Be Not Anxious (based on Matthew 6:24-34)

“Be Not Anxious”
(a sermon based on Matthew 6:25-34, page 882 in the pew Bible)

by

Rev. Dr. Paul A. Lance, Pastor
Los Altos United Church of Christ
5550 Atherton Street, Long Beach, California  90815

August 8, 2010

    "Like the gentle rain nourishes the flowers,
        like the gentle rain helps the rivers grow,
            like the gentle rain falling from above us,
                we are nourished by God's love."
                    (Mary Lynn Lightfoot, 1937)

    God -- the Creator of this marvelous, intricate, world of nature   -- pours out grace (unearned & undeserved) like a gentle rain, like a baptism, free for the taking.  God's presence and power is nourishing, sustaining, creative...  Falling on the just and the unjust alike.  God is woven into the fabric of all life.

    Today's Scripture lesson appeals to the nature lover in us.   You want to know something about God?  Jesus tells us to look at the birds... look at the flowers.  "Consider the lilies and how they grow... Consider the birds of the air..."  I can’t help but think of St. Francis preaching to the birds... Especially coming back from a week away in the mountains -- where clear air and starry-nights, the smell of pine and eucalyptus, the crackle of a campfire -- restores that primal sensual, animal connectedness to the word of nature: God’s Creation.

    Last week, when I was preparing today’s bulletin and sermon, I thought that (after a week at camp, in the mountains) I’d want to speak about those nature-images from the pulpit: pointing to birds and lilies, nests in the trees, and a carpet of wildflowers.  Instead, I was struck in re-reading today's text, that three times in these ten verses we are told not to be anxious!    Be   not   anxious.  "Take no thought," says the King James version.  "Don't worry," we say.       "Be anxious... NOT!" say our teens.   
    Instead of pastoral reflections on nature, I think it is more important that address what Jesus was getting at in today’s text from the Sermon on the Mount.  Let’s be honest and admit that we struggle (in this day of economic down-turn) with material anxiety.

    Now, since it’s only been six months that I’ve been your Pastor, I don't yet know enough about you (your occupations & life situa-tions, whether your family is single-income, double-income, or no-income...) to say whether you have any cause for anxiety... but I DO know ME!  And the passage Steve Blount read for us this morning  hits me right where I live: my appetites, and my income.  And it seems (since the economy tanked in 2008, and Wall Street lost 40% of it’s value, and the huge numbers of home foreclosures, and the persistently high unemployment figures) our world is over-whelmed with anxiety just now.  We who have faith in God are supposed to be part of the solution, not adding more fuel on the fire!

    This passage makes me look at my spending priorities.  How I spend my money, yes -- but even more: how I spend my TIME!  How I spend my hours in the course of each day.  Am I moving forward, or spinning (spinning like a top!), just to keep up with my dining and drinking and dressing and driving habits? 

    Have I set priorities for spending my time, my talents, and my treasures, that are in keeping with the character of Christ...?

    For example, am I "hungering & thirsting for righteousness" (as Jesus says his followers should!)?  Well, not if I am preoccupied with my physical appetite, with organizing my refrigerator, grocery shopping, and counting calories.  Now, there's nothing wrong with eating sensibly, frequently, even "healthy-ly" -- but we ought not let it consume so much of our time & attention. As someone with diabetes, I am under doctor’s orders to monitor my blood sugars and lower my cholesterol intake, eat less bread & starch & alcohol; more proteins and raw vegetables.  But that cannot become a central focus of my daily life: taking thought for what I’ll eat & drink.  It’s a “sideline.”
    Or, to use another example: You and I cannot be spending our time and our energy devoted to MAKING PEACE (peace with our spouse, or peace in the world; peace with your teen-ager, or with cranky parents)...  We can't be spending our time & energy devoted to making peace, if we are focused on making money (meeting time-payments!), keeping ahead of the fashions, and not missing a meal.

    "Be not anxious," Jesus advises us, "Saying: what shall we eat, and what shall we drink, or what shall we wear?... FOR THE GENTILES strive for all these things."

