Matthew 6: 21-34

“The locust invasion started seven days ago and covered the sky. Today it took the locust clouds two hours to pass over the city. God protect us from the three plagues: war, locusts, and disease, for they are spreading through the country. Pity the poor.”[1] That was recorded in the diary of a soldier stationed in Jerusalem in 1915. He was describing the worst infestation of locusts in recent history. As the locusts approached, the sun was darkened. The locusts were so numerous that they were killed by the ton without any appreciable effect. In April of that year, the government issued a proclamation requiring every man between 15 and 60 years of age to gather 11 pounds of locust eggs every single day and deliver them to government officials for destruction. One eyewitness of this plague said “nothing we did prevented the locusts from coming down and devouring everything green, even the bark of trees, in a matter of minutes.” That widespread devastation, with the destruction of crops and the blockades of WWI led to three years of famine and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people...

Oseola McCarty was an African American woman from Hattiesburg, Mississippi. She left school after the sixth grade to care for a sick relative and she never went back. For seventy-five years, she washed and ironed and folded the laundry of the bankers, lawyers and doctors in town. She earned just pennies, but she tried to save what she could and eventually she started a little savings account. She lived a simple life. Her earthly treasures were few. *She lived in a modest house just blocks from the campus of the University of Southern Mississippi. She did not get an air conditioner until she was well into her 80’sand then she only turned it on when she had company. She never owned a car. She walked a mile each way to and from the grocery store. She went to the Friendship Baptist Church every Sunday, carrying a Bible held together with Scotch tape. When she was 87, Oseola retired. In 1995, the development office of the University of Southern Mississippi received a phone call from a local bank. The bank had a check for the university from Oseola McCarty for $150,000. No one at the university had ever heard of Oseola McCarty. She had never set foot on campus. This washerwoman who had never been to high school, let alone college, gave away sixty percent of her life savings she had for a scholarship fund for minority students...

He was a disappointment to his dad, that’s for sure. After all, his dad had spent three hundred dollars, just for his uniform. Then there were other expenses: Fees to enroll him in the soccer program, costs for driving him to various places for games, and all kinds of nickel and diming that had to be done. The money alone was enough, but there were other things too. Pride, for one. His dad was one of the coaches. His son had let the team down. And why? For no decent reason: for lack of concentration, for being a scatterbrain, for making what grownups called a “mental error.” Christopher wasn’t so sure what a mental error was since he was only six, but, driving home in the car, he was sure of one thing, his father was pretty mad at him.

Today we are talking about worry. And for inspiration, I am using two of my favorite people: Jesus and Dr. Seuss. Jesus because. . .well, he's Jesus. And Dr. Seuss for a couple of reasons. First, his birthday was just a few weeks ago, and he would have been 112 years old. But perhaps more importantly is his wisdom. We tend to dismiss Dr. Seuss as a simple children's writer--just a guy who made funny rhymes. In reality, he was a Dartmouth- and Oxford-educated writer who won two Academy Awards, two Emmy Awards, a Peabody, and a Pulitzer Prize. So, while his prose is often funny and cute, it also packs a serious punch of wisdom. In fact, there have been several books written on the theology and Christian metaphors found in his writings. So today we put Jesus and Dr. Seuss in conversation about three lessons on worry.

("When I hear Jesus tell us to trust God, I think of the German philosopher and Carmelite contemplative, Edith Stein. Brought up in a pious Jewish household at the end of the nineteenth century, as a young woman she stopped believing in God. A brilliant mind, Edith excelled in philosophy. One evening she picked up a book by St. Therese of Lisieux...")

"Today, when I hear the words, 'We were so poor that...', I brace myself for an outrageous claim like…. We were so poor that we couldn’t afford Kraft Dinner. Kraft Dinner, you were lucky, we were so poor that we couldn’t afford dinner, all we had was a cup of cold tea without milk or sugar. Cup of Tea, we were so poor that we only had filthy cracked teacups..." from the Monty Python skit

"Let me tell you a classic Thanksgiving story created by the brilliant Garrison Keillor, which takes place on the outskirts of Lake Wobegon, where 'All the women are smart. The men are good looking. And the children are above average.' 'It’s been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon.' Keillor’s old home town. 'There was a holiday this last week and the return of the exiles. The exiles who come back to their home..."

