The Father's Pleasure

The Father’s Pleasure

Luke 12:22-34

March 6, 2019 (Ash Wednesday) • Mount Pleasant UMC

I am a first-class worrier. If we decide to offer a class on “learning to worry,” I should be the one to teach it. (I sort of expected an “Amen” from Cathy right about here.) One of my special skills in the area of worrying is to imagine what might happen and worry about that. I imagine how a conversation might go awry and how that will affect me and I can work up a good worry right there. When you text me or tell me you “want to talk” but don’t tell me what it’s about, I’m really good at imagining all sorts of horrible things. And I don’t think I’m alone. Tom Wright has described our current situation this way: “The modern Western world is built on anxiety. You see it on the faces of people hurrying to work. You see it even more as they travel home, tired but without having solved life’s problems. The faces are weary, puzzled, living with the unanswerable question as to what it all means. This world thrives on people setting higher and higher goals for themselves, and each other, so that they can worry all day and all year about whether they will reach them. If they do, they will set new ones. If they don’t, they will feel they’ve failed. Was this really how we were supposed to live?” (Wright, Luke for Everyone, pg. 151). I think Wright nails it with those words. That’s the world we live in; that’s the world you and I experience every day.

I’ve also watched my kids grow up in a world of anxiety, a world of worry. The world we live in is far more anxious than it was when I was that age. According to research done at Johns Hopkins University, teenagers today are stressed out by busy schedules, school pressure, family climate, and keeping up with friendships, conflict, dating and social norms. Social media and all the technology available to us today only accentuates those things, making them more visible and “real.” Dr. Kara Powell from the Fuller Youth Institute uses three words to describe the anxiety in most teens today: opportunities, acceptance and tension (cf. Powell & Argue, Growing With, pg. 204). As I read that list, I got to thinking about how those are many of the same things I worry about as an adult! I wonder how much of our kids’ and grandkids’ stress comes because we model it for them, or we transfer it to them. And if that wasn’t enough, we’ve also come to the place in our culture where we worry if we have nothing to worry about! Maybe I should be worrying about something!

I know it should go without saying, but I’m going to say it anyway: Jesus knew we would go through this. He knew we would worry. He had twelve disciples around him who had some of the same worries—not about things said on Facebook or Snapchat, but about family, schedules, making ends meet and so on. Tonight, we begin the season of Lent and it’s traditional to walk with Jesus to the foot of the cross. This year, however, I got to thinking about the last night Jesus spent with his disciples before the cross, and how he did everything he could to prepare them for that awful day. He knew they would worry. He knew they would be frightened. He knew their world was about to turn upside down. And yet, he had told them he wanted them to have an abundant life (cf. John 10:10). He has told them he wants them to live in peace (cf. John 14:27). And, at one point, he compared them to sheep with him as their good shepherd (cf. John 10:11). All of those images of those last moments between Jesus and the disciples got me to thinking what that good, abundant life might look like, and that took me to a famous psalm, a passage of Scripture that uses the same image Jesus used of himself to describe God. You know it as Psalm 23; some call it the shepherd psalm. So throughout Lent, as we seek to live into the life Jesus died to give us, we will be exploring that psalm as a guide for the good life.

But tonight, as we prepare to dive into those words, we will listen to another word from Jesus, a word that sets the tone for all of those other words. In the passage we read tonight, we heard Jesus say three different times a word we need in our world, in our lives, a word that will help us truly experience the good life. In this short little passage, Jesus says, “Do not worry.” And, in case we didn’t hear it the first time, he says it again: “Do not worry, and do not be afraid.”

Jesus tells us not to worry about our life or our bodies, because who we are and what we do is about more than food and clothing. Now, if Jesus had known how much Pastor Rick and I value lunch, he might have said it differently. Though, I guess we don’t really worry about lunch, but we do have a passionate commitment to lunch! Do not worry, Jesus says, about the things you have, the daily “stuff” of life. If you scroll back in this passage, you’ll see Jesus is teaching in response to a question. A man has approached him and asked him to intervene in a dispute over an inheritance (12:13). The man asking the question obviously was not getting what he thought was his fair share from his brother! So Jesus warns them against greed, these people who probably didn’t have very much (because you don’t have to have much to be greedy), and then he gives this caution against worry. Life is about more than food and clothes. Life is about more than what you have. He uses flowers and birds to make his point; they don’t worry and yet they find themselves taken care of by a loving God. And you, he says, are more valuable than they are! Why do you think God won’t look after you? Worry, Jesus says, is a lack of trust in a God who loves you more than you can imagine and who wants the absolute best for you.

He follows that up in verse 29 with another command to not worry, but the word here is different than it was up in verse 22. Here, the word means “to be raised up” or “to be suspended.” You might translate that literally as, “Don’t be up in the air, don’t be in suspense” as to whether or not God is going to take care of you (cf. Liefeld, “Luke,” Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Vol. 8, pg. 963). Jesus’ point is this: there’s much more to life than what we see. We get so upset and frustrated and worked up by the things that happen around us, things like the General Conference a week ago. I know there were times when I fretted and worried and fretted some more, times when I needed to be reminded that whatever happens to the denomination or even to the church is not what is ultimately important. Those things are only temporary; they will not last. That’s why Jesus calls us to a higher vision: seek his kingdom.

