Christ, the King and his Anxious Servants

President Obama is in trouble again. He has been caught on tape, once again, bowing to a foreign head of State. First to the king of Saudi Arabia, now we find him bowing to the emperor of Japan. An editorial in our local paper opined: “Kings and emperors have been treated with courtesy, of course, but to bow is—yes, I’ll say it—un-American.”
We somehow feel good about ourselves when we stand up to the kings and rulers of the world. Our inability to bow, however, gets us into real trouble when we stand before the King of the Universe. In the church’s calendar, today is the last Sunday of the year. Next week all things become new as we begin to prepare for our Savior’s birth with the season of Advent. So what’s the theme for this last Sunday of the year? Today Churches around the world honor and celebrate “Christ the King.” Today we bow before our Lord and honor him as King. Today we remember that we are his subjects, his servants. Today we try to hear him and obey.
Imagine how upset the pundits would be if they knew that most of citizens of America bow down to foreign powers every day. Constantly. Jesus said we are in a constant battle remembering where our loyalties lie. “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.” Now telling American Christians that our love of “stuff” causes Jesus to question our loyalty to the Kingdom is a little like telling us that we should lay off Sharon Chupa’s chocolate éclair cake because it might make us fat. We know there might be a problem, but we are nearly helpless to resist. Look at David! Thirty years with Sharon’s cakes and he’s still skinny as a rail?
It’s not that easy, says Jesus. No matter what the TV commercials tell you, no matter how your neighbors live, no matter how the church tries to spin it, You cannot serve God and mammon. A follower of Jesus cannot straddle the fence about money and material possessions. This is a loyalty issue…a Kingdom issue. Love of possessions belongs to a different kingdom, and you can’t be on your knees serving at that altar and do much good in Christ’s Kingdom. Love of possessions is dangerous business, it entices us away from the love of God. Today, just a few days before Thanksgiving, a day when we feast and thank God for blessing us with plenty to eat…just a few weeks before Christmas…a day when we wallow in a mountain of stuff and shower stuff on people who don’t need any more stuff….the King comes into our midst and reminds us how seductive our love of possessions really is and how easily we are seduced by our love of the easy life.
There is a very simple test, said Jesus, that will tell you if you are living in the goodness of the kingdom of God or if you are bowing down to the King of stuff, the Prince of Greed, the Lord of Control. That marker of misplaced trust, that symptom of a growing disease, that sure sign that you are bowing down to a foreign god is this: worry.
Worry. I wish it wasn’t so. But that comes straight from Jesus himself. Listen:
“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…And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing?... Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?”… So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own.”
How do we prove our loyalty to Jesus, the King? How do we show that we belong to him? We do it when we choose the path of Christ before we prostrate ourselves at the altar of “stuff,” and when we refuse the anxiety that is a sure sign of our addiction to security and comfort. “Don’t worry,” said Jesus. Frederick Buechner says you can’t telling someone not to worry is like telling someone with allergies not to sneeze. We’re hard wired to worry, aren’t we?
Did you worry when the stock market dropped 30% in value overnight and our economy seemed like a runaway train about to plunge over the edge of a cliff? Some of us are highly invested in that system of security, that kingdom of stuff, and when it gets shaky, we get shaky. On the other end of the scale, in these hard economic times, some of us are just trying to hang onto a job that will put food on the table. Jesus, our King, speaks to us all.
Some of you are in a tight spot right now. The economy is as tough as any time since the Great Depression. I remember being in a hard place, economically. When we came back to the States from missions service, our period of employment, our insurance, and our paycheck with the mission were running out. We didn’t have a job and didn’t know what would happen next. The clock in my head ticked louder and louder each day. I’ve got kids to take care of. Lord, are you paying attention? Each day I had to make the decision to walk by faith…to believe. Each day I had to throttle my tendency to worry and fret. Each day I had to take Jesus at his word.
Worry is a problem that is not unique to modern day Christians. The folks listening to Jesus on that Judean hillside identified with what Jesus was saying, or else he never would have brought up the subject. Perhaps we can benefit from the advice Jesus gave to those who were tempted to believe too fully in the kingdom of stuff.