There is that old joke out there about the farmer who saw his friend, another farmer, buying a lottery ticket and asked him, 'What WOULD you do with ten million dollars?' His friend paused a bit before he replied, 'Don't really know; guess I'd just keep farming until it was gone!'

("Back in the 1950's a popular game show was called It's best remembered now as the show that first introduced Johnny Carson. These days, if you asked the question '' the answer might be: no one. In 1972, half of Americans surveyed – 50% — said they believed most people could be trusted. Today, that number has dwindled to a third....")

("Alice Demuth, a parishioner we buried this week, wrote a personal memoir, recording her farm life here in Western Kansas. 'Palm Sunday in 1935 was a day very few people would ever forget. My parents and whole family went to Ben Rohlman's to help out the family, as they were sick. We had small chickens that were turned loose outside of the brooder house. Mom said I was to stay home by myself and get the chickens in if it would rain...")

(includes several quotes on gratitude)

("Regarding freedom from worry a story is told about a German mystic named Tauler. 'God give you a good day,' Tauler said to the beggar. 'I thank God, sir, that I never had a bad one.' said the beggar, 'I thank God that I am never unhappy.' In amazement Tauler asked him what he meant. 'Well,' said the beggar, 'when it is fine, I thank God; when it rains, I thank God; when I have plenty, I thank God...")

("C S Lewis said it best when he wrote: 'You see, I don't think God wants us to be happy. I don't think God wants us to be unhappy, either; it's just that our happiness has nothing to do with it. What I think God wants is that we should grow up, that we should leave the nursery, and love and be loved...")

("I sometimes I wish I could have the attitude of that fictional character out of the "fifties". You will remember him as the young Alfred E. Neuman, whose countenance always graced the cover of Mad Magazine. Jug ears distinguished his face, a missing front tooth and one eye lower than the other. It was a face that didn't seem to have a care in the world except mischief...")

(" In my better moments, I resonate with the farmer-poet Wendell Berry and his poem The Peace of Wild Things. Berry echoes the words of Jesus about the worries of life: 'When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water..." and other illustrations)

I had a friend in seminary whose wife had cancer. For a long time, I didn’t understand how serious her condition was. And then, seemingly very suddenly to me, she died. They were young. They had only been married for three years. It seemed so unfair and unreal and terribly hard for someone so young and newly married to have to deal with. Soon after his wife died, my grieving friend said that he had decided “I am going to let be what is.” He had some strange ways of talking, so this sentence sounds funny, but again it’s pretty wise. “I’m going to let be what is.” I think what he meant was that he couldn’t control his wife’s death. They had tried various treatments, including bone marrow transplants which were fairly new back then. They had prayed. They had called on God in front of the whole church. But ultimately they had no control over life and death and she had died. My friend had had to surrender any sense of control – things were what they were and he had to let them be...

("Once upon a time a new family moved into an elegant suburban parish, one which was very progressive. It had all kinds of committees, and ministries, and there were meetings all the time, and teenagers went to Appalachia in the spring to help build homes, and adults ran soup kitchens for the homeless, and there were clothing drives and blood donations...")

("N.T. Wright says that at its essence, prayer is not about some selfish pursuit of spiritual advancement or a method to get in touch with our deepest feelings. Prayer is not a flight out of a troubling world but is finally the posture of kneeling before the Creator God from the midst of a painful world...")

("Do you remember the Broadway musical Annie? The spunky red-headed protagonist and her fellow orphans sing 'It's the Hard Knock Life' as they clean the orphanage, a lively tune decrying their sad state where 'No one's there when your dreams at night get creepy! No one cares if you grow…or if you shrink! No one dries when your eyes get wet an' weepy!'...")

("In 1988, Bobby McFerrin recorded this hit song , which brought him widespread recognition across the world. The success of the song was so great that his whole life was changed. McFerrin is now recognised as one of the most accomplished 'a cappella' singers in the world. The song was used in the 1988 U.S. presidential election as George H. W. Bush's official presidential campaign song, without McFerrin's permission or endorsement...")

("You want to understand real trouble? Read Laura Hillenbrand's 2010 bestseller Unbroken–A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption. The book follows the life of Louis Zamperini, born in 1917 and a veteran of World War II. While flying a search-and-rescue mission, his B-24 crashed into the Pacific. Only three crewmembers, including Zamperini, were able to scramble into life rafts..." and another illustration)

("Writing against the background of czarist Russia, Leo Tolstoy's last play makes for a difficult read. The unfinished work, The Light Shines In Darkness, owes not only its title but its principal themes to the Sermon on the Mount. It was Tolstoy's firm conviction that the Russian Orthodox Church of his time had sought to dilute the candour of the Lord's teachings...")

