At the end of my senior year of football at Allen High School, my friend and I earned the most embarrassing award for any high school athlete: “The Coach’s Award.” The description given to this award was, “An award to recognize individuals who gave over and above without need for recognition or reward.” We interpreted that as, “People who made excellent blocking dummies but never gave up.”
I’ve joked about my limited physical prowess on the football field but in 9th grade, when we were just getting started, I bought in big time. They told us if we stayed after practice to lift weights that it would help. They told us if we ran more on our own that it would help. They told us if we were the first ones to volunteer to be a tackling dummies that it would help.
And it did.
But not in the way I thought.
As it turns out, I went from a two-way starter in 9th grade on the B Team to see a total of 11 snaps in 12th grade. I pushed harder than most people on the team and my rewards were fewer. Same with my friend. We were embarrassed to get the “Coach’s Award” because we knew it wasn’t an award given to people that actually mattered to the success of the team.
22 years later, I’ve changed my mind.
While I didn’t see the field, all of the extra workouts led me to better physical health. Even though I didn’t play much, I learned that I can do one more repetition even when I don’t think I have it in me. What didn’t come in immediate glory has paid off in droves when it comes to humility, work ethic, teamwork, hustle, and compassion.
The coaches liked to call these “intangibles.”
When Jesus is preaching the Sermon on the Mount…
…he puts a lot of expectations on his followers. If you haven’t read Matthew 5-7 in a while, go see how you measure up. It’s a sermon about an ideal world that we call “The Kingdom of Heaven,” with perhaps the hardest prescription in the middle at Matthew 6:25-33. I’ll let you read the whole part, but it starts with:
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear.”
What did most of us do today?
We worried about the tangibles.
We made sure we had breakfast. We made sure to start with water (or coffee, let’s be honest). We made sure we were warm and clothed. Beyond that, I’m sure we verified that our car had gas, our kids were getting good grades, our e-mails were checked, our pets were fed…and really couldn’t the list of tangible needs extend for another page?
Jesus elaborates with tangible examples of flowers and birds that instinctually receive from God, and where most of us struggle is that we assume this scripture is literally telling us to sit back, do nothing, don’t worry about getting anything done, and God will do the work.
That’s not the case.
Jesus wraps up this section with,
“But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”
What Jesus is pushing us towards is a life of intangibles that comes from regularly following the example of Christ and regularly dwelling upon the thoughts and desires of God. Lack of worry doesn’t come from sitting and doing nothing. Lack of worry comes from shaping our lives so fervently around Christ’s love that we instinctually know the next step to take, even when we don’t feel like we can walk anymore.
Because when we have a direction – we tend to worry a lot less.
As we approach All Saints Day and a new sermon series entitled “Living With,” we’ll see how very rarely tangible things bring us comfort, but learned intangibles give us a way forward.
- Intangibles like Hope, Faith, and Love.
- Intangibles like Heaven.
- Intangibles like Mercy and Forgiveness.
- Intangibles like Justice and Compassion.
I want to invite you to attend worship each week so that you might “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness,” by tangibly putting God first. By doing so, we will together develop the intangibles that help us see heaven in the future, and bring heaven here and now.
Peace,
David Lessner
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