Return to Sermons Page | Home Page

"Clarifying the Situation"

Sermon by Dr. Greg Knox Jones
on Luke 12:22-31
given January 28, 2007 at the 5:00 p.m. Feast of Praise Service

Robert Fulghum was just out of college when he took a job at the Feather River Inn nestled in the mountains of Northern California. It was a unique job that combined being the night desk clerk and helping with the horse-wrangling at the stables. The owner of the establishment was an Italian-Swiss who held old European ideas about conditions of employment. Fulghum did not like him. He thought of the owner as a fascist who wanted peasant employees who always knew their place. Fulghum was twenty-two years old and did not hesitate to share his opinions.

One week the employees were served the exact same meal for lunch every single day -- two wieners, a mound of sauerkraut, and a stale roll. To compound the insult, the cost of the meals was deducted from their paychecks. Fulghum was outraged.

On Friday of that week, he was at his desk job around 11:00 p.m. when the night auditor came on duty. Fulghum went into the kitchen to get a bite to eat and saw a note to the chef saying that wieners and sauerkraut were on the employees menu for two more days.

That was all he could take! He was quitting. For lack of a better audience, he unloaded on the night auditor, Sigmund Wollman. Fulghum said he had had it up to here, and that he was going to get a plate of wieners and sauerkraut and go wake up the owner and throw it on him. He was sick and tired of this treatment and nobody was going to make him eat wieners and sauerkraut for a whole week and make him pay for it and who does he think he is anyway and how can life be sustained on wieners and sauerkraut and this is un-American and he didn't like wieners and sauerkraut enough to eat it one day for heaven's sake and the whole hotel stinks anyhow and the horses are all nags and the guests are all idiots and he's packing his bags and heading for Montana where they never even heard of wieners and sauerkraut and wouldn't feed that stuff to pigs.

He raved on this way for twenty minutes. His monologue was delivered at the top of his lungs, punctuated by blows on the front desk, the kicking of chairs, and a great deal of profanity. It was a call to arms, freedom, unions, uprisings, and the breaking of chains for the working masses!!!

Now, the whole time he was pitching this fit, Sigmund Wollman, the night auditor, sat quietly in his chair watching him with sorrowful eyes. He has good reason to look sorrowful. He is a German Jew who spent three years in Auschwitz. He liked being alone at the night job, it gave him intellectual space, gave him peace and quiet, and even more, he could go into the kitchen and have a snack whenever he wanted to -- all the wieners and sauerkraut he wanted. To him, a feast! More importantly, there was nobody around at night to tell him what to do. When he was in Auschwitz, he had dreamed of such a time. The only person he ever sees at work is Fulghum. Their shifts overlap for an hour. And here was Fulghum, a one-man war party at full cry.

Finally, Sigmund Wollman spoke up. "Fulghum, are you finished?"

"No, why?"

"Listen, Fulghum. Listen to me. You know what's wrong with you? It's not wieners and sauerkraut, and it's not the boss, and it's not the chef, and it's not your job."

"So what's wrong with me?"

"Fulghum, you think you know everything, but you don't even know the difference between a problem and an inconvenience. If you break your neck, or if you have nothing to eat, or if your house is on fire -- then you have a problem. Everything else is inconvenience. Life is inconvenient. Life is lumpy. Learn to separate the inconveniences from the real problems and you will live longer, and not annoy people like me so much. Good night."

Fulghum says that was one of those rare occasions in life when someone simultaneously kicked him in the rear and opened a window in his mind. Ever since then, through times of stress and when difficulties have mounted, the face of Sigmond Wollman appears and asks: "Is this a problem or an inconvenience?" (1)

Our Scripture reading says pretty much the same thing. "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing .... And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? If then you are not able to do so small a thing as that, why do you worry about the rest?"

Our passage does not belittle genuine problems. There are some in our community of faith who are struggling with true hardships. They need to know that we are sincerely concerned about them, and they need to experience God's strength and support through our loving actions. Instead, today's passage speaks to those of us who imagine our misfortunes to be more menacing than they really are. Today's passage beckons us to consider our troubles in light of the big picture; in light of those truly significant things that have lasting value and make our lives rich.

Yesterday morning I was feeling stressed over all I had to do. I had two sermons to finish, prepare for my Sunday School class, work on the elders retreat, catch up on my e-mails, some projects at home, pack to go out of town this week: the list seemed endless. And then a story came on the radio about the young woman from New Castle who died in Iraq while attempting to diffuse a bomb, just two weeks before she was scheduled to come home. Her father was being interviewed and mentioned the watch he was wearing. He said it was his daughter's watch and she had set it to go off at 5:30 every morning. He said, "That's when she gets up." And there was a long pause, and then he corrected himself, "When she did get up."

As the father of two daughters, I can only imagine his anguish. Hearing what he is going through put me back in touch with the big picture. Although my list was still just as long, it was not nearly as anxiety producing as it had been a few moments earlier. I still had several hours of work to do, but I began to see it more as an inconvenience and less as a real problem.

How well do you keep things in perspective? Do you often presume your difficulties to be much greater than they are?

I suspect most of us waste time and energy on concerns that, in the long run, turn out to be of minor consequence. Most of us have found ourselves worrying about things that we will not even remember in six months.

Today's passage reminds us of the futility of being anxious over things that are beyond our control. It summons us to let go of those worries over which we can do nothing. And if everyone would put that into practice in their families, we would witness a dramatic decrease in family problems.

American League baseball teams have a designated hitter, and some families have a designated worrier. And that person's frequent state of anxiety can become an obstacle to happiness and harmony within the family. Consider those things that cause you anxiety. Do they genuinely merit the amount of time and energy you dispense worrying about them? Ask yourself a question that is harder to face: What are you gaining from being a worrier? What's the payoff? Is it attention? Sympathy? Control? Is the payoff worth the mental, physical and spiritual toll it's taking on you and those who are close to you?

Today's Scripture from Luke says more than simply, "Don't worry, be happy." It reminds us that anxiety is able to draw our attention away from the things that are rich and satisfying. If we worry about minor matters, we risk living a life of constant worry rather than a life that is continually grateful for life's blessings.

Today's passage is concerned with our attitude and our focus, and it counsels us that the way to put our worries aside is by striving for God's kingdom. That is, we are to pursue those things that are in harmony with the Spirit of Christ: compassion, justice, beauty, joy, peace.

Our faith encourages us to put first things first, and to stop worrying about those things that are not significant in the long run. How well are you doing?

NOTES

1. Robert Fulghum, Uh-Oh, pgs. 143-146.

Return to Sermons Page | Home Page