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.”
(Matthew 6:25-34)
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As 2018 looms but a few hours away, we take New Year’s Eve to look back and reflect on what was; to look ahead to the possibilities of what might be; and perhaps more than anything to sit back and shake our heads and wonder how in the world we got here so fast! Years seem to fly by. One fades into another and on and on and on, and as each one comes to an end we get a chance to take a deep breath and take stock of our lives, along with our hopes and fears and dreams for the future. On this last day of the year I want to spend a few minutes reflecting on the passage of time, and how we respond as it flies by, because how we deal with the passage of time is important since time’s passage affects us all. We all have to deal with the uncertainty of time, because the future is, of course, a mystery. One year ago we all looked ahead to 2017, and gathered here today we’re probably all aware that this past year didn’t turn out exactly as we had planned. Things happened that we weren’t expecting and that we weren’t prepared for. Some of it was good and some of it wasn’t - and 2018 will be the same, and how we face the new year and the future in general says something about our faith. Do we fear the passage of time or not? Do we lament the past or do we look forward to the future? It’s all an indication of the state of our relationship with Christ. In the movie “Star Trek Generations” there was a valuable line about time. Patrick Stewart – playing the courageous and philosophical Jean-Luc Picard (captain of the Starship Enterprise) said that “time is either a relentless enemy who pursues us all our lives, or it’s a wonderful friend who accompanies us all our lives.” I invite you to reflect on that statement: is time your relentless enemy or your wonderful friend? And, in the interests of hopefulness, I want to offer you a few thoughts on why time should be regarded as a friend.
From the words of Jesus that we heard earlier, we learn that time and the future are not to be feared. Both are in the hands of God, and if we trust in God then we have no reason to fear either. Many without faith are desperately afraid of time. They fear time because they know that time affects them. We all know that. As we get older – as time passes – we discover that the things we used to be able to do aren’t quite so easy to do. I don’t think of myself as particularly old – I’m 54 – but I do know that I can’t run as fast as I could when I was 18. If necessary I can still catch Hannah, but I’m not as fast as I used to be. That’s life, as they say. Most people learn to accept that the passage of time brings with it certain limitations and they live with that. But not everyone can accept the inevitability of time’s passage. Some people become so caught up with nostalgia for what used to be that they lose interest in what is. The present becomes nothing more than an opportunity to look back at the past. Some people become so obsessed with the past that they go to extremes to try to recapture it. You can see it in how they dress, perhaps, or how they speak or the kind of car they drive. Our society has created entire industries around people who want to deny the marching on of time. If you don’t want people to know how old you are you just get a little lift here or a little tuck there. It’s a way of denying the reality of time’s passage. I hate to inject a somber note into what is essentially a day of partying for many people, but the truth is that the passage of time which we mark tonight with the beginning of a new year is a reminder to us all that eventually so much time will have passed that none of us here today will even exist in this world. Maybe that’s why so many people party tonight – because this night more than any other reminds us that time marches on and that we can’t stop it!
This is all related to faith, because it has to do with hope. If we’re hopeful about the future, we won’t fear the future. But when we look around, hope can seem elusive and perhaps even naive in the midst of all that we see happening in the world. But it is there. There is hope. There is always hope because there is always God. If we depend only on ourselves, it’s easy to be overwhelmed by the problems of the world and saddened by the passage of time. It’s easy because we seem to have more than enough evidence over the centuries that what we’re really good at as humans is making a mess of things! But – yes - there’s always hope because there’s always God, and if we place our trust in God – in the God revealed by the baby born in Bethlehem so long ago – then we have a firm source of hope for the future, and the future then holds no fear, since the future belongs to God.
Jesus addressed the issue of time when he spoke to the crowds on the Mount of Olives. The passage we heard from Matthew came from the Sermon on the Mount, and the fact that Jesus had to tell the crowds not to worry about the future shows that even among those who followed him and listened to his teachings many must have been nervous about the passage of time and what the future might bring. And so Jesus offered those who were gathered around him this small piece of advice: don’t worry about the future! Some people get consumed by the end of the passage, when Jesus says not to worry about the future because there are enough troubles in the present. That’s true. The world has its problems, and I’m guessing that pretty much every person here today has some sort of trouble in their lives – ranging from how they’re going to pay for all those Christmas presents and other bills to how they’re going to save their marriage or how they’re going to deal with the diagnosis or how they’re going to find another job or the multitude of little things that might not be life-changing but that can gnaw away at us. Every day seems to bring some trouble, some worry, some fear or some concern, but Jesus really wasn’t talking about the troubles in this passage. His basic message was simple: don’t worry about the future because there’s nothing to worry about! God is in control!
Jesus was speaking to people who must have had problems and worries and fears in their lives, who were concerned about the future, who desperately needed hope, who saw in Jesus a source of hope – and what did Jesus offer them? Birds and flowers! But for a very good reason. Plants and animals don’t worry about the future. They aren’t aware of what’s coming next. They take care of their immediate needs, and they seem to know instinctively that God will provide. We should know that too – but for all our intelligence we have trouble trusting God. We think about these things – we worry about them; we obsess on them. We wonder where the next dollar is going to come from – and we worry. Somehow we find it so difficult to believe that God will provide for us. I’ll admit that God won’t necessarily provide a lot, but I believe that God will always provide enough. After all, God loves us – and as Martina Boone wrote in the novel Compulsion, “we’ve lost a lot of years, but you can’t lose love. Not real love. It stays locked inside you, ready for whenever you are strong enough to find it again.” But still, we worry and we think we have to solve our problems on our own and we lose sight of God – we forget to pray, we forget to trust, maybe we even start to doubt that God is with us; that God is real. And then the passage of time becomes something that we fear – because in the end, no matter how many other problems we may be able to solve on our own, we will never defeat time. Time will always beat us. There’s no escape from it. As Jesus said, “can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?”
But God will take care of us! That’s the most wonderful thing that Jesus teaches us about God: that God will take care of us. Yes, there will be challenges and hardships along the way. We can’t escape those. They’re part of the tapestry of life. But even in the midst of them, God will be there – and God’s greatest desire is to reconcile with us – to overcome that which separates us from God. I pray that 2018 will bring many blessings to each and every one of us, but I don’t worry about 2018. I think about today – because today is when we can make the decision to trust God with our tomorrows – a decision that keeps us moving forward in faith, in hope and in love! A decision that I hope you’ve all made!
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