Sermon: “Do Not Be Anxious”

Text: Matthew 6:24-34

9^th Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)

June 1, 2008

Scripture introduction.  Our second reading this morning is the familiar passage from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, in which Jesus tells the people not to worry.  “Consider the birds of the air and the lilies of the field,” he said.  God takes care of them, and God will take care of you, too.  Three times in this passage Jesus says, “Do not worry.” 

In the sermon title, I have used the translation, “Do not be anxious,” because I believe it conveys better the sense of the Greek word that Matthew used, which concerns undue worry about things.  Sometimes in our everyday speech we use the word “worry” to refer to the normal and appropriate kind of care that we should devote to our affairs.  For example, if you are out of change and I buy you a soda, you may say, “I’ll pay you back later today.”  I may reply, “Don’t worry about it.”  That is, pay it no mind.  Jesus was not telling us to go through life with the casual “What, Me Worry?” attitude of Alfred E. Neuman.[1]  We are to think and work and take appropriate care for our daily affairs.  After all, the birds certainly work hard finding seeds to eat.  And the lilies in their own way are busy photosynthesizing energy from the sun to produce their glorious colors. 

What Jesus does want us to avoid is anxiety—the chronic worry that will not let us sleep, that causes us to bite our fingernails, and that leads us to be short with our friends and family.  As he rightly points out in this sermon, the birds and the lilies are blissfully free of anxiety.  How do they do it?

Sermon.  Years ago I was among the hundreds of persons invited to the grand opening of the Kirklin Clinic, a huge multi-specialty academic medical practice associated with the University of Alabama School of Medicine.  The clinic was moving into new office space designed by the famous architect, I.M. Pei.  For the gala event the clinic’s management had invited a famous physician—I regret that I have forgotten his name—to give a lecture about cardiology.  Early in his career, during the 1960s, that doctor had been on the team of physicians called in by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to figure out why so many young astronauts were having heart attacks.  This was during the Cold War, so of course everyone suspected that the Russians were behind it.  NASA wanted to figure out how the Russians were doing it and put a stop to it.

This doctor got to work immediately.  He did a lot of tests on a lot of astronauts and finally began to form the theory that stress—not the Russians—was the cause of the heart disease.  The grinding pace of training, the physical requirements of the job, always having to deal with the unexpected, never knowing where the next danger might come from—all these were contributing to the problem.  Stress was taking its toll on these young men, many of whom had come from previous stressful work as Navy or Air Force test pilots.

To drive home the point of his lecture, this doctor then projected a photographic image upon a large screen that we all could see.  As the image came into view he explained that it was a microscopic view of muscle tissue from a human heart.  This was tissue from a normal heart—the person had died of something else.  It looked to me like a newly plowed field: there were rows and rows of long, thin cardiac muscle fibers, all lined up next to each other.  Then the doctor removed that slide and replaced it with another.  Like the first, it had long rows of muscle fiber, but unlike the first slide there were many dark lines that cut across the rows in a perpendicular direction.  Using the analogy of the field again, it was as if someone had used a hoe to cut across the furrows and break their continuous flow.  The doctor explained that the second slide of heart tissue was from a 78 year-old man who had died after a series of heart attacks.  The breaks in his cardiac tissue were caused by these heart attacks. 

Finally, the doctor projected onto the screen a third image of cardiac muscle tissue.  This one looked exactly like the second—the breaks in the muscle fiber were easily visible, even to a layperson like me.  Then, the doctor revealed that the third image had come from an outwardly healthy and asymptomatic 25 year-old Navy pilot.  The stress of repeatedly landing his jet fighter aircraft on the heaving deck of an aircraft carrier, sometimes in a storm and sometimes in total darkness, had damaged his heart muscle—so much that it was indistinguishable from that of the old man who had died after multiple heart attacks.

