Scripture: Matthew 6:25-34
Last time I preached, I said that I planned for the remainder of this fall and maybe into the winter—who knows—to do a series of sermons on the teachings of Jesus. There are a lot of them, and they cover a lot of ground, touch on lots of topics, come in the form of parables, sermons, pieces of conversation—just about everything Jesus is reported to have said could be considered in some way as a teaching. Some of them are straightforward, easy to understand and agree with (or at least are that way on the surface), others of them are not so easy to understand, head-scratchers if you will, (“I wonder what he meant by that…”). Some are downright difficult, either to understand or to put into practice, to live. In any case, over the course of several months I will be looking at a fair sampling of Jesus’ teachings, including any that any of you may have a particular interest in (and a few people have already suggested some to me and I welcome other suggestions). The question is: Where to begin.
I decided to begin with the passage you heard just a few minutes ago. It has long been one of my favorite passages from scripture—though I have to say that I have many favorite passages. This one is certainly among them. It is also one that I find to be particularly difficult. That might seem to be a kind of an odd combination—odd that I would find the same passage both particularly appealing and particularly difficult. You might think that a passage that maybe you have to struggle with would probably not be also a favorite passage, and likewise that a favorite passage would be one that you not just agree with but that you are touched by or that resonates with you at some deep level, not one that you would describe as difficult. But this passage is both of those things for me, and I’ll try to say why as I go along this morning. Maybe that’s a reason I decided to start with this passage, just because it has this unusual quality of being both a favorite and a difficult passage for me.
But let me be more specific than that. It’s not just that I both appreciate and have some problems with this passage in some general sort of way. I’m sure this passage presented itself to me to preach on today because I have been feeling particularly anxious recently. I have been waking up every morning with a kind of unsettled feeling in my stomach. And it’s not what I ate. And it’s not that I wake up thinking about the things I have to do that day or various matters that concern me. It’s not that I’m worried about things at this level of my life. It’s that my body is telling me in a particularly insistent and persistent way that I am anxious deeper down inside.
I chose the title of the sermon from what I remembered as the words that began this passage, which must have come from the King James Version of the Bible. Be not anxious, is what I remember. The New Revised Standard Version says, “Therefore I tell you: Do not be worried about your life…” Whatever the translation, whatever word you want to use, “anxious”, “worried”, however you want to say it, I’m it. Not just in my head. It’s in my body. That’s the more immediate reason I’ve chosen this passage first. It addresses me in a very pointed way.
I’ve always had my difficulties with this passage. Even though I have appreciated its language and instinctively felt that it is saying something important, that it’s more than nice sounding words, nevertheless I confess that whenever I read this passage, almost always my first impulse is to want to argue with it. I want to say, “What do you mean don’t worry? Aren’t there a million legitimate things to worry about everywhere you turn? And aren’t we supposed to worry about some of them, at least those few things we can do a little something about? How can you tell me, Jesus, not to be anxious when the world is the way it is and I am the way I am, that is human, aware of the uncertainties of my life, aware that nothing, no part of my life is guaranteed, aware that I have been given certain things that it seems to be my job as a human being to worry about, aware that I have been blessed with certain people to worry about? Isn’t it naïve to say, as you do seem to be saying here—forgive me, Jesus—to say just that God will provide. Isn’t it worse than naïve? Isn’t it irresponsible? Isn’t it a little like recommending the strategy of burying your head in the sand when there are real things to worry about? And isn’t it—forgive me again, Jesus—a little bit insensitive to respond to all these things that we human beings will worry about with just a kind of a wave of the hand and an easy assurance that God will take care of it?
Well, I don’t say all that, even to myself, every time I read this passage. But I feel that, or something like that. More likely than putting all that into words, I may respond to the passage just with an “…mmm, I don’t know,” or a frown. But it amounts to the same thing. I just don’t know what to think, quite, about what Jesus says here. It doesn’t jibe with where I am most of the time. It especially doesn’t jibe with how I am feeling these days.
As I was saying, I seem to be feeling more anxious than usual these days. Not so much for any personal reasons. It’s not that there’s anything special going on in my life to make me more anxious than usual. A kind of normal quota of things, I suppose. Certainly other people have much more to be anxious about than I do at the moment. There have certainly been other times in my own life when on a personal level I have been more anxious than I am now. It’s not that. It is—well, you can maybe guess. It’s politics for one thing. I won’t go into any detail about what exactly about our current political situation makes me anxious. No need to drift into partisan politics here, which is what I would probably do fairly quickly if I elaborated on this very much. But I will simply say that I am anxious.
I am anxious, I admit, about the outcome of the election, but it’s not only that. I’m also anxious about the process. I’m anxious about the health of our democracy. I’m anxious about how we are going to deal with race and with racism during and after the election, anxious that we may drift toward thinking that racism has gone away just because a man who identifies as African American is a candidate. I’m anxious for the safety of the candidates, and their health. I’m anxious, not just concerned but anxious, over lots of things that are involved in this political season, not only the outcome. And frankly the advice or admonition or teaching, “Don’t be anxious”, “Don’t worry”, even though the words come from Jesus, just by themselves they don’t quite do the trick.
