Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity (2023)
Trinity • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Matthew 6:24-34
Matthew 6:24-34
My Brothers and Sisters in Christ, our lesson for this morning comes from the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus is speaking to a great crowd of people and laying out these blessed teachings. Our lesson for today is valuable and precious that we might learn to not be ruled by our fears, but rather entrust the outcomes to God’s providence. Jesus reminds us of the first commandment that we are to have no other gods.
A World of Worries
There are many things you could be worried about.
We are reminded of this on a regular basis as though the struggles of this life, our work, concerns we have for family and our health were not enough. There are placed before our eyes on a regular basis the devastation, poverty, ecological, political, and divisions that plague mankind.
We are told that we have the power to control or fix them.
If we band together, if we do recycle enough, if we send enough to support the right candidate, the right weapons in a battle, everything will be fixed and everything will be fine.
What about those things that are outside our power?
When many of these issues are presented to us, it sounds great because it sounds like you or I can change the world and that by giving us things to do makes us think that maybe we can change the world. So have we stopped war? Have we solved poverty? Have we solved the divisions between mankind? You have one of two conclusions, either, you didn’t do enough, or these are outside of your power.
Does worrying change these things?
This what Jesus tells us. You can’t add an hour to your life by worrying. There are things that are outside of your power, and the outcomes are determined not by you, but our Father in heaven who watches over even the birds and the grass.
The Heart of Worry
We want a certain outcome in life.
We tend to become fixated on it, and when we don’t get it we become anxious because we are certain that is how life has to be a certain way. We always ask kids what they want to be when they grow up, but
We don’t consider the one who knew our days.
We look inside of ourselves to friends or family, when we should instead consider our maker who has ordered our days.
Instead of relying on God, we rely on ourselves.
This is when we begin to have problems. As our shoulders can only bear so much, and when life begins to fall apart and we become anxious. When we have tried taking on our shoulders things that are in God’s hands.
This is why Jesus chides us, saying “O you of little faith.”
For we forget that it does not all depend on us, but rather that we have a Father in heaven who knit us together while we were yet in our mother’s womb, and saw all of our days, and you are much more valuable to him than birds and grass.
For the ones who think this way are unbelievers.
The Gentiles who think that everything depends on them, and they are rightly worried, for they don’t have a good to necessarily cares about them or loves them or watches over them. It’s all up to them.
Consider the Cross
There is Jesus crucified. Was that good?
It is the greatest thing that has happened in the history of the world there is nothing in this life that compares with it. But it is not at all how we expected God to save us, to forgive us.
Was it a day of great sadness?
Certainly there upon the cross hangs the Son of God Jesus Christ our Lord suffering for us. As hands are laid upon to cause him great harm, and this was God’s plan for him in order that He might save you.
God’s works are not what we expect.
They don’t take the path that we want them to, but what God accomplishes even in the darkest moment of history is far better than anything any government, any group, any company, and anything you have ever done.
By so doing provided us hope even in death.
The greatest problem we face is not poverty, not war, or the environment, it is that we are sinners who were weighed, measured, and found wanting and would have ended up in hell, and we couldn’t change that. So the Father sent Jesus who took upon himself our punishment that we might live.
How God Cares for Creation
God works through means.
When He feeds the birds he still uses seeds that come from plants, when grows the lilies, that there is water, sun, and nutrients from the soil.
It seems rather ordinary.
When we think of God’s works, we think of miracles, but He chooses to work through the creation to order and arrange it to provide for each living thing.
It is also how God cares for you.
When He made you he tied you to a mom and dad, he has given you neighbors to help in those things that you cannot do. God gives to each of us different abilities, He grants wisdom to farmers, police officers, military, politicians, scientists, parents, etc.
Our Purpose in This World
God called us to serve our neighbor.
It is in this that we find why God has placed us here. We aren’t here just to serve ourselves, but rather to help others.
Why do people find charity work so rewarding?
You are actively serving your neighbor in their need, and that is wonderful, and it is something people love to do, because often when you do it, you are benefitting those who are in need.
Well why do we find our regular jobs so unfulfilling?
There are lots of people who think that about their job and the drudgery of ordinary or regular work. We don’t think of our job as work that we are doing for our neighbor.
Imagine for a moment a person who works at a restaurant and prepares food. Who do they help? Obviously the person they are making the food for, and with the money they make, they help their family as well, but in order to help their family they need to buy clothing, have gas in their car, etc. and as they use those services they help others who in turn help others as well.
My Brothers and Sisters this is easier said than done. For it is a radical shift in how we think. Quite often we think only of ourselves, and try to take care of ourselves first and consequently we end up worrying about a lot of things. But then we remember that our Father in heaven knows what we need, and His love for us is so great that he did not even withhold His Son who saved us. So let us work, without worries, as we help our neighbors in this life be it family, friends, or even those who work to provide things for our family that we cannot. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.