Isaiah 49:8-16a Psalm 131
1 Cor. 4: 1-5 Matthew 6: 24-34
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.
There is something quite profound, perhaps even the work of a playful Holy Spirit, when the Gospel text assigned for this day, a day when we will baptize Stacie and welcome her into this community of faith, is Jesus’ instruction to us not to worry. Because I am fairly certain that at one time or another in Stacie’s life, her parents might worry about her just a bit. Or is it just me? Am I the only parent who worries about her children?
But of course, Jesus’ words are to his disciples and to us as well. Do not worry. Not about what you will eat or drink or about your body, or about what you will wear.
These are things we worry about as adults, to be sure. And things that parents worry about. When Robert was little I practically had to force feed him vegetables and fruits. And I did. And he would protest that he didn’t feel well after eating them and we would all roll our eyes in exasperation at this picky, picky eater. Until an allergy test told us that he is extremely allergic to…yes, you guessed it…almost all fruits and vegetables. Parents worry about their children…are they getting enough to eat? Are they growing at the right rate? (Mary, do these concerns sound familiar at Stina and Gus’s house?) And we worry about their clothing…didn’t we just buy them shoes last month? How is it that those shoes are now too small?
But even as I write this, I am reminded that there are places in this world where the concerns over what to eat and drink and what to wear are much more basic. Places where the death rate for children is overwhelming, and most of those deaths are easily preventable by proper nutrition, by inexpensive vaccinations, and by simple mosquito netting. We forget…perhaps because we have never experienced it firsthand. We forget, or maybe we didn’t know, that one fifth, one fifth, of the world’s population lacks access to safe drinking water. We forget, because perhaps we didn’t know in the first place, that every 45 seconds a child dies from malaria. A simple net could save them. We forget, or maybe never knew, that little girls in Africa often find themselves without clothing, because they are too poor to afford it. And because the boys needs come before theirs, whether it’s clothing or education or food.
And we forget, because we haven’t met her, about people like Barbara, a 63 year old grandmother in Detroit Michigan who stays home to take care of fifteen of her 24 grandchildren. She struggles to keep food in the house and still afford clothing and medication for herself and the children. Or we forget because we don’t know Jim, from Spartanburg, South Carolina. Jim’s wife passed away recently and his grown children don’t live nearby. So Jim and his dogs are alone, without an ability to purchase or prepare nutritious meals. Or we forget because we have homes to go to, that many of our neighbors…too many of our neighbors, have no place to call home.
And Jesus said “Therefore, do not worry, saying, what will we eat? Or what will we drink? Or what will we wear? These words must feel a little differently to Jim and Barbara and the little girls with no clothing and the parents whose children are dying from malaria.
The prophet Isaiah and the Psalmist both describe God in today’s readings as a mother. In theological circles we get very caught up in the debate over the use of male pronouns for God. I resist using one pronoun or the other to describe the indescribable. I find that it is an almost impossible task for us to try to name the unnamable, the Divine One. And so, we grasp about for ways to do so. But in the first reading and in the Psalm, God is mother. These are not the only Scriptural references to God as mother, and of course we are all familiar to the references to God as father. Because God is both.
In Isaiah, the prophet is speaking to Jerusalem, to the people of Israel, also called Zion. Israel is likened to a nursing child and God is clearly the mother. And what the prophet wants to say is that even in the unlikely chance that a nursing mother can forget her child…the very biology involved, the physicality of the act of nursing, means that she cannot, indeed will not, forget the baby. And even if she did, by some remote chance, God will not forget. The Israelites felt that God had forgotten them; after all, they had spent years being held captive in Egypt. Where was God then? Had God forgotten them?
The Psalmist uses the image of a weaned child with its mother. A weaned child, one who is not nursing, would be an older child. One who’d had an opportunity to venture out into the world and perhaps discover some of the harsh realities of life apart from one’s mother. And what the Psalmist says is that like the weaned child, the soul of the Psalmist is calmed and quieted. Because this is what this older child knows…that no matter how difficult the world may be, no matter how many the disappointments, no matter how harsh the realities, this child can always return to its mother for comfort and consolation, for safe harbor in life’s storms.
These are comforting texts offered to us from the Hebrew Scriptures, the Old Testament, this morning. Words that do calm and sooth. Words of assurance. That we are never forgotten. These words join Jesus’ words…don’t worry. Don’t worry, you are never forgotten. It would be my hope that these words would bring consolation to Barbara and Jim, to those people without homes, to those people without adequate food or water, to those people whose children need nets to hang over their beds and keep the mosquitoes at bay, to those girls in Africa who need just a little bit of clothing to bring about a whole lot of dignity.
But the reality is that those words from God, those words from Jesus need feet. They need somehow to become enfleshed.
And so they put on skin…in the form of hundreds of thousands of pillowcase dresses made through Little Dresses For Africa, which we will participate in on March 5th. They put on skin in the Lutheran Mobile Meals effort that delivers a meal and nursing care to Jim and others like him every single day. They put on skin in the ELCA food pantry where Barbara receives food to feed her overflowing household. They put on skin in the ELCA Malaria Initiative that provides the nets to hang over the beds. They put on skin in the form of the lunches that this congregation provides every single day. They put on skin in the form of all of the public policy work done through LPPO. These are the ways that God says “I will not leave you. I will not forget you. I have called you by name. In waters like these, or in full fledged baptistries or in rivers or lakes or hospital rooms…I have called you by name. Each of you. I’ve called you child of God. I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands.”
Inscribed us on the palms of his hands…her hands….God’s hands. What an amazing image…that we are there, never forgotten. Always beloved. Always called. Always forgiven. Always loved, each one of us, just as Stacie is today. That, sisters and brothers, is good news, indeed.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
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