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So is thinking about this part in the passage where it says, you can't add a single hour to your life. And I was listening to NPR's uh future, you at least use program. I don't

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know if you followed this, but she's doing all kinds of things on technological and biological advances That combat aging was one of the weeks. And in that week she took a test and found out her body's

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actual ages like 15 years older than her calendar age , Stress how she's living or something. And so for six weeks she took an anti aging pill. It's not been approved yet and exercised more, slept

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more, meditated more and ate less. And at the start of the trial, as I mentioned, her body's ages 15 years older than her calendar age . And as the trial period ended, her body's

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age dropped five years. Nevertheless does not negate the general point that jesus was making. There is very little, very little we can do to change our circumstances today. I'm going to reflect a little bit

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on a famous passage in the new testament. Uh , trying to put it in the context of Matthew's Gospel then in our own time, focusing on what the passage says to me and to us. And

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I've gotten to choose this one, It's one of my holy stories. So that's why I chose to share it with you. I've been trying to prepare for the sermon without worrying about it at all,

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which is surprisingly challenging, since I feel a need to impress you all and prove that I'm worth the trust you put in me in order for us to follow what the passage tells us. It's not enough

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to have negative righteousness to know what we shouldn't do . Rather, we must depend on the active generosity of God, allowing the beauty that God has placed in the world to reorder our vision of the world

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and as a result we should worry a little bit less. This passage is in a section of the sermon on the Mount about not hoarding our possessions, Maybe not keeping any at all, since whatever we

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try to do to secure our lives is bound to fail anyway. The context of this passage is a group of disciples trying to make sense of their faith in the light of this new kingdom that's emerging around

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them. They've started to follow jesus. They see how his power is linked in healing actions, actions of word. Indeed, where God is made present and each act of mercy shown by jesus, is

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an instant of God's presence, again reminding us that God is with us. In this gospel, Jesus follows the path of moses. The sermon on the Mount is the first of five discourses that echo the

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books of the Law. This one referring to the 10 commandments which we heard read. I think the commandment that jesus looks back to in this passage is the worship of God, not stealing and not coveting

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In the beatitudes are especially Jesus reworking of the 10 commandments. By the way, Kurt Vonnegut noted that we never see anybody fight to get to the attitudes put up on a public building. Um you have

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plenty of 10 commandments, battles, but never any b attitudes battles. Paradoxically, the audience for the sermon is not the powerful and wealthy of jesus day . Those who have gathered, but rather those who

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gathered around to be healed of their diseases and pains , They've risked everything to follow, Jesus inspired by his love, they're called the maniacs, epileptics and paralympics, More arch or austin state hospital than West

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Lake Hills. In this passage, jesus encourages them not to worry because God wills to take care of them for this audience. Trust in God is a radical weapon of the weak see, worrying is disabling

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a raw, negative energy all its own and jesus is very presence meets it like a sign of beauty in nature or an act of healing. See, I've always loved this passage, I prepared a translation

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of it in greek in college, which was itself a transcendent experience. But one of my friends when I was going on and on about it said, what about those who die of hunger every day?

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Why doesn't God care about them? And I've never been hungry for a day in my life. So my context for interpreting this passage is arguably a bit narrow, but that hasn't kept me from worrying.

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As a part of preparing for the sermon. I studied what I'm worried about. This was easy to do because I've kept journals for a long time. In my early twenties I was an intense person concerned

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about pleasing the judgmental god of my conservative form of Christianity, that's my background and I worried a lot about catching the depression of those around me, marrying seemed to settle me down a little and then I

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started worrying about Children's flues and birthday parties. A few years later I worried through academia, concerned about getting it right or pleasing my mentors. Next, I worried about the losses faced in my family of

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origin, the legacies of generations gone by and what their significance would be doing. A life review of my worries. I realized something remarkable. The set of concerns that have troubled me painfully in the past

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. I can barely recognize now before I had Children , I could not imagine the things that would worry me as a father, rashes colic, er visits with eraser stuck up the nose, etcetera. One

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reason jesus tells us not to worry is that the time frame of our worries is so relative, so compartmentalized within a season of life and its concerns. And yet our worries are as dear to us as

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our fingerprints. There's something sacred about them that we wouldn't want anyone to deal lightly with. When my grandmother died, I received her monograph bible. Some no cards fell out that contains sacred scriptures pertaining to

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healing, written on them in the frail script of her handwriting. Now I knew that she prayed for healing and I think possibly for herself. Knowing her life, there must have been days chock full of

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worry when each one was trouble enough of its own . I wouldn't want to exchange one of my days for hers, but her worries are sacred to me now. I tend them carefully, an emblem of

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faith. My only hope is that by turning her worries into prayers, she experienced something of God's sustenance for her. Today's worries seem pale in comparison to first century, Palestine under Roman occupation with about a

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40 year lifespan. But today's worries are complicated. There's emotional overload, constantly being exposed to one another's distress and pastoral care class or on social media, there's partisanship and division less trust than we used to

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have. There's despair about the planet in which climate change has almost reached a turning point. There's despair over the shootings of african americans in their own homes and family separations among Latinos, families across the country

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and there's a spike in hate crimes with the trans community being hit especially hard. It seems so difficult to take jesus commandment not to worry at face value . I'm overwhelmed by today's worries alone, not sure

