Sacrificing Anxiety

One of the very best things that you can sacrifice for Lent is anxiety! Oh, I know, that sounds like a very difficult thing to do; but Jesus asks us to do it. When we worry, it can spiral out of control and take over our lives. This sermon suggests one way to get rid of it.

When was the last time that you heard those verses from scripture? (John 14:1-3, 27; 15:9-11) I’ll bet that it was at a funeral. I read these texts all the time at funerals that I conduct because family members who are grieving need to hear them. Jesus’ reassurance that he has prepared a place for us in God’s kingdom, and that he will take all of us there one day is a great comfort. But Jesus’ words aren’t just for grieving families – they’re for all of us. “Don’t let your hearts be troubled… I have told you this so that your joy may be complete.” Do we take Jesus seriously? Nope. Most of the time, we let our hearts be very troubled. We hang on to our anxieties like a dog with a chew bone, worrying and worrying and worrying some more. We fixate on what might happen in the future and miss all the blessings of what’s going on right now! For many people, the most powerful words in their vocabulary are “What if…” What if this happens? What if that happens?

I remember a humorous segment from the radio show A Prairie Home Companion that was titled “Worst Case Scenario.” During that segment, someone phoned the Worst Case Scenario hotline for assistance with worrying. The episode went something like this:

“Worst Case Scenario. How can I help you? You’re going on a trip and you’re wondering what might go wrong? Very good, sir. May I ask where you’ll be traveling? Europe! How nice for you! Will you be traveling by plane or by boat? Both! Ah, that offers many possibilities! Just let me put your trip information into our computer… And here it is, your personalized Worst Case Scenario worry plan!

When you arrive at the airport, the first leg of your flight is delayed. When you get to the connecting airport, you need to run to make your second flight. In your rush, you lose one of your shoes and don’t have time to stop and pick it up. You make it onto the plane with only one shoe just in time to board; but there is now no room for your carry-on luggage, so you need to check it at the gate. Your seat is located in the middle of the next to last row between two football players who both want to use the armrests. One of them gets airsick during turbulence halfway through the flight. Seated behind you is a screaming child who kicks the back of your seat continually. The sanitary facilities on the plane are also out of order; so you have to hold it for an hour and a half. When you get to your destination, the airline has lost your luggage. Upon arrival at the ship, you find that your reservation has also been lost, and you spend the rest of the day arguing with the cruise line. By the time you are finally permitted to board the ship, dinner has already been served. On the third day out, the ship takes on water, and all passengers are sent to the lifeboats. The man sitting next to you in the lifeboat not only has terrible body odor, but decides that this is the time to make a running commentary on politics and religion. Your lifeboat turns out to be defective and slowly sinks, depositing everyone in the water. You are washed up on the shore of a country hostile to the United States; and because you have lost your passport, you are arrested and sentenced to 10 years in prison for being a spy.

How does that Worst Case Scenario sound, sir? Wonderful, you’ll have plenty to worry about while you’re on your trip! We hope to hear from you again in 10 years, right after your release from prison!”

Does that sound like anyone you know? I thought that it might. (It might even sound like you.) When we worry about things that are completely out of our control, we let it spoil our appreciation of the blessings that we have! Even more than that, worrying impacts our physical health. People who are chronic worriers are more prone to suffer from heart disease, respiratory disorders, insomnia, headaches, and intestinal ailments. The joy that Jesus wants for us can’t be complete if we insist on worrying. Maybe we could sacrifice that useless worrying during this Lenten period so that we can focus, instead, on all the blessings that we have. Sacrificing our worry helps to build up our trust in the God who promises to care for us like a mother hen cares for her baby chicks. But I know that saying “Don’t worry” is like telling the sun not to rise. It’s part of our nature as human beings. We know that we don’t have control of what happens to us; and so we worry about it. We need God’s help to set those worries aside. Fortunately, the Psalms are full of prayers for just that kind of help; and they offer a model for us when we need God’s help to let go of our useless worrying. As you move toward sacrificing your worrying this Lenten season, try praying like many of the psalmists did.