Now, that doesn’t mean that we don’t take care of our families or focus on the details at work. It doesn’t mean that we should stop earning money and just trust God to drop it in our laps. Rather, it’s what we talked about a couple of weeks ago. It’s a matter of priorities. As I once heard a Bishop say, it’s about keeping the main thing the main thing. When we put God’s kingdom (what God wants) first in our lives, then everything else falls into right order. When we get it out of order, when we get our focus first on some small, minute matter, then we get caught up in unimportant things. And that brings us to Jesus’ third warning, which is just a little bit different.

In verse 32, Jesus once again uses sheep imagery: “Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom.” I love that he calls us his “little flock.” When I’ve been to Israel, it’s not unusual to see flocks of sheep still being led through and around and over the hills in the Judean wilderness. The sheep all follow along behind or near the shepherd, and they are not usually in big groups. But they are focused on the shepherd. The shepherd would do anything to protect the sheep, his little flock. That’s the image that comes to mind when I read this. We are his little flock who are safe as long as we are near him. And because of that, we can live without fear. The word there is a familiar one: phobou, from which we get our English word “phobia.” This is more than worry; this is being frightened, being alarmed. It’s fear—but Jesus says we don’t have to experience that because we are his flock. We are under his care. The things he lists that might cause us to fear sound pretty familiar, don’t they? Not having enough money, not having enough possessions, having things we own stolen or destroyed. What are the things that cause you fear? What is your treasure? That’s what Jesus points to. He says, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (12:34). We usually pull that verse out and read it around stewardship time to encourage you to give, but in the context of this passage, Jesus is actually saying that your “treasure” is whatever you most fear losing. It’s what is most important to you. And he’s asking us to trust God with even that.

Because what God really wants to give us is his kingdom. “Your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom,” Jesus says (12:32). What he really wants to give us is the abundant, kingdom-centered, God-filled life. What he really desires to do is to lead us into a life without lack, a place where our cup overflows and we’re at peace even in the face of our enemies (Psalm 23:5). It’s the Father’s pleasure to give us that kind of life. It reminds me of a story, an old story you might have heard before, about a little girl who had a set of fake pearls that was her favorite item in the whole wide world. She wore them everywhere, even to bed. One night, after they read some stories and prayed their prayers, her father asked her to give him her pearls. “No, Daddy, I can’t. They’re my pearls. I love them.” The father smiled. “Okay, sweetheart. I love you. Good night.” This went on for several nights, each night the father asking for the pearls and the girl refusing. Then, one night after he thought she was asleep, he heard the girl coming up the stairs. She was crying and in her hands were her fake pearls. “Here, Daddy,” she said through her tears, “if you really want my pearls, you can have them.” The father smiled, took the pearls and then handed her a box to open. When she opened it, she found a string of real pearls, beautiful and bright. “These are for you,” the father said. All along, he had something better for her, if she would just give up the old and the fake.

God has something better for us, too. It’s called “the kingdom of God,” and it is his pleasure to give it to us. Life in his kingdom is far better than anything we can imagine. We’re going to discover what that looks like in the next few weeks, but tonight we have a moment to decide if that’s the kingdom we want to live in or if we’re content to live in our own. We know what ours looks like: a life of endless worry and fear. A life that says even when we have enough, we don’t have enough. A life that says you are only valuable if you have the right possessions, if you know the right people, if you succeed the way everyone else thinks you should, if you get enough “likes” on Facebook. It’s a life of self-promotion, of making yourself look good, of worrying about worrying! It’s a life that tells you in big ways and in small that you’re never enough and you’re never good enough.

Or.

Or we can choose life in the kingdom of God—not someday in the sweet by and by when we die. No, the kingdom of God is here and now. It’s a real life lived by faith in the Son of God. Jesus came announcing the kingdom: not as a far-off future possibility, but as something we can step into and live in right now. It’s a life abundant, a life where we each day trust God the Father for what we need, a life where the cares and things of this world are not the most important thing in our lives. It’s not that we have to get rid of everything we own; did you hear what Jesus says? Seek first the kingdom, and everything else will be thrown in. It’s a matter of what takes first place in our lives. C. S. Lewis paraphrased Jesus this way: “Aim at Heaven and you will get Earth 'thrown in': aim at Earth and you will get neither” (The Joyful Christian).

So tonight, on this Ash Wednesday, we have a chance to kneel before God and say, “I want your kingdom, nothing more, nothing less, nothing else.” On this evening, as we begin our Lenten journey, I invite you to do just that, to come forward, to be marked with the sign of the cross in ashes, a sign of death to the old life, and then to pray that prayer. Marked by his cross, I invite you to pray, “Your kingdom, nothing more, nothing less, nothing else.” Amen.