Sermon
Exegesis on the
Gospel-Matthew 6: 22-34-Light, Anxiety and Priorities
This morning’s Gospel
Lesson, taken from the 6th Chapter of Matthew, is both one of the
most instructional and most comforting chapters of the New Testament. It is part of a series of several chapters
called “the Sermon on the Mount.” As I
imagine what this scene looked like, a multitude of people gathered on a
hillside—we aren’t told if Jesus is standing above them looking down or below
them and looking up. We know for sure
that He didn’t have a microphone to amplify His voice, and so the people must
have been very quiet, and for a long period of time listening to Him—to read
this discourse of several chapters takes some time. It must have taken the better part of an
afternoon to preach this message, giving the hearers opportunity to absorb its
many powerful and meaningful components.
The way this passage reads, it’s hard to imagine Jesus speaking loudly
with great hand gestures, but rather in a soft, Fatherly tone, teaching,
inspiring and comforting His followers all at the same time. The themes in this particular passage of
scripture are three—light, anxiety, and priorities.
The passage begins,
“The eye is the lamp of the body. If
therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will
be full of darkness. If therefore the
light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!” 90 percent of what our mind processes comes
through our sense of sight. That’s why
when you speak to someone, you convey 1% through your words, about 10% through
your tone of voice, and 90% through your body language. So what you see with your eyes affects you
more than what you hear, even more than what you say. Our eyes are like cameras that snap images
that are processed by our minds, which convert the images into actions. We take millions and millions of images with
our eyes each day, and these images affect 90 percent of our actions.
Our mood is affected
by how much natural light we see. When
it rains for several days in a row and we don’t see the sunlight, it affects
many people’s moods, even causes depression.
I remember sitting next to someone on an airplane once and striking up a
conversation—this man worked in the oil fields in Barrow, Alaska, where the sun
does not shine except for an arc on the horizon for six months a year. He told me that his work schedule called for
two weeks in Alaska, followed by two weeks at home in Texas, precisely because
his company knew that for its workers to be efficient and happy on the job,
they could not stay in darkness for months on end. Sending them home to the light and warmth of
the lower 48 states was absolutely crucial for each worker to have a positive
outlook on their jobs. Likewise, if your
environment is filled with darkness, then you are more likely to be sad. If your environment includes a healthy amount
of exposure to the sunlight, then you are more likely to be happy. That’s why doctors agree that it is important
for all of us to spend time outside—it makes for a more healthy life.
The same principle
works with spirituality—those who are exposed to the Light of Christ on a
regular basis tend to have a brighter countenance and a more peaceful
demeanor. The Light of Christ is found
in prayer, in scripture, in worship, in charity. The light of Christ is not found in gossip,
profanity, trashy tabloids, reality TV shows, R-rated movies, and steamy
romance novels. That’s why people who
are not around the light of Christ, and rather spend a lot of time around these
“darker” stimuli tend to be less peaceful in their demeanor and have a darker
outlook on life. That’s why priests and
theologians agree that it is important for all of us to spend time in church regularly—it
makes for not only a more healthy spiritual life, but a more healthy life
overall. Can you imagine what it would
be like if you only stood in the sun once a year? That’s about the same effect that coming to
church once a year has on your soul.
In Greek there is a
word called “Nous,” which means the mind, the place where the things seen by
the eyes are processed, filtered and acted upon. If the eye is the lamp of the body, then the
mind is the lamp of the soul. We need to
keep the eye pure, because that keeps the mind pure, which in turn keeps the
soul pure, which in turns brings the soul into closer harmony with God. This is fundamental to the Christian life.
Next, Christ tells His
followers, “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and
love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money. God, by His very definition, is the ruler of
all, the supreme being if you will. So,
either God is your supreme being or He is not.
If you place God above everything else in your life, then you are truly
giving a first portion of your time, your talent, your treasure, your attention
to God. If you are not giving God the
first and the best of what you have, then God isn’t truly your god. You have placed something else above God, and
that something else, be it money, or fame, or ego, or sports, that thing is
your god. An extreme example, if someone
says I never miss a baseball game on TV and I never make it to church, then
baseball is de facto, their god. If
someone says I never miss a day of reading the newspaper but never crack open
the Bible, then defacto, the newspaper is their God. You can’t serve God by ignoring Him. That’s not to say that it is a sin to read
the paper or watch a baseball game, it is just a sin to put these things before
God. There is nothing wrong with having
things we enjoy on our list of favorite activities. It is, however, important that prayer and
spirituality, worship and charity are at the top of the list. All of us who came to worship this morning
put God high on the priority list today, and that is good. Having come to worship this morning, it is
perfectly okay to spend the afternoon watching baseball game, or as I plan to
later, working in the yard. It’s okay to
go out for a nice steak dinner, just make sure you keep the fasts of the
church. It’s okay to listen to the radio
in the morning or in the evening, just make sure it is not the first and last
thing you do each morning—that should be praying.
Anxiety is something
we all face, especially in the world today.
We are anxious about our economy, world peace, the job market,
inflation, the cost of gas, and I could go on and on. I remember a couple of years ago, I was
talking to my spiritual Father about an issue that I thought at the time might
come up a year or so down the road in my life.
I expressed some heartfelt concern, anxiety and angst. He responded to me in a gentle, loving way:
“What you are talking about may or may not happen, first of all. Secondly, it is at least a year away. And third, lots of things could happen this
year—you could die, the world could come to an end. Worry about the things you can control or
change today, and don’t worry about the things that may or may not happen a
long time from now.” He was right. The thing I happened to be worried about actually
never happened. All than anxiety for
nothing. Jesus says “Which of you by
worrying can add one cubit to his stature?”