First, tell God what you are worried about. Lay it all out! Don’t omit anything! Are you worried about your health? Your career? A relationship? Your finances? Tell God about every single thing! God won’t judge you; God will have compassion for you! After all, God created you and knows exactly how you feel. If you’re worried and don’t admit it, you’re not fooling anybody but yourself.

Second, thank God for what he has done for you in the past. That not only gets your mind off your worries; it helps you to remember what has gone right in your life. And once you start thinking about how God has cared for you, you’ll remember more and more. The Old Testament does that all the time, reminding the Israelites that God brought them out of Egypt and led them through the wilderness into the Promised Land. God didn’t do all those things for them and then decide to take an extended vacation leaving them to take care of themselves. God has taken care of us in the past, so we can trust God to take care of us in the future!

Finally, thank God for what he will do for you! That is an act of faith that will help you draw closer to God. The book of Hebrews says that “Faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we don’t see.” (Hebrews 11:1) We don’t know what the future holds; so we often assume that it will be terrible. Sure, experience tells us that life isn’t always a bowl of cherries; but it also tells us that marvelous surprises await us! Planning for the worst is probably a good idea; but why not anticipate the best? God will help us through rough times, and offer us joy and the peace that passes all understanding no matter what our circumstances may turn out to be! Worrying steals both joy and peace from our lives and can leave us depressed and sick. That's not how Jesus wants us to live!

During this Lenten season – just until Easter – I invite you to sacrifice all your worrying! Tell God about it… thank God for what he has done in the past… and then thank God for what he is going to do in the future. By Easter, you may be surprised to find that worrying no longer holds you prisoner. Wouldn’t THAT be a wonderful resurrection surprise on Easter morning!

Sacrificing Violence

Violence is all around us. It has infiltrated the mass media, our entertainment, and even our conversations! What if we gave it up for Lent? This sermon suggests some ways to do that.

We live in an incredibly violent society. Violence is everywhere: in movies and TV shows, on the evening news, and even in the catch-phrases that we use. It seems to be in the very air that we breathe! And it wasn’t always this way. Oh, gangsters and members of the Mafia have always been violent; but until relatively recently, that violence was for the most part hidden from public view. Now, we can’t escape it. Video games like Death Race or Mortal Combat encourage its players to kill as many opponents as possible in order to win the game. Television shows show the effects of violence in all kinds of ways. I recently stumbled upon an old episode of CSI. In just the first five minutes of the show, I saw a bloody corpse hanging on a barbed wire fence with its decapitated head impaled on a nearby post. When I was a kid, I watched shows like Leave It to Beaver, where the only violence was Eddie Haskell threatening to punch out the Beav if he tattled. (And we knew that Eddie would never do that, anyway.) And the movies are experts at depicting violence. In 1952, the year that I was born, the three most popular movies were Moulin Rouge (a biography of artist Toulouse-Lautrec), Singin’ in the Rain (a musical) and The Quiet Man (a love story). Sixty years later, the most popular movies were The Avengers, The Dark Knight Rises, and The Hunger Games, every one of them violent or based on a violent situation.

But while the violence that we see in movies and TV and video games isn’t real, the deaths that have taken place as a result of mass shootings over the past 20 years certainly are. Their names fall on our ears like the tolling of a bell in a funeral procession.

Columbine

Virginia Tech

Fort Hood

Sandy Hook

Emmanuel AME Church

Pulse nightclub

Las Vegas

Marjory Stoneman Douglas

Over 300 men, women, and children have lost their lives since the Columbine High School massacre took place in 1999. What in the world is going on?

There is no easy way to answer that question. I’m not going to analyze the causes of violence this morning. That’s the work of a sociologist, not a preacher. I’m not going to offer a political solution to the problem, either. Jesus didn’t give us any political solutions, and neither will I. But Jesus does call us to reject violence wherever we find it; and the fact is that violence has infiltrated our society to such an extent that most of us accept it as normal. And it’s not normal! It’s not normal to be entertained by torn flesh, bullet-ridden bodies, and decapitated corpses! And if we want to draw nearer to God, we need to free ourselves from the swamp of violence in which we are mired. I’m going to suggest that during this this Lenten season, instead of sacrificing small luxuries such as chocolate or cookies, we try our best to sacrifice some of the violence that is part and parcel of our daily lives.

