Lake Edge United Church of Christ

Jesus told his disciples not to worry about what they’ll be eating or what they’ll be wearing, and if I take his words literally, that’s pretty easy for me. I have been known on occasion to wonder about and even to ask “What’s for dinner,” but never in my life have I been hungry and without prospects for a meal. And all you have to do is look at me to know that I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about my wardrobe. So if we could leave it there, I’d be fine, right? I don’t worry about my next meal, and I don’t worry about what I wear. But I don’t think that Jesus would want me to leave it there. His teaching in this passage isn’t about food and clothing only, but rather about all the material things of life and the anxiety that comes when we worry about whether we’ve got enough.

And we do live in worrisome times. There are people whose job it is to measure our worry about our economic status, and these folks tell us that more than two-thirds of us are currently worried these days about whether we’re going to make it or not. Housing values are sinking, unemployment is rising, the fear of increased inflation is upon us, and it just doesn’t seem to any of us that a dollar goes as far as it used to. The average American family is now living on about 103% of its annual income, a trend which cannot continue without being ruinous. A majority of young people now believe that they will never be as comfortable materially as their parents, which is concerning to their parents, who no longer feel all that comfortable themselves. Older folks are worried about outliving their money and are unsure about what the future will be like if they do not have enough.

Well, all these facts and figures are important, but you don’t need me to parade them past you; I likely do not have to talk you into feeling worried. It’s likely that you feel some measure of worry gnawing away at your heart and mind. It’s likely that you’ve been kept awake or had a moment when panic seems to arise in your heart, sets you off down the worrying road.

So if you’re like me, or the vast majority in all these polls, Jesus’ teaching his disciples not to worry is one of those things that we all wish we could believe in but really can’t quite bring ourselves to do it. Perhaps, we might think, if we were wealthier than we are, then Jesus’ words might make sense. We might think that the truly rich never have to worry about money. But even if that’s true, Jesus didn’t address his teachings to the wealthy and the well-to-do. These teachings are from the Sermon on the Mount, when he gathered all those who’d come to him, the poor and powerless, the blind and the lame, the sinner and the excuse-makers. Sitting with him were people who in a very literal sense, had no clear idea where the next meal was coming from. It’s possible that some of them were thinking, “Well, that may be possible for the rich, but how on earth am I to pull it off?” But compared with them, we’re all, each one of us, impossibly rich. And being rich in their eyes doesn’t free us from being worried, does it? Why then should we think that if we were richer, we wouldn’t worry?

Worry is universal, I expect. We can’t help ourselves. For despite all the things we pile up, all the planning we do, all the savings that we accumulate the truth is that we’re all pretty fragile on this earth. All it takes to remind us of our vulnerability is an accident, an illness, a broken relationship, a betrayal of trust. Any of these things, which can happen to any of us at any time, have the potential to make us desperately exposed to danger. Jesus knew that we were all finite, limited, vulnerable, and exposed, and that we can’t help worrying about being this way. But he also knew that worrying was dangerous to our health.

Worry is one of those rare things in life that has the ability to feed on itself. Worry literally gets stronger the more you do it. Science has concluded that a perpetual motion machine is an impossibility: we can’t make a machine to make its own energy. And that’s surely true, unless and until we can find a way to harness the enormous energy that gets expended in worrying. When we start worrying about one thing, it brings to mind other things to worry about. And the more we worry about this new thing, the more our worries multiply, until before we know it we’re riding down the mighty Worry River in an open canoe with no paddles, pushed along by the momentum of worrying itself, dangerously dancing among the rocks of additional things to worry about. Worry invades our sleep, and our wakefulness. Worry shades the ways that we treat others, and the way we perceive ourselves. Worry, like rust, never sleeps, never ceases to devour anything in its path.

As bad as the Worry River is, worse is its destination: the ocean of fear. Worry ends in fearfulness, and fearfulness tempts us always to reckless behavior that, absent the fear, would be incomprehensible to us. On this Memorial Day weekend, we are entirely mindful that we remain mired in a state of war, a war that our leaders chose to fight not because of anything that had happened, but because of something that might happen. “What if,” we were asked, “the smoking gun turned out to be a mushroom cloud?” And so we invaded a sovereign nation because we had been taught to be fearful. Worry about our security became fear about our survival, and our fearfulness became recklessness. Thus it is and always shall be: worry begets fear begets recklessness.

“Do not worry about tomorrow,” Jesus said, not because he thought this path to be easy, but rather because he knew its end to be so dangerous.

Well and good. But it is one thing to be told not to worry and quite another not to worry. How do we do this? More than seventy-five years ago, Franklin Roosevelt, speaking to a nation in the midst of the Great Depression, with the rising tide of fascist totalitarian states rising in Europe and Japan, spoke words as true as any president has ever spoken. “The only thing we have to fear,” he said, “is fear itself.” Depression and fascism could not destroy us, he reasoned. But fear of them could, because fear would make us cowardly and fear would make us reckless. He wasn’t quoting Jesus, but he might have been. Do Jesus’ words this morning amount to anything other than “The only thing we have to worry about is worrying?”

Roosevelt didn’t have all the answers to every question. He made mistakes. But by acting, he embodied courage for a fearful nation. And by acting he empowered others to act as well. And the result was the resounding victory over depression and fascism, yes, but even more important, over fear itself.

Things didn’t always go exactly as Jesus might have planned either. There were and are lots of people who think he was a bit naïve, that his teachings will make you worry in this world of the bottom line. But Jesus acted. Even if he was worried himself, (and how could he have not have been?) he acted unworried. And by acting unworried he gave others the courage to act as well.

Well, here is what he did: he first sought God, and to walk in God’s ways, and when he did that, everything that he needed was given to him. This is what he told his disciples that day on the mountain: Don’t waste time worrying; it can’t help a thing. Instead of spending your time on the Worry River, put your paddle in the water and seek what God wants. As Eugene Peterson puts it, “Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow.” God is helping to sustain us here and now. And God will help sustain us tomorrow too, come what may.

Instead of worrying about what might happen or about what we don’t have, which will set us to worrying and make us fearful, let us instead try giving thanks for the blessings we have received, to observe that what we have now is sufficient for today, and that, because God is good, nothing can happen tomorrow that God will not help us to endure. Let us trust God. And let us act upon that trust, paying attention to what God is doing now: creating, redeeming and sustaining all who call upon God’s name.
Amen.