2^nd Sunday after Pentecost (Lectionary 8) “The Sin of Worry”

Matthew 6.24-34

May 25, 2008

Listen to these words from a newspaper editorial: It is a gloomy moment in the history of our country. Not in [our] lifetime . . . has there been so much grave and deep apprehension. Never has the future seemed so dismal. The domestic economic situation is in chaos. Our dollar is weak throughout the world. Prices are so high as to be utterly impossible. The political cauldron seethes and bubbles with uncertainties. The newspaper? The Boston Herald American. The date? 1857.

Worries and anxieties have always been with us, haven’t they? They are not by any means phenomena of the modern world only. Worry is as old as human kind; I expect Adam and Eve worried about what they were going to tell God, and about how they were going to make those fig leaves hold together.

So perhaps it will be good this morning to think a bit about worry. I want to say three things about it, and then talk a bit about how to cope with the anxiety that seems to be such an inevitable part of our human nature.

The first thing to understand is that worry is needless and useless. Every so often I will toss and turn and stay awake much of the night, usually because I’m worried about something. On our morning walk, I’ll report this insomnia to Lois, along with what the focus of my worries had been. Her response is usually this: “Well, did it help?” And of course it didn’t. Worry doesn’t help a thing—it is useless. Jesus puts it this way: “Which of you, by worrying, can add a single hour to your span of life?” We can’t—that’s the point. Worry doesn’t accomplish anything. It is a useless activity.

And not only is it useless, but it is generally needless. Some years ago there was a psychological study where people were asked to keep track of everything about which they worried for a period of several days, and then to evaluate those worries. Something like 75% of their worries were about things that never actually happened. Another 20% were centered on things over which the worrier had absolutely no control. Only 5% of the worries were about things that could actually be remedied.

Winston Churchill grasped this intuitively. He once remarked, as he reflected on his long career, “When I look back at all these worries I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which never happened.” That’s the way it is with our worries—they are mostly about things that won’t happen; and if they happen, there’s nothing we can do about them anyway.

Of course there’s still that five percent! But even t here, wouldn’t it make more sense to do something productive rather than worry? As the old saying has it, “To worry about what we can’t help is useless; to worry about what we can help is stupid.” Or, to put it another way, in that great prayer of Reinhold Niebuhr which has become known as the “Serenity Prayer”: God grant me the patience to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Now the second thing to say about worry is that it is actually harmful. Most of us know that. That great theologian Edith Bunker once said about her husband, “Archie doesn’t know how to worry without getting upset.” And that’s true of all of us, because worrying always upsets us. It can upset us physically. One doctor has estimated that millions of Americans suffer from what he calls CDT Syndrome: “cares, distress, and troubles.” The fact is that many of the most common ailments in our society can be traced to worry: heart problems, ulcers, headaches, intestinal problems—all can be triggered by anxiety.

Of course it upsets us in an emotional way as well. One can worry oneself right into severe depression. Or, if it isn’t quite that bad, one can worry oneself into a negative attitude about life which can then take its toll on our relationships. Make no mistake about it: worry can be harmful to your health, both in mind and body.

The third thing I want to say about worry may surprise you. Worry, I’ve said, is needless and useless, and also harmful. Now I want to tell you that worry is a sin. We get the clue from Jesus: “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink . . . for it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things.” We might paraphrase that like this: “Worry is characteristic of people who do not know God; people who know God should not worry.” Worry, in short, is a sin.

What does he mean by this? Isn’t worry just something natural, something we all do? Well, yes, but that doesn’t mean it is OK! We’re all naturally prideful, selfish, lustful, and a lot of other things—but we acknowledge them as being sinful. It’s the same with worry—except that worry so often masquerades as responsibility and concern! And so we aren’t accustomed to thinking of worry as a sin. Perhaps we call it a problem, a temporary trouble, a nuisance—but not very often do we think of it as “sin.”

But it is! The reason can be stated very simply: Worry is fundamentally the failure to trust God, and so it is a violation of the First Commandment. “You shall have no other gods,” Luther says, means “We are to fear, love and trust God above everything else.” And as a favorite saying of Lois’s grandmother put it: “If you trust, you do not worry. If you worry, you do not trust.”

So how do we cope with this sin? How do we fight against it in our own lives? I think Jesus gives us two strategies for this. The first, he says, is to “strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness.” I think that means to let God’s love and care for us be the primary fact in our lives. Jesus has already told us that we need not worry about material things—and why? Because God loves us and cares for us. God, to quote Luther again, “has given me and still preserves my body and soul with all their powers. He provides me with food and clothing, home and family, daily work, and all I need from day to day.” All I need!

In the Old Testament lesson today, Isaiah says that Israel’s attitude in their troubles is that God has forgotten them, but God’s answer is this: “Can a mother forget her child? Even if she could, I’ll never forget you!” And so the first solution to worry is to remember that God is with us, that God will stay with us.

The Methodist bishop William Quayle, so the story goes, went to bed one night but couldn’t sleep because of many problems that seemed to have no solutions. Then he heard the voice of God speak: “Quayle, you go to bed. I’ll sit up the rest of the night.” That’s the clue, you see, as to how we prevent worry. Worry is distrust of God; so when we cultivate trust, worry flees away.

Then Jesus has one other prescription. “Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own.” His point, I think, is that we must live in the present, not the past or the future. John Wesley once put it this way: “Live today. . . This [day] is your own, and it is all you have. The past is as nothing, as though it had never been. The future is nothing to you: it is not yours; perhaps it never will be. . . . Live today.”

If we could just learn that the future is in God’s hands! Sometimes, I suppose, that phrase sounds like a kind of giving up, but really it is much more positive and powerful than that! The future is in God’s hands, and he has told us not to worry about it. Our concern is for the present, for what we can do today, this day, to serve him. If we concentrate on today, and leave the future to the One who stands outside of past, present and future and sees them all, then we will be freed from the worries that so often bind us.

William Barclay once put it this way: “There may be greater sins than worry,” he said, “but very certainly there is no more disabling sin. ‘Take no anxious thought for tomorrow’—that is the commandment of Jesus, and it is the way, not only to peace, but also to power.” May that peace and power be yours this day.