FLOWER POWER

 

the lilies of the field (Avalanche lilies)

²⁴No one can serve two lords. For either he will hate one and love the other, or he will be loyal to one and think ill of the other. You cannot serve God and money. So I tell you: do not worry your heart about what to eat or what to drink, nor your body about what to wear. Isn’t the heart more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the sky: they do not sow or reap or store up into barns, and your heavenly father looks after them. Are you not better than they? Which of you can by worrying add even a smidgen to his age? And is anyone worried about clothes? Look at the lilies of the field, how they grow. I tell you that not Solomon in all his glory could overgo even one of them. And if God so dresses the fodder of the field, that is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the bread-oven, how much more you, you of little faith? So do not worry, saying what shall we eat, or drink, or put on to wear? that is what the goyim seek; for your heavenly father sees that you need all those things. Seek first the reign of God and his justice/righteousness, and all those things will be given you as well. ³⁴So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow can worry about itself. The day is enough, and its uglies.

This, of course, is a famous and much-loved passage of the Sermon, often cited by critics of capitalism. Yet it does have its difficulties. The whole middle chunk of it sounds very Sixties-ish, as if Yeshua were a hippie guru, telling us all to be La Fontaine’s grasshoppers and stop worrying about stuff. The Ant would know what to reply to that: Kid, you are not a bird in the sky; in any case, the birds in the sky do nothing but search for food; sorry, petal, you are not a flower: the flower may be pretty but it cannot move about or think, and if there is a drought it will swiftly die.   So is that what he is, and is that what he is saying? Only if you slice out that part and look at nothing else. So let’s add the beginning and the end.

            First, no one can serve two lords at the same time. We moderns should not think of this as having two jobs, because lots of people do, and manage fairly well. Think feudal society. Think real service. In feudal terms, serving a lord means being completely loyal to him, preferring him to everyone else, wearing his  badge, being “his man” as they used to say. You cannot, says Yeshua, be that for two lords: such commitment can only be to one. So, if that premise is granted, you cannot serve God and money (mamōn is not a god, just “money”). Therefore – because of that, I am telling you not to worry about all the humdrumlies of daily life.

            This doesn’t mean that you should go swanning about playing your guitar and waiting for someone else to feed and clothe you. It means that you do, responsibly, everything that’s necessary, but that you don‘t let it fill your horizon. As so often, he gives a couple of illustrative images: the birds and the lilies, which are maintained by God – as, in a different way appropriate to being human, are you. What you, as a human and a Jew, should do is understand and follow that difference. What makes you, as a human, different from the bird and the lily is consciousness, both intelligent and religious. What makes you, as a Jew, different from the goyim, the Gentiles, is that you know that you have a heavenly Father who looks after you. And the reason you know this is the Torah. And what does the Torah tell you to do? It tells you – I tell you, because this is what the completed Torah means – to make looking for, seeking, working for, the reign of God on earth, God and His justice, your first and absolute priority.

            And if you do that, if you have your priorities right, then your life has shalom: the order of peace, the peace of due order. And since you have a heavenly Father who loves and cares for you, all those other things will be sorted also. Of course, to seek first the reign of God you have to believe in it: you must not be (and I love this Greek term) oligopistoi, “littletrusters”. As Paul Tillich wrote in Dynamics of Faith, this has to be the basket you put all your eggs in. 

            Finally, in what way does this fit into the pattern of a completed Torah that Yeshua has been establishing? The recurring element has been a converting of outward action to inwardness, from required deeds to the spontaneous doings of a converted heart. In this passage, the argument moves to our capacity for fides, faith and trust both. Only a heart that fully accepts the new Torah can give up on hedging its bets, on being an oligopistos who thinks of God only when all his worldly security has been taken care of. Only such a heart can make the basileia, the reign, of God and of his dikaiosunè, his justice and his righteousness both, its first priority. And then, as the Collect says, "His service is perfect freedom."