Text: Matt 6:24-34
In the name of + Jesus. Amen.
Anxiety is a terrible thing. It can paralyze a person from even performing the basic functions needed for this life. Anxiety medication is big business in America. We see even young children suffering with anxiety. It can be like a spiral that continues to drag a person down deeper and deeper, until it seems like there is no hope.
Being anxious is not something that someone can just will himself out of. Anxiety is like being stuck in quicksand. The more one struggles with it, the deeper one sinks.
And then Jesus comes along and says: “Do not be anxious.” He says that having anxiety is to be of “little faith.” And our Lord also ties anxiety to an unhealthy and sinful love of money.
I’ve heard people become almost cruel about this, telling a parent who is worried about a child who is suffering with illness to “repent” because “worry is a sin” – as if worrying about loved ones who are in danger is like drinking too much or committing adultery, and that they just need to knock it off.
Anxiety is indeed sin, but it isn’t that kind of sin. It isn’t rooted in personal selfishness or a desire for worldly pleasure. In fact, much of our anxiety is grounded in worry for others. Similarly, in the Small Catechism, Martin Luther instructs us to say our bedtime prayers and then: “Go to sleep at once and in good cheer.” Again, I have heard pastors say that if you cannot sleep at night because you are upset about something, that you need to repent of this sin.
So is it really sinful to be anxious? Yes it is. But it is sinful in the same way that being subject to death is sinful. It isn’t something you can “fix” by just not doing it. We live in a fallen world. We live in a sinful world. We are sinful creatures. This means that we suffer – sometimes because we did something directly to deserve it, sometimes just because the world is fallen.
If you find yourself worried and anxious – for whatever reason – you cannot will yourself to stop it. You can’t slap yourself on the hand and say: “Don’t do that!” any more than you can make yourself not sick by calling yourself to repentance.
So how can we deal with anxiety, dear friends? By listening to Jesus. His Word is truly therapeutic, in the supernatural and divine sense of the word. Notice that our Lord begins His teaching about anxiety by saying, “Therefore I tell you.” He tells us. He speaks to us. He declares His Word to us. He teaches us how not to be “anxious about your life” – especially as it concerns our inability to know the future: “What you will eat or what you will drink” or “about your body” and “what you will put on.”
He reminds us that life is more than staying alive in the body. He reminds us that there is indeed more to existence than chasing after material things. He reminds us that we have a Heavenly Father who does provide for us. He reminds us that we do not have a God who is distant, like the kind of god that Thomas Jefferson believed in who creates the universe and then just walks away and doesn’t care about you.
In fact, our Lord in His Word contradicts Jefferson by pointing us to nature: “Look at the birds of the air,” for “they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.” And our Lord asks the rhetorical question: “Are you not of more value than they?” So many people today have allowed Satan to convince them of their worthlessness. This is a diabolical lie, dear friends. For you are created in the image of God. Before the foundation of the world, the Most Holy Trinity willed that you would exist. You are part of the plan of the universe. So many people describe the experience of looking into the night sky and feeling small and insignificant, a fleck of dust in a vast universe. But the reality, dear friends, is that you are created in the image of God. You are alive. You have a body and a spirit and the love of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit that brought you into being, and still takes care of you.
And in spite of your sins – and yes, anxiety is part of that sinful brokenness that we all suffer – God the Son took flesh on our planet, and He died as a cosmic sacrifice for you. You are beloved of God. Indeed, “Are you not of more value than” birds, than the lilies of the field, than the planets, than the stars, than the galaxies? Jesus took on our human flesh, for He came to redeem mankind – all of us. He did not die just for someone else. He died for you, and He rose for you, and He speaks to you – right here and right now. He bids you not to be anxious, not to scold you for sinning, but to invite you to a more excellent way – the way of faith.
By living day to day in His Word, by living week to week in His Supper, by living each moment in your baptismal grace, you will be comforted because your faith will be strengthened. We suffer worry and anxiety because our faith is weak. And this is normal for everyone, dear friends. Remember what God revealed to St. Paul in his weakness: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness,” and St. Paul replied, “Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.”
The “power of Christ,” dear friends. This power “rests upon you,” because of the love, mercy, and providence of God.
We become anxious because we feel powerless, and the future is unknown to us. But by means of His Word and His Sacraments, we receive His grace, we receive the gift of faith, and the power of Christ rests upon us to drive out fear and worry and anxiety.
When Jesus speaks to us “of little faith,” it is not a condemnation, but an invitation. It is an invitation to strengthen our faith by receiving the power of Christ. For as St. Paul also tells us, “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing through the Word of Christ.”
We are tempted to look elsewhere to overcome anxiety, whether through mind-altering drugs or alcohol, through the escapism of entertainment, through looking to ourselves and our strength (rather than the grace that comes to us in our weakness), or by depending on money. So often we think that money will fix everything. And that is indeed the sin of idolatry. Jesus even speaks about the rich man whose riches only cause him more worry.
We Christians do indeed have the antidote to the universal problem of anxiety: and that is Christ. Pray to Him. Listen to His Word. Allow the Heavenly Father to feed you with the bread of life and clothe you with a baptismal gown of Christ’s righteousness. And in Christ, no matter what happens in this world – up to and including death itself, and beyond – we can lay our anxieties upon Him who values you more highly than all of His creation, valuing you even to redeem you at the cross.
When our Lord says, “Therefore I tell you,” let us listen attentively, dear friends, let us listen and be restored – even to life everlasting!
Amen.
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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