Pink Elephants

sermon by Carrie Eikler
Matthew 6:24-34 Isaiah 49:8-16

Dramatic reading of Matthew 6:24-34:

Carrie: Imagine you are present at the Sermon on the Mount and feel emboldened to interrupt Jesus as he attempts to teach. It goes something like this:

Martin: "You cannot serve God and wealth" (Mt. 6:24b).

Carrie: Why not?

Martin: "Because no one can serve two masters. A slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other" (6:24a).

Carrie: I don't know if I agree with that or not. It seems overstated.

Martin: "Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear."

Carrie: Seriously? Isn't your advice a little naïve? I do need to plan ahead and know where my next meal is coming from and make sure my family is clothed.

Martin: "Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?"

Carrie: Yes, when you put it that way, but . . .

Martin: "Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap, nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?" (6:26)

Carrie: Yes, but . . .

Martin: "Can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?" (6:27)

Carrie: No, I guess not, but . . .

Martin: And why do you worry about clothing?

Carrie: Well, because I need to be appropriately dressed for various occasions and at least try to be somewhat up to date. And all the people in church are looking at what I’m wearing and…

Martin: "Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these" (6:29).

Carrie: Why do you keep making these nature analogies? Those are flowers. I'm a person.

Martin: "If God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, you of little faith?" (6:30)
Carrie: It would be nice to think so, but don't you think worry serves a useful function sometimes?

Martin: "Therefore do not worry, saying, 'What will we eat?' or 'What will we drink?' or 'What will we wear?'" (6:31)

Carrie: All right. I get that you're not going to budge on the worry issue. But tell me this: what am I to do with all that mental free time I used to spend worrying?

Martin: "Strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well" (6:33).


Sermon:

It is clear to me that Jesus never came across the concept of “The Pink Elephant” theory. You probably know this one. The joke is of course, if someone tells you not to think of pink elephants, that is exactly what you are going to think of. In my experience, it is also known as “tell the two-year old not to touch something” challenge. Inevitably…he does. And I knew he would. Why did I think he wouldn’t?

And I think that Jesus isn’t acquainted with the pink elephant theory because of what happens on the Sermon on the Mount today. As we have progressed through the Sermon on the Mount the lessons have gotten a little harder for us, haven’t they? A bit more challenging. It’s nice to think about being blessed or blessing others in the beatitudes. Being salt and light…lovely images, that feels good. Love your enemies. Gulp. And now, the coup de grace – “No one can serve two masters…. You cannot serve God and wealth.”

And then…then he continues, “Therefore I tell you, do not worry…,” and I really don’t hear anything else because I’m already worrying if I’ve made the right decision on the first thing he said, about money. I’m now wondering if I make a master out of money. Don’t worry? He tells me I can’t serve God and money and I’m not supposed to worry?

Rhetorically, it’s like he is setting up a whole line of pink fluffy elephants, elephants that squeak, elephants that are banging cymbals and doing flips, and then telling me not to think of pink elephants. It’s like…putting a beautiful tree with delicious fruit in my garden, a garden where he said everything is good, and telling me not to eat it.

Jesus gives us something to worry about, and then tells us that we shouldn’t worry. Really…it’s not very fair. It throws me off balance and I’m forced with hard questions: what is my focus? What is at the core of my life?

These sayings of Jesus are known as some of his “impossible questions.” Alyce McKenzie notes, “If Jesus had stuck with rhetorical questions, questions with obvious answers that listeners like to answer, he might have lived longer. But Jesus was a subversive sage,” she continues, “undercutting the comfortable assumptions of his audiences. So Jesus isn’t expecting us to have an answer, at least an easy one. Jesus is expecting to create a pit in our stomach by confronting us with our loyalties between God and money and then deepens that pit, rather than filling it in with good things. He deepens it by telling us not to worry. Doesn’t that seem a bit…callous and insensitive?

But maybe it’s all part of it. Maybe Jesus gets us at our most vulnerable, gets us where it really hurts and then has us try this on for size. One more radical teaching. One more task that we are simply sure we cannot do, no human can, not on our own and maybe that’s when Jesus says “yes! You’ve got it! You can’t do it…on…your…own.” So maybe, just maybe, Jesus is very aware of the pink elephant theory.

To be honest, it’s not the God and wealth part that is so hard for me to swallow, it’s the worry part. Worry? I was born to worry. At least, I was born to seek security. From my parents. From my teachers. From airport security who never seem to take our fear level down below the color yellow.

For many years we are dependent on the security of others, and even Isaiah recognizes this, asking a rather rhetorical question: how can a nursing mother forget her child? And then he throws us off balance by giving us a very real, sad answer. Sadly, she can. We can. Bonds of trust fail. Between parents and children. Between friends and spouses. Between ourselves and our bodies when they go awry, housing diseases we never invited in. These informal contracts that we are to be secure in can dissolve at any moment. And the only response we can seem to muster is…worry.

