Sermons

Second Sunday of

Pentecost
Matthew 6:24-34

May 25, 2008

I’ve often wondered where the word worry-wart came from. If you look the word up on the internet you can find Worry Wart dolls and Worry Wart earrings and Legends of the Worry Wart. But really all I could find out is that worrying worries a lot of people. Most think we’d be better off if we just stopped worrying.

My interest in warthogs started with the worried look on the mother warthog’s face as she gazed on me. I had entered her territory in the forests of Africa . I must have seemed a curious threat to her and the four babies who followed at her heels. I have no idea really what was going on in her mind, but she focused her attention on me. I knew I was no threat. I was tickled pink to see her and her babies and was at a loss as to how to let her know that. “Don’t worry,” I could have said, but I knew that wouldn’t help.

In Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount Jesus repeatedly says “don’t worry.” We might say, “Easy for Jesus to say.” He’s not living in the wild territory of our lives where uncertainties abound. But Jesus did know life’s uncertainties and still urged his disciples to not worry.

Worry is age-old – at least 2000 years old we know from Jesus. Worry is defined by Webster as “being anxious, disturbed, troubled.” Jesus urges a non-anxious presence; “let not your hearts be troubled” – even as he urges us to not be afraid. Worry and fear are siblings. Jesus never said “don’t cry; don’t be sad; don’t grieve; don’t be angry; don’t question.” But he did urge us to not be afraid and to not worry because fear and worry are symptoms.

Fear and worry point to something deeper. When we’re paralyzed by fear or distracted by worry, Martin Luther says, we’ve turned in upon ourselves. We make ourselves our own god, our own savior, our own hope for surviving whatever we fear or worry about.

Luther had lots to be afraid of and worry over. He was making huge challenges to long held assumptions. He was calling for change where change wasn’t wanted. He had all kinds of reasons to be afraid and to worry, but what he tried to live out of was trust. As grace is God’s gift to us, trust is our best response.

For Luther, faith is really trust. And trust is what we do when we decide to stop worrying. When Lutheran scholar Joseph Sittler spoke of trust he pointed to the first page of the Bible. In Genesis 1 we read that “God created a cosmos by ordering.” It is bringing chaos into form, Sittler said, that humans long for. When we’re afraid or worried it’s because we see or hear chaos and not the grace that holds us, as Isaiah 49 says, in the palm of God’s hand.

I’ve enjoyed a song about a play where it looks like the evil side will win, except that the audience is let in on the fact that love wrote the play. “Its love who makes the mortar and its love who stacked the stones and its love who made the stage here, although it looks like we’re alone. There is evil cast around us, but its love that wrote the play and in this darkness, love can show the way.”

When I’m really worried it doesn’t help for someone to say “Oh, don’t worry.” What helps is when someone offers something to displace the worry – like the play-write letting us in on the fact that the play was written by love. The characters may not know that when evil is cast around them, but we know the deeper story line! To know love wrote the play makes it possible for even the most squeamish to manage the difficult scenes!

My friend Brian Stoffregen shared a great illustration recently about how to get air out of a cup. We can try to shake it out; or dump it out; or even blow it out with our own hot air, but there will still be air in it. We can, however, pour another substance into the cup, and that displaces the air.

This is what Jesus invites us to do. He reminds us that we do not live by bread alone, but by every word that pours forth from the mouth of God. We can learn to let that living word displace our worry. We can allow practices that deepen our awareness of Christ fill us rather than let worry occupy so much of our thoughts.

Our congregation is beginning a prayer practice that we will share together through the summer. It’s a Prayer Banner. A Prayer Banner is a visual invitation to pray for deepened awareness that we are held in the palm of God’s hand. While the Church Year calls the Pentecost Season “Ordinary Days,” we will pray for attentiveness to the extra-ordinary ways of Christ.

What we will do with the Prayer Banner is take a small piece of cloth and weave it into the banner as we pray a silent prayer. We are suggesting in the first weeks that we pray for personal and family growth. Who among us doesn’t yearn for growth in attentiveness to Christ’s risen life among us – growth on our own part – and growth on the part of members of our family? I know that’s one of the things I worry about most – will our children have faith – my own, my nieces and nephews, my godchildren, the beloved children in the family of the church.

Because this is the Pentecost Season whose color is green indicating growth in the spiritual life, we are using shades of green beginning with pale green and gradually deepening the greens until the end of the Pentecost Season we are using cloths of deep forest green. Each subsequent week the cloths will be of deeper and deeper greens and we will expand our prayers to our congregation, then to our neighboring community, then to our country, then to our companion synod in

Rwanda

and our global world. You could make a Prayer Banner at home and invite your family or visitors to add cloths as they offer prayers.

Or, you can come to our sanctuary any time during the week and add cloths to the Prayer Banner as you lift up your silent prayers. Or, people can come forward each Sunday either before and after they receive communion.

Jesus knew we needed tangible things to help us displace our worrying tendencies. He attached his living presence to the gifts of bread and wine. This practice deepens our awareness of life in the living Christ. As we enter the summer may we not see summer as a time to take a vacation from these practices! Rather may we gather all the more around water and word, bread and wine, fellowship and prayer, being hungry for God’s lavishing gifts.

Even when we travel we can gather with other Christians and learn their practices. Bring back bulletins and ideas from places where you worship when you’re out of town. Share with us the good ways others are growing in attentiveness to God. God is always filling us with good things – if only we will notice.

Some of us are bigger worriers than others, but we all get absorbed by things that distract us. We fill our cups with worries rather than trust in Christ our Savior. A good Bible verse to have written down and available in our pockets or date books or wallets is from II Timothy 2. We can bring this verse out to recite whenever we’re noticed our minds have become filled up with worry. II Timothy suggests we keep something – or someone – else in mind: “Keep in mind that Jesus Christ has died for us and is risen from the dead; to be our living savior; to be joy for all ages.”)

Rather than worry ourselves into worry warts over how we’re going to save ourselves from whatever it is we’re worrying about, we can remember that Jesus Christ is our Savior. He is joy for all ages – even our uncertain constantly changing age.

A woman was being interviewed by a newspaper reporter. She had raised six children and then adopted twelve more. The reporter asked her how she did it. She said, “I did the work and I left the worrying to God.” The palm of God’s hand is extended to us, children of the heavenly Father. “Nestling bird nor star in heaven such a refuge e’re was given.”