And that’s to say nothing of the state of the economy, which is more than capable of generating anxiety, especially on behalf of people who are most vulnerable, and raises all sorts of questions about how many people are going to be vulnerable to what degree and in what ways. To say nothing about the future of our planet, which I find I’m not able to take quite as much for granted as maybe I did once upon a time. I know that a factor in my anxiety too. As, no doubt, are dozens of other things; there’s no shortage of things that might threaten us. The litany of them will be a little bit different for each of us, but they’re there, and add to that at any given time at least a normal quota of more personal situations that weigh on us and worry us and all of that can rise up and grab hold of our insides at any time.
In the light of that, how do we deal with these words from Jesus that begin by telling us not to worry; be not anxious?
Several things. First of all, of course Jesus doesn’t just say “don’t worry”. To pretend that this is the message, to take this to be the teaching, simply “be not anxious”, would be a classic example of taking something out of context. The message here is not just a kind of carefree and careless philosophy of don’t worry about anything, eat, drink, and be merry, nor a mindless “don’t worry, everything will work out all right in the end” kind of attitude. Actually the context here is that this passage follows right after a teaching about money and could even be seen as being part of that teaching. The verse before says, “No one can serve two masters for a servant will either hate the one and love the other or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth. Therefore I tell you do not worry about what you will eat and what you will drink…” and so forth.
I’m not going to deal directly with Jesus’ teaching about wealth today. I’ll come back to that another time. But a more general thought does occur to me reading the passage in this light. We can get so caught up in the cares of the day, whatever they are, that they take up too much room on the inside of us. It’s not that all worry is bad. It’s that there are so many things to be anxious about, and we are so good at thinking up things to be worried about, that they can just fill us up, the relatively unimportant along with the important, the trivial along with the things that matter most, and it can come to pass, in spite of our desire that it not happen, it can come to pass that we lose a firm hold on which is which.
I’m not so sure that this is exactly what Jesus meant to say to us, but certainly one of the things I hear being said to me through this passage is that there is always a need for me to be about the business of sorting through all those worries that can so easily take up so much space in my inner world, separate the wheat from the chaff, as it were, be honest with myself as to what I am worrying about, and ask myself honestly whether it’s what’s most important to me. “Therefore do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, or your body, what you shall put on…” Perhaps what you shall eat or drink here stands for all those things, that do need some attention from us after all but that are not worth the worry we give them. If Jesus meant to say that to me, I will listen with an open heart. I know I need to hear it.
And if Jesus also meant to say to me that we can’t let worry consume us, even the things that may be worth worrying about, that we can’t let it consume us, can’t let it take us over, can’t let worry win, I can hear that too. I know I need to hear it. “Seek first the reign of God,” he says, “and what you need will be provided.” I won’t talk about the kingdom of God, the reign of God, today. I said a few weeks ago that just about all of Jesus’ teaching had to do with, or need to be seen in the context of, the reign of God. For today let’s just put it in terms of what is most important, what our hearts and spirits tell us is most important. And if Jesus is telling us to be anxious about that, anxious not in the sense of worried, but anxious in the sense of eager, if Jesus is telling us not to let worry get in the way of being anxious for what’s most important and to set our hearts and hands to those things that have to do with doing justly and loving mercy, then again I will listen because it is a word, not just of correction but a word of hope spoken to my anxiousness.
But I think Jesus is saying something even more than both of those things. The rest of what I have been saying, or rather what I have been saying Jesus might have meant to say to us, falls in the category, I suppose, of good advice, or even wise advice, reminding us of things we already know at some level, reminding us of our need to keep our priorities in clear view, to have our hearts set in the right direction, not to let our worries, which are going to be there, not to let them overcome us or control us. All of that is well and good. And because we are so subject to anxieties playing a larger part in our lives than we really want them to or believe they should, we need to hear that reminder, coming from Jesus here, not to let that happen. I hear it not so much as a teaching in the sense of an instruction but an encouragement.
But even beyond all that, I believe Jesus is trying to say something to us here that asks something different and more of us—to believe that whatever happens, that whether all the things we may be anxious about come true or whether we are fortunate enough to avoid the worst of what we worry about, that whatever happens, we are safe because our lives are part of the life of God. It’s not that God will magically protect us from all harm. I don’t know that and I don’t believe that. It is rather that, as best I can say it right now, and I can’t say it, I’m afraid, very well, but it is rather that whatever happens, God is our dwelling place. In tis uncertain world, filled with threat of all kinds, where there are more than enough things to make our hearts tremble and to give us more than reason enough to be anxious, God is our dwelling place. There is nowhere we can go, there is nothing that can happen to us, that can take us away from the heart of God. When Jesus says “Be not anxious”, it is not just a teaching or an encouragement to keep our worries in check, and maintain a proper sense of priorities, and so forth. It is also an invitation to a faith that if we were to receive it would be a very great gift. I pray for that gift for all of us. Amen.
Jim Bundy
September 28, 2008