Hilton Head Island, SC – July 3, 2022
The Chapel Without Walls
Matthew 6:25-29; Matthew 6:30-34
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day’s own trouble be sufficient for the day.” – Matthew 6:34
In college I took only two psychology courses: Psychology 1: Introduction to Psychology, and Psychology 104 or 219 (or some such number): The Psychology of Religion. In the advanced course, I learned that people’s minds can be very helpful or hurtful to them in their religious practices. Cockamamie thinking is one of the major threats to the viability of reasonable religion. But then, cockamamie thinking is a threat to every other human discipline as well.
Surprisingly, Psychology 1 was probably more useful to me as a minister than The Psychology of Religion. I have never considered myself a very good counselor, but the clergy often serve as counselors whether they like it or not. I always thought my mentor, Elam Davies, was a superb counselor. Over the five years I was under his tutelage, he counseled several people in each week in his office, and many of his sermons were mass counseling sessions for the twelve to fourteen hundred people who filled the sanctuary of Chicago’s Fourth Presbyterian Church each Sunday.
Jesus of Nazareth was also a master psychological counselor. A number of the issues he addressed in what Matthew put together as “the Sermon on the Mount” were questions of how his listeners and we ourselves can deal with some of the matters that affect all of us in our daily lives. The two passages from Matthew 6 that were read earlier this morning are examples of that.
“You cannot serve God and mammon. Therefore, I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor about your body, what you shall put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?” (6:24-25) In order better to understand how these words would have fallen on the ears of those who came to hear Jesus preach, we need to recall how tenuous life was for many of them. Most of them were the so-called “people of the land,” the tenant farmers, day laborers, servants or even slaves of the few people of wealth in the region of the Galilee who were able to pay helpers. These workers were not constantly starving, but they didn’t have much to eat, either. As for clothing, they probably had just one or two outfits to wear at any given time in their lives. Poverty nipped at them on a depressingly regular basis.
We were taught in Psych 1 that there is a difference between fear and anxiety. Fear is apprehension about a known threat: hunger, illness, disease, inability to cover a debt, concern over the illness of a family member. Anxiety is apprehension over things you can’t predict: an employer who might arbitrarily fire you, a menacing stranger in a nightmare who turns up one day in actuality to scare you half to death, a natural or financial disaster which might destroy most of your assets in a few days, and for those who heard the Sermon on the Mount, a Roman soldier or civilian official who might make your life miserable out of nothing other than indefensible ethnic spite.
But the factors that make us anxious might come to pass, might they not? Bill payment dates face us on a regular basis, and what if there isn’t enough money to pay? A period of inflation and recession might come (as they have), and your investments might plummet, as they probably have, - - - and then what? You’re feeling something in your abdomen or shoulder or hip you’ve never felt before, and what should you do? Should you go to the doctor, or should you wait a while? Do you really want to know what the problem is, or would it be better not to know?
Jesus reminded his bucolic congregation that God feeds the birds, and if He does that for birds, will He not much more do it for you? The First Presbyterian Church Sunday School in Dixon, Illinois, 1944: “God sees the little sparrow fall, and rushes to her side/ If God so loves that little bird, I know He loves me too/ He loves me too, He loves me too, I know He loves me too/ If God so loves that little bird, I know He loves me too.”
“Which of you by being anxious can add one cubit to your life?” (6:27) A cubit is about eighteen inches in length, the distance from the elbow of a grown man to the tip of his index finger. That isn’t very long. Being anxious about life doesn’t add length to life. If anything, it shortens life. Fear and anxiety are not good for us, especially for our alimentary system and for a smoothly-operating heart. Every day, around the world, thousands of people die from out-of-control anxiety.
“Why are you so anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, but I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these” (6:28-9).
Whenever I set dates for the tour groups I led to Israel, I did it in months when the weather would be good. But on one of those trips, wet, heavy snow fell, at first melting when it hit the ground. A valley we had to cross in the bus was four or five feet under water, meaning we could not get to an historic city on the Mediterranean coast. This gave me the heebie-jeebies. This was our first day out, and what might it bode for the rest of the itinerary? The next day everyone was freezing half to death when we got to Caesarea Philippi, where Peter declared Jesus to be the Christ. Two days later, when we drove down the Jordan Valley toward Jerusalem, we stopped at a famous Crusader castle on the top of a high ridge overlooking above the river. By then the snow and rain had caused great expanses of brilliant red anemones to bloom all across the dry ridge.
Everyone wanted to get out of the bus to take photographs of “the lilies of the field in all their glory.” As always, the slowest lady in the bus let everyone get off first. By the time she got off, the others had taken their pictures, and were ready to go again, but she was not going to miss this opportunity to bring home a visual reminder of Matthew 6:28 and 29. Our guide became very anxious, because we had miles to go before we slept, and here she was, getting the sun’s angle correct, so that her photograph would look just right. Everyone was anxious to get back on the Jordan Valley Road, but she wanted to validate a memory, and she didn’t want to be rushed in the doing thereof. It was a stomach-churning moment for Walter and me. Somehow we survived.
Woody Guthrie wrote the lyrics to a well-known song, which Pete Seeger and others also sang. “It takes a worried man to sing a worried song/ I’m worried now, but I won’t be worried long.” The song goes on to say that the songster fell asleep, only to wake up in chains for a crime he either did, or did not, commit. That is never clarified. But there is much to worry about in the rest of the song, and the singer tells us all about it.