Now, you may object that no one here is violent. On the whole, we all live peaceful lives. That’s true. I’m fairly certain that none of us is going to plan a mass murder anytime soon. But do you know what we will do? We’ll use violent words and phrases without giving it a thought. Instead of saying, “I’ll give it a try,” we’ll say, “I’ll take a shot (or a stab) at it.” Instead of asking, “Are you ready to start?” we might ask, “Are you ready to pull the trigger on that?” (Do you see what I’m shooting for here?) And I’ll bet every single one of us has said, at one time or another, “I’d like to knock some sense into his head!”

I’m just as guilty as anyone! Those catch-phrases show how easily we have accepted the violence in our culture! Why, we don’t think twice about it! What if, during this Lenten season, we did think twice about it? What if we decided to take a tiny step towards reducing violence by eliminating violent language from our vocabulary for the next 6 weeks? It might not decrease the violence in our society by much, but it would certainly make us more aware of how pervasive it is!

Changing our speech is relatively easy. But his next suggestion will be much harder for some of us. What if we sacrificed watching violent movies and TV shows during Lent? Could we watch The Greatest Showman instead of Death Wish? Could we tune in to The Big Bang Theory instead of Game of Thrones? We might even consider turning off the evening news in order to avoid some of the images of bloodshed from around the world! If we sacrificed some of the violent entertainment that we watch regularly, even just for a few weeks, we might start to recognize how twisted that violence really is!

Finally, just for the next 6 weeks, let’s practice turning the other cheek. Now, I understand – that’s sacrificing our rights as citizens to respond to insults, slurs, and other affronts any way that we like. But the way that we like to respond isn’t the way that Jesus wants us to respond! I recently ran across a story that is almost unbelievable given today’s climate of retaliating for every slight. And it took place, of all places, on Facebook, that hotbed of trolls who use offensive vocabulary and even worse grammar! It seems that a young lady who is, admittedly, overweight posted a modest photo of herself on her Facebook page. The internet trolls came out of the woodwork! One told her that she looked like a pig. Another advised her to get off her big fat rear and exercise. A third asked her why she was offending their eyes by posting the photo at all! Now, what would you do if anyone said those things to you? Most folks on Facebook would immediately respond in kind. “You think that I’m fat?? Oh, yeah???” or something of that sort. But this wise young lady responded in a very different way. She said something positive to every single one of her attackers! She complimented one on the lipstick that she was wearing in her profile photo; and she thanked another for the suggestion that she exercise, saying that it gave her motivation to improve her general health! Do you know what happened? The vast majority of the folks who had insulted her contacted her to apologize for their ugly words.

Do you suppose that Jesus is on to something when he tells us to turn the other cheek? Could we help to de-escalate the violence in our society by learning to do just that? The book of Proverbs (15:1) says that “a soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” Maybe we should take that advice seriously.

“Those who live by the sword will die by the sword." That’s still as true today as it was when Jesus said it. My prayer is that the violence in our society will be rejected by men and women who are as tired of it as I am, and who decide to practice non-violence in their own lives in greater or smaller ways. It may not be an easy sacrifice, but it’s one that I guarantee will draw you closer to God during this season of Lent.

From the Mountain to the Valley

On this first Sunday in Lent, I reflect on how far it is from last Sunday (Transfiguration Sunday) to today, and why we don't have to be afraid of the change.

It’s a long way from the top of a mountain to the valley below. It’s an even longer distance from the vision of Jesus’ Transfiguration to the solemn journey through Lent. That change from the mountain to the valley can come as quite a shock to our systems, because we have very little time to adjust to it. One day, Jesus takes us to the mountain where we see a vision of him in all his glory; and the next day, we plunge down into the valley where we have to deal with doubts, mistakes, and misunderstanding. Given a choice, we’d much rather stay on the mountain. Peter wanted to stay there, too (Mark 9:12-10). He even wanted to build three shrines – one for Jesus, one for Moses, and one for Elijah – so that he could come back to the mountain and experience the sight of Jesus in glory any time that he wanted to! But it doesn’t work that way. No sooner had Peter offered to build those shrines than a cloud surrounded the disciples so that they couldn’t see Jesus’ glory anymore. When that cloud disappeared, the everyday Jesus that they knew was back – the human Jesus who got tired and hungry and thirsty, the Jesus who plodded along the dusty roads with dirty feet, the Jesus who was just as frail and vulnerable as his disciples. It was that Jesus who led them down off the mountaintop back into the valley.

