How many of you still buy and read a daily newspaper?  Most of us keep up with the news one way or the other – either by listening to the radio or watching TV news.  And many get their news on the Internet.

Archbishop Hartley and I were talking the other day about how depressing it can be to hear the news in the morning—how it can ruin your entire day.  And this is while the most important news—the stories about our neighbors who are shot and killed by bad guys with guns, when there’s no GOOD guy with a gun around to stop them—or when an elderly neighbor falls or has a medical emergency and no one checks in on them for days and days.  Those most important stories, it seems like the news man doesn’t want to give more than 20 seconds to!

It’s a pity that it’s bad news that sells!  I wonder if anyone has ever measured the psychological impact of being bombarded with bad news stories from day to day in the absence of good news.  

Here’s a question for you:  How do you handle bad news?  How do you handle news that an elderly person suffered a heat stroke and died because nobody checked in on her to find that her air conditioner was broken and she was unable to open the windows? 

How do you handle news that your favorite cashier at the local food store was shot and killed senselessly during a robbery?

And how do you handle the news that the insurance company has denied the claim on the roof of our cathedral?  That we will have to pay for it through our tithes and offerings, after paying the premiums for all these years.

How would God have us respond to news like this?

Let’s read Matthew 6:25-34: “Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on.  Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them.  Are you not of more value than they?  Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?

“So why do you worry about clothing?  Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?

“Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’  For after all these things the Gentiles seek.  For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.  But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

If I could paraphrase this Scripture, I would say: DON’ WORRY – BE HAPPY!  Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things will be yours as well.  God’s word to us is this: Focus your thoughts on the kingdom rather than the calamity.

That’s amazing counsel.  Philosophers, motivational speakers, therapists and gurus could not come up with anything better.  Because all they could offer is a coping strategy.  But Jesus reveals to us the right way of living that has the backing of Holy Scripture and spiritual reality behind it.

Yes, the Bible offers us a story with a happy ending.  The drama of Scripture moves towards an ending in which all things are made new and sin and evil are finally defeated.  What’s more, the good news is that none need perish in the process.  All who put their trust in Jesus as Savior and Lord will be saved.

Now, what does it mean to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness?  It is simply what we focus our lives upon.

My sweet wife, Lady Susan, has a nice digital camera that focuses automatically on the object she wants to photograph.  But one day it went bonkers, and the automatic focus thing began to drift on every picture, leaving everything in a blur.

Sometimes our Christian lives can be like this.  God directs us to focus on the kingdom, but we all too easily drift from focusing, and when we do that, everything turns into a blur.

We will always have the tendency to drift.  But we can always re-focus and fix the direction of our lives on the kingdom of God and His righteousness.

So, how do we do this?

John Stott, the noted Anglican theologian, in his commentary on Matthew states that to seek is first to desire--to desire more than anything else to see in everything--the Kingdom. 

The Kingdom of God and His righteousness is a description of God’s rule under His Commandments–partially in this present, sometimes miserable life, but fully in the future.

It is to desire justice for the poor, the incarcerated, the powerless, and those enslaved to addictions and evil peer pressure.

It is to seek to make Jesus Christ known to those who might receive him as Savior and Lord in a personal response of faith.

It is to seek each day to “take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.”  And it is to desire, and to make our goal, the fulfillment of what we pray for: “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

So let me ask you this--what is the focus of your life today?

Is your worry over the news about our church and our neighborhood greater than your concern for the Kingdom?

What is first in our list of priorities?  The Kingdom of God or our current corporate need?  The better we know ourselves, the more aware we may be that our concerns for temporal things are often greater than our concerns for the Kingdom.

If our beloved late President, John F. Kennedy could be engaged in this conversation, he might ask---

Are we more concerned with what the Lord might do for us?  Or with what we might do for the Lord?  Seeking first the kingdom means to do so with a pure motive.

Scripture tells us that God will take care of His own interests, and I’m sure that this cathedral and the health and wellness of our community rank high on God’s list.  So if we make God’s interest our interest, then God will take care of us too.  But only as we seek His kingdom and His righteousness.

God promises to meet our need.  But it’s personal– Repent and Believe.

To seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness involves personal repentance and faith in Christ.  When we pray, “Your kingdom come,” we follow up with the parallel statement, “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

To seek first God’s kingdom is to embrace our Lord’s mandate found in Luke 4:18-19:  "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor."  To seek first the kingdom means to remember and care for the poor, the sick, the orphan, the widow, and the elderly in our communities.

It means for us to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ to others.  No, that’s not just the preacher’s job.  The preacher’s job is to teach and equip you to go out on your job, to the store, and with your friends and neighbors, and shine the light of Christ through your life, planting seeds that the Holy Spirit can water and bring to fruition. 

Seeking first the kingdom means that we are not going to be complacent about this, but that we will make it our priority to be witnesses for Jesus.  To seek first the Kingdom means being ready for His coming.

In a world where it profits newspapers, TV, and radio news organizations to focus only on the bad news, and in a world where, even as Christians, our focus will always tend to drift to the issues that cause us anxiety; we have God’s word today directing us to focus our thoughts elsewhere and to keep them there.

So, in closing, let me say:  When you worry, your face will frown, and that will bring everybody down.  DON’ WORRY – BE HAPPY!