("There's a wonderful illustration found in Dr. Spencer Johnson's little book The Present. The Present is a story of a little boy and an old man in a mentoring relationship. The little boy is riding his bicycle, the old man is sitting in a swing on a front porch, and his very countenance attracts the little boy's attention. The little boy sees the old man, and he turns his bicycle around after two or three days of the old man smiling and greeting him. He says, 'Old man, why are you so happy?'...")

("There was once a king who felt the pressures and demands of his office. One day he said to his wife, 'If only I could determine which people and which affairs of the kingdom were the most important, I could use my time better and thus be a more effective king.' 'There are many wise people in the kingdom,' the queen said. 'Consult with them.'...")

("Some years back there was an advertisement in Fortune magazine which depicted a chauffeur standing next to the open door of a limousine. The caption on the ad was: 'Drive yourself today, be driven tomorrow. Let Fortune show you how'...")

("The English mystic and Benedictine nun Juliana of Norwich (1342–1414) had reasons enough to worry. She lived during the Black Death that killed 75 million people in medieval Europe...")

("Deal or No Deal does pretty well in the ratings, as I understand, as do but most of these big-money giveaways. Almost ten years ago, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire took the nation by storm and made Regis Philbin a household name...")

"I've told you before about the day that Alfred Nobel woke up and read his own obituary in a French newspaper. Nobel's brother had died, but the paper mistakenly reported Alfred's death. Under the headline 'The Merchant of Death is Dead', the column reported that Nobel became rich by inventing dynamite – for bombs – and found ways to kill people faster than ever before..."

("The Clark family, who lived in Scotland many years ago, had a dream. They wanted to travel to the United States and start a new life. It took them years to save enough money for safe passage over the Atlantic. They finally achieved their goal...")

("A poor devout woman lived with her husband, their five children, and her mother in a one-room hut. The children were noisy, and the crowded conditions often produced loud arguments. In summer, when the family spent many hours outdoors, life was bearable, but when winter arrived the family felt trapped..." and another illustration)

When Bill Wilson was washed ashore into detox for the fourth time – he'd finally had enough ego-stuffing knocked out of him that he turned to God and asked him to reveal himself to him. It was now or never. That's when Bill had his famous spiritual awakening. He says, the room lit up with a great white light and then he suddenly felt himself standing in the presence of his Creator.

A construction crew was building a new road through a rural area, knocking down trees as it progressed. A superintendent noticed that one tree had a nest of birds who couldn’t yet fly and he marked the tree so that it would not be cut down. Several weeks later the superintendent came back to the tree. He got into a bucket truck and was lifted up so that he could peer into the nest. The fledglings were gone. They had obviously learned to fly. The superintendent ordered the tree cut down.

(" I have a friend whose name is Mike Yaconelli. He had a deacon in his church who didn't "deak!" You know what that's like. He just didn't do what he was supposed to do as a deacon. One day he said to the deacon, "I have a group of young people that go to the old folks home and put on a worship service once a month. Would you drive them to the old folks home and at least do that?..." and another illustration)

("Barbara Brown Taylor, one of the leading preachers in America today, likens Jesus' teaching here to a ferris wheel understanding of life. As soon as you hit the top of the ride, you begin to go down...")

("This year, I returned to the old classic by the author Ray Bradbury, his novel Dandelion Wine, a book I read in seminary years ago. It's a story of two boys who spend each summer together in a fictional town in Illinois, called Green Town. Bradbury describes it as the StrangeWorld of Green Town, Illinois. Here is a conversation between Doug and Tom, two twelve year olds, ona summer afternoon...")

("I read of a farming experiment done with chickens. They induced fear into a flock of chickens and found out that they couldn't lay eggs. People taking care of turkeys changed from the normal work attire to something new, fed them at a different time of day, inducing fear into the turkeys. Their growth was stunted!..." and other illustrations)

("There was a man who was a chronic worrier. He would worry about anything and everything. Then one day his friends saw him whistling. 'Can that be our friend? No it can't be. Yes it is.' They asked him, 'What's happened?'...")