Is it any wonder that Peter wanted to stay on the mountain? When we’re on that mountain, we’re lifted up into a realm that we usually only dream of, far away from the stresses and troubles of our normal lives. When we’re on that mountain, we see Jesus in glory, and we are absolutely certain that he is the Son of God. We don’t doubt his power when we see him like that. When we’re on that mountain, we have no doubt that we’re God’s beloved children. We know that we’re precious to God! But when we go back to the valley, suddenly we’re not so sure. But just as our mountaintop experience reassures us that Jesus is truly the Messiah, it also assures us that God goes with us when we leave the mountain and return to the valley.

For just a moment, let’s focus not on Jesus, but on the cloud that surrounded the disciples. The disciples would have known right away that cloud was the very presence of God. They all knew the stories about God giving the Law to Moses after the Exodus. In all those stories, God looked like a cloud on top of Mt. Sinai! The book of Exodus (19:16-19) describes the scene this way: “On the morning of the third day there was thunder and lightning, with a thick cloud over the mountain... Everyone in the camp trembled. Then Moses led the people out of the camp to meet with God, and they stood at the foot of the mountain. Mount Sinai was covered with smoke, because the LORD descended on it in fire. The smoke billowed up from it like smoke from a furnace, and the whole mountain trembled violently. [Then] …Moses spoke and the voice of God answered him.” That’s the way that God spoke with Moses: out of a cloud. So when a cloud surrounded Jesus’ disciples on the top of mountain of Transfiguration, they knew what it was. It was the very presence of God! But God wasn’t supposed to work that way! The only people who were ever in the presence of God were the priests, the ones who sacrificed in the Temple and kept themselves ritually clean. God never mingled with ordinary people! God lived in the Holy of Holies in the Temple where he wouldn’t get dirty by rubbing elbows with people like us. God never came to the people; the people had to go to God!

Well, apparently nobody told God that; because God’s presence not only rubbed elbows with the disciples; it surrounded them, enfolded them, embraced them, and even spoke to them! “Listen to Jesus,” was what God said. God might have added, “Listen to Jesus, not to tradition. Don’t rely on what you think you know. I’m going to do something absolutely new, so keep your eyes and your ears and your minds open!” The disciples would need to remember those words when they went back to the valley and Jesus told them that he would not only die, but be raised from the dead. And as they traveled through that valley on their way to Jerusalem, the presence of God that embraced them as a cloud on the mountain would travel with them. Oh, they couldn’t see it, but it was there, helping them to understand when they were baffled, helping them to be brave when they were afraid, and helping them to face the future when they wanted to crawl into a hole and disappear. Today, we call God’s presence the Holy Spirit; but it doesn’t really matter what we call it. The important thing is that just as it was with the disciples, God’s presence is still with us, wherever we go and whatever we do.

God even travels with us through Lent, that time in the church year when we focus on all the ways that we have failed to follow Jesus. It’s all too easy to forget that God is still with us during Lent. We fall into the trap of only seeing God in all God’s glory, sitting up on the mountaintop on a golden throne; and we imagine that God looking down on us just waiting for us to mess up. When we have that image, we falsely believe that God is waiting for us to do things during Lent that will pacify his anger with us. But God isn’t angry with us! God loves us! And because he loves us, God wants us to do things during Lent that draw us closer to him! God doesn’t want to travel through life with us walking on the other side of the street, or even walking at arm’s length. God wants to be as close to us as our own breath; and when we do things during Lent that focus on our relationship with him – things like prayer, meditation, and works of charity – then we invite God into the very center of our lives, and our relationship with him becomes much more than just a nodding acquaintance.

During the upcoming days of Lent, I hope that you will do just that – invite God into the very center of your life. With God’s help, when we reach Easter Sunday, we will see Jesus again in all his resurrection glory, just as we saw him on the mountaintop. And on that day, we will recognize the God who raised Jesus from the dead as the very same one who has been traveling with us all the way through the valley of Lent, guiding us through the cross to an empty tomb.