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"Thanksgiving Day"
St. Mark’s Episcopal Church
November 26, 2009
The Rev. Elizabeth Molitors
“Jesus said, "I tell you, do not worry
about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or
about your body, what you will wear.” -- Matthew
6:25
In 1998, journalist and writer Barbara Ehrenreich undertook
a project. Interested in the issue of poverty, Ms. Ehrenreich
attempted to live the life of a working poor person, laboring
at the kinds of minimum wage jobs available to what are called
“unskilled” workers, to see if she could feed and
clothe and shelter herself with that kind of income. She spent
12 months on this endeavor, moving to different parts of the
country to see if or how it’s different to be poor in
Florida or Minnesota or Maine. She wrote about her experiences
in her book, called “Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting
By in America.” The author has no illusions about the
authenticity of her experience – she’s well aware
that this, for her, is an experiment and not a way of life;
she has an ATM card in her wallet, and can, at any moment, return
to her home and her comfortable, middle-class life. One of the
things that I found fascinating as I read this book –
besides the content of Ehrenreich’s observations –
is how I felt as I read it. Although I knew, on an intellectual
level, that Ehrenreich was living a constructed life that she
could instantly escape, I still felt this heaviness, this sense
of deep desperation…anxiety and hopelessness…as
she described what it was like to live in a shoddy, dirty motel
room that cost more than the monthly rent on a modest nearby
apartment. Apartment living wasn’t an option, because
she lived hand-to-mouth, and couldn’t scrape together
the capital necessary to pay, upfront, the deposit and first
month’s rent normally required for a lease. I worried
for her, what she would eat and how much of her income she had
to spend each day on meals, much of the food being calorie dense
but nutrient poor, because she had no refrigerator to store
food, nor cooking facilities to heat things up. My heart beat
a little faster as she described how carefully she ate her meager
meals, for fear of spilling anything on herself, as it was costly
and time-consuming to go to a Laundromat – money and time
she just didn’t have as she worked 2 or more jobs each
day. And though Ehrenreich’s situation was a fiction of
sorts, what she learned was that her experiences were entirely
typical – a good representation of how millions of people
live and work in America.
Jesus said, "I tell you, do not worry about your life,
what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body,
what you will wear.”
I have never – except when I’ve voluntarily chosen
to fast, I’ve never gone hungry. I have never –
except when I’ve voluntarily chosen to ‘rough it’
in the wilderness, never gone without a roof over my head. I
have always had clean clothes to wear. And though I have had
times of financial insecurity, times when I was unemployed,
when I lived paycheck to paycheck, times when I ran up lots
of debt and had to juggle minimum payments, never was I without
a safety net. I have always been lucky enough to be surrounded
by parents and siblings and friends who would have – had
I swallowed my great pride and asked for it – helped me
out with a financial gift or loan, or provided a place for me
to live.
Jesus said, "I tell you, do not worry about your life,
what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body,
what you will wear.”
I have never lived the kind of life that Ehrenreich, or the
people she describes in her book, have lived, and so I suspect
that they and I hear those words of Jesus very, very differently.
For me, in my middle-class and comfortable life, I can hear
Jesus’ words as a little coaxing, and maybe a little chiding.
He seems to be calling me to move higher up Maslow’s hierarchy
of needs, toward the Christian version of self-actualization.
“Don’t worry about food and clothing,” he
says, “use your time and energy to focus on more worthwhile
things.” I’m supposed to get my priorities straight,
and not worry about mundane subsistence, because, as Matthew’s
gospel says, “Is not life more than food and the body
more than clothing?”
This whole passage – which also appears in Luke’s
gospel – gets used so often, gets trotted out as an easy
aphorism… don’t worry; consider the lilies of the
field, they neither toil nor spin, and yet God puts them in
splendid clothing. Beautiful and lofty words, but I think there’s
a real danger lurking here, a temptation to be self-congratulatory,
to think that if I’m not worried about the day-to-day
necessities of life, it’s because I have listened to Jesus,
have strived for and achieved “the kingdom of God and
his righteousness.” In reality, if I’m not worried
about food and clothing and shelter, perhaps it’s because
I really don’t have all that much cause to worry in the
first place.
This passage also invites the danger of standing in judgment
– either judging God, wondering why God isn’t taking
care of the poor as well as he takes care of the lilies of the
field and the birds of the air? Or, perhaps we judge the poor,
looking for reasons why they seem to have fallen out of God’s
favor?
So, how do we avoid the dangers of self-congratulation and
judgment as we look at this gospel reading? I think this is
one of those passages that can’t be read on its own, in
isolation – we need to understand it in context with the
whole of Jesus’ message, and notice that it comes near
the end of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, that long series
of teachings where Jesus describes in concrete detail what it
means to be part of the kingdom of God. He tells his followers
that they are to “Give to him who asks you”, and
they are to “Go the second mile.” They are to “love
their neighbor” and “love their enemy” and
“do good to those who hate” them. They are to do
charitable works – in secret – not to attract attention
and accolades, but simply to help one another.
In light of these teachings, then, today’s gospel reading
can be understood in a different way. The call not to worry
about your life, about your food and clothing, ends up being
not so much an action we are to take as it is the natural consequence
of having lived an intimate, inter-connected, inter-dependent
life with neighbor and enemy. Freedom from worry about the everyday
things of life – for everyone – is one of the ways
that we’ll know that we’re living in the kingdom
of God.
We aren’t there yet – not fully, anyway. We still
live in a world, a country, a community where some have more
than they need, and others don’t have enough. Where some
are clothed in beauty and splendor, and others go without. Where
some are free from worry and others can do nothing but.
Our hope, though, lies in the meal ahead of us. In the gift
of the Eucharist, we get an opportunity to not only glimpse
God’s kingdom, but to be a part of it. I invite you to
gather around this table, where all are welcome, where each
will get what they need, where there is always enough. No worries.
Amen.
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