Anxiety and Trust

So far in this series on the Sermon on the Mount, we’ve heard Jesus’ radical teachings on what it means to be ‘blessed’ by God, on how to truly live into God’s ways, against expressions of faith that turn it into public performance, and on the relationship between our heart and what it is we value. All of this points to a teaching that focuses our attention on sharing God’s mercy, grace, and love with others, while holding this world and its kingdoms, concerns, and pleasures with an open hand. Today, we turn to his famous words about anxiety and worrying, which are always relevant, but perhaps at no time in my lifetime more relevant than they are today.

Jesus begins: “‘Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear” (Matthew 6.25a). I’m stopping here becaused I’m struck by the ‘therefore’ here, which I hadn’t noticed before. He’s directly linking this teaching about not worrying to the previous line, which is “You cannot serve God and wealth.” We often thinking of serving money as dedicating our lives to greed. But this teaching is more nuanced. Jesus is saying that being overly concerned about having enough is also a kind of service to money. This feels harsh, since being able to afford food and housing is obviously very important! But, it’s a good reminder of the spiritual lesson behind fasting and other spiritual disciplines, and the truth behind it is perhaps easier to recognize in those areas. The goal of fasting is to free ourselves from being controlled by our appetite for food. But the wise practitioner will quickly learn that focusing on eating as less as possible is as much being controlled by food as gluttony is. With this in mind, Jesus’ teaching about money makes a bit more sense. We are not to be controlled by wealth, nor by our lack of it. Rather, we are to be freed to trust God with our finances. And as we saw last time, our ‘treasure’ isn’t just about money, it’s about what we value in life. It could have just as easily read, “You cannot serve God and national security” or “… God and pleasure” or “…. God and academic achievement.” We are to serve, worship, trust, and orient our lives around God — God’s Kingdom and God’s ways (which are, again, about generous, reciprocal sharing with others what we have been given by God) — and God alone. “Therefore” we are not to be anxious in the world. I’m not saying this is easy; certainly faith in God does not make the hard practical and psychological realities of life disappear. But what it does is shift our focus, broaden our perspective, and reframe those realities in ways that release us to see the good in the world along with the bad, to experience joy, love, and connection — in other words, to live and not be overwhelmed by our concerns, however pressing they are.

He continues:

Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds in the sky: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth more than they are? And can any of you add a single hour to your life by worrying? And why do you worry about clothes? Consider the wild lilies, how they grow; they neither work nor spin yarn, yet I say to you, not even Solomon in all his glory was clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass in the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? (6.25b-30)

By pointing to these examples of the abundance and beauty of the natural world, Jesus highlights by contrast the strangeness of human civilization and the artificial anxieties it has created. There is plenty of food, shelter, and clothing to go around. The world God has made is not stingy; it’s humans who have made it so that some live in mega-mansions while others are on the streets. But for me the big flashing truth-bomb here is the one-liner sandwiched between the examples of the ‘birds of the air’ and ‘lilies of the field’: “Can any of you add a single hour to your life by worrying?” Worry isn’t working hard to avoid negative outcomes. Worry isn’t planning ahead. Worry is the obsessive rumination on worst-case scenarios, and this focus on imagined futures prevents us from enjoying and appreciating what is right in front of us right now.

Therefore do not worry, saying, “What will we eat?” or “What will we drink?” or “What will we wear?” For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But first pursue the Kingdom of God and God’s righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today. (6.31-34)

Here I’m reminded of Maya Angelou’s statement, “When you know better you do better.” As those who know God and who have our basic life instructions from Christ’s teachings, we have the privilege of knowing God is faithful. So, knowing this, we shouldn’t waste time, energy, and resources on worrying over our attachments in this world. Pursue — seek out, hunt down, strive for — the Kingdom of God and its righteousness and justice, and the rest will sort itself out.

Jesus then ends this section with another important truth bomb: “Today’s trouble is enough for today.” This focus on what is right before us has become a bit of a refrain in the Sermon, from the petition to be given our “daily” bread in the Lord’s Prayer, to the comparison of our lives with grass, and now stated explicitly here, the focus of a faithful life is on what is needed right now. Today has too many things needing attention to waste time on our imagined tomorrows.

Jesus’ teachings on the Law that we looked at last week are often called “the hard sayings,” but to me, this one is just as deserving of that title. The world is a frightening place, and for many of us, it appears to becoming more so almost every day. But put in the full context of the Sermon on the Mount, the teaching makes total sense. At every step, Jesus is ripping open this world and its delusions and illusions to reveal the reality behind it. This teaching too is part of the general call to repentance at the heart of Jesus’ message: Repent! — Open your eyes! See the world as God sees it!

In anxious times in an anxious world, this is a reminder to keep first things first. In this world we will have trouble. We can expect all kinds of problems. But they are outside of our control. What we can control is where we put our time, energy, and attention. Worrying and anxiety don’t move the needle, don’t make change. But if we strive first for God’s ways, everything else will sort itself out. Those bad times will still come, but at least we will know goodness, truth, beauty, and joy too.