By Martin Morrison
Our passage for today is Luke 12: 22 – 31. It may be better if you read it first! Is this just another Bible passage which may be fine for Sunday morning, but totally irrelevant for Monday morning?
Before the advent of prosperity theology, the church sometimes gave the false impression that the truly spiritual man is not a man of property but a man of poverty; a man secluded from the rough and tumble of the real world.
But that is not the New Testament picture at all. The New Testament picture of the woman or man of God is someone who has a family to raise, a home to maintain, a job to perform and a world to win. In fact, the passage in front of us could not be more relevant as we face an uncertain economic future, both individually and as a country.
In Luke 12: 13 – 21, Jesus addressed the sins of greed. The man who has too much. You’ll remember how Jesus exposed the Farmer of the Year as a fool, for having no eternal perspective, for living life by purely materialistic categories. “You fool, this night your soul is required of you”.
Now, in our passage today, Jesus turns the corner. He is not addressing someone who is rich, but someone who is battling to make ends meet. The followers of Jesus were no doubt mostly ordinary people, struggling to raise and feed their families, pay the monthly bond, keep up their medical aid. In a word they were battling to get through the month. It is to these people that Jesus now turns his attention.
Now before we understand what Jesus is prohibiting, we need to understand what Jesus is not prohibiting. Jesus is not despising the needs of the body, when he says in vs. 23, “Do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, nor about your body, what you will put on”. Though life is greater than the body and its needs, that in no way means that food or clothes have no value or importance at all. Jesus cared for the five thousand who were starving, by providing bread and fish when they had no food. Jesus made a yellowtail braai on the beach, when the disciples had had a long cold night on the sea. The point of the passage is in fact to reassure us that God will look after our bodily needs, and therefore we are not to be preoccupied with them. “If God even feeds the brainless ravens, how much more will he feed us”.
Nor is Jesus denying the need for planning. Some people may read this passage and infer that Jesus is teaching, Don’t be worry, be happy! The mentality which says, just live for today and give no thought to tomorrow. A perpetual teenager, or is that unkind! But clearly that is not what Jesus is saying. Jesus tells us to consider the ravens. Do birds not continually plan for the future. They build nests, they lay and incubate eggs, they feed their young, many migrate to warmer climates before winter, some even store food. Jesus is clearly not preventing his children from planning and making common sense provision for the future. He is not prohibiting forethought, but anxious thought!
Nor is Jesus absolving us from work. Jesus didn’t need to read Roberts book on Birds, to know that birds labour and work all day. From morning till evening, they are scurrying around to earn their daily bread. The birds know that there is no divine vending machine coughing out insects and seeds and grass. No, they are to search and find their food. God provides and they cooperate. Generally, God does not provide for our needs through supernatural methods, but natural. He uses the normal channels of hard work, production and distribution.
Listen to Martin Luther and his characteristic earthiness,
“God wants nothing to do with lazy gluttonous bellies, who are neither concerned nor busy; they act as if they just have to lie down and wait for him to drop a roasted goose into their mouth”.
Again, Jesus is not denying the needs of the body not is he despising the value of work. What he prohibits is not forethought, but anxious thought.
The first reason Jesus gives for not being consumed by anxiety is from the natural world. He points to the birds and ravens, he points to the flowers and grass around them. He argues, that just as God provides for the needs of the grass and the birds, can’t we trust him to provide our daily needs. Surely, we are more valuable than they are. There’s an inescapable logic in the teaching of Jesus. If he cares for the relatively less valuable, then surely we can trust him to care for the more valuable.
The second reason given for not being consumed by anxiety is from the supernatural world. God is the one who ultimately determines the date of your birth and the date of your death. Imagine, you and I are totally incapable of adding a single hour to our lives. Then surely, if God determines your birth and death, can you not entrust lesser matters to him as well! Once again, the logic is inescapable. Just as we leave the matters of life and death to God, is it not rational to leave less important things to God as well.
In the parallel passage, Matthew 6:34, Jesus says, “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own”. Jesus understand full well, that when you are raising a family, maintaining a home, paying off a bond, facing crises, tensions and demands at work on a daily basis, that all these things need to be faced and dealt with. As Jesus says, “Every day has enough trouble of its own”, and we are to deal with them each day. What he is prohibiting is that constant state of anxiety, nervousness and worry that starts to consume your life and eats you up. If we are honest, we so often worry about future events, that actually never happen!
So, what Jesus makes abundantly clear, to those of us who are his children, is that a constant state of anxiety is not only incompatible with common sense but is inherently incompatible with Christian faith.
Before lockdown, I was in a dentists’ waiting room. I picked up a glossy magazine on lifestyle. There were adverts for champagne, tobacco, food, clothing, motor cars and antiques. There was an article on having a Caribbean holiday, the delights of reindeer meat and Scotch whiskey, how to win a luxury cabin cruise holiday and the unique pleasure of a luxury watch. We have grown so accustomed to these magazines, that we no longer realize how absurd it all is. It betrays a distorted view of human beings, that the body only needs to be watered, fed, clothed and housed. It reduces life to the level of animals, plants and birds. Surely there is more to life than eating at the best restaurants, wearing the latest Calvin Klein outfits and going on the latest exotic holiday destination. Isn’t that what Jesus means, when he says, “Life is more than food, and the body more than clothes”.
You, however, are to be different. Seek first his Kingdom. Jesus is dealing, not only with our worries, but with our priorities, our preoccupations, our gods. So, either it is a preoccupation with yourself or a preoccupation with God. Either it is an ambition for your own Kingdom or an ambition for God’s Kingdom. It’s one or the other, there’s no middle ground.
As Bob Dylan so clearly sang, You’re gonna have to serve somebody. It may be the devil or it may be the Lord. But you’re gonna have to serve somebody.
Your call!