Don't Worry, Be (seeking) His Righteousness

Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity
September 25^th, Year of Our + Lord 2022
Our Redeemer and Our Savior’s Lutheran Churches
Custer and Hill City, SD
Don’t Worry, Be (seeking) His Righteousness

    Don’t sing pop tunes from the pulpit.  I have been warned by many a homiletics professor: “Don’t sing pop tunes from the pulpit.”  But it’s hard not to sing Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” this morning.  On this day when Jesus tells us not to be anxious, not to worry, McFerrin’s 1988 hit seems like it could be the Hymn of the Day.   

   “Here’s a little song I wrote, you might want to sing it note for note:  Don’t worry, be happy.”  There’s not much more to this super popular, and also super hated song, which is set to a real ear-worm of a tune that is hard to forget, hard to stop whistling.

   It really seems like Jesus is saying something very similar.  Do not be anxious.  Don’t worry.  Consider the birds of the air, the flowers of the field.  God takes care of them, and He will take care of you.  Bobby McFerrin leaves God out of it, which granted is a major detail.  But in terms of a set of instructions for living, Jesus seems to say something quite similar to Bobby – worrying is bad, don’t do it.  Bobby just extrapolates the implication of this instruction:  Don’t worry; instead, be happy. 

    Except… Those nagging optimists can exhort us all that (to quote a similar line from a pop tune of another generation), “Gray skies are gonna clear up, so put on a happy face;”  .  But you know and I know that life doesn’t work like that.  Dick van Dyke, Bobby McFerrrin or the Lord Jesus Himself could croon “just be happy” encouragement all they want.  It will still be beyond our species to be happy all the time, just by choosing to be happy.  Sometimes your flour jar is empty and there is no food to buy.  Sometimes your neighbor Russia decides to destroy your country with tanks and artillery.  Sometimes your boyfriend or girlfriend of husband or wife says or does something really hurtful.  Sometimes your daughter is uncontrollable.  Or your baby gets sick.  Or you get cancer.  And on such days “Don’t worry, be happy,” just doesn’t cut it.

   Happily, this is not the Lord’s song to us this morning.  Despite the surface similarity, Jesus of Nazareth and Bobby McFerrin are not singing the same idea. 

   No doubt, Jesus does command us not to worry, pointing out the foolishness and the sinfulness of lacking faith that God will provide what we need.  In the end our Lord concedes that we will probably worry about today’s trouble, but we are to leave tomorrow’s trouble to tomorrow.  But Jesus does not follow His “Don’t worry,” command with “Be Happy.”  No, the Lord’s direction is even stranger, but also wonderful. 

    In the stranger direction, we should remember that today’s teaching comes in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount, three chapters of Matthew in which Jesus, preaching on the mountainside, turns everything upside down.  Near the beginning, Jesus says this to His 12 disciples: “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” Matthew 5:10-12.   

   This seems worse than McFerrin’s advice.  Rejoice when people persecute you?  This would be worse than “Don’t worry, be happy,” except for one little Word.  One Word which ties rejoicing in suffering together with avoiding worry.  What Word is that?  Righteousness.  And not just any righteousness, but His Righteousness.  God’s Righteousness.

   “Don’t worry, be happy” can be a cruel platitude.  But Jesus says something different, something eternally better: Do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or what you will wear.  It is a sign of unbelief in the goodness of God to be anxious about such things, your heavenly Father knows you need them.  Rather, “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” 

   Now, maybe you think Jesus is being way more cruel than Bobby McFerrin.  Seek first the kingdom of God and His Righteousness?  How do I do that?  Can I build a ladder and climb up to paradise?  Can I perform open heart surgery on myself and exchange my every-day-sinful heart for a pure and good one?  God is in His heaven, and in my heart I sin every day, even on those days I manage to outwardly put on a good show of being a Christian.  But now Jesus tells me to stop worrying about food and clothing, and seek the Kingdom and God’s righteousness? 

   We are still over a month away from Reformation, but our problem this morning reminds me of Hans and Margaret Luder’s oldest son Martin, flailing away at his sinful nature in that monastery in Erfurt.  Martin Luther was a faithful son of the medieval Church, and so he took seriously the proposition that God’s Righteousness was a standard, a requirement for us.  God’s righteousness was said to be the goal of human achievement, that Martin had to earn.  The teaching of works righteousness, the false doctrine that salvation was finally gained only by those who piled up enough good works to offset their sins, this false teaching had thoroughly infected the Church.  The Church mostly taught that each person had to climb a ladder of their own good deeds, in order to climb up to God’s Kingdom and achieve sufficient righteousness to win God’s approval. 

   Bobby McFerrin’s simplistic “don’t worry, be happy” sounds pretty good by comparison.  And it seems that many, maybe most people, recognizing the hopelessness of earning salvation as taught by their preachers, join the Church of McFerrin.  Many simply give up on achieving righteousness, and focus instead on trying to find brief moments of happiness, day by day. 

