“Don’t worry about what you will eat or drink or wear. Let God take care of that.” Think about what would happen if we all did that! In the same sermon, Jesus says, “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.” The arrogant people who thought they were perfect were the Pharisees who drove Jesus crazy; we all know people who think they are God’s gift to the world -- are we meant to be perfect like them? Put the whole thing together and you have the title for this sermon: “Don’t be anxious, be perfect.” But, perfect people are anxious people. Do you see why I chose this text for today’s sermon?

To get to the underlying issues of this text, I’d like to pose three questions:

I Do we come to church to find comfort or a challenge?

The prophets of the Old Testament did both. When the people were comfortable and very sure of themselves and their power, the prophets challenged them: “Let justice role down like water and righteousness like an everflowing stream.”(Amos 5:24) When the people were oppressed, defeated, and in exile in Babylonia, the prophets were sympathetic: “Comfort, O comfort my people says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and cry to her that she has served her term… that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.” (Isaiah 40:1) That’s why I come to worship each Sunday, to find comfort when I am beaten down, and to be challenged when I am far too sure of myself. I usually get what I came for.

But in today’s text, Jesus is uncompromising in his demand. We usually think of the Old Testament as a demanding set of laws and the New Testament as Jesus, a loving shepherd. But listen to what Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount,

You have heard that it was said, you shall not murder… But I say to you that if you are angry with your brother or sister, you shall be liable to judgment. (Matt. 5:21)

You have heard that it was said you shall not commit adultery. But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.(5:27)

You have heard that it was said, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” But I say to you, ‘Do not resist an evildoer. If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile.’” (5:38)

Listen again to the text,

Do not worry about your life…, “What will we eat?” or “What will we drink?” or “What will we wear?” ... Your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. Strive first for the Kingdom of God and all these things will be given to you as well.”

Harvard University decided that the students had the facts but needed help with their values. The Dean asked Harvey Cox from the Divinity School to teach a class on “Jesus.” The registrar had to move the class to Sander’s Theater so that 700 to 800 students could enroll. The lecture was followed by discussion groups each week. This went on for nearly a decade. In 2004 Harvey described the course in a book entitled, “When Jesus came to Harvard.” I could hardly wait to read it. Jackie and I have known and admired Harvey for decades. How would we introduce Harvard students to Jesus of Nazareth? How did Harvey do it? One chapter of the book describes the class entitled, “Rabbi Teaches Torah.” It was a class on the Sermon on the Mount.

Responding to “Do not be anxious,” Harvey remembers that “Many students spoke fondly about a high school friend or distant relative who had ‘Thrown it all over’ and become a ski bum in Vermont or was hitchhiking through Europe…Others responded to those stories with “They didn’t worry about the cost because they could pay with a credit card or draw on a trust fund.” But,” Harvey claims, “the radical message of Jesus got through. “He really did burn all his bridges. He really did launch a new life in which he sometimes had ‘no place to lay his head.’ But he did so because he truly believed that God would indeed somehow provide for his necessities.’”

Surely this Bible story is as disturbing for you as it is for me.

What do we really want from the church?

Most of us, I dare say all of us, in the beginning wanted to be blessed. We come to worship to be forgiven for our failures and blessed in the life we live. Remember the fad during the early 1970s? “I’m OK; you’re OK” was the bumper sticker. Spirituality groups formed on the principle that, if we really believe that each of us is OK the way we are, and that our neighbor is OK the way he or she is, that is heaven. We started out with the hope that the church would bless our OK lives and strengthen us when life was not at all OK for us.

Few talk that way anymore. It’s a dangerous world. Violence comes from the Muslim Osama Bin Laden, and from the Christian Timothy McVeigh. Children in school are gunned down in their classroom in Iraq and in their classroom in the United States. President Bush is right to worry about nuclear weapons in Iran and North Korea, and also in Russia, England, France, China, India, Pakistan, and the United States of America. We are now sure that everything is not OK. God’s promise to save the world is the hope these days.

The core message behind the “Do not be anxious” text goes this way: “Strive first for the Kingdom of God and these things will be given to you as well.” It’s not all about me – my present place in the world, or my future place in heaven. It’s about the world that God created, the world that the descendents of Abraham were to preserve, the world that Christ came to save. Jesus invites us into this central truth: that we live and die for the Kingdom that God is creating here and now. When that priority is clear, our worries about ourselves diminish.

That doesn’t mean we have to quit our job and go to Sri Lanka. In our office, kitchen, neighborhood, classroom, playground – if we strive first for the Kingdom of God, everything else will be provided. How do we do that? By putting the other first and our self interest last, by honoring the child, the weak, the poor, and not only those who are just like us -- we do it by love instead of fear!

Harvey Cox again:

Wrestling along with my students with the Sermon on the Mount year after year… I was thankful that someone took the trouble to write it down. Still, I was repeatedly frustrated to realize that I could never live up to it, even as I admired the people who came closer than I. Consequently, each year when we were finally finished with the Sermon on the Mount, I sometimes felt I had physically scaled a formidable peak myself.

So are we a bunch of hypocrites?

That integrity question is the key to the puzzle. Christians are forever being accused of hypocrisy –believing one thing on Sunday and doing the opposite on Monday. Worse, all of us in the church who are honest say to ourselves, “I just don’t seem to be able to live up to it.”

So we try to lower our expectations. We come to believe it is not healthy to strive for perfection; it’s too frustrating to even try to live the Christian life. So we lower our goals until they are more attainable: a promotion at work, a good home for our family, a good night’s sleep, and then we rely on God to forgive the rest.

But reading the Sermon on the Mount, blows away all diminished dreams. At the beginning there Jesus stands saying, “Seek the Kingdom of God and God will provide all we need.” At the end, there Jesus kneels, “Take this cup from me. (I think there was a long silence after that prayer. I think it was near dawn when Jesus continued, concluded, “Yet not my will but thine be done.”) Those who focus on Jesus’ total trust and transforming power can’t maintain diminished expectations very long.

So the accusation from outside coincides with the confession from within – we are hypocrites. We aren’t proud of that, but we believe it is better to strive for the mountain peak than to wallow in the swamp.

Welcome to The Rooster Church. You understand the meaning of the rooster on the bell tower. The night Jesus was betrayed, at the table, Peter said to Jesus with feeling: “Lord, I love you; I will never fall away from you.” Jesus replied, “Before the cock crows you will deny me three times.” That very night, when Jesus was arrested, out in the garden Peter was challenged: “You are one of the disciples; your accent gives you away.” Three times Peter denied it saying, “I don’t even know the man.” Then the rooster crowed! Peter raced from the garden, weeping.

There, perched on the bell tower stands the rooster, a reminder that we who worship here are hypocrites just like Peter. There on the bell tower stands the rooster, a reminder that in spite of his denial, Peter is the rock of faith because he said, “I love you.” There on the bell tower stands the rooster the symbol of our impossible dream: that we will seek first and foremost the Kingdom of God, and we will no longer be anxious about anything else.