I am not generally a big fan of Martin Luther, but this week the German Reformer’s definition of sin struck me as perceptive. Sin, he said, is “a person turned in on oneself” (homo incurvatus in se). And lately I’m impressed with just how much of my life I spend protecting and pampering me.

I think about me. What’s the next step in my life? How can I get the most out of my opportunities? I hope that person likes me. I can’t believe what that person said to me. Am I happy? Do I think about myself too much?

I decorate myself. I worry about being over-dressed, or under-dressed. Or wearing the right colors, or the right things for the season. And certainly I can’t wear the same outfit twice in one week!

I talk about me. I hate it when people just want to talk about themselves!

I am self-centered, and so I avoid dependence on others: independence gives me the time to do what I need to do for me.

So I secure myself. I spend most of my time running far away from anything that might control me, that might limit my freedom and self-expression. But perhaps most of all, I am running away from anything that might make me dependent upon others. For utter dependence is humiliating.

Worst of all, I separate myself from other members of the church and from God, assuring myself that I don’t really need those other messed up people. Surely these are not the people Jesus prayed for me to be one with!

But I am also self-centered because I avoid dependence. After all, I rationalize, its only the responsible thing to do to spend all my time making sure I am maximizing the potential God has given me.

I spend my time making sure that I am self-sustaining so that I need charity from neither others nor from God nor, heaven forbid, from others in the name of God. I will not be a charity case! I will be a self-made man.

So I avoid dependence because I am self-centered, and I am self-centered because I avoid dependence.

Locked in a cage of narcissism and unable to get free, I realize that I am obsessed with myself!

But then the Gospel is read: Do not worry. Look at the birds and the lilies. Seek first the kingdom of God and all these things will be given to you.

Jesus paints for us here one moment in his stunning vision of a life of mutual, worry free, dependence for those who seek God’s kingdom before all things. While we do this Jesus promises that God will clothe us, feed us and give us to drink. I don’t think we should hear Jesus saying that, if the - for us - unthinkable happens and we run out of food, God will deliver food from the sky. Rather, Jesus hits much closer to home. As we seek the Kingdom, he says, God will feed us with all that we need by means of one another. This mutual dependence is confirmed by what Jesus says in the immediate context of our passage:

Give to him who begs. Don’t refuse one who wants to borrow.

Ask and it will be given to you; knock and the door will be opened; seek and you shall find.

If a child begs bread or fish he will not be given a stone or snake.

So don’t worry, if God knows how to take care of the lilies and the birds, he surely knows how to take care of us.

And he will feed us, clothe us, and give us to drink, I dare say, both literally and metaphorically.

For God takes care of us not just by people’s gifts, but by the gifts of people. God makes us dependent upon others and others upon us in order to redeem us, in order to shape within us the virtues of his Son. For how can we learn to go the second mile, if we’ve run far from anyone who might ask us to bear her burden in the first place? And how will we learn to turn the other cheek, if we are never in danger of being struck?

As Mother Rhonda said to me this week, "we are each other’s spiritual disciplines." We are each other’s hope of becoming Christ-like.

Only if we realize and live into our deep dependence on one another, will we give thanks the way we should – now, and each time bread is broken and wine poured out.

--Colin