CONSIDER THE LILIES

October 19, 1986, 11:00 a.m. Worship Service
John M. Buchanan
Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago

“Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor
spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like
one of these," --Matthew 6:28b, 29 (RSV)

Scripture
Matthew 6:25-29

That's why the trees are wrapped. We didn't tell Marian Vieux to do
a visual exegesis of Matthew 6:28 and I can't say for sure but I don't
think that is what she had in mind when she created a “living sculpture" by
wrapping the trees around Fourth Presbyterian Church with bright colors,
but that is what she has done for'us and for the city. ‘On Wednesday I was
invited to lead a brief worship service for our new after school program
for neighborhood children - youngsters who by 5:30 p.m. have been in a
classroom environment for a long time, are tired, hungry, sweaty and ready
_ for action - which is to say, it was hazardous duty. I decided to try to
engage them in the devotions - so I asked if they had noticed anything.
different when they came to church that afternoon. They had. They had
seen the trees. And they understood. When I asked “Why do you suppose we
wrapped those trees?“ ~- a question I had heard several times last week -
they responded easily and accurately: "to make people notice them!" __
Exactly. “Consider the Lilies." We have not done it to discourage the
Commission on Landmarks. It has nothing to do with that issue. Nor have
we done it, as one passer-by concluded and announced, because the trees
are sick and the colors indicate the place and nature of the infection:
although having observed the public reactions to the project, I conclude
that the effect has been therapeutic for the human spirit. We did it as
part of an Arts Festival: we believe it is part of the mission of the
church to say to the city what Jesus said one day to his disciples... .
“Consider the Lilies." The artist has succeeded wonderfully. A lot of
people have looked at trees - a lot of people who otherwise would have
bustled by - head down, leaning forward, striding meaningfully to the next
appointment, have slowed, looked up, smiled and for a gracious moment, have
indeed “considered the lilies." ~

It is in the Sermon on the Mount, a precious collection of Jesus'
teaching about life, human destiny, human priorities. It is important
material, It is singularly relevant. “Do not be anxious about your
life... Look at the birds of the air. Consider the Lilies..."

“Lilies of the field," as a matter of fact, was an idiomatic way of
referring to wild flowers. It could be an idiom - for the natural order -
all of nature. It has been suggested thatthe scene is the mountain side,
and that perhaps behind Jesus, or off to one side, was a sweeping, gradual
incline of bright Scarlet Anenomes which looked like a giant, royal robe.

"How many times have you walked by a field of flowers like that and not
even seen them?" he was asking. You are so tied up in anxiety about your
life, so tied up in knots over what to wear to work.tomorrow, or what's for
dinner, or how in the world you will get done what you have to get done
this week, that you have quite forgotten the steady, grace that energizes
the whole universe. You are so tight you are acting as if the whole world

depends on you and your schedule. Relax. ‘Loosen up. “Consider the
Lilies."

It was an important word for them. It is even more important for
us...for our emotional and mental health, but also for our spiritual life.
Jesus was saying an important word about God whose will and whose nature is
somehow revealed in that smashing scarlet meadow...

Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote:

“Earth's crammed with heaven,

And every common bush afire with God;

But only he who sees takes off his shoes -

The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries."
(Aurora Leigh, Book VII, line 820]

People were always asking Georgia O'Keefe why she painted those huge,
wonderful flowers and what the flowers meant. She didn't like the question
much because she thought the answer was so evident. Once she said -

“Most people in the city rush around so, they have no time to
look at a flower. I want them to see it whether they want to or
not...it occurred to me to paint a flower so huge that it would
make New: Yorkers stand still and contemplate it."

[Georgia O'Keefe, A Biography, -author-, p. 170]

The first item on Jesus' agenda was to get his friends to stop
worrying long enough to see the beauty in front of their eyes: and then
the connection between the beauty and the love of the one who created the
beauty. Jesus wanted to save their souls, a part of which in this instance
_had to do with beholding, hetping them to be able to see the common, the
holiness which is part of the ordinary. Part of salvation - the best
definition of which is "wholeness" is seeing the gracious providence of a
creator with a fine eye for aesthetics. Look at what God has made. It is
a very welcome word, spoken quietly in the midst of a civilization which
seems designed to increase and enhance anxiety, to urge us to run faster
and push harder, to keep our shoulders to the wheel, eyes on the goal, feet
moving in the right direction, calendars full, schedules loaded. “Consider
the Lilies.“ The lilies - or the trees - don't need our help, of course.
But we have boxed them in so thoroughly, and boxed ourselves in with the
anxieties that are produced by our pace of life that we do need the
gracious word of Jesus, or the gentle reminder of Elizabeth Barrett
Browning, or O'Keefe's wonderful flowers - or the wrapped trees. Look at
what God has made!

