who cares?

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WHO CARES? Hosea 11:8-9, I John 4:7-12, Matthew 6:25-33 Second in Series: Burning Questions June 12, 2016 Rev. David S. Cooney In the month of June, Amanda and I are taking on some challenging questions often asked. Not asked out loud, necessarily. Sometimes they are questions we only ask ourselves, fearful that they are not appropriate questions or that they will make it look like we lack faith or understanding. The truth is, they are questions many ask, spoken or not. Today’s question is, does God care about me? Do I matter to the Lord? Hmmm. Let me think. Does God care about me? No. Wow, that was easier than I thought. Easiest sermon ever. I am joking, of course. I am joking because what am I supposed to say, that God really does not care about you? How ridiculous would that make me? I have committed my entire adult life to the task of inviting people to be in relationship with Christ Jesus. That is challenging enough. Imagine if the pitch was, give your life to Christ who, by the way, doesn’t care a hoot about you. That would fill the church! No, the answer is, of course, yes, God absolutely cares about you. You matter to God. That is my answer and I am sticking to it. Ah, but if the answer is so obvious, why do so many ask the question? Because the answer is not always so obvious and for a number of reasons. One is that it is so easy to feel insignificant in this world that it is hard to imagine one so great as God even noticing, much less caring about us. This may be how you feel if you begin your prayers by saying, “Excuse me, I hate to bother you God, I know you have far more important things to tend to than me, but….” This is some of what the psalmist was getting at when he wrote, “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?” The vastness of the world, the fact that literally billions of other people share this earth with us, can overwhelm us. Shoot, forget the world. It is easy to feel insignificant when you are sitting in traffic on 270, or you are identified by multiple businesses only by a number, or no one in school knows your name, or you try to get help and are told to make an appointment and, if you are lucky, you can be squeezed in some weeks from now. It is easy to feel insignificant you if are nameless and faceless in your apartment building or your neighborhood, or if

your contributions at work are never acknowledged, or your own children never call or visit, or if no one friends you on Facebook. Honestly, when you start counting up all of the ways it is communicated to us on a daily basis that we do not matter, it truly is hard to believe that we are any more than a speck of dust to an all-powerful God in heaven. That is one reason we question. Another reason we may doubt God’s care for us is that we believe we are not worth caring about. Maybe we were told as children that we would never amount to much, or we never hear from friends or acquaintances asking how we are doing, even if it is known we are having a hard time, or we do not look like the beautiful people we see on television and magazine covers, or we don’t have the education others have, or make the money others make, or hold the positions others hold or have the circle of friends others have or, or, or…. If we believe that we do not matter, then we assume that we do not matter to God. Still another reason we may not think that God cares is that sometimes there seems to be no evidence that God does care. What are you to believe when you pray with all of your heart about something profoundly important to you and nothing changes? What are you to believe when you plead with God and your loved one dies anyway, or the physical pain does not leave you, or you cannot find the job you need, or you experience one setback after another until you are convinced there is a dark cloud directly over your head and God does not care? The answer to, “Does God care?” is an easy answer, an obvious answer, when life is going well, or when the vast majority of the pieces fit, or when your prayers seem answered in a desirable way. The answer is not so obvious, though, when the storms of life are raging. I get it, I do. Among the most challenging tasks of pastoral care is trying to assure someone that God cares about them when all the evidence points to the contrary. Nevertheless, wherever you are on the continuum of life’s not going well – life is going well, I stand resolute in my answer to the question. God does care about you. You matter to God. This is why. First and foremost, scripture is crystal clear that God cares for each of us. In our gospel lesson this morning, Jesus is telling us not to worry about things. He talks about birds not worrying and yet being cared for, and then asks, “Are you not of more value than they?” I saw a cartoon once which pictured some birds reading this passage and when they got to the verse, “Are you not of more value than they?” they said, “Hey, wait a minute.” Well, sorry birds, Jesus is saying that God values people even more than the birds of the air and the fish of the sea and the flowers of the field. I earlier quoted the

psalmist looking at the moon and stars and saying, “What are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?” The psalmist goes on to say, “Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor.” The prophet Hosea dramatically speaks to God’s love and care. To make a point to an idolatrous people, Hosea married a woman he knew would be unfaithful to him. He then used her unfaithfulness as a teaching point, saying that when the people worshiped other gods, it was to God like it was to him when his wife ran out with other men. He said that God was incensed by their continual unfaithfulness and had determined to have nothing to do with them anymore. Then God speaks saying to the people who did not deserve his care, “How can I give you up? How can I hand you over? My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender.” In other words, even when God should not care and, in fact, does not want to care, his love for us is so strong that he cannot let us go. John, in his first letter, put it this way. “God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.” Would God have sacrificed his Son for us if he did not care for us? And this is not a general thing like, well God cares for humankind in general but not for me. Isaiah makes it clear that God knows each one of us, forms us and loves us, even before we are conceived in the womb. Jesus tells us that God knows the number of hairs on our heads. That is how intimately God knows each of us. Throughout the biblical record, God’s care shines through. You can say that, you might think that, but it does not seem like it, it does not match my experience. I hear that. Sometimes we want to say, if this is how you love me, please love me less. But here is what we need to understand, though it can be challenging. Care cannot be calculated on just the empirical, the immediate experience. Often children or students think that parents who are strict or teachers who are hard don’t care about them when, in fact, they care enough to provide discipline and to demand the best work. Usually these parents and teachers are appreciated and thanked - much later, in retrospect. Think of it this way. Maybe we think that God does not care for us, but surely we believe God cares about Jesus. But Jesus died on a cross. That experience made Jesus wonder about God’s care, as evidenced by his saying, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.” That experience convinced others that they were right in thinking Jesus was a fraud. After all, how could he claim to be God’s beloved Son if God let him die on a cross? We know, however, that that was not the end of the story. God allowed Jesus to

die because of his love for us, and God raised Jesus from the dead and seated him on a throne in heaven. And there were certainly many other times over the span of Christ’s life that God demonstrated care. The point is that the story is always longer and more layered than our present experience and the entire story has yet to be told. We do not know all of the whys and wherefores of life. Our lack of knowledge should not lead us to the conclusion that God does not care. What it takes is trust in God’s care when the evidence suggests otherwise. We have, for example, Horatio Spafford, after his family was lost at sea when an ocean liner sank, writing: “When peace like a river attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll; whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say, It is well, it is well with my soul.” Or as Civilla Martin’s old gospel hymn which we’ll sing later puts it, “Why should I feel discouraged? Why should the shadows come? Why should my heart be lonely and long for heaven and home, when Jesus is my portion? My constant friend is he: His eye is on the sparrow, and I know he watches me.” These hymn writers express confidence in God’s care even when the evidence seems contrary. They do so knowing that God’s care for us is related to the long term, not just the immediate, proven by the fact that even in the worst case scenarios, God does not leave us to die but has instead arranged for us eternity in paradise. God does not have to bring us to his heavenly home, into his presence for all time, but God does, because God cares. Does God care about you? Do you matter to the Lord? Absolutely. Do others? I don’t know. I cannot speak for others. But does God? Believe it. You are precious in God’s sight. Amen.