April 18, 2010 Sermon

Worry
Matthew 6:25-33

According to the US Census Bureau, mortgage foreclosures have more than doubled in the past two years.  Four out of every one hundred loan holders now cannot make their payments.  If that statistic held true in this church, maybe four or five mortgages held by people in this room right now might already be in foreclosure.  (This is a guess.  We average 150 people in worship each week.  Not all of us have mortgages, and those who do often share them with a spouse.)  And how many more of us teeter on the edge of not making our mortgage payments? 

Jesus addresses worry in his Sermon on the Mount.  As he does throughout the sermon, here he uses dramatic language.  He preaches a no compromise message that, if taken literally, breaks us apart.  We cannot behave perfectly as he calls us to do.  We do not see sufficient evidence of the perfect justice of God that he tells us exists.  Jesus tells us not to worry about food, shelter, clothing or any other material, external thing.  We must focus instead, he says, on the kingdom of God.  But we worry.  And while we worry we cannot focus on the kingdom.  Jesus concludes by telling us that if we could focus on the kingdom, God will give us “all these things” anyway.  But experience tells us that material prosperity and personal security do not go only to the righteous.  And many spiritual people we know struggle financially.

How shall we take the Sermon on the Mount?  Can we soften Jesus' message without losing our trust in the truth of the Bible?  Can we find a way to live between the worry and the kingdom that does not cheat on scripture even just a little?  We can, but we must walk carefully.  If we try to do what Jesus calls us to attempt in his Sermon on the Mount, we will come to know his peace more fully.  Pray, and you will experience the peace of Christ.  We will worry.  Yet Jesus teaches a critical spiritual truth.  Live for Him, not things.  Pray for peace and receive it.

Jesus tells us not to worry about food, drink, health or clothes.  He asks whether by worrying we can add an hour to our lives.  In fact, we know that worry shortens lives.  We use the word stress to cover a list of destructive emotional and spiritual forces.  Researchers have found negative consequences of stress on the skin, the heart, the circulatory system, the kidneys, and more.  Prolonged stress can change the chemical composition of the fluids our brains use to transmit nerve impulses.  The altered chemistry makes us more vulnerable to depression and/or bursts of rage. 

Ask any police officer.  My mother's father was a policeman in St. Louis.  During World War II he requested a transfer to become a dispatcher, though this would mean less pay.  Despite the incredible industrial expansion the war effort created, the Great Depression did not end for the workers of this country until 1946 or '47.  People were coming apart.  They had little cash.  They had lived for years on short rations for food, tires, tin foil, everything.  Loved ones were dying on beaches in the Pacific and foxholes in Europe.  My grandfather could not take any more suicide or domestic dispute calls.  He finally became a fireman because even the dispatchers had to deal with far too much tragedy.  He preferred jogging into burning buildings.

Worry kills.  Jesus uses birds and flowers to illustrate his point that we must try just to live the life God gives us.  Birds spend most of their time looking for food.  But they do so by nature, by God's design.  They do not amass great storehouses of seed.  They do not even plant seeds.  Yet they eat.  Flowers also do what God made them to do.  They put down roots and make pollen.  The birds and the bees come along and do the flowers the great favor of exchanging that pollen.  Flowers blossom.  “Terrific,” you may be thinking, “but birds and flowers do not have mortgages.  I do.  How the heck am I supposed to just stop worrying about paying the bills?” 

A fair question.  Jesus answers it with a reminder that God values us most highly of all His creations.  Though the flowers are better clothed than even the richest king in Hebrew history, God esteems us “much more”.  Jesus goes on to tell us that we are of “little faith” when we worry.  This sounds harsh.  Yet he must speak strongly.  Love compels him to confront us with our need to focus on him, not our material worries.  I grew up swimming.  I took all the lessons the YMCA offered.  (Not that I wanted to, but my parents insisted.)  By the time I was sixteen I had lifesaving certification from both the Boy Scouts and the American Red Cross.  But I almost did not receive my lifesaving merit badge.  The waterfront director at camp would not sign my papers.  He said he would not trust me to work as a lifeguard.  I was too cocky.  I could do all the physical stuff.  I breezed through the lessons on overturned boats, CPR and jumping into the water from the high chair without letting my head go under the surface.  I did the mile swim.  But I did not listen.  I ignored my instructor’s warnings that people often panicked and resisted getting saved.  When pressed I apparently told him not to worry, that I was strong and mean and no matter what anybody did I would get them to the beach.