As an activity in preparation for this sermon I decided to make a worry log. I was going to wake up in the morning and for one whole day I would write down when I worried, what I worried about, how long the worry lasted, and how I felt about it. Talk about pink elephants.

Well, it didn’t last long. But long enough for me to get a glimpse at the things I do indeed worry about on a daily basis. Without getting mired in the details of minutiae, and without writing off sweeping worries that I’m sure are universal like, I worry about the safety of my children, I worry about money, I tried to find a balance that was real and tangible. And this is what I came up with. On a daily basis I worry that

a)this decision I'm making or action I'm taking towards my sons is going to harm them in some way (am I being too permissive/too strict/too inconsistent, is this hour of TV going to do damage, am I not encouraging too much of "this" and letting too much of "that" happen)

b.) What impact will this particular action I am doing right now have on the environment and in perpetuating injustice in our global economy?

c) contracting a fatal disease and dying young. Or dying in a car accident. Or dying by an act of violence. OK, basically I’m scared of dying.

d). Am I a "fraud", or a hypocrite, or well-intentioned but lacking substance as a pastor, socially-conscious person--that is “does my walk not match my talk”

e). Am I doing a "good job" as a pastor? And please, I’m not fishing for compliments. It is probably similar to your worries about job performance and reviews. I daily worry about small numbers and unmet budgets which may lead me to job insecurity, which is, yes, I’ll admit, a worry about money.

Don’t get me wrong. I can, and do, worry about much more than that: about unrest in Libya and earthquakes in New Zealand and about the cocoa trade in Ivory Coast. But those five things I mentioned are the daily things. Every day, in a big or small way. The things that don’t just trouble my mind or my conscience, but they trouble my gut…my soul.

The word worry appears six times – in one form or another – in these nine verses, relating to the very basics of human life: food, drink, and clothing. And I don’t think Jesus is wanting us to ignore those things. In fact, the three items he mentioned - food, drink, and clothing - come around again when he talks about entering into the kingdom of heaven: did we give food to the hungry, water to the thirsty, clothing to the naked?

And I do recognize others have more desperate worries. How will I pay the mortgage this month? How will I feed our family on $50 these two weeks? How will I get to work if my tires go flat? What if my husband comes home drunk again? It probably does give us a glimpse at privilege if we can get a glimpse of people’s worries. But Jesus doesn’t tell us to judge our worries, whose are more legitimate, more justified. No matter what they are, worries are our masters.

And Matthew uses imagery to tell us what we already know, at least already experience. Worrying today only brings more worrying tomorrow. And isn’t that what worry is? An endless cycle of dividing one’s attention and energy between living life and fretful concern about life.

I think you probably know this. I don’t have to tell you worry begets worry. But do you know how it really affects you? What are your daily worries that divide your attention? That has you spending energy feeding fear, than living life?

When Elesha Coffman led some of us in yoga at our Women’s Spa day last week, she had us assume a balance position known as the table. You get down on your hands and knees; you raise your arm up, point it forward, and extend the opposite leg back. It’s challenging. You feel like you’re going to fall over and the more you worry that you’re going to fall over the more off balance you get and the more sure you are that you’re going to fall over and the more off balance you get…

And at about the time that it seemed like collapse was imminent, Elesha reminded us to focus on the core of our bodies, our center, that place where we gain balance. And she said, “You’ll notice that when your attention is focused on maintaining balance, focused on your core, you can’t think about much. There isn’t a lot of room in your head for much else…and that’s kind of nice.”

I doubt Jesus did much yoga…. Maybe he did, there are theories that he may have spent time in India in his young adulthood. But even if he didn’t, he certainly knew something about what it is that throws us off balance and what we need to do to help find it again. He knows about what is at our core. At least, what should be.


So probably, that’s what he’s doing here. He’s asking you, me: do you have at the center of your life something that is strong enough to keep you from collapsing? When the world throws at you what it will, what will bring you back into balance?

Jesus doesn’t test our faithfulness by whether or not we worry. But he does invite us to free ourselves, calling us back to our core. And if we respond, we will likely find that the life of the spirit is there. No matter how much we may try to crowd out God with our worries, Christ is there, holding all our pink elephants, telling us, “You don’t need all these.”

And I hope…I pray…that we will believe him.

[waiting worship]

Merciful God.
There is no denying it. We worry.
Some of our worries are true worries. Worries that tear us up. That create deep and painful pits in our stomachs and souls
And we know some of our worries are frivolous. Superficial worries. Worries where…we know better.
But we are familiar with our worries. We perceive them. While they somehow overwhelm us, we know what to do with them.
Maybe…you aren’t so familiar to us, God of mystery. Maybe we haven’t perceived your love.
Maybe we don’t know what to do with your inescapable, and yet incomprehensible presence.
We don’t want to worry, or to be anxious, or to live divided lives.
We want to be free in you, to see your promise.
We want to know, not just in our head, but in our gut, that your love is stronger than our fears and worries

But we confess, it is hard to do.
And we know it can’t happen with one prayer.
But we pray anyway that you will help us.
We pray that you will stick with us as we try.
Amen.