“What, Me Worry?”

Psalm 23 and Luke 12:22-32

August 8, 2010 + Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost

Pilgrim Congregational United Church of Christ

400 Glenwood Drive

Chattanooga, Tennessee 37404

Many of us here this morning would recognize the iconic face of Mad Magazine’s Alfred E. Newman with his silly grin and familiar words: “What, me worry?” Alfred has been around most of my life and the irony is that for all these years we’ve had plenty to worry about. It’s no accident that our time in history has been called “the Age of Anxiety.” One psychologist defined anxiety as “. . . an abnormal and overwhelming sense of apprehension and fear often marked by psychological signs of doubt concerning the reality and nature of the threat and by self-doubt concerning one’s capacity to cope with it.”

Would you agree that not only have we been bombarded by rapid change but also it seems things are simply out of control? Here is the way one astute observer laments the times: “But the present world is a different one. Grief, calamity, and evil cause inner bitterness . . . there is disobedience and rebellion . . . Evil influences strike from early morning until late at night. They injure the mind and reduce its intelligence and they also injure the muscles and the flesh.”

But, wait, this observer lived more than 4600 years ago in China! It could have been written today, couldn’t it? Or listen to this more recent commentator: “The nation is worn out. Administration and protection have broken down; robbers make every street unsafe at night . . . trade has diminished, investments stand still, property values fall. People have lost their economic footing and their moral stability. Citizens have seen their savings consumed in taxes and inflation. Women are dizzy with freedom, multiplying divorces, abortions and adulteries.”

Is this a description of the 21^st century? No. It is an historian’s depiction of Rome a few years before the birth of Jesus. I only changed the tense of the verbs from past to present. Yet it sounded eerily like our times, didn’t it?

Let’s move closer to the present. Here is a more up-to-date description. This one is about our country:

“Within the last few years, the public has been scandalized by the degree of corruption and blatant dishonesty revealed in government and politics . . . The exposes of favors and gifts . . . given and received as bribes to obtain special privileges have shocked us . . . members of  Congress have received special gifts and interests in economic enterprises for delivering special favors to their constituents . . . others have been convicted of receiving kickbacks in salary from employees, and have placed friends and relatives on the payroll without their contributing work . . . reliable witnesses have pointed to widespread frauds and grafts. There has been a striking failure in the Congress in disciplining its members from both parties who have been involved in corrupt practices. In a number of cases, convicted Congressmen have been re-elected by large majorities.”

That is a more contemporary description of our time and, in a way, it is. The quotation is taken from a textbook for a college course in Christian social ethics published more than 50 years ago.

The pressures on us today may seem more intense, but, as these quotations illustrate, our situation is not new. In this kind of world it is certainly legitimate for us to seek help from our faith in God, but that need not mean we should return to a rigid fundamentalism which fears all change, is suspicious of new knowledge and growth, and is afraid to question old assumptions. The Bible is for Liberals, too!

The people of Jesus’ time were as anxious as we are today. If not, why would he have told them in  the Sermon on the Mount?  “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will wear . . . Your Heavenly Father knows you need these things . . . but seek first the Kingdom of God and God’s righteousness and all these things will be yours as well. So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will have worries of its own. Today’s troubles are enough for today.” In spite of this, Jesus’ closest followers, the disciples, were worried. They could see the opposition to Jesus was growing, especially from people in power. They had given up much to become his followers. What about the future? Could they trust God?

So what did Jesus say to his disciples in their anxiety and what does he say to us today? “Fear not, little flock, for it is God’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” (Luke 12:32)

“Fear not.” “Don’t Worry.” It’s amazing how frequently these words were spoken by Jesus, not only to his disciples, but to other people with whom he came in contact.

In the Old Testament, too, these words are heard time after time. It’s no accident that the 23^rd Psalm is the most frequently requested part of the Bible for reading in funeral services and at those other times in our lives when our world seems to be coming apart and we need to be reassured of God’s mercy, goodness and faithfulness.

“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters.” Restful, reassuring words. “He restoreth my soul. He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.”

The Psalmist also dares to speak about the end, the dark valley of death, and names it as a place where the Good Shepherd still comforts us. Even there we are reminded of God’s faithfulness. “Surely, goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

“Goodness?” The word has many nuances in the Old Testament. Goodness recalls all those benefits of God’s presence. Even in the valley of the shadow of death it is good to know that God stands with us. “Mercy?” This is the beloved Hebrew word, “chesed,” often translated “steadfast love.” Mercy is the word for the kindness, the fidelity of God. Even when we are not faithful, God’s goodness and kindness follow us.

But the word that should surprise us is the word translated as “follows.” “Goodness and mercy shall follow me.” The Hebrew can also be translated as “pursue me.” Here we are plodding through life, and who’s that behind us? Why that’s goodness and mercy. They’re not only following, us but pursuing us. They won’t let us alone.

 Here’s a story Bishop William Willimon likes to tell about God’s goodness and mercy pursuing us.

“We knew him as a mean old man. Resentful. Bitter. Someone said that his bitterness was justified. His beloved wife died giving birth to their one child. The child died shortly thereafter from complications. “He has reason to be bitter,” they said in his little town.

Never went to church. Never had much to do with anyone. When in his late sixties, they carried him out of his apartment and over to the hospital to die, no one visited, no flowers were sent. He went there to die alone.

There was this nurse. Well, she wasn’t actually a nurse yet, just a student nurse. She was in training, and because she was in training she didn’t know everything that they teach you in school about the necessity for detachment, the need for distance from your patients. She befriended the old man. It had been so long since he had friends, he didn’t know how to act with one. He told her, “Go away. Leave me alone.”

She would smile. Try to coax him to eat his Jell-O. At night she would tuck him in. “Don’t need nobody to help me,” he would growl.

Soon he grew so weak he had not the strength to resist her kindness. Late at night, after her duties were done, she would pull up a chair and sit by his bed and sing to him as she held his old gnarled hand. And he looked up at her in the dim lamplight and wondered if he saw the face of a little one whom he never got to see as an adult. And a tear formed in his eye when she kissed him good night softly on his cheek. And for the first time in maybe forty or fifty years, he said, “God bless you.” And as she left the room, two other unseen presences remained, whispering softly in the old man’s ears, the last words he heard before slipping away into the dark valley: “Fear not!” And who whispered those words? “Goodness and Mercy” who followed the old man all his life and now led him by the hand into that life beyond life which waits for all of us.

Perhaps that seems too simplistic and sentimental for some of you, particularly the younger ones among us, and I suppose it is. But simplistic and sentimental as it is, it points to a profound truth: whether in life or in death we are all in the hands of God. Despite the seismic changes that are shaking our times we are held firmly by the God who loves us and who will never abandon us. No wonder Jesus could say – and this is my free translation of his words – “Don’t be afraid, little people of doubt and worry, God is still God and the future is in God’s hands.” So let’s give hymn-writer (Arthur Ainger) the last word today:

“God is working his purpose out

As year succeeds to year;

God is working his purpose out,

And the time is drawing near;

Nearer and nearer draws the time,

The time that shall surely be,

When the earth shall be filled with the glory of God

As the waters cover the sea.”

Amen and amen.