November 24, 2009 | A Shared Worship Service for Thanksgiving
at Chicago Sinai Congregation with Holy Name Cathedral
and Fourth Presbyterian Church

What, Me Worry?

John W. Vest
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Matthew 6:25–33

Many thanks to Sinai Congregation for hosting us this evening and to both Sinai and Holy Name Cathedral for the beautiful music. And many thanks to all of you for coming out on this less-than-perfect Chicago night. This Interfaith Thanksgiving Service is a joyful opportunity for neighbors to come together to give thanks to God and to celebrate our relationships with each other. It is a wonderful testament to our shared sense of community and cooperation here in this neighborhood.

Each year one of our faith communities hosts and another provides music and another preaches. As I prepared for tonight, I wondered to myself if our Jewish and Catholic sisters and brothers live in fear of long sermons when it is the Presbyterians’ turn to preach. While we are all “people of the book,” I’ve come to learn that Presbyterians are especially wordy people. So if this was indeed a fear for you, I hope to set your mind at ease by promising a crisp sermon this evening, something for which we all may be thankful.

The New Testament text I chose to preach on this evening is the text suggested for Thanksgiving Day this year in our lectionary. It didn’t necessarily strike me at first as a particularly obvious Thanksgiving text. It’s not so much about being thankful for what we have as it is dismissive of the importance of material possessions or comforts.

Even more, as I reflected on this text with regard to the context of real and immediate need that we encounter in our shared commitments to serving the poor and the hungry, it seemed quite simply naïve. How do you tell someone who is hungry and legitimately concerned for the well-being of her family, “Hey, don’t worry about things like food or clothing. Life is much more than that!” Well, maybe not when you are truly hungry.

It’s easy for us, in our positions of relative privilege, to say things like “consider the lilies of the field.” It’s easy for us, who have full stomachs and warm clothes, to claim that we aren’t overly attached to such material comforts.

But if a single mother with three children were to adopt this attitude about food and clothing, we would think her dangerously naïve. A caricature of such a person made me think of Alfred E. Neuman, the iconic cover boy and mascot for Mad magazine. Himself a utility caricature of American culture, Neuman represents blissful ignorance in the midst of the absurd extremes of our culture, typified by his memorable catchphrase, “What, me worry?” Is this the kind of attitude Jesus is suggesting?

Or there is, in my opinion, an equally dangerous temptation to use this text and texts like it to fuel an unhealthy idealization of the poor. While monastics and ascetics of various religious traditions teach us much about the virtues of simplicity, I don’t think it is helpful for people of faith to trivialize poverty by celebrating or encouraging some notion of the “noble poor.” While simplicity and hunger can be powerful spiritual tools, idealizing these conditions makes a mockery of those who truly suffer.

Moreover, every drought and every famine and every community dying from hunger seems to call Jesus’ teaching into question. Where is God when children starve to death in Africa or Indonesia or right here in Chicago? What kind of heartless people would tell such victims to “look at the birds of the air”?

Finally, there is yet another danger in this text, a danger that may be a predominantly Christian one. The suggestion to “seek first the kingdom of God,” as opposed to the material things of the world, has led many Christians to devalue the realities and needs of life in deference to the supposedly higher calling of the world to come. The life we now experience is only secondary, such interpreters will tell us. Our real life lies in the great beyond, in heaven. Such focus on the afterlife has blinded many of our sisters and brothers to the real needs of this world, as if God is not concerned at all with the present-day well-being of God’s children here and now.

But not every Christian tradition understands the kingdom of God in this way. Not every Christian tradition uses Jesus’ language of “the kingdom of God” or even “the kingdom of heaven” to dichotomize heaven and earth. There is a respectful Christian tradition that understands the kingdom of God not as a heavenly paradise that we strive to enter when we die, but rather as a reality that God intends to bring about here in the present.

The kingdom of God isn’t about heaven and earth, or heaven and hell for that matter. Neither is the kingdom of God about who is in and who is out. The kingdom of God isn’t about Protestants, Catholics, or Jews. The kingdom of God is about God reconfiguring the world we live in. The kingdom of God is about God working in and through this community we find ourselves in. The kingdom of God is about the recreation of the world.

So I wonder if perhaps Jesus is really saying this: While I know that food and clothing are important and that you need them, don’t let that be your only focus. Whether you are rich or whether you are poor, don’t be content to live in the world as it is. Instead, consider what the world might be like if the kingdom of God were to become a reality. Focus your energy on contributing to the genesis of that kingdom. Join in with God in the reconfiguration of the world. Because when the kingdom of God arrives, all the rest will fall into place. People will be fed. People will be clothed. People will be cared for.

So what does this have to do with Thanksgiving? I believe it is a prologue to something remarkable that will inspire a great thanksgiving, the likes of which we have yet to experience.

Friends, it is such a remarkable blessing that our three congregations come together like we do. We all know that there were times in our respective histories when a service like this, for whatever occasion, would be unthinkable. Be here we are, as we have been for years, and for that we should truly be thankful.

But let’s make sure that our relationships go deeper than this. There is more that unites us than a common American holiday. Forgive me if I sound too Presbyterian when I say this, but I believe we share a common calling, a common vocation, to live in this neighborhood and be agents of transformation. Where else in Chicago can you serve those with profound needs while at the same time speak truth to power? Where else but in the Gold Coast can you witness to the kingdom of God in the midst of such extreme materialism and excess?

And here in this place, in the midst of it all, Jews, Catholics, and Protestants come together in a spirit of cooperation. While we fully live into our respective traditions and never water down what makes us unique, we nonetheless reject any sense of division or animosity. As children of God, as sisters and brothers, we are called here—called together—for a reason. Let us give thanks for that, and let us strive together to bring about God’s vision for the world. Let us strive first for the kingdom of God.

Amen.