Why is it that life gets more complicated as you get older? As a child you really don’t have a lot of things to worry about. Your parents look after you – provide your food – clothe you – give you free accommodation – educate you – protect you – and a whole range more. In fact, according to Luther’s explanation of the Apostle’s Creed, our parents are God’s gift to us to do his work for us as his children: He explains the first article in this way:
I believe that God has made me and all creatures; that He has given me my body and soul, eyes, ears, and all my members, my reason and all my senses, and still takes care of them. He also gives me clothing and shoes, food and drink, house and home, wife/husband and children, land, animals, and all I have. He richly and daily provides me with all that I need to support this body and life. He defends me against all danger and guards and protects me from all evil. All this He does out of fatherly, divine goodness and mercy, even though I do not deserve. For all this I will thank and praise, serve and obey Him.
All the things God promises to do for us, parents do for their children. But as we get older life becomes complicated. And I wonder if that is because the older we get the more responsibility we take for our life and preservation and less reliant on others including God. And that’s understandable. We can’t take out a mortgage and tell the bank – God’s going to pay for it. No, part of our free will is that we take responsibility for our life and we see that in our Old Testament reading. A man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh. Now we don’t want to get caught up in the patriarchal wording of this – but we understand what Genesis is saying: That eventually we leave the family nest and take responsibility for ourselves. That’s part of God’s plan for us and the purpose of creating us in his own image.
Notice in our Old Testament reading the rite of passage of God handing over responsibility to his children:
Out of the ground the Lord God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them; and whatever Adam called every living creature, that was its name. Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every animal of the field; Not God – Adam.
The problem for human beings will come in the following chapter of Genesis when Satan will turn things around that the responsibility that God gives is no longer a blessing but becomes the curse as Adam and Eve’s eyes are opened to know not just the good of creation but good and evil. Responsibility is a blessing that God gives to us but because of our fallen creation and the influence of evil now in the world, that responsibility now sees us replacing God as the giver and preserver of all things to us now taking control. That was Satan’s plan – disobey God and you will be like God. So now, instead of responsibility being a blessing of our free will and image of God – we now take the place of God and we worry about everything.
Unlike children who receive from their parents without a care in the world, we now worry about tomorrow and always wonder if we have enough. And this is what God works very hard to reassure us to not worry about. Jesus says: do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life. “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
It’s really hard to let go of concern. It’s inbred into us at an early age. But God is wanting to assure us that even though we chose to disobey him Even though we chose to know good and evil that he has not abandoned us. This is where God wants us to return to our childlike faith and trust him just as we trusted our parents when we were children. Jesus says: Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.
In our 2nd reading and in our Psalm the writers could not understand why God would continue to care for us even though we rejected him – but he does: What are human beings that you are mindful of them, or mortals, that you care for them? You have made them for a little while lower than the angels; you have crowned them with glory and honour, subjecting all things under their feet. God could have abandoned us and focused on the rest of what he created, as our Psalm said: When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars you have set in their courses, what is man that you should be mindful of him? And that’s what God wants us to understand so that we trust him particularly in these difficult times.
In difficult times the temptation is to take control of our own lives. That’s not what God intended when he gave us a free will. Through Jesus Christ God has shown just how intimate our relationship with him is. We might not have that “one on one” relationship that people like Adam and Eve or Moses had. But we have a closeness that the people of the Old Testament did not have as Hebrews says: Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son.
In the old days the people of God were not permitted to look at God and live. They could not enter into his presence unless they were the designated priests and high priests.
I’m often reminded of the story in 2 Samuel chapter 6 of a well-meaning and God devoted man called Uzzah:
Uzzah was guiding the cart with the ark of God on it. Uzzah reached out and took hold of the ark of God, because the oxen stumbled. The Lord’s anger burned against Uzzah because of his irreverent act of touching God’s Holy Ark of the covenant; therefore God struck him down, and he died there beside the ark of God.
That’s the relationship the people of God had with God in the Old Testament. But we, because of Jesus reach out our hands and receive God’s body and blood into our hands. We reach out our hands and take God’s Holy Word in our hands. We come into God’s presence and hear his word and assurance of our forgiveness. This is what it means to have a child-like faith. Faith as a child of God. A child who trusts in their Heavenly Father even when the world around them is in turmoil. And we can do that because we know that even though God has given us the responsibility for the world, he is still the creator. And we are God’s glory and honour and he does care for us in all our needs.
So let us come to Jesus just as the children came to Jesus in our Gospel where he reached out and blessed them and so too now reaches out and blesses us and assures us that we are God’s joy joined to him through Jesus Christ our lord and what God has joined together, no one can separate.
