Prayer of the Day: Lord God, Heavenly Father, we thank Thee for all Thy benefits, that Thou hast given us life and graciously sustained us unto this day: We beseech Thee, take not Thy blessing from us; preserve us from covetousness, that we may serve Thee only, love and abide in Thee, and not defile ourselves by idolatrous love of mammon, but hope and trust only in Thy grace, through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost, one true God, world without end. Amen.

“No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature? And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”

Grace and peace be to you from God our Father and the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

We see in our text, Jesus suggests the sinner, ever possessed with many a wild thought, seek first His kingdom and His righteousness. Then through faith in Him, you will have everything you question in life fall into place. Again, the Savior says: “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?”

Lord Jesus, bless Thy Word that we may trust in Thee. Amen.

As you’ve heard, Google tracks everything. Everywhere you go, everything you purchase, everything you ask. And among the more bizarre trends Google has recorded, in May of 2020, a statistically striking number of people, completely independent of one another, began asking Google the same exact question: “Are birds getting louder?”

They weren’t. No louder than before 2020. No louder than they are today. There was neither an increase in the number of birds nor bird volume. The answer to their bizarre question lay in the fact that May of 2020 was the spring of Covid. In the midst of lockdowns, Zoom meetings, and store-shelf shortages, a latent paranoia apparently made people extra attuned to two facts: (1) not only do birds exist, (2) birds make noise. Could you imagine the kind of racing thoughts which would drive someone to ask Google about the birds: “They’re everywhere. They’re chirping. And they refuse to stop. What does this mean?”

Now, I highly doubt anyone here today suffered from such avian paranoia, but there was some way Covid lockdowns drove you wild, something you started hoarding, some long-standing custom you began questioning, someone you took your frustration out on.

Truth be told, though, you don’t need a life-change of global proportion to make you act as if it is. Pressure and anxiety on the micro-level can make the mind run just as wild. Any given morning just slightly disjointed from normal routine, something as innocent as the chirping of the children under your roof can take on a perceived increase in volume and intensity which can prove to be your breaking point before the day gets started.

Examples: Husband and wife grow suspicious of what the other spouse is up to now, what they really mean by what they say or don’t, for no good reason at all, or for a very good reason you find impossible to shake from your head; Coworkers for whom it’s only a matter of time before they let you down; A restaurant you won’t go back to because you don’t trust what they put in their food; Who’s making all this money you spend at the grocery store? It’s certainly not the farmer. Need I add government to this list?

Paranoias likes these cause us to question, rethink, and think the worst of the great flock of people all around you, everywhere you look, those God has given you to serve and love. And what all our suspicions and annoyances do is subtly chip away at a simple and clear social structure to your daily life defined and ordered by the Ten Commandments. This makes all our hesitations, questions, and rebellion against what should be normal routine the definition of sin. Which is why when you are all too aware of your sin, the gnawing guilt can make you suspect everyone thinks less of you. And why whenever the life you demand should run without a hitch changes outside your control, you begin to rethink everything you once assumed.

Questions like ‘Are birds getting louder?’ absurd as they might sound, are just the tip of the iceberg of a long-standing problem with all mankind ever since our first parents broke God’s first command and descended into a downward spiral of paranoia. They hid in fear from the Creator whose ways but moments before it would never have entered their minds to question. They then chirped back at Him how if it weren’t for Him and the other one, none of this would’ve happened.

Should we give up Google? Did you hear they keep track of everything? Well, the Lord keeps even better record, of everywhere you go, everything you ask, every place you’ve turned for answer other than Him. But the good news is, whatever the reason, today you have come to the right place, to Jesus, and He has the answer: “Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them.”

Who knows what the hundreds of thousands googling about birds chirping in spring feared that might have meant? Jesus says it means if you can hear the birds, God can hear you: “Are you not of more value than they?”

In our gospel lesson today, Jesus points out as example the “fowls of the air” and the “lilies of the field.” The most insignificant near-bothersome birds whose chirping we do our best to drown out with all our daily clamor. The subtlest micro-motion of wind through the wildflower-dandelion you wish you could uproot. Yet it is a marvelous and ceaseless beauty to which you and I are remarkably deaf. All of which Jesus noticed with a remarkably heightened sense of hearing. As true man, He had physical ears of flesh like yours, but as the sinless Son of God, those ears actually worked, taking in as Jesus walked about His Father’s creation His ceaseless care for everything you and I take for granted.

