Today, I feel called by the scripture to talk about anxiety. I think about anxiety a lot, to be frank—I’m a very anxious person, by nature. And the most fabulous—and resonant—definition of anxiety I’ve ever heard is that anxiety is using your imagination to be mean to you. Whoof. And yet… well… yes!
Thing is, lately, I feel as though a lot more folks have come over to join me in chronic-anxiety-land. As we stand on the other side of this contentious election, many of us are deeply shaken by the events of this season, and uncertain about what happens next. One thing I’ve been focusing on is that just about everyone in the country is sharing (yes, I said sharing!) one experience right now: Everyone has just learned, or maybe relearned—some of y’all might have been more observant than me—that about 50% of the country disagrees with them. Worrisome! And there are a lot of things to be said about what to do in light of this. To my way of thinking, though, every one of those “things we might do” depend on acting from the right heart, and the scriptures today speak to our internal, rather than our relational, processes. Today we’re talking about the heart.
Do not worry, says Jesus.
Do not worry.
Do… not … worry?
Well, that feels a lot easier said than done on good days! And some of the days I’ve had and seen recently have been … not good.
This is where careful attention helps us: I cannot believe that “do not worry” is meant as a commandment the way “do not murder” is. And it’s not a scolding. I believe that in the very act of telling us not to worry, Jesus is affirming that he knows that we DO worry! He does not condemn us for these feelings; rather, He acknowledges them and redirects our attention. “Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes?” He asks. “Is not life, and the abundant life I am talking about, more than any worries: temporal and temporary as they are?”
Let’s get into this a little bit. This passage from Matthew comes in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus is speaking to the crowds. Oftentimes, we can observe that Jesus says different things to the crowds than he does to the disciples, in small groups, with his friends. We see lots of passages where Jesus speaks in parables to the crowds, but plainly to his friends. So, it seems worth noting, that when he tells the crowds not to worry, he is using the exact same word as he uses when, in Luke, he tells Martha, “Martha, you are anxious and troubled.” And oftentimes people interpret that scene as though Jesus is scolding Martha. I don’t believe that’s true in either case.
I find it a little easier when I think of this other “do not worry,” because I can think in terms of friendship: Which of us would not seek to help our friend when they are distracted, anxious, worried,
even when they are worried about important things: their ministry, their work, their loved ones?
Those things are absolutely important, but worry won’t help any of them. What better act of love can there be, in that moment, than to see your anxiety, see your worry, and say, look! Here! There is ease available to you. There is time with your friend. I am your friend, and your service, your work, your ministry will be there when you return. Or bringing it back to Matthew, “What or whether you eat, or what you wear will not be changed by worry.” Or as a therapist of mine said once: “You know what worrying is not the same as planning, right?” The things we are concerned about are important, and letting go of our worry will only help.
Jesus models naming our anxieties: we do worry about our material situation, just as Martha worried about her work! But in naming our anxieties, we begin to loosen the grip of worry on our hearts. Jesus encourages us to be honest about what worries us but not to let those worries define us. Anxiety is real, but it is not sovereign. God is.
One of the challenges of preaching on this passage is that “consider the lilies of the field” has become fairly cliché in the last 2000 years. But again, this is where careful attention can help us. “they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these”—especially after a long days work, that passage sounds like, “Well, nice job if you can get it, lilies of the field! But that not toiling or spinning thing just doesn’t work for most of us!” But think of existence in a field! Just because they don’t punch a timeclock doesn’t necessarily make the lilies life easy. What happens in fields? Storms still come, blight can come, lilies get eaten, seasons change—but the point I believe that Jesus is trying to make there is that no matter what—sun or storm, life or death—the lilies, like us, exist fully within the love of their Creator.
This doesn’t mean we ignore the work to be done. Lilies still grow; they reach toward the light and respond to the seasons. In the same way, we are called to act, but to do so from a place of trust rather than anxiety. It means recognizing that our worth, like the lilies’, comes not from our efforts or our achievements or even on our efforts but from God’s love—we are, each and every one of us, beloved children of God. When we align our lives with God’s loving priority, the fruits of that trust—justice, mercy, and compassion—begin to blossom.
When you go to seminary, one experience that just about everyone has to have is called Clinical Pastoral Education, which is a fancy name for chaplain training. They send you somewhere with BIG pastoral needs, a hospital or hospice, or sometimes a prison or other challenging place. And the big thing they tell you that people need from their chaplain is a “non-anxious presence.” Because in the worst moments of people’s lives, in the life-or-death moments, that is when letting go of anxiety about outcomes is most important, and most difficult. We learn that the chaplain’s role is to help with that.
In my own CPE experience, I stood praying with a wife in the room as we watched her husband of 30 some years die. Surely, one of the worse moments of her life. And what I remember distinctly is that she started to make lists in her worry. Call the bank. Call the funeral home. Call the lawyer. Call the credit cards. And as she was making lists she turned to me and said: I have to learn to live in the world as a single person now! And the one thing I could find to say was, yes, you do, but you do not have to do it tonight. All you need to do tonight is to go home, and sleep the best you can, hug your kids and your grandkids, and just be. All the tasks will be there tomorrow. Or the next day. Or when you can. Just be.
Trusting God means means embodying the peace we wish to see in the world. It means using your imagination to be kind—to yourself and others. It means sitting with our feelings, showing kindness to those we disagree with, advocating for the oppressed, and holding fast to hope when despair threatens to overwhelm us. In doing so, we model what it looks like to live in God’s abundance, even when the world around us may feel scarce and unstable.
Jesus’s message about anxiety is not a promise that life will be easy—storms! Blight! It is, instead, a reminder that God is with us in every circumstance, offering us the strength to persevere and the assurance that His plans are for our good. When we trust in God and not in our own striving, the worries of today lose some of their power, because we know our hope and our peace come from and rest in God’s eternal love.