Sunday, May 25
Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Weekly Theme
Seeking God's Way

Weekly Prayer
God of tender care, like a mother you never forget your children, but comfort and quiet those who are restless and fearful; like a father you know already what we need. In all our anxiety, give us faithful hearts, that in confidence and calm we may seek the kingdom of Christ where your holy will of peace and justice has been made known. Amen.

Weekly Reading
Matthew 6:24-34

[And Jesus said]:"No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.

"Therefore 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. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you--you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, 'What will we eat?' or 'What will we drink?' or 'What will we wear?' For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

"So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today."

Reflection
by Kate Huey

Reading the Gospels, we wrestle with the deepest truths about God, and ourselves, and the world around us. And in today's passage from the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus is going right to the heart of the matter. In fact, just a few verses ago (6:21), he observed that each one of us will find our own heart right next to wherever our treasure is. Then he talks about our vision (6:22-23), not our physical eyes but the ability of our heart to see, or perceive, what's real and true and worthy of our attention. (I once heard a speaker say, "Everyone gives their heart to something; be sure that you give your heart to something that's worthy of it.") As a Jewish wisdom teacher, Jesus valued the orientation of our heart, the very center of our being. But he also knew that our fears and anxiety could drive us to construct a sense of security – false as it may ultimately be – on the foundation of material possessions, fame, fortune, position, all the things the world around us considers important and valuable.

Marcus Borg says that Jesus had something to say to the conventional wisdom of his day (and ours) about those same values: "His criticism of them was a call to center in the Spirit, and not culture. Such centering in God is the opposite of anxiety as well as the antidote to anxiety. It is what Jesus meant by the word 'faith.'" Borg often and eloquently speaks of faith, in fact, as "a radical trust in God" and "a matter of the heart." He says that Jesus appealed to his listeners to use their "imagination and intelligence" so that they might see in new and meaningful ways, not missing the deeper truth at the heart of things: "a glimpse of the divine earth 'filled with the glory of God,' permeated by the divine radiance ... reality as marked by cosmic generosity." We suspect that this "centering in God" is a much more powerful "antidote" to anxiety than any anti-anxiety medication we might seek. But anxiety is more than fear that makes us miserable inside ourselves. It wreaks havoc with our relationships with one another and with God, again, when it affects our ability to see what really matters: "anxiety and blindness go together. Anxious about securing their own well-being, whether through family, possessions, honor, or religion, people experience a narrowing of vision, become insensitive to others and blind to the glory of God all around us." (Marcus Borg has written several helpful books that expand on these themes, including Jesus: A New Vision). What are signs of the glory of God that you and your community might miss if you're preoccupied with other things, including a need for security? Does a need for security distract you and your community, and keep you too busy with tasks to recall the deeper meaning of your life? Do you agree with Thomas G. Long that "Living the good life and living a good life pull in opposite directions"?

The verbs "love" and "hate" in verse 24 deserve closer attention. According to Holly Hearon, these words aren't about our feelings but about the setting of our hearts, that is, how we fix our priorities: "'love' is demonstrated as loyalty or commitment to another; 'hate' is demonstrated by disregard or scorn. Neither word is concerned with how we feel about things so much as how we orient ourselves and, consequently, how we will behave." This fundamental orientation draws us toward the kingdom, or realm, of God. It draws us into God's way of living.

But it's a challenge to re-visit our priorities regularly, since they often slip off-center, and after enough time and enough attention paid to other things, our spiritual orientation may wither next to more "pressing," but less important, concerns. What are the things that absorb most of your attention? What story would your bank statement, or checkbook, tell about your priorities? (Some people claim our checkbooks make a "theological" statement about what we really believe, and really value--where our hearts are?) Does our bank statement speak more powerfully than the statements we make so easily in church or in earnest conversation about our spiritual lives? Does money (our material "treasure") have anything to do with our spiritual lives?

Another word that merits our attention, according to Fred Craddock, is the Greek term translated as "anxiety," which he translates as "split attention" or "divided concern." Perhaps it suggests not so much blindness as trying to keep our eye on too many things at one time, when we hold in tension two competing loyalties. But this is a "distortion," Craddock writes, "that splits or divides a life between God and things, between persons and wealth, between love of others and greed. This is the distortion that dries up the springs of gratitude (no one can at the same time be grateful and greedy), closes the door of hospitality to strangers, refuses to open the purse before human need, trusts money rather than God with one's future, and learns too late the destructive force of greed's demand on marriage, family, and community." Is it any wonder, then, that Jesus speaks so often and with such passion, about money, and possessions, and our attitude toward them? And yet what does "popular" Christianity focus most of its attention on? How do you define "the faithful Christian life"?