To the contrary, actually, worrying has been proven to shorten a life,
not lengthen it. God has a way of
sorting things out, albeit sometimes in way we cannot understand. Am I concerned about our economy, or
society’s continually disintegrating morality?
Absolutely. Am I going to be
thinking of these things as I play with my son this afternoon? Absolutely not.
Probably one of the
reasons we worry so much is because we’ve set the bar of our expectations
unfairly high. I spoke last week about
seeing simple, natural, and normal things as blessings, rather than taking them
for granted. We blame God when we lose a
job or can’t win the lottery, and we oftentimes forget to thank Him for another
day of life, for health, for the warmth of the sun, or the natural beauty all
around us, for our talents and for our friends.
And we tend to over-dramatize things that happen on a particular day,
failing to realize that they often have no bearing on our life even 24 hours
later. About a month ago, I picked a
Saturday afternoon to mow the lawn.
First of all, it needed to be mowed because of all the rain we had
had. And secondly, looking at the
calendar for the upcoming week, I realized that I didn’t have a free afternoon
to do it until five days later. About
half-way through mowing, the skies opened and it started pouring rain. It was thundering and I could see lightning
in the distance. Despite the elements, I
was determined to finish, because the only thing I dislike more than an ugly
yard is a half ugly yard. I can’t stand
the look of coming home to a half-mowed yard.
So, I continued—the rain got harder, the lightning got closer, and
finally, common sense took over. I
thought, “I might have to look at an ugly yard for five more days, but a
nicely-mowed yard is certainly not worth getting struck by lightning over.” I went inside, and sure enough, didn’t get
back to the lawn for 5 more days. While
this irritated me the day it happened, and a little bit for those five days, it
certainly doesn’t affect me at all now.
Mowing in a thunderstorm and getting struck by lightning could have
drastically changed my life—so this was a real-life lesson in small things that
make us anxious usually don’t matter much, or at all.
Jesus tells us in
Matthew 6:34, “sufficient for today is its own trouble.” Many people have both eyes on the future,
worried about what is to come. And some
people have both eyes on the past, regretful about what has happened. And some people have one eye on the future
and one eye on the past, living in a constant state of either regret or
worry. The thing that all these people
have in common is that they have no eye on the present. They miss out on the present. I remember going on a hike next to a
waterfall many years ago. We were hiking
up a steep path, getting drenched by the mist, hearing the roar of the
waterfall. The person in front of me was
walking with a videocamera in front of one eye, stumbling along the path,
desperately trying to preserve the moment for posterity, so much so that I
wondered how much of the present he was missing out on. Was he so pre-occupied with preserving this
moment for the future that he missed out on the present? I didn’t own a video camera back then but I
can still remember the heavy mist soaking my hair, the thunder of the water
making my heart seem to skip a beat, and how insignificant I felt next to this
giant waterfall. I enjoyed the
specialness of that moment so much that I can recall it mentally in great
detail many years later.
That’s not to say
don’t think about the future. I plan to retire
some day so we put away money for that.
I’m hoping my son will go to college in 16 years so there are some plans
for that as well. But I’m worried more
about today—is my son healthy, is he learning and having fun, did he get enough
to eat, has he taken a bath. 16 years will pass quickly enough. I try to focus on enjoying the present—and
that is not just with my son but with many other things in my life. I can’t worry about problems I will encounter
tomorrow until I fix the ones I am encountering today. I will miss the joys of today if I’m focused
on the challenges of tomorrow.
Sufficient for today is its own worry, and likewise, sufficient for
today is its own joy.
Which brings me to the
final word which is priorities—Where does prayer fit on your list of
priorities? Does it make the list of
things you do each day? Where does
worship fit on your list of priorities?
Does it make the list of things you do each week? Where does stewardship fit on your list of
priorities? Does it come first, or is it
behind your dog, your pool man, and your barber? Where do salvation and heaven
come in on your list of daydreams? Are
they even on it?
Jesus tells us to
“seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things
shall be added to you.” What things does
He refer to? Namely the things listed in
this chapter as worries that people have on a frequent basis—what we will eat,
what we will drink, what we will wear.
If God feeds the birds of the air and clothes the lilies of the field, and
the grass that is cut down and burned, why can’t we trust in Him to provide for
us?
Sometimes life
disappoints us and we blame God for our disappointment. Again, though, look at the entire span of
your life, or look at the entire span of one’s life when one has reached an old
age and realize that God really does provide for those who have placed their
faith and their hope in Him. I’ve never
been at the bedside of someone who died, full of faith, who wasn’t at perfect
peace, regardless of the circumstances that brought them to that point. I’ve been at the bedside of those who haven’t
been faithful Christians and seen anxiety and fear. Faith is spending your lifetime, one day at a
time, seeking God’s Kingdom, making that the priority, and when you come to the
end of your life, He will open the doors of Paradise for the one who has been
faithful, to the one who has put God first.
So expose your eyes to
things of light, rather than things of darkness, so that the eye of your mind
will shine the light of Christ on your soul.
This will help ease the anxieties we all feel as we negotiate our way
through life. And if we make God the
priority in our lives, we will not only inherit the kingdom of heaven, but
receive many earthly blessings as well.
Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things
shall be added unto you. Amen.