From the perspective of religion, art says that and does that,
whether it starts out te say and do it or not. In arranging shapes, color,
words, sound, art is conveying a sense of the wonder and beauty of the

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world. Sometimes art has to clamor for our attention. Sometimes the music
has to be insistent and dissonant and the shapes abrasive and the colors
raucous. Sometimes art has to work hard to persuade people to see.

But it grows - always - out of a deep reverence and love for the
world. Art and religion, that is to say, begin at the same starting
point, and are siblings, Ted Gill has observed. Both start with wonder and
awe before the mystery of creation, gratitude for the created order,
celebration of the world and everything in it. The City of Chicago, the
Museum of Natural History and this Church were honored this year by the
visit of Te Maori - the religious art and artifacts of the - indigenous
Maori peopte of New Zealand. A Targe contingent of Maori people came to
Chicago for the opening of the exhibit and subsequently worshiped with us.
They were here because their art is synonymous with their spiritual
heritage. It is only in recent history that works of art have been
displayed in frames on walls of museums and homes. To look at Te Maori was
to learn that art originally had to do with the practice of religion and

ordinarily it helped people express reverence and gratitude for the created
order.

Sometimes words alone are not sufficient. Sometimes the affections
of the heart demand a gesture. . And so when we want to say “I love you" we
buy a rose bud, or when we want to convey deep sympathy, we make a
casserole, or when we want to say thank you to God we build a cathedral or
write a poem or sing a hymn, That's why sacred liturgy has employed
chanting - because saying the words doesn't quite get the meaning -
expressed. John Calvin was arguably one of the greatest intellects ever to -
think about the meaning of Christianity. The great truths of faith, Calvin
said, should be put to music. Creeds should be sung, not recited so as not
to give the impression that all the truth to which they point may be
exhausted by our descriptions of it.

Art and religion both originate with a deep reverence for the world,
How sad it is, therefore, that so much conventional religious expression
seems to tilt in the opposite direction, away from the world.

The Biblical tradition begins with a true story that invites the
reader to fall in love with the world. The creation account in the opening
chapters of the Book of Genesis contain an important and radical word about
creation and the creator. -It is a word which is similar to what Jesus said
to his disciple. “Consider the Lilies.” It is a word that is often missed
in the debates about historical accuracy, biological precision and the
exact historical time frame. The word here is that there is one God. God
is good. God's creation is good; in fact, it is very good.

The first people to read Genesis 1 - or more probably to hear the
story needed a saving word from the Lord. Their lives - their very
existence as a people was in danger. Defeated by the Babylonians, captured,
taken to a foreign land and held in exile, the children of Israel were
subjected to all the pressures which living in an alien culture could exert
on them. In addition Babytonian religion - which must have seemed very
appealing - exposed them to one of the oldest religious tdeas around,
namely that there were at least two gods: a god of the heavens, the
spiritual places and the god of the world, the creator of the earth. The

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tangible world was suspect in Babylonian religion, tempting, sensual,
sinful, ultimately evil.

God's people needed a saving word - and what it got was a poem about
creation - a work of art which contains important truth - saving truth.
The wonderful theology in Genesis contains the radical assertion that
creation is good: that the creator is deeply committed to the creation,

that the process of creation is stil] going on and that God's people have a
part in that process.

There's a sense in which Babylonian religion keeps creeping into our
faith. Early Christianity flirted with Greek thinking that was remarkably
like Babylonian dualism and sometimes it came out with a decidedly other-
worldly flavor to it. Christianity has always had to work hard not to come
across as world denying, world hating, world avoiding piety. At times we
have acted as if “natural” meant “lower," “evil," “bad,” as if God made a
mistake when we were created with bodies and appetites. We have celebrated
celibacy and tried to ignore or deny sexuality. And so we have, at times,
been suspicious of the arts precisely because they were so worldly. We
were suspicious of sculpture precisely because it celebrates the beauty of
the human body and dance because it celebrates the beauty of human movement
and painting because it celebrates the sensual beauty of the world.

In our more extreme and least attractive moments - we have turned on
the arts as a threat and following the Reformation, for instance, in
righteous zeal, ripped intricately carved wood screens out of the
cathedrals and smashed the sculptures and burned the paintings and outlawed
musical instruments. Fortunately the inclination to beauty is so deep
within us that when it is stamped out in one place it emerges at another.
Even in the Nazi death camps people wrote poetry and drew pictures. And so
Protestantism developed its own forms of beauty - in spite of itself. But. :
in Highland parishes to this day, you will not find even so much as a cross’
- so suspicious were our forebears of tangible, sensual beauty.

