The Alternative to Worry

Matthew 6:25-33

Harvest Thanksgiving, October 13, 2024

Holy Trinity Cathedral

“The Alternative to Worry”

Jesus tells us not to worry at least four times in the gospel reading.  For most of us, that is hard to do.  Anxiety is our body’s natural response to perceived stress.  How we react in the moment is an acute response.  Our heartrate increases, our blood pressure rises, our muscles tense, our gut clenches.  We may sweat and shake as we get ready to fight, or flee, or freeze until the danger passes.  When we live in a world that always seems stressful, anxiousness can become our chronic state.  God doesn’t want us to live in constant worry.  There is another way.

Jesus has just taught his followers the Lord’s prayer.  His words, beginning with “Our Father” are so familiar and dear to Christians that we use it more than any other.  The phrases focus our attention so that we don’t get distracted and overwhelmed by our worries.  Even when we feel we are being pulled to pieces by everything around us, it can bring us back to right relationship with God and others.  The Greek word used for worry is “merimnate”, which literally means to be divided or distracted.  In the negative sense, it is what draws us in different directions, away from what is right.  Instead, we need what can distribute or disperse our concerns so that they once again are in proper relationship to the whole.  By prayer, we connect back to someone outside of ourselves who can answer our needs.  We reorientate our attitude from worry to gratitude.

Worry is usually about the future; felt in the present.  In contrast, gratitude cultivates reflection on the past, awareness of the present, and hope for the future.  No one can force you to feel thankful.  The feeling is fragile and transitory at best.  It’s especially difficult for those who think they deserve or are entitled to what they have.  But everyone can practice ways to acknowledge life as a gift.  And if what we receive is a gift, then where is it from?  Well, from someone who loves us and wants what is good for us.  To be thankful, then, is to learn to direct our thanks.  We teach our children to say please and thank you to others from an early age. We hope that by repetition they will grow into an understanding of what it means to give and receive in love. The more consistently we recognize moments when blessing comes our way, the less we are likely to fear being left out in the future.  -God took care of me before.  God is with me now.  God will walk with me into the unknown.-  And so, we offer back a token of thanks for what we continue to receive.  This attitude of gratitude not only brings down our anxiety level, it reassures us of God’s grace working always: in our past, our present, and our future. 

Jesus encourages us to seek first God’s righteousness.  Then we will find that all the things we need follow on from our intention to orient our lives towards God.  He affirms that all people need the basics of life: food, clothing, shelter.  But without a thankful heart for what God gives, we fall into the danger of running after things driven by fear.  Theologian Mary Jo Leddy, in her book “Radical Gratitude”, talks about our modern society falling prey to a dissatisfaction that enslaves us.   If we buy into the priorities of secular economy, who we are and what we have matters more than God.  We have to have more, but the more we have, the emptier we feel because there is always something else.  We never have everything we want.  The problem, especially for those who already have more than their daily bread, is being kept captive in power structures that lure them with the promise of more.  We need to be broken from our prisons of worry with faith that God is enough for us.

Living a life of thankfulness has less to do with feeling and more to do with intention.  One way is through the value of enough.  A song of doxology from Judaism has the Hebrew refrain “Dayenu” or “it would have been enough”.  As the singer reflects on all the stages of the journey of the Hebrews escape from Egypt, the affirmation is that at any point, it would have been enough.  If God had only brought them as far as the Red Sea, it would have been enough.  If God had only got them as far as Mt. Sinai, it would have been enough.  If God had only fed them manna once in the desert, it would have been enough.  There is a thankfulness that does not ask for any more than what has already been received. What would that song look like in your own life?  At what stages in your journey can you give thanks to God that it would have been enough?

• that you are enough.
• that you are good enough.
• that you have enough.

At the end of this gospel passage, Jesus adds, “do not be distracted about tomorrow, for tomorrow will care for itself” (Matthew 6:34).  Our heavenly Father will take care of us and what we need.  We are precious in God’s sight, even more than the birds of the air and the flowers in the fields of this beautiful creation.  We are so valued that God’s son Jesus lived and died for us, and he was raised up to affirm the power of God’s love.  Our yesterdays are forgiven.  With the promise of eternal life, tomorrow is in God’s hands.   Today is a gift. So, we gather in thanksgiving: whether we are feeling anxious or feeling grateful, whether we have much or little.  We only ask for God’s grace to disperse our fears and open our hearts to say “thank you” for His great goodness.

We thank you for giving us

what we need to be grateful.

We offer back to you

all that we have

and all that we are.

We know our thank you

is as fragile as we are

• It can be crushed by the cares of the moment
• It can disappear in the heat of the day
• It can be blown away by the winds of suffering.

And so we ask You

to take our small thank you

into Your great act of Thanksgiving:

You, Lord of the loaves and fishes,

You who are from God

with God and for God

You in whom it is all.

Yes and Amen.