September 6, 2009 Sermon

Labor vs. Management
Matthew 6:25-33

Between Flint and Saginaw I saw it: a bumper sticker on the back window of a Chevrolet pickup. It read, “Please don't put MY flag on YOUR foreign car.” Michael Moore could not contrive a more ham-fisted way to illustrate a point. I thanked God for seeing it. I mean, it made me angry, but it so perfectly displayed the ultimately pointless warfare in which the State of Michigan has been embroiled these past fifty years. All this time management and labor and the politicians have fought over the wrong ground. Instead of producing reliable vehicles at low prices they used every weapon at their disposal, including powerful symbols (like the American flag) to defeat their enemies. Unions and executives grew entrenched in their hatred for each other. They focused on getting as much for themselves as possible. Neither paid serious attention to their customers. Meanwhile, Europeans and Asians built better and better vehicles. Eventually even highly patriotic Americans decided to buy them.

In part because of this misdirected warfare the State of Michigan, so terribly dependent on the automotive industry, now has an unemployment rate of over 15%. Three out of twenty able-bodied Michiganians have no jobs. These numbers only scratch the surface. Businesses with no obvious connection to the Big Three are hurting. Many are closing. Auto workers' pensions have constricted and in some cases disappeared. Families are collapsing under the strain. Nobody meant for this to happen. Nobody woke up one morning and said, “Gosh, how can we inflict the most pain on the greatest number of people?” Yet here we stand (barely), in a pickle because powerful groups of people persisted in looking in the wrong direction.

Jesus tells us where to look. “Seek first the kingdom of God,” he preaches, “and his righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well.” Seek the kingdom. The rest will take care of itself.

Jesus does not call the things we tend to worry about evil. He simply makes them secondary to the main thing, to seeking the kingdom. We return to Michigan and the auto industry to illustrate this point. Imagine going back to 1959, fifty years ago. (Strange how that span of time keeps popping up in my mind these days.) You are graduating from a high school any place in the state below, say, Traverse City. You can get a good job that you can reasonably expect to keep the rest of your work life simply by going to the nearest auto factory and applying. No need for college. No need to postpone earning some money. You can get married; you can buy that cool sedan with the tail fins and the house with a 3% mortgage. Maybe you have just graduated with an engineering or management degree. The American Dream lies before you. Who can blame you for pursuing it? Not I. Not Jesus, as I read this Sermon on the Mount from which we read today. No, Jesus does not call material things and a secure future bad. He calls them less important than seeking the Kingdom of God.

“Do not worry about your life,” Jesus preaches, “what you will eat…or about your body or what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?” Jesus emphasizes life and the body (by which he means our selves, not our appearance). Birds do not worry yet they feast on God-given feed. Flowers have no anxiety yet they have glorious, God-given “clothing”. Jesus implies that God values us far more than birds and flowers. If God shows such extravagant generosity toward them, try to imagine what God has in store for us. Just before encouraging us to seek the Kingdom Jesus states that, “your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.” God knows we need food, water, shelter and clothing. And God will provide. Stop worrying about them. Worry instead about the Kingdom.

What does it mean to worry about the Kingdom? What does the “Kingdom of God” mean? Jesus often referred to it, yet he never defined it. He often compared the Kingdom of God to examples of growth. He called the Kingdom “like good seed”, like a mustard seed that multiplies wildly, like the seed a man sows and then guards, “all the while not understanding how it grows.” The Kingdom grows within us. The Kingdom grows around us. But what is it? The Kingdom of God is where and when God reigns. When we grow spiritually we accept the Lordship of Christ. When the church grows spiritually it becomes better able to make the love of Christ real to hurting people. Wherever people accept the power and truth of God the Kingdom rises. Jesus therefore means for us to focus on confessing our utter dependence on God. “Seek first the Kingdom” means “pursue spiritual growth above all else.” Grow that seed and all the other seeds will grow alongside it.
My wife Linda and I spent a college summer working at a Presbyterian conference center on a ranch in New Mexico. Students from around the country supported the program there by doing all kinds of labor. As our time together passed we drew extremely close to a group of about eight others. One, Dave, would graduate the following year with an engineering degree from Bucknell, an excellent small college. A year before graduating he already had job offers from several major firms. Yet that following spring he took off for Africa. Instead of starting immediately on piling up money he got involved in a project that taught villagers how to use materials they already had to build wells that insured a constant supply of clean, safe water. Many young people do things like this. I know a few kids in and just out of college right now who have gotten involved in meaningful service of this kind. But Dave had an extra reason, an added motivation that few possess. Dave was a committed Christian and he believed with all his heart that God was calling him to use his education to change the lives of impoverished people.

Dave was seeking the Kingdom. He was not seeking it selfishly. Far too often Christians appear to view their relationship with Christ as a personal possession, a thing to get and to hold onto. But Dave had a kind of winning faith. He was willing to sacrifice in order to serve God. He was firm in his belief in Jesus and yet humble about it. He felt grateful, thankful for his brain and the chance to develop it (both of which he viewed as gifts from God). His decision to spend several years living in primitive conditions, catching frightening diseases and seeing his fiancée only a few times, had little to do with saving the planet or with politics. He supported saving the planet, but his primary purpose in life was to demonstrate the lordship of Christ. God is his King. God has commanded that we love one another. Dave, in his quietly humorous way, obeyed that commandment.

How might we obey God? How might we demonstrate the lordship of Christ? How can we make the love of God real, tangible? How might we seek the Kingdom?

These are big questions. I think their size frightens us. It can paralyze us. I advise us, paradoxically, to think small. In what small ways can we seek the Kingdom by making the love of God real? Do you know somebody who would come to church if they had a ride? Give them a ride. Do you know somebody who would come to youth group if a friend invited them? Invite them. Do you know of a lonely person, of a hungry person, of people who have lost their jobs in this wonderful economy? Visit him, feed her, encourage them. Make the love of Christ real to people who need to know they can trust it.

I have spoken already of the great spiritual renewal sweeping through our youth group. During the same week as Vacation Bible School we also held our Challenge event, traditionally one of the strongest youth programs this church offers. The adults who planned this felt the teens probably would think VBS too uncool and would go home before it started. Nothing of the sort happened. Those kids hung around here. Twenty or more of them stayed. They stayed for supper, they stayed for VBS and they stayed together. A few families visited VBS. One had a teenaged daughter. The second night I sat on the sidewalk outside with all those youth eating hot dogs and I saw the visiting teen girl talking with her mother about fifty feet away. Now I am sure her mother is a wonderful, caring person, but most teen girls would prefer to hang with their peers, not their moms. I picked the most outgoing girl within reach and said, “Go get her over here.” She stood and walked toward the visitor. That girl saw her coming and started smiling before our heroine got even halfway there.

Can you remember how lonely it can get when you are a teenager and feel like you don't have any friends? Sure you can. Most of us still feel that way at least once in a while. If we feel it, others do. Reach out to them. Let them know that God is love. Let them know that God is Lord. Do so by taking small, yet powerful actions that demonstrate it. Do not get caught up in whether your clothes bear the right label. Do not let your money worries—no matter how legitimate—blind you to the truth. That young girl I sent to the visiting girl already knew how to be friendly, and I might say without judgment, popular. Now she knows that she can use these qualities as gifts from God to make God more real to others. How powerful is that?

Seek the Kingdom of God. Let God rule in your life. Demonstrate your obedience to God by making the love of Christ real to people who are thirsting—thirsting—to believe in Him.