November 17, 2024
—John Newton
Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken
Jesus was a happy man.* Of course there was sadness in his life—some of the deepest sadness the world has ever known, sadness based on pain and injustice—but for the most part, the gospels portray him as happy. Not happy-go-lucky; that would be something else entirely. But happy in the sense that he was satisfied, that he was grateful.
Jesus’ happiness and gratitude were, more than anything else, based on love. He loved God and he loved his neighbor, and his love seemed to make everything new. Each encounter that he had with people and with nature, the sick and the destitute, foreigners and the disreputable—in all of these he found new evidence of God’s presence. And in this morning’s scripture reading, when he heard the birds in the trees or saw flowers in the field, he learned new lessons about God’s love.
This, I think, is pretty much the opposite of religious teachers (and there were plenty of them in his day) who saw the world as a place of evil. Yes, Jesus also warned of the evils of his time, but his main focus was on the beauty of the earth and all that people had in common with each other—all that made them children of God, and brothers and sisters to each other.
And so here, in the middle of his most important set of teachings, the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus teaches us some of the lessons that we can learn from plants and animals. Birds and lilies don’t fret about the future. And they don’t want more than the bounty that God has already bestowed upon them. So, Jesus teaches, be satisfied with the gifts of God; be grateful.
We might be tempted to think that Jesus is calling us here to be like the birds and the flowers by not working and by not having anything more than they have. But that’s ridiculous. He isn’t calling us to be birds and flowers. He’s asking us to look at them and see in them the love and the providence of God. Those who farmed the land for a living would still plant and harvest. People would still spin and weave cloth. No one was expected to eat like a bird and run around in their birthday suits. What Jesus expected of his listeners—and from us—is gratitude; acknowledgment that our God is the Giver of the gifts we receive, the Source of all good things.
I’ve always preached that if you want to know the most basic teachings of Jesus—the doctrines and the theology that truly represent him and his followers, then we should look at the Sermon on the Mount. And so the lessons of the birds and the flowers is at the heart of what Christians should believe—these lessons that teach us not to fret or stew or worry, but to be grateful for the gifts we receive from God.
Near the end of this passage, there’s a verse that goes a little beyond what we might expect. It almost seems to want to divide people up. In verse 32, Jesus says, that “these things dominate the thoughts of unbelievers, but your heavenly Father already knows all your needs.” By unbelievers, he’s not talking about atheists. He’s talking about those who don’t believe in Israel’s God—that is, people who believe in a multitude of gods. And his point here is the difference between how Israel’s God was worshiped, and how those pagan gods were worshiped. And he’s making a genuine point when he says this—one which would do well to listen to today.
When unbelievers—or pagans—offered gifts and sacrifices, it was done in order to curry the favor of the gods, to manipulate them in order to get them to do what people wanted. If you believe this sort of thing, then you believe that you have some sort of power over whatever god you’re worshiping.
But when Israel worshiped God, they offered gifts of thanksgiving and they offered sacrifice to show their need for forgiveness. There was no idea of manipulating God, there was no possibility of power over God. God was the Creator of all things who dispensed gifts out of unconditional love—pure grace.
So Jesus is telling his followers not to approach God with a strategy to get more. God already knows what you need, and God will provide. Offerings aren’t tricks to get something more out of God. They are sharing with God and with the community out of gratitude. They are an example of how we are not alone, and that when we share God’s blessings, amazing things can happen.
If Jesus were preaching this sermon for the first time today, I wonder if he’d use the same example—if he’d tell us not to be like unbelievers or like Gentiles. I ask that because these days it seems like most of the people who are trying to get more out of God are our fellow Christians. It seems that just about all the famous preachers of our day—the ones with thousands of people in their auditoriums on Sunday and millions of viewers of their TV ministries—they preach a prosperity gospel, what’s called “name-it-claim-it” theology. They find verses in scripture—always out of context—that seem to promise us that, if we just have enough faith, we’ll have riches and big houses and fancy cars… and we’ll be healed of every illness.
This is contrary to what Jesus and the apostles taught at just about every turn. Jesus suffered, and he taught that those who follow him cannot expect to be better than or above their teacher: We can also expect suffering. It’s not a sign of the absence of faith, but a sign of the presence of the One who was crucified for us.
It breaks my heart that there are people out there—probably millions of people—who are promised healing if only they have enough faith, who in their pain when they should feel closer than ever to the God they love, are taught that God has abandoned them to suffering.
And it breaks my heart that Jesus has pointed to the birds and the flowers to teach us that we don’t need to strive for mansions, cars, or designer clothes, only to have some of his followers teach the exact opposite.
Material blessings are a crude imitation of the elegant beauty that God gives God’s children. So receive God’s gifts with gratitude. And if you’re going to seek further blessing—if you’re going to strive for something more, then “seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.”
My first response to this well-known verse—maybe yours, too—is that Jesus is telling me to seek God’s kingdom. But he’s not. It’s a quirk of modern English, and it separates us out from our sisters and brothers in the church. The original Greek and the King James both make it clear whom Jesus is talking to. He’s not speaking to me. He’s speaking to us. Seek ye, ζητειτε—don’t think it’s up to you to do it alone. We’re part of a kingdom-seeking community. We’re not potential one-person kingdoms. We are members of the body of Christ. And without others, there can be no kingdom, for the kingdom of God is a beloved community.
And the kingdom is sought together with God’s righteousness, God’s goodness. Another way that word δικαιοσυνη is translated is justice. The kingdom is sought through goodness or justice. The syn that is part of that word is also present in words like synchronize and synagogue. There’s togetherness built in. So neither the kingdom of God nor the justice of God are lone-ranger concepts.
So it’s as part of the community that we learn gratitude from the birds and flowers, and it’s as a community that we seek God’s kingdom through justice or goodness. Living without worries probably seems impossible to most of us. But if we would let go of the notion that we have to go it alone, I think a lot of that worry would be wiped out. For the Son of God experienced eternity as part of divine community—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And when he lived in time, Jesus gathered to himself a community of disciples.
And so we if we have in him an example of how to fulfill his teachings, then let us start by seeking the answer together. Gratitude is best expressed in the community. And this, brothers and sisters in Christ, is our community. Let’s thank God for each other, and let’s help each other make it to the goodness of the kingdom of God.
—©2024 Sam Greening
*Much of the opening of this sermon was inspired by N.T. Wright, Matthew for Everyone, Part One (Louisville: Westminster-John Knox, 2002), pp. 65-57.