    Of course, unlike his original Jewish audience, you and I are Gentiles!  We act like Gentiles, because we ARE!  But does that mean we have to act as though we have no revelation of God?  No access to the mind of Christ, or to the generous resources of the Creator?

    If you and I, in our daily behavior, cannot be distinguished for the good from those who are totally in the dark about God; who have no concept of grace and forgiveness; from those who have refused the "love of neighbor" which is God's plan; or those who do not have a supportive community standing with them (like this church)...

    If you, in your behavior and in your daily thoughts, are just as anxious as any unbelieving Gentile, then you are saying (in effect) to the world:  "Yes, I believe in God, but MY GOD IS UNABLE to supply my needs.  My God is unable, or unwilling, to communicate with me.  My God is unconcerned with my physical and material well-being."

    Friends, if our God were truly UNABLE, unwilling, or unconcerned... then we may just as well go home and lock up this building.  Auction it off for its property value, and be done with it.

    But, if we believe our Lord IS ABLE to supply our needs, with a bit of creative sharing on our part, and caring, and vision, and encouragement...  If our Lord IS WILLING to communicate with us, through Scripture and song and telling our stories... 
If our Lord IS CONCERNED for our well-being... Then we ought to be living in that assurance! 

    We should be living lives, which are so radiantly attractive, spiritually centered, and emotionally secure... that every one of these pews (and the choir loft behind me) are full!  Full with our friends, who need what we've got; full with our family members, who have seen the great change in our attitudes at home!

    A spirit of anxiety betrays our faith.  And so do our words:  "Therefore do not worry, SAYING: what shall we eat, and what shall we drink, and what shall we wear?..."

    Anxiety uses the language of unbelief.  It has been said that "from the abundance of your heart words spill out of your mouth."

    So, what do you suppose fills the heart when our mouth is saying: "What shall we eat?  What shall we drink?  What shall we wear?"  This is not the language of faith.  These are not the words that spill out of a heart deeply concerned with matters of the spirit; admitting where we have fallen short, rejoicing that we have been forgiven, and committing ourselves to LOVE ONE ANOTHER...

    OK, so it's obvious (what I‘ve been saying)...  our material anxieties make us unable to function as a follower of Christ in our world; and makes us use the language of unbelief.   Still, if you are like me, it is so easy... so natural... to get caught up in worry.

    How often?  How often since you and I came to know God's grace and assurance, forgiveness and faithfulness, have we pushed the panic-button when the piles of bills come in?  Ministers are not immune from material anxiety.  Just like you, we sometimes have to cover our checks with our credit cards, take on second mortgages, and scale-back our expectations, our vacations, and our spending-habits.  The economic down-turn that has pinched some of you, tweaks our church treasurer as well.  
    Every line item in a “budget” reflects our values, and every decision to defer paying a bill shows our priorities.  It's true for you at home, at work; it's true for us here in God's house.  Expenses don't just go away when money gets tight.  Expenses don't take a summer vacation.  (Now, don’t get me wrong.  Los Altos UCC is in fine financial shape, for a small congregation.  Two of our former member families – Alberta McMahon & the Piotrowskis – deeded their homes to the church when they passed away, and we gain from those two endowments. Furthermore, the rental of our facilities to the Montessori school helps keep us afloat.  You can relax about that.)

    When the cash flow dwindles, I know the temptation to reach for the panic-button.  And I know the convicting power of this text, as it flies in the face of so much of my own life... pointing out my own misplaced priorities!  And so, this question is for me, as well as for you to consider: 

    Have we searched our hearts lately, in the light of the principles Jesus offers us, to know WHERE our treasure is?  To know where we place our day-to-day values? To know where our anxieties are rooted?  Perhaps it is time again to really listen to the kinds of words that spill out of our hearts, since they reveal where our deepest loyalties lie.