How do we find perspective? “Look up! Look around! Consider the birds of the air (those little insignificant sparrows); they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?" God not only provides us with life; he also provides the necessities needed to keep us going. Notice that Jesus did not say that God took care of the sparrow without the sparrow lifting a feather…sparrows work hard to make a living. But they don’t have to fret that they have been forgotten by God. And if they, who are so much lower than we in God's scheme of creation, do not have to worry, why should we?
Jesus gives us other such examples. “Look at the flowers of the field, even kings can’t match their beautiful dress!” Our Old Testament scripture from Joel gives us other examples of God’s care (Joel 2:21-27):
21Do not fear, O soil; be glad and rejoice, for the Lord has done great things!
22Do not fear, you animals of the field, for the pastures of the wilderness are green;
the tree bears its fruit, the fig tree and vine give their full yield.
23O children of Zion, be glad and rejoice in the Lord your God….
24The threshing-floors shall be full of grain, the vats shall overflow with wine and oil.
25I will repay you for the years that the swarming locust has eaten,
the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter, my great army, which I sent against you.
26You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied, and praise the name of the Lord your God.
It’s so easy for us to become locked into our own problems, fears, troubles. Jesus calls us to open up to the goodness of creation. Getting out among the flowers, the birds, the fields will remind us that God watches over all that he has created. Not a sparrow falls from the nest but that he knows. And he knows about your situation too. In this life journey, we often become disoriented by our worries and fears, losing our way and forgetting to whom we belong. Paying attention to the natural world can help “re-orient” us and help us remember how much our God cares. When I get out in these mountains and walk, I can literally feel my soul begin to decompress. I get out to remember who I am…to remember that God is in charge…to remember that he loves me.
Consciously counting our blessings also turns us from selfishness and worry and focuses us on the Giver of all good gifts. Is there a better time than the Thanksgiving season to remember Paul’s words to the Philippians: Rejoice in the Lord always! Again I say rejoice!...Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
Jesus gives us one more practical word on this problem of worrying—he points out that if we spend too much energy feeding our worries in the Kingdom of stuff, we will not have time or energy for service in the Kingdom of Christ. “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these other things (food, clothing and so on) will be yours as well."
Think about that for a minute. If we spend all our energies worrying about our own issues…our own needs, our own wants…we will eventually lose the capacity to be concerned about whether or not anyone else has enough. The way to overcome worry about yourself is to begin to act on your concern for others. That is what kingdom living is about. My mother-in-law, Barb, puts in time serving others at ARM. She’s 88 years old. Terry Dibble can be found there too.
When you find yourself endlessly circling your own problems and issues…look to the needs and concerns of others and your own issues will begin to come into focus. Taking care of the King’s concerns will help bring answers to your own. At her son Duston’s funeral, Patsy Glover spoke of a dark time when Duston became so rebellious and uncontrollable that they couldn’t have him in the house. Duston became homeless, and lived for a time in the woods. It was during this terrible time in the Glovers’ lives that a ministry for homeless families called the Interfaith Hospitality Network was being developed in our area. When Patsy heard that we needed a church coordinator to minister to homeless people she knew what God wanted her to do. Even though at this time she couldn’t reach her own homeless son, she said “yes” to God’s call to minister to other sons and daughters. She pushed past her own pain and got involved with Kingdom work. Patsy was soon drawn into the leadership of IHN, and has helped hundreds and hundreds of homeless families. And God was good to them, bringing their own son, Duston, home to the family.
To what Kingdom do you belong? Which King do you serve? The Kingdom of Stuff? The Kingdom of worry? The Kingdom of Fear? The Kingdom of Scarcity? Or the Kingdom of Christ. The Kingdom where enough is enough. The Kingdom of service. The Kingdom of Sharing. Jesus said, “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things (food, drink, clothing, help, grace, answers, the presence of God) will be given to you as well. May Jesus bless us with enough, but keep us from greed. Let us say “yes” to generous giving and “no” to worry. And may we be thankful people, rejoicing in the goodness of Christ Jesus and sharing all that we have. Christ is King! Serve him with glad hearts.