Ten days ago the United States Congress passed a bill which may help reduce some of the gun violence which has plagued this country since its constitutional founding more than two centuries ago. A couple of days later the Supreme Court made public a ruling on guns which negated parts of that congressional bill, and the day after that the court publicized its ruling on abortion, which has a majority of the American populace highly anxious about what that ruling portends for the future. As of last Friday a highly valued right for women has been taken away from millions of them, and it is uncertain if anything can be done to revive the right the Supreme Court guaranteed to women half a century ago. On top of that, a House of Representatives committee is investigating the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, and the ultimate outcome of those hearings may not be acted on for many months or even a year or more. This is a time of what Mel Brooks would term “High Anxiety.”
“If God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O men of little faith?” (6:30) There were relatively so few trees in Judea that people would rake up dried vegetation from the fields in the late autumn and burn it in ovens for cooking or for warmth on cold nights. If God took care of the plants in the fields, Jesus said, which neither toil nor spin, wouldn’t He take even better care of people?
A synonym for faith is the word “trust.” Do we trust God, or don’t we? Worry and anxiety suggest that we don’t really trust God. If we are constantly concerned about the future, doesn’t that suggest a shortage of trust in the one who created us, sustains us, and redeems us? Can we call ourselves daughters and sons of God and followers of Jesus Christ if we live in perpetual fear that at any moment the world may collapse on us?
And what good does it do voluntarily to bear the considerable weight of worry? Of what benefit is anxiety to anybody? Where does it get us to fret about matters over which we have little or no control? Worried people might be able to sing worried songs, but of what positive use are those songs, unless they lead to something positive?
Alcoholics Anonymous is one of the greatest self-help organizations in the history of the human race. Every day and night of the week, millions of people gather in small groups all over the world. When each person gets up to speak, he or she says, “Hi, I’m George (or Ann or Ralph or Jenny), and I’m an alcoholic.” The friends of Bill W. have become by far the largest fraternity and sorority that ever existed.
Over the decades since Bill Wilson started the first AA group, they have learned to follow twelve very difficult but also very necessary steps. When they share their stories, they try to remember two mantras: “Let go, and let God,” and “Live just one day at a time.” Don’t get wound up with all the past troubles you have put yourself or others through, and don’t worry about how you’ll do tomorrow. Just concentrate on today. “Do not be anxious for tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day’s own troubles be sufficient for the day” (6:34).
Most of the people who live on Hilton Head Island are affluent, compared to other Americans or to most people who live elsewhere in the world. Most affluent people invest part of their affluence in something or other, in order to become more affluent. When I was a young man, I followed the advice of two men I knew and respected, and I bought a few shares of over-the-counter stocks they recommended to me. Back in those days, newspapers daily published the records of several hundred corporate securities for the New York and the American Stock Exchanges, but they also had an over-the counter section for my kind of low-cost, potentially high yield or no-yield start-ups, although then they weren’t called start-ups.
For a couple of years I became a compulsive daily checker on how my stocks were doing. They never did anything, except to trickle slowly into oblivion. I lost a few hundred dollars, but I deduced that my older and presumably wiser friends lost many thousands. From that I learned three lessons: 1) Don’t invest money in stocks that you can’t afford to lose. Fortunately I could afford to lose the little I Iost. 2) If you do invest in stocks, don’t check on a daily basis to see how they are doing. It is inimical to your health. And 3) As my father often said, invest only in highly reputable companies, keep doing it if you can, and don’t watch it. Also, he said, don’t touch the money until you really need it, and you’ll end up far more wealthy than you ever imagined. He did. He was never wealthy, but he was more affluent than he could ever have predicted.
Investing money to make more money is a financial and intellectual challenge for many people, especially of the male persuasion. I have known men who made avalanches of assets, because they know what they’re doing. I also have heard countless parishioners through the years who were in agony whenever recessions or inflation came around, as inevitably both do. Those reverses never gave my father ulcers. It was dealing with the Teamsters Union every three years that gave him ulcers. Negotiating with Jimmy Hoffa’s associates was like negotiating with Vito Corleone; you wanted to refuse every offer they made to you, but sooner or later you had to accept one, and it turned Dad’s stomach into razor blades every time.
We have two new neighbors in our building in The Seabrook, and they have two dogs. One dog, Fay, adjusted immediately to life in her new environment, because Fay loves everybody, and everybody loves Fay. On the other hand, from her first day in her new surroundings, Kia looks at all of us as though we are about to attack her and tear her limb from limb. She doesn’t trust a soul, except her human mother and father. The constant look of terror on her face would almost bring tears to the eyes of Ted Bundy or the Boston Strangler.
Worry and anxiety do not change the course of a single thing that happens in life, but they can very much change us - - - decidedly for the worse. Jesus knew that, and he urged us, and perhaps even commanded us, to cast worry aside.
Many people are like Kia, and it is a burden too heavy to bear. Carrying the weight of worry for a lifetime is a huge mistake. Yeshua ha-Nortri, Jesus the Nazarene, B.A..M.B.A., M.D., Ph.d., frequently addressed this issue. If anyone had reason to be anxious in life, Jesus did. But from what perhaps was the first sermon he ever preached near the top of a mountain north of the Sea of Galilee to a small hill just outside the city wall of Jerusalem, he spent the rest of his life doing everything he could to change the world for the better. In that he succeeded more completely than anyone who ever lived. Let us try to live as he did, and cast the weight of worry to the four winds. It’s too heavy a burden to bear, and it’s foolish to try to bear it.