Which God?

So how many of you have been up in the middle of the night this past week because you had something on your mind? I have friends who swear by Ambien - the drug of choice for worriers and middle aged people whose bodies don’t rest well through the whole night.

Anxiety and worry are the new normal – the underlying tone, the background noise that is so omnipresent that we don’t even hear it although we are deeply affected by it.

We don’t worry about our next meal or how we are going to shelter our children – thank God. But we do worry about our weight, about what’s in our food, about the stylishness of our clothing and the solvency of our retirement plans. We do worry about our relationships, about our health, and about really big things over which we have actually very little control – the price of oil, the effect that will have on economic recovery, global warming of our planet, national security.

I may not be talking now exactly to you – you, as a person of faith, might not be deeply worried about these things – but we are steeping in a culture that is – and responds to that free floating worry and anxiety with ideas such as attempting to build a gigantic fence between California and Mexico, or Texas and Mexico, under the impression that this will actually make things better on either side.

Jesus goes to the heart of the issue – an issue that affected people in the 1st century just as much as it affects us in the 21st century.

You worry because you are divided, he says. Your attention is split. You are trying to serve two gods when that is not possible to do. That’s not because of some ethical failing – it’s just not possible. You can’t go two different directions at the same time.

I mean, when you drive to Lake Tahoe, there’s different routes you can take – but you can’t drive to Lake Tahoe and to Los Angeles at the same time. You need to decide – Snow or Oscars. They both might be great – but you can’t do both at the same time.

Likewise, Jesus says that a lot of our worry has to do with indecision – with trying to go in different directions. Will it be Kingdom of God? Or will it be Kingdom of Money?

If you decide Kingdom of God – that does not mean money is evil or scary or unnecessary. It doesn’t mean you can go pick flowers all day. It just means that it’s not your first priority – and it’s not your destination.

But what happens when you make the kingdom of money your destination? It turns out it’s governed by a god who isn’t very reliable, who is fickle and who – in the end – doesn’t take very good care of his people.

The god’s name is Scarcity. The rules? There’s only so much to go around and if you don’t get enough, you’ll suffer – and, it turns out, there’s never really an end to enough. No matter how much you get – it’s not quite enough.

It’s a kingdom of Musical Chairs. Remember the adrenaline of musical chairs? Grown up musical chairs is not any prettier. Even the ones sitting pretty can’t rest -– because conditions can change, sometimes quite rapidly, and then they are out - hungry and cold – either for real, or metaphorically speaking.

We basically live in the kingdom of Money, and the voice of its god, Scarcity, is all around us. We are all of us, every one of us, susceptible, and at one time or another we have all worshipped at its feet. Hoping we will be among the winners, we will be among those not caught on the outside.

It’s a cruel god – but we serve this god because we are trying to make ourselves secure, even when, deep down, we recognize that this god will not take care of us, will abandon us and let us down, and will ultimately make us insecure and increase our worry.

It’s just that it looks so true. It really does look like there’s not quite enough.

And we do not have to look far to see examples of real suffering because of not enough. In our backyard, there are homeless. And then, there are places of deep entrenched poverty, places like Haiti.

Jesus says that the true God – the God of the Kingdom of Heaven – the God of Abundance knows what you have need of and will provide. How?

A friend of mine spent yesterday rounding up blankets and jacket, hats and gloves and taking them out to the homeless men she knows who come to eat Sunday breakfast at her church. The weather forecast was deep cold – and her friends were going to be suffering – and tucked away in the closets of her more fortunate friends, were enough warm things to go around – to be shared.

I’m guessing that her fortunate friends might have wanted some of those coats and blankets. When you live in the Kingdom of Heaven, it doesn’t mean that you don’t have nice things – it just means that you have a different relationship with those things.

They are Not the source of your security or your contentment or your sense of value and worth. They are yours for as long as they are yours – and when the Generous God of Abundance has need of them elsewhere, you offer them, knowing that this God has your welfare in mind just as much as everyone else’s, and that there’s enough to go around – so long as no one hoards. Knowing that the intention in the Kingdom of Heaven is that no one get left out in the cold. That everyone has a chair.

Again - living into this Kingdom does not mean that you don’t plan for the future or that you are not prudent with one’s resources. It doesn’t help the poor to plan poorly.

But it does mean you can unhook yourself from the governing god of scarcity, this fear of not enough, and trust the true God of creation, the God who will not abandon you or turn his back on you.

You can learn to trust the God who has inscribed – tattooed – permanently marked you - onto the palm of his hand – who will not forget you - Ever.

Is this easy to trust? No. It goes counter to everything around us. That’s why we do it in community. That’s why we practice and work at building our muscles of trust by bringing food for the food bank, by making presents at Christmas for strangers, by pledging ever increasing proportions of our income to God’s work in the church and in the world.

It’s not easy. But it gets easier the more we find that it works – the more we find there is enough when everyone shares – and it gets easier when we begin to see examples of God’s provident care everywhere we look.

So choose your kingdom and your god – even if it’s a choice you have to make over and over again –which it is, for most of us.

Leave the kingdom of scarcity and choose the Kingdom of Heaven. Practice giving your undivided attention to the God who cares for you and see if the siren song of worry does not cease to trouble you.

photos: driving to Lake Tahoe, by Kai Harris
Luis Renteria, Monterey Food Bank Warehouse Manager, taken at Good Shepherd, Salinas, CA