That waterfront director finally told me that he cared for me and for the swimming public too much to let me get away with my attitude.  In a similar manner Jesus loves us so much he feels compelled to shake us up.  He means to get us to trust Him, not things.  This is virtually impossible for us to do, at least fully.  Yet in his sermon he refuses to compromise his message.  Focus on the kingdom.  Focus on your relationship with Christ.  Seek security in Him.

Live for Jesus, not things.  Trust that God will provide what you need.  In the section of his sermon just before this Jesus spoke about prayer.  Do you pray when you feel anxious?  This might seem like an obvious question.  It has only one correct answer.  Yet in my experience as a pastor, and in my personal life, I find that we do not pray as often or as fervently as we could, even when under great stress.  Pray.

Using the prayer advice Jesus gives us just in this one chapter, Matthew 6, we learn to pray quietly, so as not to try to impress others, yet regularly; to pray straight to the point, as God does not need to hear “piled up words”; and to pray with an honest, straightforward list of our needs.  Jesus gives us the Lord’s Prayer just before our passage.  It contains three requests for basic needs: daily bread, forgiveness and protection from temptation.  Putting all this prayer guidance together we come up with the following recommendation for worry: We ought to pray quietly yet regularly about our worries.  We ought to pray to the point about what scares us.  And we ought to come clean with God about exactly what we think we need in the face of our fears.

Most of us know all too well the two o’clock in the morning feeling.  That’s when we lie awake as our worries chase around and around in our heads.  We try to think through them.  We may get up, make a cup of tea, read a book, watch a movie, or try to make a list of how we will deal with whatever worries us.   Each of these strategies has its place.  Yet the one thing we ought to do before and above them all is to pray.  Martin Luther, the great founder of the Protestant Reformation, famously said, “I have a great many things to do today.  I shall have to pray twice as long.”  He meant that when faced with pressure he needed to pray even more than usual.  While this seems counterintuitive, it makes perfect sense.

Jesus never promised us wealth, physical health, or even protection from our enemies.  One thing he did promise us is peace.  “Peace I give, my peace I give to you,” he said.  He added that his peace passes our understanding and has the power to overcome the worst that the Evil One can throw at us.  When you face massive mortgage and credit card debt, pray.  When you face disease, pray.  When you face disintegrating relationships, pray.  Pray when any stressor starts breaking you apart.

Doctors Andrew Newberg and Eugene D’Aquili, both on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania School of medicine, did a study in 2001 of the human brain while praying.  They used a single photon emission computed tomography machine (a variation of CT and PET scanners) to measure the brains of monks reading, doing crossword puzzles and adding lists of numbers.  Then they measured the monks’ brains as they prayed.  The doctors found a clear and repeated contrast in the scans made while praying.  They found a marked decrease in the posterior orientation association area of the brains.  The brain uses this OAA, as it is known, to help distinguish between the self and outside objects or beings.  Prayer, in other words, acts to blur our sense of ourselves as separate beings.  When chemicals are used to suppress the OAA subjects report a sense of calm, of increased ability to process difficulties without triggering the hormones the brain uses to tell the rest of the body it is under stress or attack.

Prayer, in other words, brings peace.  Doctors Newberg and D-Aguili actually speculated in their scholarly article that we are “wired for God”.  (This phrase brought them brief fame—or notoriety, depending on whether people believe in a loving God.)  But we do not really need a study to tell prayer works.  Jesus tells us prayer works.  As many a preacher has observed, the number one reason prayer does not work is that it is not tried.  Pray about your worries.  Pray quietly but regularly.  Get to the point in your prayers and be honest with God about your needs.  The peace of Christ will come.  Your worries may not go away.  Bad things will still happen.  But the peace of Christ is real and it is powerful.  Ask for it.  It can diminish and even defeat worry.