("Bobbie McFerrin wrote and sang a song entitled Don't Worry, Be Happy. The words go like this: 'Here's a little song I wrote, You might want to sing it note for note, Don't worry, be happy!...")

"In the ancient Arabian folktale, Aladdin, Aladdin is the lazy son of a poor Chinese tailor. After his father's death, he meets a magician who says that he is Aladdin's uncle. The magician convinces Aladdin to go after a beautiful lamp that is hidden in a cave..."

("Let me tell you a story passed on to me by a clergy friend. Some years ago he attended a church supper in Birmingham, Alabama. He was a stranger in the town. When he sat down at the table, there was no one across from him, and no one to the right of him. To his left, however, there was an old man he had never seen before...")

One day a very rich man with a good life in a large city took his son on a trip to the country because he wanted to show his son how poor people lived. He wanted to instill an appreciation for their blessings. They spent a couple of days on a small farm with a poor farm family where the days were long, the work was hand and there were no luxuries..." and another illustration

("I remember a passage I marked once in Viktor Frankl's book Man's Search for Meaning. Do you remember Frankl? He was the psychotherapist who was imprisoned by the Nazis and survived to write a book about his experience...")

("A book came out some years ago called How to Win over Worry. It quoted some statistics that are probably just as valid today as when they were published in the mid-sixties. The book pointed out that more people die in America as a result of suicide (the consummation of stress, duress, anxiety and worry) than who die from the five most common contagious diseases combined..." and another illustration)

(includes many pictures of flowers and birds)

("We visited a wildlife refuge outside of Anchorage and it was there that I saw two orphaned brown bears playing in a pond. I watched them and I thought to myself, 'Now those bears have nothing to worry about!' It brought to mind that wonderful song from Disney's The Jungle Book sung by Ballou the Bear...")

("In 1931 a missionary named John Vinson was working in North China. An army of bandits swooped down on his village looting, burning and killing. They took 150 Chinese and Vinson captive...")

("A classic movie It's a Wonderful Life is about a man who runs a Savings and Loan. George Bailey, played by Jimmy Stewart, is the town's favorite son; he gives up his dreams of adventure to stay home and take over the family bank. One Christmas season a large deposit of cash is mislaid; there is a run on the bank, and George faces ruin..." and discussion of several popular titles like How to Make Friends and Influence People)

("In the year 1637, a great disaster hit the city of Eilenberg, Germany. This was during the Thirty Years War, and the city had opened its arms to refugees fleeing the conflict. But the influx of so many people, along with a shortage of food and terribly unsanitary conditions, resulted in a plague...")

"A certain preacher was known for his uplifting prayers. He always found something for which to be grateful. One Sunday morning the weather was so cold, dark and gloomy that one the church members thought to himself, 'I'll bet the preacher won't be able to think of anything for which to be thankful to God about today.''...

("I heard about a ninety-five year old woman at the nursing home who received a visit from one of her fellow church members. The visitor asked her, 'How are you feeling?' She said, 'I'm worried sick!' Her friend said, What are you worried about?....")

Celebration of St. Francis

Scroll down the page for this resource.

("Some of us can relate to the Charlie Brown cartoon that shows Linus dragging his blanket as he observes, 'You look kinda depressed'. 'I worry about school a lot,' Charlie Brown replies. Then he adds, 'I worry about my worrying so much about school.'...")

("One of my favorite (and oft used) comments addressing that question comes from American writer, Maya Angelou: 'I'm trying to be a Christian. I'm working at it...")

("In reading a recent book by Gretta Vosper, a United Church minister in Toronto With or Without God . I was taken with a prayer in which the congregation joined together at the end of each service. It is based on a prayer known as the Prayer of St. Francis but represents our desire to show what we might call 'the ways of God' to the world..." and another illustration)

("Some of you remember the movie Jerry Maguire. Tom Cruise played Jerry, a very successful sports agent in that dog-eat-dog profession. But after one of his 72 clients, a hockey player, suffers his fourth concussion, he has a moral epiphany. He looks at his life and sees emptiness. He winds up writing a new mission statement for his large agency...")

("'An old, silent pond. / Into the pond a frog jumps. / Splash! Silence again.' It is perhaps the best known of all Japanese haiku. No subject could be more humdrum. No language could be more pedestrian. Basho, the poet, makes no comment on what he is describing. He implies no meaning, message, or metaphor...")