Ever since attending that program, I have understood that stress can rob us of life and vitality.  A little bit of stress may improve our performance, as long as it is not too intense and does not last too long.  When we face a challenge, our bodies produce adrenalin and other hormones that increase our physical abilities.  That’s why my heart beats a little faster when I preach a sermon.  But if the challenge continues without relief, the body keeps producing those hormones; and the result eventually is a breakdown—physical or mental or both.  I guess that’s a good reason not to preach too long!  At work we may have so many projects going at any one time that we become anxious about getting it all done.  If we are just busy, then good planning and diligence may help us finish all the jobs.  But if we really do have too much to do, no amount of planning or hard work will solve the problems.  Even if for a short time we can force ourselves to great feats of productivity, we all know what happens when we “burn the candle at both ends.”  If we have taken on too much, or too much has been placed on us, at some point our increased stress levels begin to work against us. 

Of course, different things are stressful to different people.  We are all built differently.  Some would be driven crazy by assembly line work.  Others can get into “the zone” and are not stressed out by the repetitive work.  Some people thrive in an environment of time pressure and multi-tasking.  But all of us—even those rare persons who, as they say, “eat stress for breakfast”—will eventually break down if we ever feel that things have gotten out of control.  That feeling that things are out of control, I think, is also at the heart of anxiety.  As long as we think we reasonably can do something about the problem, then it’s easier not to be anxious; rather, we work at solving the problem.  But when we feel like the problem is beyond our ability to solve, but won’t go away, we are caught in the middle; and anxiety builds.  What do we do then?

Let’s listen again to the instructions Jesus gave us two thousand years ago.  “Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.  Are you not of more value than they?”  And if the lilies that are simply grass in the field are clothed in glory, then won’t the Father “much more clothe you—you of little faith?”  Consider for a moment: the birds are not in control of whether there are seeds for them to eat.  The lilies are not in control of the sunlight.  If they are not in control, but God provides for them, then won’t God provide for us even when we are not in control?  I think Jesus was saying, “Guess what: you’re not in control.  That’s OK because God is in control, and God loves you and cares for you and provides for you.”

As is so often the case, the teachings of Jesus have important practical applications—in this case, leading less anxious lives—but he also shows us deeper truths about who God is and about our human existence.  Notice how Jesus connected anxiety with faith: “Will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith?”  I can imagine Jesus smiling when he said this.  He wasn’t passing judgment; rather, he was helping them see that link between faith and anxiety.  If we really trusted God to take care of us, would we be so anxious?  We might not have all the things we want, but we would have the things we need.  We might not live to be a hundred, but the life we have would be more vital if we did not spend it worrying about things that really don’t matter.  We might even have enough time for each other—to walk, to sit on the porch, to lend a helping hand.

For years theologians have argued about what was the nature of that first sin—when Adam and Eve were in the garden.  Famously, Augustine taught that the root sin, the first one, was pride.  Calvin didn’t directly disagree with that, but he tweaked the conclusion a little.  Calvin said that the particular kind of pride that lies at the bottom of every sin is a pride that believes we can provide for ourselves better than God can.  Calvin pointed out that this kind of pride is actually unfaithfulness, unfaith, failing to trust God to know what is best for us.[2]  When we deny that God is in control and try on our own to control the parameters of our lives, we are denying that God loves us, cares for us, wants us to have what we need, and will provide for us.  When we embrace the false idea that we can be in control, eventually we will become anxious, as the contradiction between our assumptions and reality makes itself felt.  Moreover, when we try to ensure our own safety and comfort by getting enough of the world’s goods, enough never is enough.   So we take more than our share and hurt others in the process.

Jesus teaches a different way.  Certainly, prudence in our daily affairs.  Without question, hard work and diligence.  And also generosity and a basic trust that God will take care of us.  As if to remind us that we will always be fed, Jesus told us to remember him with a meal.  In a few minutes we will answer his invitation to eat the bread of life and to drink the cup of God’s forgiveness and love.  May we come to the table as birds and as lilies.