    We hear in the nightly news that our teachers are facing another pay-cut, when they really deserve a raise!  We read about our state workers receiving IOU's, the courts and the DMV taking Friday furlough days to save money; we hear about Cal. State Long Beach classes and faculty being cut to the bone.  Going through my many boxes of papers and program from the past, I came across a July 10, 1957, front page printer's master for the Long Beach INDEPENDENT.   53 years ago the headline read: "5% city worker pay raise requested."  But times were tough...The article doubted they would get it that year.

    And then, another headline, dated two days later: "North American Aviation firing 10,000 workers" due to cancellation of the Air Force's half-billion dollar Navaho guided missile program. 
These could be today's newspapers, just change the names to BOEING and the C-17 Globemaster military cargo plane, or to your own request for a raise...  I'm sure panic buttons were blinking all over town in July of 1957, even as they are in 2010!

Jesus said for them, and says for us today: Be not anxious! (Take a moment.  Pause.)  Consider...  "Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?" 

    To Jesus, it is apparent we do not have our sense of VALUE  right.  That is, we don't appreciate our intrinsic WORTH in contrast to the things which sustain us.

    If God has given you LIFE... and given you that body of intricate complexity... then certainly God will provide what's needed to preserve and to protect it.  Focus upon the real you: be not anxious, pause to consider...  "Your heavenly Father KNOWS that you need them all."  That's the way you are made!  God knows!

    It's through no effort of yours that you have a body.  It's through no work of yours that you have the gift of life... whether for only a dozen years, or for a century.  It is through no skill of yours (or will of yours) that your stomach can digest a lump of bread...  So, why spend our energy, spend our life, spend our conscious will worrying about whether we might miss a meal!?  Compared with your life, what is today's lunch?  Compared with your body, what is clothing, but external decoration!  Jesus would have us realize our precious worth as a human being, as a creature of God, who is loved as a child.  There is no NEED to worry; God knows you.  And you are precious!

    Not only are our anxious thoughts needless, Jesus shows that they are senseless as well: "Look at the birds of the air... Consider the flowers of the field..."  God cares and provides for their needs.  Are you not of more value than they?!  They are not children of God, but you are.  No one baptizes birds; flowers have not been reborn through faith in God, but you have been! 
What makes you think God would have less to do with you, than with the rest of nature?  What makes you think God would care less for you than for them?

    Once you realize your worth, anxious thought appears sense-less... needless.  And, Jesus shows us, too, that it is USELESS, as well:  "Which of you, by being anxious, can add a single hour to your span of life?"  ... I can't...  Just like you, I have 24 hours to live -- today, that is!  24 hours for which I will give an account.  One day at a time; it's how life comes to us all.  It's measured for our own good.  Jesus advises us to avoid spending the present day rehashing the past, or fretting about the future. 

    "Don’t worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will bring worries of its own," he says. "Let the day's own trouble be enough for today."

    These 24 hours can be a GREAT time to be alive!  A time for doing something to overcome the hate in this world with love.  Time to help another human being toward the personal dignity you & I want for ourselves. Or we can be sapped of our time -- sapped of our energy -- by pouring it into anxious thoughts about our own material well-being.  

Someone once reminded me that: 
"Worry never paid a bill!  Worry never climbed a hill;    never led a horse to water; never did a thing it ought-a."

    Material anxiety.  It's natural... but it's needless, it's senseless, it's useless -- and, for us in the church, worry proves faith-less.  "Will he not much more clothe you, O YE of LITTLE FAITH?"

    Jesus is not talking to folks who have NO faith; he's talking to folks like us, who have some faith, but it needs to grow.  He's talking to his followers: men and women, who are unable to relate their faith in God to the worrisome need which is in their minds. 

    Spinning like a top over matters of material well-being may come easily to us in this fast-paced, high-demand, affluent-prone corner of Southern California.  But that anxiety may also effectively eliminate our potential for serving God in this community... all because of needless, senseless, useless, faithless worry!

It is (1) unlike the character of a child of God. 
(2) It makes us unable to function AS a child of God. 
And (3) our words betray a heart of unbelief. 

Christ would have us stop spinning... and rest in Him.