   But not Martin Luther.  Our favorite Augustinian monk and ordained priest went all in.  He starved himself.  He prayed relentlessly.   He punished his own body and tried his best to follow God’s Laws and achieve the righteousness that he understood Jesus required.  And where did that leave Martin?  Luther later confesses that all his efforts at achieving righteousness by his own efforts left him hating God. 

   Luther believed the straightforward teaching that dominated the Church of Rome in the 16^th century, that the righteousness of God required to gain entrance to His Kingdom was a standard of righteousness, a level of goodness and holiness that the Lord requires us sinners to achieve by our avoidance of sin and our good works.  But Martin Luther, always serious and honest about his own spiritual state, knew that the harder he tried, the more his own sins became apparent. 

   From the outside Luther no doubt looked like the most godly man around.  But he knew that in his heart, in his thoughts, he was still a sinner.  No doubt from time to time it also broke out into his words and deeds; Luther did have quite a temper.  Finally, all this hopeless struggle to achieve God’s Righteousness left Martin hating God.  Which of course made Luther’s sin problem even worse. 

   Thankfully, happily, Martin Luther and the Church of Rome had it exactly backwards.  Which is normal.  God’s Law, from Moses down to St. Paul, is very demanding, and we always fail to keep it perfectly.  Try your best to obey God’s rules, (and btw, you should try your best to obey God’s rules), try your best, and you will be daily reminded of how you fall short.  But thinking we must do what it takes to achieve righteousness is the normal human position.  It doesn’t even matter if you believe in God.  We humans, even those who profess to be atheists, naturally want to be considered good people, righteous.  And we all have a set of rules about how to do that.    

   We naturally think that the solution to the problems we see around us and inside us is for us to try harder, do better, do more good deeds to offset our sins.  Keep on that treadmill, keep climbing that ladder, no matter how often we fall.  This is what human religions and demonic religions teach.  Whether we are talking Islam or Mormonism, JWs or the American Civic Religion.  Whether we are following in the way of the social media woke overlords, or the anti-human environmentalism of Greta Thunberg, it’s always the same.  Even if we call ourselves Christian, but our faith is centered on what we are doing for God, we fall into the same error. Every god other than the True God requires we sinners meet a standard of righteousness in order to be accepted.   And, no matter which god sets what kind of righteousness bar, our efforts are never enough.  We can never reach the top of the ladder. 

   And so many people give up.  “Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we may die,” is a popular life philosophy for a reason.  And that reason is that trying to make ourselves into “good enough” people by following the rules always leads to guilt and despair.  

   I don’t know where each one of you find yourselves today.  But do not despair.  Don’t give up on God’s Kingdom and His Righteousness.  Don’t seek out sin as a way of escape.  Nor should you imagine, like Bobby McFerrin sings, that you can just declare that you’re happy and not worry about it.  And most important, if you realize you are climbing a ladder of self-righteousness, stop it. 

   Wherever you find yourself, be still for a moment, and listen closely to Jesus.  Seeking His righteousness does not mean perfectly keeping God’s Law and climbing the mythical ladder to heaven.  No, seeking God’s righteousness means drawing near to the Man Jesus Christ, the same One who told you to stop worrying.  Because the same heavenly Father who gives you food and clothing has also given you His Righteousness.     

   Remember this wonderful thing: God’s Righteousness is named Jesus.  As Isaiah promised, the Lord has become our Salvation, our Savior.  His Name will even be called “The Lord is our righteousness.”  The Name of Jesus means the Lord Saves, and Jesus has come to fulfill His Name.  All sinners are called to hear and believe this Good News. 

   The righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, to all those who believe in God’s Son, who has lived and suffered and bled and died and risen again, to achieve the Righteousness of God, for you.  For me.  For all sinners.  As the poster downstairs rightly says, salvation is by works, but not by your works.  No, salvation, righteousness, access to the Kingdom of God are all found in Jesus, who has done all our works for us.  He is our wisdom from God, our righteousness, our holiness, our redemption.   

   So, don’t worry,  Instead, be seeking God’s righteousness.  Don’t worry, because Jesus, who has done everything necessary for your salvation, makes Himself available to you.  So be seeking Him where He has promised to be found.  You are baptized in His Name; it is your birthright to hear His voice, calling to you through Holy Scripture, inviting you to bring all your sins to Him, so He can take them from you and wash you clean again.  Hunger and thirst for His forgiving promises.  Take your place at His table.  He prepares it for you. 

   True and lasting happiness is knowing that in Jesus Christ, God the Father has provided, is providing, and will provide for your every need, of body and soul.  This doesn’t mean that this life will be trouble free.  Flowers still fade and wither.  Birds sometimes starve.  We still live in a sin-stained, imperfect world.  But in Christ, you have the promise that God will bring you through every struggle of this life, and into eternal happiness in the life to come. 

   So, don’t worry; seek God’s righteousness, in Jesus your Savior.  He is your righteousness, your happiness, today, and forever and ever, Amen.