,” he calls back to them.  “God will take care of me.  You go on ahead.”

            The water keeps rising.  The man goes up onto his roof to wait it out.  Eventually a helicopter comes by and all the people shout to him to climb up into the chopper and be rescued.  Of course the man calls back “Oh don’t worry about me.  God will take care of me.  You go on ahead.”

            Well, the pious man drowns.  And he winds up in heaven, so the first thing he does is he goes up to God and says “Well look now: I don’t mean to criticize or question your will or anything, but God, I’m a little confused.  You know I’m a faithful believer and when the flood came I waited patiently for your help.  Why didn’t you do anything to rescue me?”

            And God answers, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.  Didn’t you see the truck, the boat, and the helicopter I sent?”

                        We can’t sit there passively and wait for a miracle to change everything.  That’s actually a faith that disables.  That’s not what Jesus is encouraging.  His vision for trust in God means that we are enabled, freed up to do something greater than worry about our day to day needs, because the miracle’s already happened.  God loves us.  God claims us.  Our lives and our futures and our needs matter to God.  We’re not on our own.  So my first priority stops being me and my and how can I take care of myself, and instead I will have the time and energy and freedom to focus on the rest of the world that God is calling me to care for.  And in that light, the point of the ravens and the lilies is clearly not so much that trusting God means ignoring all responsibilities, even your self-preservation instinct, and waiting for God to sort it out.  Rather, it’s that you can know while you are busy building God’s kingdom, One who works more faithfully and more tirelessly is busy looking after you.

Jesus told his disciples “Let go of your fear about food and clothing, because truthfully, life has so much more to offer than that boring stuff!”  Following on the heels of the previous parable about the rich fool, it’s almost as if Jesus is saying to his disciples, “Look, I know I come on strong about this whole money thing.  But really, it’s just that I hate seeing you throw away your trust in the God who made you for the false security of a loaded wallet.  You end up pursuing all these things don’t matter at the expense of all the things that actually do – all the gifts you already have, and the One who has given them to you.  So let’s turn this thing around, get the priorities straight, and when we do . . . I think you’re going to find that sense of peace you’re really after.  It doesn’t come from accumulating wealth; it doesn’t come from having a full belly and access to all the latest fashions.  It only comes from knowing you (and all you have) belong to God – God who is good, and powerful, and will never give up on you.  Put that knowledge first in your mind, and let your actions flow in a grateful response.  Oh, and if you forget . . . just take some time to stop and smell the roses.”