St. Paul’s United Church Sunday, February 27, 2011

What, Me Worry? – Rev. David Mundy

Philippians 4:4-9 Matthew 6:24-34

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Have you noticed how television reporting on the weather has changed over the past few years? I’m ancient enough that I can remember when the weather guy stood there with a piece of chalk and mapped out what was coming our way.

Eventually the weather people became minor celebrities and they used technology more and more to explain what was unfolding. Of course they were still wrong a lot of the time but it looked more impressive. More recently the concept seems to be weather as drama and entertainment. “A huge storm in bearing down on the GTA!” we’re told. Then they tease us: “Details coming up in ten minutes!” When we eventually get to the weather report, they try to scare us half to death.

In the good ol’ days there were just thunderstorms and snowstorms and the occasional blizzard. Now there are “weather bombs.” Who made that one up? The media types trot out Snowmaggedon, and Snowpocalypse, cutesy variations on biblical themes. And they are still wrong a lot of the time. It’s strange, really, because even when they get it right we still can’t change the weather. Supposedly all this helps, but it really seems to make us worry just a little bit more in a world of worry.

The room where we watch the news each evening also has the window where we look out to the bird feeders in our backyard. The birds don’t get the dubious benefit of the weather forecasts so they just go about their daily lives. I understand that their lives are difficult and dangerous, yet they keep appearing Sometimes I look out first thing in the morning when it is minus 20 degrees Celsius, and they are there. It will be snowing hard and they are there. One miserable day I peered out and saw a cardinal perched on a branch above a feeder, bright red against the white snow. Suddenly my world was a better place.

“Do not worry about your life . . . look at the birds, free and unfettered, not tied down to a job description, careless in the care of God. And you count far more to God than birds.” That is Eugene Peterson’s translation of one of the verses we just heard, and it is a fresh take on this encouragement that God is our provider and sustainer.

Take no thought for your life . . .behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? KJV

This morning we listened to two passages of scripture that are about anxiety and worry. More specifically, they are about how to live beyond worry and anxiety, because most of us are quite skilled at worrying already – we don’t need any coaching. Jesus begins by talking to people about how to deal with wealth and not to treat it as though it were a god. Its surprising because he isn’t speaking to middle class Canadians as he teaches. His audience members are peasants who fish and farm for a living, along with day labourers who aren’t sure what each day will hold. Yet as they sit on a hillside in Galilee Jesus encourages them to move beyond worry, to savour the day with all its blessings. That day they may have been plunked in the midst of a field of wildflowers. In northern Israel there is a brief rainy season during which the hillsides magically green and the flowers emerge. While the flowers are only around briefly, they are glorious – I have seen them in April in Galilee – and then they are gone. Jesus encourages them to awaken to the loveliness of life as it comes.

Of course Jesus is speaking to middle class Canadians in the twenty first century, and perhaps we need to pay closer attention because we might actually be more inclined to worry than those people by the lakeside two thousand years ago, even though we are infinitely more wealthy.

Are you a worrier? I suspect that there are a fair number of us lurking around even though we have heard this passage before. I am “guilty as charged” and I worry when I’m not worried. Some people just don’t worry, but the rest of us are trying to figure out what’s wrong with them – don’t they have a grip on reality? Some of you will recall the heyday of MAD magazine with the goofy image of Alfred E. Newman and the caption “what, me worry?”

Sometimes we fret about financial security, to the point that it can be a destructive compulsion. We were married around the same time as good friends, another Christian couple, and they were as optimistic about life’s possibilities as we were. They were also as poor as most newlyweds but they worked hard and saved hard and “got ahead” as the expression goes. They both had decent jobs so she looked forward to the day when they didn’t have to be quite so frugal and could travel and do other things together.

Unfortunately he became more attached to his money as time went on, perhaps a throwback to his childhood. His idea of travel was a drive to the local doughnut shop for a coffee and a cruller. And he just didn’t want to spend a dime on anything or anyone. Eventually her frustration and resentment led her to separation and eventually divorce. And guess what? Half of everything he had squirrelled away went with her.

The state of our health, or of our loved ones, often causes deep anxiety, especially as the years go by. And a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. The comedian Ellen DeGeneres says she has a woman friend who made the mistake of checking out her symptoms on the internet after she developed some aches and pains. Now she is convinced that she has an enlarged prostate!

If we are not careful, we end up teaching our children to be worry warts as well, with the best of intentions for protecting them. A colleague with younger children was telling me that she visited friends recently who have kids of a similar age to her own. She feels badly for the son, who is probably eight or nine, and who has absorbed every caution his parents have issued to the point that he is a nervous wreck. Before he goes to bed he unplugs everything in sight out of his fear of an electrical fire.

We are anxious about the rising price of oil, of the possibility of declining housing values, our human assault on the environment . . . the list goes on and on. It’s not that these things are unimportant. It’s just that unbeknownst to us, our worry begins to shape us. It can rob us of the joy of living and take away our ability to laugh from deep within. It can make us cynical and pessimistic about just about everything.

It might be unfair to label worry as a sin, because that’s a little like kicking someone when they’re down. Some of us are biologically more disposed to anxiety than others. We all have seasons in our lives when we are hit hard by difficult circumstances. Yet I can say from my own heart that I know getting stuck in my anxiety and worry is not healthy for body or spirit, and in the end it doesn’t honour God.

Do you remember the film, The Colour Purple? Do you remember this bit of dialogue between Celie and Shug?

Shug: More than anything God love admiration.
Celie: You saying God is vain?

Shug: No, not vain, just wanting to share a good thing. I think it pisses God off when you walk by the colour purple in a field and don't notice it.

Celie: You saying it just wanna be loved like it say in the bible?

Shug: Yeah, Celie. Everything wanna be loved. Us sing and dance, and holla just wanting to be loved. Look at them trees. Notice how the trees do everything people do to get attention... except walk?

[they laugh]

Shug: Oh Miss Celie, I feels like singing!

So how do we counteract the worry within and without? Well, if worrying is learned behaviour, not fretting and worrying can be learned as well. If we want to change, then we will choose change, and we will also choose an awareness of God and a relationship with Christ which will allow that change to happen.

How can we do this? Recent studies have confirmed that regular meditation essentially rewires the brain in a positive way which creates a sense of well-being and centredness. When people learn to meditate they become mindful of their breathing, and they focus on the moment.

In a way, isn’t that what the apostle Paul is saying in the verses we read this morning from his letter to the church in Philippi? We know that Paul was getting older when he wrote this letter and that he was under house arrest in Rome. He might have been tempted to be bitter after years of energetically planting congregations across Asia Minor, only to become a prisoner for serving Christ.

Instead Paul says that Christ is close at hand, so we needn’t worry. He encourages these folk to express joy and to engage in a prayerful way of living which makes room for gratitude, and peace, and concern for others. All this can happen in Christ.

Then Paul invites them, and us, to consider the things which move us beyond our fretfulness and cynicism and worry into the fullness of life. What are the honourable, and pleasing, and praiseworthy events which happen all around us?

When have we been blessed by the smile of a child? When have we admired the person who is facing illness with courage and dignity? When have we sung God’s praise and felt the warmth of that experience? Where have we witnessed ordinary people living with extraordinary integrity in their daily lives? When we stop to consider all these things, so many of them happen when we come together as the Christian community.

Our challenge is go out from this worship and affirm all of these things in the “push and shove” of day to day life. We can let go of worry one hour, one day, one week at a time.