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Do Not Worry “Do not worry. Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?” These are ironic words in today’s context of Christchurch’s dark hour of worry. Today many people will find resonance with the prophet’s view of Jesus as ‘a man of sorrow and acquainted with grief’. It will be a comfort to those who may be wondering if Jesus has any empathy with their situation · To know that he experienced great agony in the Garden of Gethsemane. · To know that he wept at Lazarus’ tomb. · To know that he was saddened when people refused to trust God. · To know that His passion and death is a harrowing story. · To know that their darkness and sadness along with all the darkness and sadness of the world descended on him as he went to the cross. However, to survive such a crisis, to draw strength, to move on, we must also remind ourselves that Jesus, in spite of his difficult life, was also an optimistic person! The examples we find in the Gospel reading for today flow right out of Jesus’ life and the perspective from which he viewed life. He drew from his own life the illustrations he used in his teaching. These illustrate his optimistic nature. In which case he will have watched the birds he is referring to plying the thermals above the hills of Galilee. He will have taken the time to appreciate the beauty of the many varieties of wild flowers that grew up in the fields near his home. The word translated as lily here includes several different flowers such as crocus, anemone and gladiolus. Time and time again we discover that despite the hardships and suffering, he encountered on a daily basis, Jesus had a strong and lively sense of the goodness of God. His spirituality saw the world as a beautiful and God-filled place to be enjoyed and shared with others. Given that His teaching grew out of his own experience of the world, we must conclude that when he told his followers not to worry about tomorrow, he will have practiced what he was preaching, he will have led by example. When he said do not worry about tomorrow, we must assume that he was a man who did exactly that who made the present moment count, who lived in the present and gave attention to the present task, who extracted the goodness of God to be found in the here and now, however ghastly the here and now might have been. Furthermore, we know that Jesus wanted the people to find happiness and fulfilment in life in spite of the pain and suffering which he knew from first hand was part and parcel of what it means to be human. In John 10 Jesus says: “I have come that they might have life and have it to the full.” Happiness is what Jesus wanted for humankind. He could not shield people from trials and tribulations nor from the suffering that is part of human existence, but he could offer people a way of being that would enable them to get the most out of every moment of their lives. Today we learn that the habit of worrying is not part of that way of being. In fact worrying is counter-productive to finding happiness, contentment and peace. Jesus’ recipe for finding happiness is simply this: Put your trust in God and obey his commandments, Trust and Obey. That’s it! Worry has no part in this recipe, rather we must stop worrying . Of course that is a whole lot easier said than done! Our lives on earth are littered with situations and challenges that are anxiety provoking. We undergo experiences that we would never want to relive and we worry What if .... that were to happen again?! We hear of experiences others have endured and we worry What if that were to happen to me?! This week we have all received a strong sense of the deadliness of the earthquake that struck Christchurch through the stream of heartbreaking stories and pictures that flowed into our homes and hearts via the media. This event which may well rank as the greatest calamity New Zealand has had to face. So does Jesus advice mean that the people of Christchurch have nothing to worry about and that we should sit back in the midst of their pain and relax? Not so much.... It is useful here to define worry before we go any further. Worry is the undue fretting over what might happen to us or those we love and allowing those negative thoughts to paralyze our ability to function and to think straight. The human response to problems is to address them and to try and figure out how to solve them. This is not worrying; this is bestowing legitimate, constructive concern and attention to an area of our lives that needs creative thinking. This week we have seen legitimate concern working at its best. When the scale of the problem seems this overwhelming the importance of community pulling together, national and international support, strong leadership and open communication cannot be overstated. Today a terrifying situation faces the people of Christchurch and our nation. Jesus reminds us that the way to deal with these situations is to desist from engaging in chains of thoughts and images that are negative and in which we attempt to avoid anticipated potential threats i.e. Don’t worry. He advises us to desist from a type of thinking that makes us relive a past event or live out hypothetical future ones ; such thoughts that begin with phrases like “ if only..” and What if...” , events that are not actually happening right now, that exist only in our minds i.e. Don’t worry. To desist from thoughts that make us fret and anxious, afraid and unhappy. For these thoughts will make us distrustful of the world, of ourselves and worst of all of God and His steadfast love and power. The underlying message of this passage and indeed of the whole of the Sermon on the Mount is simply this, stop wasting time worrying and fretting, turn your energies into a more constructive direction, the direction of trusting God and in his strength and with his guidance deal to the task at hand. To paraphrase Jesus words, ‘Seek first the will of God in any given situation, trust his authority, enlist his aid, and focus your attention on the problem at hand. Trust in his power and in his ability to partner with you as you engage with the current problems facing you, for each day has enough trouble of its own!” To worry is to waste your time and your energy. It won’t change your situation or your problem and at worst it will shorten your life. To worry is a pointless and unhealthy habit which will stress you and make you and those around you unproductive and unhappy. The irony is that most of us, are very often not even aware that we have started to worry and fret. We wake up one day feeling stressed, anxious or even depressed. And then we wonder how that happened. That is the nature of habits. They cause us to operate at a sub-conscious level. This is why we must pause from time to time to take stock of our lives and to reflect on our thought patterns. Jesus wisely advises us to live in the present. The present is the only reality we can influence. Yesterday is no more and tomorrow is a dream. There is a world of difference between attending to what exists "out there" and attending to what doesn’t actually exist except in your thoughts and imagination. Now it has to be said that we are all prone to worrying. For some, living without worry, sounds to many people, as impossible as living totally without breathing. Some of us are so hooked on worry that if we haven’t got anything to worry about we worry that we’ve missed something we ought to be worrying about. Jesus’ words invite us to break this habit. He says: ‘Trust God and submit to his authority in your life one day at a time and wellness will follow. Julian of Norwich puts it this way, trust God and “All will be well and all will be well and all manner of thing will be well.” Nature’s pulverising attack on Christchurch reminds us that we are one nation and that this is no time for worrying, this is the time for us all to pull together, to trust God and in his strength and with his guidance to deal with the task at hand which is to reach out with legitimate constructive concern to our brothers and sisters who need our support. We can do this in practical ways like, by sending money to them, by opening our homes to them, by supporting those who are supporting them and most importantly by praying for them. So let’s begin right now by doing just that. Let us pray. |