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what I should worry about today, Jesus points to several moments of nature's bounty and impermanence to draw the conclusion that we're focusing in the wrong direction. For jesus, the beauty of the world is like manna

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in the wilderness, each instance of it serving as a signpost to God's provident. Grace Jesus addresses the problem that we do not know what we want and all the things we seem to want, or a

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poor proxy for the desires of our hearts, God's kingdom. By the way, all the things about having a good eye in this passage seems to be a metaphor for jealousy, since the evil I was

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thought to be the jealous one and the good. I was free from covetousness in all this, though Jesus seems a little too strenuous for me, a little too transcendent. Jesus had taught the disciples to

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pray for daily bread and the Lord's prayers. One of the prayers I find amazing to pray if I slow down and think about it, Jesus points us to nature as a place to discover new ways that

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God is at work. This is not mere escapism for him. The antidote to worrying is found in the excess, the beauty of the flowers, the birds of the air, the surprising work of God's

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kingdom, which brings unasked between the cracks in the pavement of our lives, but for which it takes a real act of spiritual attention to consider. Creation shows us a God who provides, but also what

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provision means. It's incredibly complex, the world that surrounds us and breathtakingly beautiful. It should almost be an article of faith. Recently, my nine year old daughter has been begun contemplating the blue aster plant

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in our yard, which is actually the result of my poor yard maintenance as uh in our yard. But at this time it's full of bees and she says watching the bees dance, she's nine years old

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. She says watching the bees dance makes her feel calm so she'll kind of carve out some weekend time for b contemplation. Honestly, I'm having a hard time believing in God's providence these days, but thankfully

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jesus, in Matthew's gospel doesn't expect too much from us as disciples. His favorite term for us is oh you of little faith sense that sounds about right , jesus tells us to look at the birds,

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of the air and the lilies of the field, a reminder of God's care and also of the impermanence of life. There's a long tradition of studying the Book of Nature along with the book of scripture.

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Brave, very natural lessons that lead us to faith , Jesus seems to use nature to point to God , especially the providence of God as a guideline for the new kingdom that he was discerning in this process

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. He suggests that our lives are more valuable than the birds and the lilies of the field, which we might want to push back a little bit onto . What we're learning nowadays is that we live in

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interdependence with the rest of the world and whatever is good for them is good for us. It's like we need to catch up to the timeline of nature with its deep rhythms. I've been birdwatching with my

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son for the past few years. It's incredible the excitement that washes over you as you share the experience of seeing a bird. It's almost as if jesus wants us to have those kinds of regular experiences of

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delight and he wants to replace our ever present knowing worry with these moments of present ness. He reminds us that they aren't just therapeutic, they're a gift from God, jesus encourages us to truly pay attention

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, but it takes a while to tune our hearts to God's rhythm made manifest in nature, coming to our senses in its presence and really listening and observing this passage does not seem to solve some of our

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biggest problems. There are still people who go hungry and we must not take it as a facile comfort . Something you could put on a greeting card. For example, rather, the truth is something else

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entirely. In the midst of all these efforts we make to ensure ourselves against disaster. The anti aging pills, there are things full of beauty which may live only for a season or a year and yet

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are signs of God's kingdom and care slowing down. We can attend to their subtle lessons a bomb for are worried minds and whatever we do to learn and care for them will be learning to care for ourselves

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as well. Since we share and creativeness together, a little piece of God's effort. The kingdom at work in her book separated by the border, Gina thomas tells us about a deep love. She says

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love is like water, no human border can keep it out. Her love for Julia Honduran child that she and her husband invited to their home through the foster care system is a commitment that comes from her

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evangelical faith. Julia had been separated from her parents at the border and placed in a detention facility and then sent out into the community in the foster care system. And when she lived in Gina's homes,

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Julia would spend hours video chatting with her mother Lupe in Honduras Gina went and visited ice detention centers to explore what Julia had told her and indeed found Children in cages. Eventually, Julia was reunited with her

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mother and Gina visited them in Honduras. Gina tells us that with a legalistic approach to immigration, the current administration and the one before it as well have been missing out on something of the grace of faith

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. Jean has learned about loving the world and caring for it through the abundance of the beauty gods made Gina and her husband seemed to grasp a little something of this kingdom logic. It's not enough in light

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of the good work that God's doing everywhere simply to worry about ourselves and our where it well being. Instead, we must open our eyes to the work that God is doing everywhere, trusting that as we

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cooperate in this work, God will take care of us, Jesus sees what you're worried about and he cares about it as well. It's not like Jesus simply scolds us out of our fears rather, God's

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generosity reminds us that what we hoard actually hurts us , God's generosity puts our whole timeline in perspective. The broader view Jesus has promised to be with us , God with us is echoed three times in Matthew's

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gospel, the beginning, the middle and the end , and this is what makes a difference. It is God's presence through Jesus christ that slowly weans us from worry from our tendency to focus too much on

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our fears, from our need to compare what we have with what others have. The journey of discipleship will be hard, we will have little faith even at the end, after the resurrection with Matthews disciples

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, we will doubt, but through it all we will learn what God values in daily acts of trust . Indeed, each day has enough trouble and beauty