Another closer look at words, at the verbs translated as "look" and "consider": Jesus is poetic in his observation of the birds and the lilies, but his speech is more than pretty words. These are "strong" verbs in the Greek, Thomas G. Long claims, that urge us to learn something about the God of abundance by studying nature: "Jesus commands us to look, really look, at a world where God provides freely and lavishly, a world where anxiety plays no part, where worry is not a reality. Jesus invites us to allow our imaginations to enter such a world, to compare this world with the world in which we must live out our lives." This is perhaps the most difficult thing for responsible, hard-working people ("like us") to understand, and it does in fact require a lot of imagination on our part. It's very, very difficult for us to summon the imagination to picture God's way when there is so much suffering around us, and when we ourselves feel vulnerable to scarcity and need. Most commentators acknowledge the reasonable claim of those who try to provide for their families and themselves. It's not that we shouldn't be responsible, they all seem to agree, but it's the anxiety that drives us much of the time that's the sign of spiritual trouble. Long connects the words of Augustine, "Our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee," with the observation that "restless anxiety over what tomorrow may hold is a sign that our hearts have not found their true home." (Long's book on Matthew in the Westminster Bible Companion Series is an outstanding aid when reading this Gospel, which we'll be studying much of this year).

And "home" is what Barbara Brown Taylor focuses on in her hauntingly beautiful sermon, "None of Us is Home Yet." She speaks of the deep hunger – a "peculiar melancholy, an inexplicable homesickness" that is part of the human condition: "For as long as God's people can remember, they have been seeking the way home ... wherever they went they were to remember their destination was never Egypt or Jerusalem or Babylon but God, always God." This is "God's tug, a kind of homing instinct planted in each one of us that nags at us, and turns us around and makes us restless when we sit too long." It reminds us of so many stories from the Bible about a God who seeks us when we wander (could that be what we feel in our hearts: God seeking us?), and calls us to turn around (repent), and come home. Taylor refuses to divide the world into "us" and "them," with those of us who have enough, and are therefore presumably blessed, on one side, and the rest of us who are homeless, and presumably not blessed, on the other. We fall easily into the trap of thinking that we provide for those who don't have enough, when it's God who provides for all of us: "We can serve the God who feeds and clothes and shelters by doing some of that ourselves, but always with the knowledge that it is God who provides--no--who is our true and only home, in whose household there is plenty--for the birds of the air, for the lilies of the field, and for every one of us."

We close our reflection this week with an exquisite prayer by Thomas Merton that expresses the deep longing to trust God with our lives (really trust God, not just say we do), to depend on God in every condition, and to open our eyes to see the goodness and glory of God all around us: “Lord, I have not lived like a contemplative. The first essential is missing. I only say I trust you. My actions prove that the one I trust is myself--and that I am still afraid of You. Take my life into Your hands, at last, and do whatever You want with it. I give myself to Your love and mean to keep on giving myself to Your love--rejecting neither the hard things nor the pleasant things You have arranged for me. It is enough for me that You have glory. Everything You have planned is good. It is all love” (A Book of Hours, Kathleen Deignan, ed., is an excellent prayer companion for our day-to-day spiritual journey).

For Further Reflection
Thomas Merton, 20th century mystic

There is not a flower that opens, not a seed that falls into the ground, and not an ear of wheat that nods on the end of its stalk in the wind that does not preach and proclaim the goodness and mercy of God to the whole world.

From "The Book of Hours" (Kathleen Deignan, ed.).

All readings for the Week
Isaiah 49:8-16a
Psalm 131
1 Corinthians 4:1-5
Matthew 6:24-34

About Weekly Seeds

Weekly Seeds is a source for meditation and prayer based on the readings of the "Lectionary," a plan for weekly Bible readings used in Protestant, Anglican and Roman Catholic churches throughout the world. When we pray and study the Bible using the Lectionary, we are praying and studying with millions of others. We invite you to continue the conversation on our “Opening the Bible” forum at http://i.ucc.org.

Weekly Seeds is a service of the Congregational Vitality Initiative, Local Church Ministries, United Church of Christ. Bible texts are from the New Revised Standard Version, © 1989 Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. The Revised Common Lectionary is © 1992 Consultation on Common Texts. Used by permission. The Ancient Christian Devotional is © 2007 by Thomas C. Oden and ICCS, and is published by InterVarsity Press. Used by permission.