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May 25, 2008 | 8:00 a.m.

Where Is Your Treasure?
There Is Your Heart

Joyce Shin
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 131
Ecclesiastes 3:9–14
Matthew 6:24–34

I have no object to defend
For all is of equal value to me.
I cannot lose anything in this
place of abundance I found.
If something my heart cherishes
is taken away,
I just say, “Lord, what happened?”
And a hundred more appear.

Catherine of Siena 

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“This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.” Years ago, a mentor in ministry told me that he begins each day reciting this verse. Before he begins his morning ritual of washing, shaving, eating breakfast, and reading the paper, he recites these words, acknowledging both that God has created the day and that the only proper response is to rejoice and be glad in it.

Today I want to explore with you our attitudes toward daily life, attitudes that determine how we spend almost every waking minute of every day. If you are like me, you spend most of your time busy doing this and that and take little time to reflect upon the attitude that orients everything you are busy doing. As any psychologist, philosopher, sage, or thoughtful person knows, however, taking time to reflect upon our motivations, orientations, and attitudes is extremely important, not only for the sake of knowing ourselves better (as Socrates would say), but also in order to handle crises in life.

First of all, let’s state the obvious: sooner or later crises arise. Crises of some kind or another are unavoidable, and this is because not everything in life is within our control. Life itself is not under our control. Recognizing this is the starting point for our exploration of how we approach daily life.

It is also the background presumed in both of the scripture lessons read this morning. Our Old and New Testament lessons recognize that the future is unknown and beyond any mortal’s control. In the face of socioeconomic turbulence that did not benefit all people equally and left a shrinking middle class feeling overwhelmed, Qoheleth, the sage who wrote Ecclesiastes, and the Jews for whom he wrote began to question the traditional teachings that they had received from their ancestors about how to live a good life. Left and right they observed people toiling without gain and people gaining without toil. Given all the uncertainty about how things will turn out in life and given that the only thing about which one could be certain is death, Qoheleth raised the question, What is the point to all our striving, to all our strategizing, to achieve and gain things?

Like his predecessors, Jesus also recognized the ultimate powerlessness that people had over their future. Political catastrophes and socioeconomic unrest made up the backdrop against which we can understand why Jesus would say to his followers, “So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.”

The question raised by today’s scripture lessons is not how will we handle a crisis if it were to arise, but rather, given that crises will, sooner or later, arise, how are we to approach daily life? In other words, given that we know that life is not under our control, with what attitude are we to engage life?

Perhaps one of the most common attitudes we experience either in ourselves or in other people is anxiety. People in all ages have known anxiety. In fact, writing about the later Roman Empire, the period of Jesus’ ministry, classical scholar E. R. Dodds dubbed it the “age of anxiety.” So central was anxiety to his analysis that he chose to name one of his books Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety. The level of anxiety is reflected even in the literature of the period. The literature is replete with stories, admonitions, and arguments for or against anxiety as well as for or against its opposite, “tranquility of the mind.”

The thing about anxiety is this: it has an insidious way of spreading and coloring all sorts of things, making it difficult for us to distinguish between which worries are justified and which are not—so much so that some people theorize that anxiety is a state of being that doesn’t depend upon any specific object. Rather than being anxious about this or that specific thing, a person may just be anxious in general.

From how Dodds characterized the era, we can surmise that Jesus must have observed anxiety as a widespread phenomenon. In the part of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount that we heard this morning, Jesus said three times, “Do not worry. Do not worry. Do not worry.” He exhorted his listeners not to worry about what they will eat, what they will drink, or what they will wear.

Like sages who preceded him, Jesus tried to help people to navigate daily life, and daily life in its basic reality consisted, as it still does, of attending to what we will eat, drink, and wear. It also consisted, as it still does, of money and our labor for it.

I remember reading an editorial in the New York Times a couple of years ago around Labor Day in which the author suggested that what we really need is Labor Week, a seven-day respite from our overworked lifestyles. He even remarked that for people who are in the habit of overworking, it is usually easier to keep working, in sync with the day-to-day rhythm of working, than it is to take a day off from work. The editorial was humorous and in a humorous way made the point that it is all too easy to get caught up in a cycle of work.

For Qoheleth, the author of Ecclesiastes, this would be a serious issue. Obsession with work as a means to acquire wealth, he thought, was a woefully misguided attempt to wrest certainty out of uncertainty, like trying to create something out of nothing. Ecclesiastes begins with him raising the question, “What do people gain from all the toil at which they toil under the sun?” There is a danger in getting caught up in the toil of life. If we think that we can expect some gain by working all the time, by making long- term and short-term plans, by putting off time with family and friends so that we can work some more, it is entirely possible and outside our control that sooner or later we will face disappointment. Our expectations may not be met. Unexpected turns in the course of life are always tragic, and they often result in disillusionment.

When I was in college, retired Yale chaplain and social activist pastor William Sloane Coffin visited my college campus. Talking with students, he told us that people would often share with him stories about how life had disillusioned them in one way or another. He told us that he would respond to them by saying, “What right did you have to such illusions in the first place?” He may not have responded in the most pastoral way, but he was underscoring the stark reality known by Qoheleth and anyone who has suffered in life: ultimately life is not in our control.

Tragedy and disillusionment, however, are not the worst consequences of what can happen, if we bank on our own efforts. Worse is that if we think that our efforts and labors suffice, we will never recognize God’s way of providing for us. For Qoheleth, and for Jesus, this is true poverty.

There are things that God provides for us that we will fail to recognize and, worse, fail to enjoy in all our striving. In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus drew his listeners’ attention to things observable in nature and grounded in daily experience: the birds in the air and the lilies of the field. God feeds and clothes even these. Even more will God then provide for human beings.

What are the things that God provides for us? In the passage read from Ecclesiastes, Qoheleth named two: work, as well as food and drink. He wrote, “I have seen the business that God has given to everyone to be busy with. . . . I know that there is nothing better for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live; it is God’s gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil.” Labor is a gift from God, and so are the fruits of labor. Both are to be enjoyed. Qoheleth, in his wisdom, was drawing a subtle distinction between the toil/labor of striving for some gain and the toil/labor that is itself a gift and that bears fruit, which is also a gift.

I think we may know what Qoheleth was getting at. We know the difference between treating our work as simply a means to an end and perceiving our work as a gift to be enjoyed. We understand the different attitudes involved. Who could be a better example than Mother Teresa of someone who perceived labor and toil as gifts that God gives us to enjoy? In a guide to daily living, entitled The Joy in Loving, Mother Teresa shared a story about a coworker who came to enjoy her work.

A young girl came from a university in Paris and she had told her parents: “Before I sit for my final examination I want to go to Mother Teresa and work with her.” She came to Calcutta and I looked at her. She looked very tired; her eyes were not smiling. I suggested that she come for the Adoration that we have every day and that she keep up regular visits to the Home for the Dying. Then one day, after ten or twelve visits, she suddenly came and threw her arms around me and said: “Mother Teresa, I have found Jesus.” I asked: “Where did you find Jesus?” “In the Home for the Dying,” she replied. She was full of joy and smiles.

Even toil that takes place amidst the saddest circumstances can be a gift when it is perceived and received as such.

The capacity to enjoy God’s gifts is itself a gift from God. I’m afraid that it is a capacity that we underexercise. While we will never know the grand design of God’s purpose for our lives and for the world, depending on our attitude, we can come to know God’s way of providing abundantly for us in the ordinary things that make up life—things such as toil and food and drink. It is in these details of daily life that we can come to enjoy the abundant gifts of God for the people of God. Amen.

Sermon © Fourth Presbyterian Church