Poems and Psalms 4. Lilies, Ravens, and an Altered Look.

Readings, Psalm 131 and Luke 12:22-34
Image, Claude Monet, Poppy Field in a Hollow near Giverny (1885)

 
Let’s hold that gospel reading in mind for a moment, while I read these famous words from the letter of James:
If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill’, and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?
Now I want us to consider if there any conflict between those words and the teaching of Jesus heard today? That is to ask, could James’ words be offered as a rebuff to Jesus’ encouragement: do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear, seemingly offered here without attending to the crowd’s bodily needs?
 
No one panic! We’re not attacking Jesus. No one is saying Jesus did anything wrong. And yes, we might say, Jesus did feed people with the fish and the loaves, and we might say, that Jesus does note at the end of the passage that food and shelter and clothing will be given as well, as natural offshoot of striving for God’s kingdom. But if we want to be a little brazen, we could ask: what is the good of telling people not to worry about what they will eat or what they will wear without providing them with what they need to keep warm and full? Would we not critique a more common man for so casually teaching us not to worry about things so basic to our survival? What should we do about this tension?
 
The great picture of what it looks like to strive for God’s kingdom and receive the basics needs as well comes in the early chapters of Acts.
All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. 
Here we see the material needs being met, overflowing as an outcome of centring the communal life on striving after the kingdom. This is a community, we might say, that has organised itself in such a way as to make it easy not to worry about what you shall eat. If the apostles were to pass on the teaching of Jesus in the midst of a community holding all things in common, we would see no discrepancy. Indeed, it is the harmonious picture of faith and works in concert, where striving for God’s kingdom includes the meeting of earthly needs.
 
What I want to offer, is that what Jesus says about considering the lilies is a bridge between the encouragement not to worry and the community of Acts. The teaching to consider the ravens and the lilies is not only key to observing the instruction do not worry but paves the path to that harmonious common life. Learning to consider the lilies is thus foundational to becoming not only a person able to lay aside the drive to strive for more and more worldly things, but also to becoming a people of God able to tend to one another’s needs.
 
But to get to how, we need to consider a psalm and poem… for that is the series after all.

 
If Jesus seeks to respond to one impossible question: how to not worry over the things we need, Emily Dickinson’s “an altered look about the hills” responds to another. She responds to the question Nicodemus asks of Jesus in the Gospel of John: how can one be born again? Dickinson’s response: consider the altered look about the hills.
 
An altered look about the hills --
A Tyrian light the village fills --
A wider sunrise in the morn --
A deeper twilight on the lawn --
A print of a vermilion foot --
A purple finger on the slope --
A flippant fly upon the pane --
A spider at his trade again --
An added strut in Chanticleer --
A flower expected everywhere --
An axe shrill singing in the woods --
Fern odors on untraveled roads --
All this and more I cannot tell --
A furtive look you know as well --
And Nicodemus' Mystery
Receives its annual reply!
 
Creation itself, at the change of the season, offers annual reply to Nicodemus’ question. And, I suspect, helps us also to draw close to Jesus’ teaching.
 
Attune one’s breath with the rhythm of the world around and you will see in the continued rhythm of life from death the faithful provision of God. And when we see this will we understand that not only is it possible for one to be born again, it is possible that as such, we can learn to be free from worry. In learning to observe the altered look about the hills, like learning to consider the fineries of the lilies of the field or the preciousness of the life of the raven, we will learn to breath in the rhythm of God’s tender provision. It is this careful and regular observance of even quite mundane things, rather regular changes, that our souls, so determined to fill themselves with worry and striving, will be able to be quieted. From this place, from the breath attuned to God’s care, we can begin to live again; to lay aside striving and so lay aside worry.
 
The psalm we heard today (which is, admittedly, a good psalm to pick if you want to memorise a psalm) also attests to the caring logic of both Christ and Dickinson’s words.
O Lord, my heart is not lifted up,
   my eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occupy myself with things
   too great and too marvellous for me.
But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
   like a weaned child with its mother;
   my soul is like the weaned child that is with me.
 
I love this little psalm. I love its gentle image of calming and quieting the soul by ceasing to occupy oneself with those things too great and marvellous.
 
In lowering the vision, our soul becomes like the weaned child within us, peaceful and at rest. Now I do need to offer a caveat here: teachings about not worrying, encouragements to quiet our souls, are not medical advice. Anxiety is a condition that needs professional therapeutic/medical support. It is not sinful to be anxious, nor is it a sign of lack of trust or weakness of faith to seek treatment in order to care for one’s soul, quiet one’s mind, and live an abundant life. These passages of scripture, this kind of sermon, is about the kind of worrying we can lay aside with the right support from community and consideration of lilies. It is interesting to observe, that the kind of cataloguing that Dickinson lays out, like the practice of Jesus to observe and take in, reflects what we know about treating panic attacks – slowing down and returning to the moment by helping the panicking person notice what is around them, helping them to breath and catalogue their surrounds. 
 
I said before, the teaching to consider the lilies, like observing the signs of creation going about its course in unhurried simplicity, becomes the bridge from the teaching about not worrying to the picture of a community devoted to harmonious common life. And this is because we cannot be ready to be the kind of community who hold everything in common, when we are gripped by worry. We cannot be a people who cast off the lures of partiality to the powerful, when we are striving after worldly things. For when we are consumed by such worrying and striving then we are too busy watching closely that common pot for any hint of unequal distribution, for any whiff of unfairness, for any glint of someone unproductive or unconducive. We become too concerned with making sure I get what is mine to ensure that everyone has theirs. That is to say, the consuming striving and worrying proves a barrier to a communal life where all our needs are met. On the other hand, learning to strive first for God’s kingdom, builds a bridge by which we can move out beyond ourselves, giving ourselves fully to the joy of a common life lived in the power of the Spirit.
 
And so, in the end, we learn to hold all the tensions and instructions together – not held in contrast, as if each time one tugs it moves us away from another. But we hold them in tandem, realising we need them all to make it work. The picture of harmonious common life in Acts is one reached when, following Jesus, we learn to quiet our soul through observing the testaments to God’s provision, love, care and faithfulness all around us. When we do this we can quiet voices telling us to strive, to secure, to store up, to suspect. And instead – free of such worries and striving – we learn to trust not only God but each other… and in this state of trust we are ready not only to say keep warm and eat your fill, but to turn what we have to that cause, to give what we have to any who have need, so that there are none trapped in the worries which – without a caring, loving community built on the power of a caring and loving God – we would simply crumble beneath.
 
So this week, look around for those signs of God’s care and provision, Christ’s love and grace, the Spirit’s presence and power. Look for them in the little shifts in the season, the simple consistency of the birds, the finery of the flowers, the love and care of this community. And as we take these in, let them calm and quiet our soul, as a weaned child with its mother. And from this quiet calm, let us find the strength to lay aside the drive to strive for what we will find much more wondrously in the shared life of the community of Christ.