Relax, We Are Not In Control

Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14; 2:18-23

Luke 12:13-21

Sunrise over the high lakes in the Adirondacks

I’m going to start with two brief snapshots that reveal something deeply true about being human because it is the same truth that our scriptures point us towards this morning.

The first moment happened earlier this summer when I was flying with my two-year-old daughter. We were on a layover in Chicago on our way to the Adirondacks. While we waited, I struck up one of those unexpected airport conversations. You know the kind: both candid and uninvited. She smiled at my daughter and said, “We have two kids. Grown now. We always worried we couldn’t afford a second…but then we realized we couldn’t afford the first either.” Then she said something that stuck with me: “There’s never enough preparation or savings when it comes to raising kids.”

The second moment came in a conversation with a friend who is nearing retirement. She’s trying to decide when to stop working. She earns a good salary, and every extra year she works means more savings and fewer years of drawing them down. At one point, she joked: “I just wish I knew exactly when and how I’ll die…then I could make a proper plan.”

Both moments point us to a truth we all face: we live with limits. We can’t know everything. We can’t prepare for everything. We have finite resources, uncertain futures, and far less control than we’d like. If you’ve read Ecclesiastes before, you’ll recognize its refrain in our first lesson today: “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.” The entire book of Ecclesiastes is an extended reflection on our futile efforts to grasp what simply cannot be controlled.

We are at war with this truth.  So much of modern life – our habits, our culture, even our sense of self – is built on the presupposition that we can become masters of our own destiny.  If we work hard, study hard, plan, do enough research…then, we think, we’ll be able to control the world around us. German philosopher, Hartmut Rosa, describes this mindset clearly. He writes, “Modernity’s basic stance toward the world is one of aggressive appropriation: we relate to the world as a series of points of aggression, as though it were a target to be conquered, mastered, and rendered available.”[1]

One of the reasons that our war on this truth is so compelling is that our efforts to control the world often work. Like all the most dangerous heresies, the illusion of control contains some truth. After all, hard work and research really did help us to cure diseases like tuberculosis and leprosy. Thank God for that. Thank God for modern medicine. Thank God for reliable bridges and clean water. In many ways, learning to control the world around us has provided us with safety and comfort. It’s no wonder that control is a proverbial “drug of choice” for us modern people. It feels good: really, really good.

But Rosa warns us: our aggressive posture towards life comes at an extraordinary cost. We’ve created a world where anxiety is the water we swim in. It is so constant that we barely notice it anymore. We set higher and higher goals for ourselves and for each other, then spend our days – even our entire lives – straining to reach them. When we finally do, we raise the bar again. And if we don’t, we feel like failures. To make matters worse, we now know that anxiety itself can cause illness, or at least make it worse. Which gives us the delightful modern condition of being anxious about being anxious. And of course, in those moments of anxiety, nothing is more helpful than a preacher telling us that we need to, “Stop worrying.”  Right?

Is this really how we were meant to live?

In today’s gospel parable, Jesus points us away from the world of control that we try to build for ourselves and toward the world that God has made for us. Bishop Tom Wright puts it beautifully: “The kingdom of God is – at its heart – about God’s sovereignty sweeping the world with love and power, so that human beings, each made in God’s image and each one loved dearly, may relax in the knowledge the God is in control.”[2] When we hear those words, the psalm we read today starts to come into focus. The psalmist writes:

We can never ransom ourselves, *

or deliver to God the price of our life;

For the ransom of our life is so great,*

that we should never have enough to pay it.[3]

We cannot buy our way into control. We cannot plan or work our way out of anxiety. We cannot rescue ourselves. But the good news is this: God has already ransomed us – with his very self. This is the truth of Christ crucified: the love of God poured out for us, not because we earned it, but because we needed it. Jesus doesn’t tell us simply to “stop worrying.” Instead, he invites us to bring our worry – our fear, our limits, our poverty – and to turn toward God with all of it.

Because God, the Creator, loves to give good gifts. As we heard in our children’s sermon, God’s gifts often show up in small things: in laughter, or fish, or a hermit thrush. Things like bread and wine. He loves to share his kingdom. He loves to bring his goodness into our lives…even though we can’t earn it, can’t plan for it, and can’t fully understand it.

And so – back to those two snapshots we began with: We have children we can’t afford or control. We retire without knowing the future of the markets or our health. We live these wild, precious, unpredictable lives. And in all of it – through all our silliness and vanity – God is here. He invites us to receive. He says to us: Take, eat; this is my body, which is given for you.”[4] There is no good gift greater than that.

Amen.

[1] Hartmut Rosa, The Uncontrollability of the World, trans. James C. Wagner (Medford, MA: Polity Press, 2020), 10.

[2] N.T. Wright, Luke for Everyone (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004), 153.

[3] The Book of Common Prayer (New York: Church Publishing, 1979), 652, Psalm 49:7–8

[4] Luke 22:19, New Revised Standard Version Bible