What? Me Worry?
Eighth Sunday after Epiphany
February 27, 2011

I took a call this week from someone who was totally frantic. He was facing homelessness for the first time, due to circumstances outside of his control, and he didn’t know what to do. The fear and anxiety came through as he spoke. I spent some time trying to calm him down, and then I walked him through the steps he could take to address the situation in which he now found himself. I was also able to help him with one of his immediate needs, as well provide a little orientation to the Men’s Drop-In Shelter here at Grace.

I’ve had several such conversations this winter with men who are in a completely new situation, often in a place that they know nothing about. They are completely disoriented, both geographically, and with regard to their lives. They don’t know what to do; they don’t know where to turn for help. By the time they come to me, they are often at wit’s end. All I can do is help get them oriented to the homeless shelter and hope that they can survive in a cold winter with no personal resources and few social services available to help them.

I’m increasingly aware of the anxiety that seems to be pervasive in our world these days. You can sense it when you walk around Capitol Square—police officers from out of town who aren’t sure what’s going on and why they’re here; protesters who are deeply frightened about what might happen; state workers who are concerned about what’s going to happen to them. Workers in the restaurants and other businesses that line the square are frazzled too. For many of them, every day brings another crowd of customers. They’re happy for the money and the tips, of course, but they also need a rest.

We may be feeling it more dramatically here than elsewhere in America, but there’s no question that we are an anxious people right now. We are worried about our own livelihoods, our personal family futures, and the future of our country. Many of us are also deeply concerned about the future of our planet. Worry seems to be a constant in our lives. We do all sorts of things to reduce our anxieties. We take medications, some of us self-medicate. We search for distractions. We may try to wall ourselves off from our neighbors and the world by turning off the tv.  We may seek to insulate ourselves with wealth, and luxury. In the end, nothing can secure us from our angst.

To hear today’s gospel with such a background is startling. The incongruities are piling on. In the last weeks, we have heard Jesus make radical statements like if you call your brother or sister a fool, you are liable for hellfire, someone who lusts in their heart has already committed adultery, and if someone hits you on your right cheek, turn your left and allow them to hit you on your left. These statements, commandments really, are so far away from our personal experience and perspectives that most of us cannot imagine living according them. When do see someone who lives in that way, people like Gandhi or MLK, we quickly are inclined to revere them as saints or something more than human.

Today’s gospel seems to be in the same vein. How can we not worry? How can we not plan for tomorrow? To do otherwise would seem to be irresponsible. All of the worries that swirl around in our minds, compounded by the events that occurring around us in Capitol Square, all of those worries are certainly legitimate. They are very human responses to the lives we are living and the situations in which we find ourselves.

But is there good news in these words from the gospel? Are there words that can help us get necessary perspectives on our lives and on our world and experience the grace of God? We might be tempted to say that “God will take care of everything” or just pray, or trust in God, and it will all work out. But many of us no all too well that such statements ring hollow and false in the face of the real challenges we face—whether it’s our economic well-being, our health, whatever.

To answer these questions, it might be helpful to look back to other texts we heard today, in particular, the reading from Isaiah and the Psalm. The reading from Isaiah clearly dates from the period of the exile, when the elites of Jerusalem and Judah had been forced into exile by a victorious Babylonian empire. It begins with the prophet promising deliverance to a disheartened people, assuring them that they will return to Jerusalem, and that God will take care of them on that difficult journey. Yahweh speech ends with a statement that God has comforted God’s people and had compassion on those who suffered.

These words rang hollow to the exiles as well, who replied to these promises by saying that God had forsaken them. To this, the prophet replied, using a surprising metaphor: “Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show no compassion for the child of her womb?” Comparing God to a nursing mother, the prophet reminds God’s people that a mother’s love is a powerful bond that unites her with her child.

That same image is picked up in the Psalm, which some scholars think was written by a woman who is describing her own experience. It begins with a stunning reversal of the sursum corda, the words we sing or say at the beginning of our celebration of the Eucharist. In the Instead of “We lift our hearts unto the Lord” the NRSV translation of the Psalm reads, “My heart is not lifted up.” For whatever reason, the Psalmist cannot praise God. But the psalm continues, saying that in spite of all the trouble that may be taking place:

I still my soul and make it quiet

Like a child upon its mother’s breast

My soul is quieted within me

We might think, from our translation, that the Psalmist is using precisely the same imagery here as the prophet did in Isaiah. That’s not the case. Where Isaiah likened God to a mother nursing her child, the force of the Hebrew in the Psalm implies the child has been weaned. No longer dependent on her mother for all nourishment and protection, we can imagine a toddler, eager to explore the world, yet often in need of comfort.

Two slightly different, yet equally comforting images of a God, who like a mother, loves and cares for her child. To remember those images, the notion that God is like a mother who loves, nourishes, and comforts her child, helps us put Jesus’ words about not worrying in proper perspective. Instead of hearing them as instructions on how to live our life, plan for tomorrow, or even plan for the rest of our lives, Jesus is reminding us that our lives are ultimately held within God’s loving embrace.

To hear those words, and to experience that embrace can give us the assurance that in the midst of a difficult and uncertain world, with all sorts of concerns and worries swirling around in our heads, our lives are in God’s hands. We may continue to struggle to find security in our lives by accumulating status and wealth, by grasping for security. Some of us may respond to our uncertainty, and our fears, by protesting. In the midst of all that, in the midst of the chaos, confusion, and conflict that surrounds us, let us remember God’s loving embrace, taking comfort in that love, and drawing strength for the journey that lies ahead.