What if our greater sin is loving the world too little, not too much?
What if the genius of both Judaism and Christianity is a profound love for
the created order precisely because God created it and it is good? What if
the better morality is a worldly morality based on the premise that the
world and everything in it is part of God‘s intention? Perhaps the other
worldtiness of religion does not belong beside the Gospel.

Non-religious observers: suggest that the environmental crises is only
possible for a civilization which-does not reverence the creation.
Ecologist Lynn White, for instance, holds religion responsible for the
unfeeling, uncaring exploitation of the natural world by our civilization.
And moral philosophers continue to ponder the meaning of our uninterrupted
willingness to spend our treasure making weapons, chemical and nuclear, the
effect - if not the purpose of which - is to reverse the creative love of
God by making war on all of life. Perhaps we don't need more other-woridly

piety. Perhaps we need to fall in love again with God's world.. -Perhaps we
need most to “Consider the lilies.“

It is deep within us...that love is. God put it there. The little
children knew immediately why the trees are wrapped. When you visit a

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" museum and see those graceful small figurines carved four thousand years
ago, - men, women, horses, children...think about what it means that the
artist, the person who did the carving, was not hunting or gathering food
in a time when providing food was a total occupation. Ponder how-near the
essence of humanness art must be because those primitive societies somehow
concluded that what the artist was doing was important. We are the
creatures on the evolutionary ladder, Rollo May wrote, who paused, picked
up a burnt stick and drew a picture on a cave wall.

At Lascaux, France, on the walls of the caves are beautiful paintings
of bison, horses, deer, enormous black mammals with curly hair - and the
handprints of the people who painted them -- 15,000 years ago.

It's as if there is an eleventh commandment which Moses forgat to
include in the first 10... Rollo May suggested. It's as if the creator
said: “Thou shalt make thyself and thy world beautiful, for this is why I
sent my gardeners, Adam and Eve, to cultivate the flowers in Eden. And this
is why I have made the twilight and the springtime so radiant with
splendor." [My Search for Beauty, Rollo May, p. 230]

It is our lot, it seems, to be anxious. To be human is to worry.
“What, me worry?" strikes us as a funny thing to say precisely because we
know how much of our lives we invest in worrying. Jesus knew that his
friends were worrying about this and that: about things they could control
-like food and clothing; and about things they couldn't control - like
physical size and how long they would live. Jesus knew that to be human is
to be anxious. And he knew that beneath all the surface worrying we do
there is profound anxiety. Anxiety over what the philosophers call non-
being, our mortality, the reality of the shadow of death which is
anticipated in every life by the dark night of the soul.

Jesus knew that we have a highly developed capacity for worry: that
we can worry about food and clothing, about the test we have to take and
the report to complete. He knew that we can work up a fairly severe case
of anxiety about the money we don't have, the behavior of our children, or
the sermon we have to write. He knew that sometimes we awake at 3:00 a.m.
anxious about - we don't know what. And he knew that behind all that
worrying - in fact, the source of all that worry, is the deeper anxiety,
the nameless, faceless fear of our demise.

_ How interesting that his response - the content of his response to

the basic dilemma of our humanness - was not a lengthy sermon, not a
philosophical argument, but a work of art... “Consider the Lilies" he said.
The God who loves the world enough to make this beauty, loves you. The God
who created the world can be counted on to love you, to be gracious to you,
to care for you forever. Jesus' response to the basic human anxiety is an
invitation to see, to enjoy with the senses, to fall in love with the
world. It is part of what salvation means - yours, mine - and the world's.

The real trouble with that worrying is that when you're worrying
you're not living as fully as you could be living, and as God wants you to
live.

Those crusty old Presbyterian theologians in the 17th Century might

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not have been very enthusiastic about Michelangelo's nudes and cheerful
Renaissance music - but they knew the essence of the Biblical word when
they wrote a catechism and began it like this -

“What is the chief end of man?"

“Our chief end," they answered “is to glorify God and to enjoy God
forever."

Edna St. Vincent Millay gathers that up for me...I get it out every
year and read it:

“OQ world, I cannot hold thee close enough!
Thy mists, they roll and rise!

Thy woods, this Autumn day, that ache and sag,
And all but cry with colour!
Lord, I do fear

Thou'st made the world too beautiful this year."

Jesus said Consider the Lilies. Amen.

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