Take for example the blind beggar, whose chirping had long before become mere background noise to the rest of his town. Jesus could hear his cry from far down the road, “Jesus, Thou son of David, have mercy on me.” A delightful sound to the ears of the Savior, who turns right about, commands ‘Bring him closer,’ and gives him sight.

Jesus could even hear what other people were thinking. When Jesus said He would offer His flesh for the life of the world, “He knew in Himself that His disciples murmured at it,” a suspicion Jesus showed no hesitation to bring out in the open, “Doth this offend you?” And had no hesitation to keep repeating, near obsessively, that “The Son of Man must be… crucified.” Even though each time He did, His disciples would continue to argue and doubt, sometimes out loud, all the more in their heads… ‘A cross!? He wouldn’t harm a fly… and He expects us to believe He’ll end up with the death penalty?’ ‘The Romans out to get Him? He’s the only Jew in the whole country who tells people to pay their taxes.’ ‘He says in one breath “take no thought for the morrow” but the next, back to all this talk of crucifixion any day now… He just won’t give this up.’

This seeming paranoia on Jesus’ part, which Jesus repeated in countless parables, allusions, and unmistakable word-for-word predictions, which when they realized they couldn’t shake out of His head, became to them mere background noise… until it happened. And they scattered and ran, into all sorts of very real paranoia all their own.

This, though, was no case of they’re all out to get Me. This, Jesus’ bitter suffering and death, was the only way to get all of you back. It was the way to atone for every sweet noise which has brought a tone not so sweet from you, for every suspicion and fear of those God has given to you love, for each and every one of our sins.

You see, Jesus, who could listen to His disciples’ hearts, can hear every flutter of worry in yours. Even when His heartbeat throbbed in His ears under the deafening stress of hanging from two planks of wood, He heard your heart like never before, that His final breath might serve as answer to each and every one of your questions: “It is finished!”

He rose from the dead without making a noise. Had the stone not been rolled away, maybe no one that day would have noticed, but by God’s good grace the sound today is unmistakable. Here in our midst the Spirit of God opens your ears and heart to receive everything Jesus’ victory over sin and death means for you, as He promised: “My sheep hear My voice.”

This is the kingdom of God. This is His righteousness. This is what He begs you to turn to and seek. In every decree from His lips, He promises to rule and guide every step of your life into eternity with Him. That is because Jesus has endured in full every drop of wrath your sins deserve: “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.”

Wait, what about this or that thing in my life I don’t like? That’s got to be God punishing me, right? Nope. “No condemnation.” Cannot be. Instead, “we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose.” Even if you can’t, or refuse to, see how it could, it must now all serve your eternal best: “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.”

For any question of this life, seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, seek the clear promises of forgiveness and salvation in Christ Jesus, and have every paranoia washed away in the promise of the life to come, “casting all your care upon Him; for He careth for you.”

The Lord Jesus has to say things like, “Look at the birds of the air,” because we don’t. But that Google question shows that when you start to—on your own, that is—this fallen mind can only think up the wildest things. If God simply opened your ears to everything He’s doing all around you every moment, it’d all be far too overwhelming to take: “What could this possibly mean?” That’s why here we offer the answer, as the Lord opens instead your hearts and minds to the simplest truths of His Word, as explanation to everything you notice or not.

Here is the brilliance to Luther’s Small Catechism structure. It equips God’s children, young and old alike, with the very basics as the most advanced training there is. In the Ten Commandments, it gives the structure to life. In the Apostle’s Creed, it explains the one, true God who guides it all. Each “What does this mean?” after another “What does this mean?” has crystal clear Bible response. Instead of asking ‘artificial intelligence,’ turn to those very basic, yet advanced trainings of the catechism that your every day might be guided according to the true intelligent design of the God who saves.

Now, don’t be alarmed if some days the Lord’s marvelous creation does seem to get a little louder… birds, children, spouse, neighbors, or the news… No reason to fear as long as you hear behind all the clamor the Bible verse: “Be still and know that I am God.”

The call to keep yourself in His Word, to have your senses attuned to the grace which sustains everything you have and are, and come to notice the worries and concerns of others before your own, that they might come to learn how Jesus knows and cares for every little flutter of their heart no less than He does yours.

Now the peace that passeth all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.

—Pastor Timothy T. Daub

Prince of Peace Lutheran Church
Hecla, SD

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Ministry by Mail is a weekly publication of the Church of the Lutheran Confession. Sermon archives, and subscription and staff information may be found online at www.clclutheran.org/ministrybymail. Audio Sermons are available at: podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/ministrybymail

All scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the King James Version.