Sermons

FILTER BY:

← back to list

    Aug 28, 2016

    Can Any One of You by Worrying Add a Single Hour to Your Life?

    Passage: Matthew 6:25-34

    Speaker: Rev. Vivian McCarthy, Pastor

    Series: What Did Jesus Ask?

    Category: Jesus' Teachings

    Keywords: faith, worry

    Worry is a natural human activity.  Worry can be destructive.  Using the keen insights of Dr. Barbara Brown Taylor from her chapter in the book What Did Jesus Ask? this week’s message explores the question “Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?”

    Last week I ended the sermon with some questions of my own.  This week I want to start with some questions of my own, and I’d like for you to take a moment to talk in groups of 4 or 5 to answer them.  Please look around you and make sure that everyone is included in a group.  I’ll give you 3 minutes per question, and I’ll let you know at every 30 second mark.  The purpose of that is so that everyone in your group has a chance to speak.

    First question:  How do you feel – both mentally and physically – when you worry about something?  And how does it affect your life?

    Now the second question:  What have you learned about worry over your lifetime?

    Finally: What techniques do you use to push worry away?

    Worry can suck the life right out of your bones and the air right out of your lungs.    I have noticed that I am not the only one who can get more and more frantic as I dwell on things that worry me.  I begin to see or think things that aren’t really true.  The issue can get bigger and bigger and I feel more and more helpless.  I remember a time when I was struggling with daily migraines.  I was pregnant and couldn’t take much of anything, and those headaches lasted for over 6 weeks – blinding headaches.  I decided it was time to go to a specialist, and I remember that when I was filling out the paperwork my headaches got worse and worse and worse.  It was awful!  We all worry, and worry can make you crazy! 

    Barbara Brown Taylor, an episcopal priest, author and seminary professor, is the author of this week’s chapter in What Did Jesus Ask?  She is quick to acknowledge that Jesus was human and was probably just as prone to worry as the next guy.  She actually says that she thinks it was unfair of Jesus to ask this question and then point to the birds of the air and the lilies of the field!  She wrote:

    Do birds of the air have mortgage payments?  Do lilies of the field have aging parents who depend on them for long-term care?  No, they do not.  Only humans have problems like these, which goes a long way toward explaining why we, of all creatures, are the most anxious.

    Why do we worry?  We worry because we have been given the gift of human consciousness.  We worry because we are able to imagine a future we cannot control.  We worry because we are afraid of losing what we love.[1]   (Emphasis mine.)

    Dr. Taylor then tells about the Episcopal liturgy for house blessings.  She says that she has done a lot of them and they are always the same because Episcopalians are “people of the book.”  The Book of Common Prayer is very specific about what to use, and for house blessings, today’s scripture is the scripture that is read.  Seems rather odd, doesn’t it?

    But what if this scripture is chosen for that purpose so that the house is immersed in Jesus’ words about trust and faith.  What if each room is blessed in keeping with this scripture so that, whether we are caring for our bodies in the bath or cooking a meal for our family or watching a movie together in the living room or playing a game or fixing something in the basement, the blessing reminds us that God’s got our backs – that we are not alone – that we are loved so deeply by God that no matter what, God is working for good. 

    There is a prayer in the back of our hymnal in the Daily Order of Morning Prayer.  It starts with these words:  “New every morning is your love, Great God of light, and all day long you are working for good in the world.”  What a way to start the day – reminded that the love of God is always fresh and new and active.

    Barbara Brown Taylor ends her reflections on this question like this:

    If [Jesus] was truly human, as Christians insist he was, then he worried as much as anyone about losing what he loved.  He just figured out how to let the loving surpass the losing.

    On days when I am having a hard time following his lead, it is sometimes enough to remember the distinction.  However many hours I have to live this life, with however little power to keep from losing even one of them, I do this day love being alive.[2]

     [1] Elizabeth Dias, Editor.  What Did Jesus Ask?  Copyright © 2015 by Time Inc. Books.  From Chapter Can Any One of You Add a Single Hour to Your Life, page 6.

    [2] Ibid., page 8