When you lie awake at night, what is it you worry about?
Your children?
Your parents?
Your ever-growing “To Do” list?
The bills you need to pay?
Whether you have enough to feed and clothe your family, buy gas, pay your taxes, make your car payment, pay the rent or the mortgage? Save for retirement?

We are often preoccupied with the basic question: Do I have enough? And if not, how can I get more, so I will have enough? A recent study shows that most of us worry about money. A lot.

The people who gathered to hear Jesus teach on a hillside above the Sea of Galilee were not much different from us. They weren’t too worried about shelter in that temperate climate, but food and clothing were daily challenges.

Over the past few weeks, as you’ve been reading through the Sermon on the Mount, you’ve heard Jesus offer blessings to people who didn’t see themselves as blessed. You’ve heard Jesus teach people how to pray who didn’t see themselves as particularly holy, or worthy of approaching the throne of God. You’ve heard Jesus offer hope to people who were hopeless.

You’ve also heard Jesus raise the bar for people who thought they were righteous enough. He has turned the tables on religious leaders, and lifted up the lowly – just as his mother prophesied he would do, before he was even born.

And now, Jesus gets to the heart of his message. Everything he has said up to now, and everything that will follow, points to this one, singular truth.

‘No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.
‘Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 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? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? 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. But 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? Therefore do not worry, saying, “What will we eat?” or “What will we drink?” or “What will we wear?” For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
‘So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.’

Matthew 6:24-34

So, what worries you these days? Are you like the people described in that study I mentioned earlier? When I asked what keeps you awake at night, it was because at least 34% of you, according to this study, experience negative impact on your sleep due to financial stress. And 90% of us experience some negative impact on our stress levels because of financial worries every day. Money worries impact decisions about everything from which groceries to buy to whether we can get a pet or buy a new car. Getting married, having children, buying a home – even how we spend our leisure time or invest in our own health and personal hygiene – all these decisions, big and small, are affected in some way by how we view our financial well-being, or lack of it.

This is nothing new. More than a decade ago, Kathleen Vohs, from the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota, did another study. [1] This research explored the psychological effects of wealth, and used a number of different tests with a wide range of subjects.  What she discovered to be consistent among all the findings was this: “Subjects with money on their minds are self-sufficient, self-focused, and anything but selfless.”  In all of the experiments, Vohs found that “people who are reminded of money are really good at pursuing goals, but they’re not that interpersonally kind or warm.  They’re kind of standoffish, keeping in their own head, not interested in being friends with anyone.”[2] 

Vohs describes these people as “siloed” more than anti-social, and she is quick to say that we are not talking about wealthy people, necessarily, but those who are pursuing wealth, people who think about money a lot.  Some really wealthy people don’t think about money very much at all, while some middle class and very poor people think about money all the time.  It’s the thinking about money that keeps people in their silos, according to Vohs.

It’s the thinking about money that keeps us from thinking about God. So why do we worry about money so much?
Why do we worry about having enough?

Let’s look again at what Jesus says.

‘Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 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?‘

Matthew 6:25-26

See, I think one of the reasons we get stuck in our little silos of worry is that we forget just how valuable we are to God. We forget how much we matter. We forget that, as much as God cares about birds and lilies, God cares about each of us so much more. God knows what we need.

Are you familiar with Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs?

 In 1943, Abraham Maslow proposed the idea that all humans have basic needs, which must be met for us to achieve our full potential. Maslow didn’t use a pyramid to illustrate this hierarchy, but each level builds on the one below it. Maslow proposed that we need our food/water/shelter/sleep/clothing needs met, before we can look for security, health, and employment. And those safety needs make it possible to find friendship, love, belonging, etc.

Later on, Maslow refined his thinking, and allowed that people might pursue higher levels of need before all the levels below it had been met, but the basic framework has been in place for 80 years. Maslow also added a few more layers to this hierarchy, to reflect our need for thinking and creativity, and finally, “transcendence,” or spiritual needs.

Jesus reminds us that God is fully aware of all our needs. But we have to be careful about getting stuck on the bottom of the pyramid. There is more to life than food and clothing. And our need for God is at the top of the list.

Jesus says, “But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.’

Or, as the good old King James Version puts it, “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” We don’t need to add to the troubles we face by worrying about them. And we certainly don’t need to be preoccupied with material things.

See, our material worries can’t compare to the greater picture of the reign of God, which Christ ushered in with his own life, death, and resurrection. In Christ, God is doing a new thing, an eternal thing. This is where Jesus wants to focus our attention. These are the thoughts that should preoccupy our minds.

The whole Sermon on the Mount is all about how God’s kingdom is so much different and so much more than our imaginations can grasp. Every day has enough trouble of its own – we don’t need to worry about having enough in the eternal scheme of things. That isn’t really what we desire at the deepest level anyway, is it?

Thomas Long writes, “What our hearts really desire, of course, is to count – to count for something and to count to someone.” [3] We want to have a purpose. We want our lives to mean something. We want our lives to matter to somebody.

And Jesus says, “you matter to God. You matter to Me. You matter so much, I will die for you and I will live again so you can have life with me forever.”

This room where we worship is a reminder, by its very octagonal shape, that we live in our baptismal promise. God created the world and everything in it. On the seventh day, God rested. On the eighth day, God welcomed you into the deepest love you will ever know. You matter to God.

Thomas Long goes on to write, “Ultimately, whether one serves God or wealth depends on trust.”[4] It’s a matter of orientation more than a matter of financial planning. When we place our trust in the Savings & Loan, our wealth is only insured up to a certain limit. When we place all our trust in God, and orient our lives toward living as Jesus would live if he were in our skin, our priorities change.

Our concern is less and less about accumulating wealth. We think less and less about money, and more about people – we get out of our silos and into community. We become part of the family of God, part of God’s kingdom here on earth. And we begin to realize just how much God values each of us, how much we matter.

And when we start to trust God, orienting ourselves away from the things we want for ourselves and toward the things God wants for us, we discover that this good news is more than enough. This good news of God’s abundance is worth sharing. Because, as much as you matter to God, every person you meet matters to God as well.

And that brings us to next week’s text … which we will cover next week! In the meantime, I encourage you this week to look for ways God is showing you how much you matter, how much God cares about you and your needs.

Yes, you still have to budget your resources so you can buy groceries and pay the rent, but Jesus says you don’t have to let worrying about the day-to-day get in the way of thinking about the eternal things of God. Let your first thought every morning this week be about the Kingdom God is creating in and around you, and see if the day’s troubles might not seem so overwhelming. And may the peace of Christ, the love of God, and the power of the Holy Spirit be with you this week.

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[1] Bill Ward, Star Tribune, August 30, 2012, Variety section, page 1.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Thomas G. Long, Matthew, 75.
[4] Ibid.