Sermon: “Sermon on the Mount” Matthew 6:25-34 , February 8, 2026

Scripture: Matthew 6:25-34

Preacher: Ryan Slifka

Sermon: “Sermon on the Mount”

This Sunday we’re continuing in Matthew’s gospel/ Specifically in the Sermon on the Mount. Like Moses in the Old Testament, Jesus gathers crowds up on a mountain, delivering divine teaching. His definitive doctrine on a whole range of subjects. 

And what’s the topic Jesus weighs in on this week? It’s anxiety. Fearfulness, worry. Anxiety.

“Do not worry about your life,” Jesus says. “Do not worry about your life, what you eat or drink. Don’t even worry about what you wear!” After all, he says, “Who’s ever added even an hour to their lifespan by worrying?” “So you might as well not worry about tomorrow. Besides, there’s enough to worry about today.”

Now, it doesn’t take a genius to know that if Jesus is taking time to talk about something, it’s something on people’s minds. Remember, most of the people who gather around Jesus are poor. When you’re poor, food, clothing, shelter, these are always at the top of your mind. How am I going to survive until the next day. Then the next day after that. And after that and so on.

Jesus is going on about anxiety and worry with the crowd because it weighs heavily on their minds. Leaving them little energy for much else.

Now, what I love about today’s passage is that it proves that modern people aren’t so different from ancient people. Are they?

Of course, we’re not first consumed about basic survival. Like, we worry more about what to eat than whether we’ll eat, or what to wear, rather than whether we’ll wear anything at all. But if I were to say we are without worry or anxiety about tomorrow, you’d probably think me an idiot. Cuz we’re bristling with all sorts of other anxieties.

You might remember a CBC Massey Lecture delivered a couple years ago by the Canadian-born activist Astra Taylor called The Age of Insecurity, where she argued that all our western institutions that are supposed to provide us with a sense of security and well-being have failed to deliver. You don’t necessarily have to agree with her politics or her solutions to agree with her point that our world feels precarious. Fragile. Insecure.

We’re worried about our jobs. We’re worried about technology taking our jobs. We’re worried about our kids, our kids and technology. We’re worried about what governments will do next. We’re anxious about rising oceans and lowering standards of living. And, I mean, we’re glued to our TVs and our phones, as if worrying about tomorrow is our full time job. I mean, how many of us wake up in the morning and think tomorrow is going to be better than today, not worse? And somehow, all our worries and our social media vigilance have done nothing to change how we feel—imagine that!

Though our worries may be different from our ancestors in faith, we are, like them, still consumed them. We’re still as terrorized as anybody about tomorrow.

Now, I told you that Jesus does, in fact, tell his anxious crowd not to be anxious. He points out that worry won’t extend your life–as we know anxiety is much more likely to kill you. And that blowing all your energy on tomorrow’s problems is rather silly, since, there’s already plenty enough to grapple with today. Which, hey, is good advice. The same given by Socrates, the sort of thinking you can find in all the best self-help books out there. In that sense, Jesus lines up with all the best wisdom. Down through the ages.

There is a difference with Jesus, however. Because not only does he point out that anxiety and worry are bad, and it’d be good to stop. He goes further. He gives a reason why we need not be worried in the first place.

And what’s that reason? Well, the reason is God. God.

The problem is, Jesus says, in worrying like this the crowds are acting like “Gentiles.” They’re acting like secular people, people without faith. But they, in fact, have God to lean on.

Don’t worry about what you’ll eat, he says. “After all, look at the birds of the air, they don’t plough or plant or tractor pull bales into barns. They’re just birds! And yet, your heavenly Father feeds them. “

And don’t worry about your clothes either. Why? Well, “consider the lilies of the field. They don’t really do much–they don’t have to dig soil or punch a clock. Yet, they’re clothed in beauty, a glory greater than even an opulent fashion-freak like Solomon.

Like, if God feeds mere birds and clothes flowers that grow and die in mere weeks in such extravagant glory, Jesus says, how much more so will your Creator care for you? You human beings made his image and likeness? It’s a rhetorical question because it’s obvious. God will care for you so much more!

Jesus is using an analogy from nature. Birds and flowers don’t worry about tomorrow, and God takes care of them. Human beings are so much more precious to God, so why shouldn’t we human beings feel the same? Don’t worry about tomorrow, then, Jesus says. Because God’s got tomorrow in hand.

Now, what does Jesus mean by this? Before we continue, perhaps I can say something about what Jesus doesn’t mean by this.

A few years ago, Cheyenne and I were watching an episode of the ultra-high-brow tv show Wife Swap, where the wife in one family trades places with another. In it one husband was this dreadlocked rastafarian white guy who spent most of his days sitting on the couch smoking weed. His wife kept encouraging him to get a job, but he’d just reply “Jah will provide.” And by that it meant he’d go and beg to his neighbour for a few cans of soup, or do a little light shoplifting to fill the pantry.

Clearly, this guy did not worry about tomorrow. Or much at all! But what Jesus means is clearly not that! When it comes to the audience of Jesus’ day, you don’t toil in the fields, you die. As much as I’d love this sermon to be a license to just relax and not write next week’s sermon, it’s not a license to ignore tomorrow to get out of our responsibilities today.

