Blessed and Highly Favored: Joel 2: 21-27; Matthew 6: 25-33
A friend of mine, when asked how she is doing, will respond to you, “I am blessed and highly favored in the Lord.” In anticipation of Advent, the saying is a reference to the angel visiting Mary saying something to the effect of, “Hail, you who are blessed and highly favored,” depending on which translation you read. But the saying has come from the words of Luke’s gospel to the everyday Southern sayings we have now. The other day, I jokingly replied with a new twist saying, “I am stressed and highly labored in the world.” My friend gasped and laughed loudly before replying, “You know, sometimes, that’s exactly what it feels like.”
I think many of us can say that same thing. Instead of “blessed and highly favored,” we are “stressed and highly labored.” As we approach Thanksgiving this week, there are two things we need to remember from Jesus’s words in Matthew: letting go and finding gratefulness. Changing a mindset from stressed and busy to one of freedom and thankfulness is no easy task. And it’s not really a question of how much you’re doing. It’s more a question of how you approach what you do in both mind and spirit.
Let’s look first at letting go. The Gospel starts out with Jesus saying, “That is why I tell you not to worry about everyday life—whether you have enough food or drink, or enough clothes to wear.” This passage gets a lot of criticism. Many challenge it saying, “How dare Jesus be so dismissive and heartless about people who may be homeless, dressed in tattered clothing, or hungry and without food. How can he say this?!” But that criticism misses the context. This passage comes in the middle of an entire sermon on money and worldly things. It follows closely the scripture on not storing up treasures on earth, but instead storing up your treasures in heaven.
One commentator notes that “‘worrying’ in this context is not to be defined as ordinary concern, but a debilitating anxiety that is [completely opposed] to trust in God.”[1] It’s normal to be worried about where your next meal comes from or about good housing. What is not normal is worry or concern that is crippling to your life. And side note, it is equally wrong for churches to leave people with crippling worry about whether they will have food or a warm place at night. Letting go for us who are blessed means we give over these things unto God. But letting go is a hard process, and it’s not just about the bits of worry we have here and there.
What is a dragging on your life, holding you hostage, or creating a spiritual clog in the pipeline between you and God? Jesus identifies here that we often let doubts and worries get into our minds far too much. We worry sometimes about the very things God has provided for us. Letting go means realizing that if the lilies in the field are beautifully clothed, if the birds have plenty of food, then God is not going to allow you to be utterly ruined. Jesus even challenges them asking, “Why do you have so little faith?” And that, my friends, can honestly challenge us in a lot of ways.
Why do you worry that something has to be perfectly done and arranged? Why do you worry that someone has to appear and act perfect all the time? Why do you worry about the politics and culture we live in? Why do you say no to God’s calling because you don’t think you can do it good enough? Why do we worry about people who look, think, and live differently from us? Why do we fill our lives with doubts, fears, and worries at all? Those things are a product or result of the systems of sinfulness in the world we live in, but Jesus challenges us asking, “Why do you have so little faith?” How many of you all have accomplished one useful thing by being worried? Let it go. If the worst happens in life, so be it. I’m just hopeful enough to think that God will love me enough to see me through here or see me through to heaven. If you have worries, doubts, fears, and concerns, let it go. Let it go.
And when you let go of that worry, you can find a sense of peace and gratefulness in life. In the prophet Joel’s book, we are told that God will not disgrace the people again. And in light of those promises of restoration and hope, they are told, “Don’t be afraid, O land. Be glad now and rejoice, for the Lod has done great things.” A major theme of both the Old Testament and Gospel for today is this idea of being at peace or at rest.
Joel describes it as being glad and rejoicing at the deliverance God has promised. Matthew is even more poetic and gentle. Some translations have Jesus saying, “Consider the lilies.” There’s a strong calming, meditative quality to what Jesus is trying to teach here. There’s a central theme that as we release all of this misery and dread and concern about life, we can find peace and gratefulness in the knowledge and promise that God provides for us.
If Jesus were to really, and I mean really, challenge us in these scriptures, I think Jesus would ask us questions like this: what do you think about more during the day—your gratefulness to God or worry about life; what motivates you to do or not do something in life—your faith God will lead, or your fear and worry it will get messed up; what consumes the bulk of your prayer time—fear-filled petitions that lack the faith to support them or exclamations of praise and trust accompanying your requests?
Finding this sense of peace and gratefulness while letting go of worry is hard. Jesus knows it’s hard for us. Therefore, Jesus reminds us in the Gospel, verse 32, that God already knows all your needs. Ask in faith, then trust in God to provide. One writer notes that surely to goodness, if we can believe that God gives the gifts of life and body, we can also believe God will take care of food and clothing in our lives.
The Gospel wraps up with a bit of good advice. It sounds a lot like a commandment, but I prefer to soften it by recommending it to you as good advice in verse 33, “Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and [God] will give you everything you need.” That is actually pretty good advice for living out our days here. Seek the Kingdom of God first and foremost. Live righteously in this world with Christ’s help. Then trust that God will meet your needs. It’s a simple answer for the complex web of fear and doubt in our minds. The trick is turning our minds back to the simplicity of trust Jesus tells us to have.
Life may feel like we are “stressed and highly labored” instead of “blessed and highly favored,” but Jesus tells us about the fix for those struggles: consider the lilies and look at the birds. God has provided for them, will not God provide for you, the very ones made in God’s own image and called God’s own children. So, this Thanksgiving I encourage you to let go of some things in life—old habits, ingrained fears, doubts we’ve kept hidden from others—and to find the peace Jesus gives. It’s a simple formula to seek God’s kingdom, live righteously, and trust in God’s care. If we live in that kind of life and mindset, our hearts may be truly filled with gratefulness and praise.
[1] Senior, Donald. Matthew. Abingdon, 1998.
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