So what does Jesus mean, then?

One commentator points out, the bird Jesus is talking about, the sparrow, is actually one of the busiest birds in the animal kingdom. It’s working hard to keep alive. It’s just not worried about it. And that is the point that’s crucial to understanding what Jesus is talking about. Jesus isn’t being a simplistic optimist, like tomorrow’s another day so don’t worry. Fire up another blunt and let the chips fall where they may. No. Jesus assumes our days will be filled with struggle, and heartache, and yes—even hard work! That we will have many good reasons for anxiety and worry tomorrow is a given. It’s a given.

And YET, even then, even then we don’t have to worry. Cuz in the same way God provides for the flowers and the birds, we can have faith that God will provide a tomorrow for you and for me.

God holds the future. And God will provide a tomorrow for you and me. This is Jesus’ teaching about how to deal with anxiety and worry.

It’s a teaching that he himself demonstrated, and vindicated on the cross, in fact. Jesus faced the ultimate anxiety-inducing, tomorrow ending-event in the form of torture and death, eternal damnation. Yet, he trusted God to the point of death. Only to be raised again on the third day. You could say that Jesus’ death and resurrection are the illustrative proof of the truth of this parable. The resurrection proves that God is the Lord of tomorrow. You know that great country hymn:

“Because he lives, I can face tomorrow. Because he lives, all fear is gone. Because I know he holds the future. Life is worth the living, just because he lives.”

It’s exactly right. All thanks to Jesus, we know that God holds the future, no matter what. Since tomorrow is taken care of, we need not waste a single hour of our lives worrying about it. We will, no doubt we will. But we don’t have to. All on account of God.

And you know what? It’s freeing. It’s freeing. Being freed from the fear of tomorrow not only provides us with an emotional relief. It frees us to do good. That’s what Jesus means when he says to “seek first the kingdom of God and it’s righteousness.” That actually, when we’re less anxious about tomorrow, we’re freed to face today, and more able to serve today. If tomorrow is taken care of, we can be less worried about the mortgage, or our job, or the future for our kids. So we can be more loving today, more generous today, more compassionate today, more loving today.

It makes a difference.

A few weeks ago I was listening to an interview with the writer and environmentalist Paul Kingsnorth, who’s just written a bestselling book called Against the Machine: the Unmaking of Humanity. In this book, Kingsnorth says he “seeks to offer an insight into how the techno-industrial culture that I call ‘the Machine’ has choked Western civilisation, is destroying the Earth itself, and is reshaping us all in its image.” From ecology to AI, Kingsnorth’s vision is as dark and pessimistic as you get.

Now, this isn’t entirely surprising—Kingsnorth had a long career in environmental activism, Greenpeace and the like. What I found the most interesting in the interview was the difference his spirituality made. He’d moved from atheism to Buddhism, to Wicca, but now finally had settled on Christianity, through the Orthodox Church. The interviewer asked Kingsnorth about this, about whether his conversion to Christianity changed his outlook.

“I think,” Kingsnorth replied. “I think my concern for the kind of the destruction of the natural world, which was very profound for a long time, very intense... I think it hasn't disappeared, but somehow it's subsided a little since I became a Christian. I think partly that's because if you become a Christian, it isn't possible to be a catastrophist in quite the same way.

Because if you're a Christian, you don't believe everything ultimately is in the hands of humanity. There's an endpoint to history. There's something or someone who is bigger than us.”[i]

If you’re a Christian, “consider the birds of the air, the lilies of the field.” If you're a Christian, you don't believe everything ultimately is in the hands of humanity. If you’re a Christian, there's an endpoint to history. If you’re a Christian there's something or someone who is bigger than us.”

Now, clearly, Kingsnorth still has his worries—many of them! As will we. And he’s not rolling over, lighting a fat doobie and raiding his neighbour’s pantry for treats because “Jah will provide.” Nor should we! But it’s started to free him from his future fears, by giving him a sense of assurance, encouragement. Freeing him to seek first the kingdom instead. As it should you. As it should me.

What are you worried most about tomorrow? Your kids? Your health? Your reputation? Your career? Your faults, failure, or your sins? The state of the world? What Trumps gonna do next?

The good news, dear friends, is that there is a God in heaven, one in whom we live and move and have our being. One who holds the future, one who promises to feed and clothe us. Even in the event that the birds of the air cease to sing, and the lilies of the field fail to grow, there’s something, or someone bigger than us who will clothe us with faith, hope and love. Into eternity and beyond.

It doesn’t mean nothing bad is going to happen to you. Or tomorrow’s always going to be a better day. But the good news is even when tomorrow means a cross. Even when tomorrow means a grave. Even then you need not fear. But you can seek first the kingdom knowing that thanks to Christ, a greater tomorrow is coming your way.

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

[i] Paul Kingsnorth, “This is the War Against Human Nature,” Interesting Times with Ross Douthat,  https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/this-is-the-war-against-human-nature/id1438024613?i=1000736725905