St. Matthew 6:24-34 + September 8, 2024

Jonathan Haidt’s important book The Anxious Generation demonstrates that smartphones and social media multiply anxiety. This is particularly true for adolescents. He’s right. Yet the problem of anxiety is not new. Tolstoy in the 19th century said, “Our whole life is taken up with anxiety for personal security, with preparations for living, so that we really never live at all.”

Election years exacerbate anxiety. But anxiety haunts the human experience. A little 4 year old spent Tuesday morning crying through morning prayer on the first day of school, right over there. Perhaps the mother was also weeping. Letting go of your child, whether for JK or her freshman year out of state, is fraught with worry.

Anxiety causes insomnia. And if you do fall asleep, your dreams can haunt you with unfinished work, like the dream I know some of you have also had, where there’s a class that you’re failing because of something you’ve missed, something you left undone.

But perhaps the worst kind of anxiety is in the conflict between what God commands and what we want to do to keep ourselves safe. You can see it in today’s first Bible reading, the widow of Zarephath. Elijah has no food and no lodging, so God directs him to a widow who has a little boy. They’ve also run out of food. She’s down to a handful of flour, to make one last little pancake, and then lie down to die.

“Give me food,” Elijah tells her. She explains she’s out of food, and she’s gathering two sticks for the fire. That’s the detail that really gets me – two sticks. A tiny fire for a tiny meal.

Elijah tells her to give him the food, and promises her that God will provide. I’m not sure the miracle in the story is that the jar of flour doesn’t run out, or that the jug of oil doesn’t dry out. A more powerful miracle is that she does what the prophet says.

We are not on the brink of starvation, but you probably do think about the conditions that would bring about your ruin. If I do what the prophets say, if I follow God’s Word – what will the consequences be? We’re not given a word about an amazing refilling flour jar, we’re just given regular, normal commands to be faithful, to speak what is true.

But if you dare say, for example, that there is an intrinsic difference between a man and a woman, and one cannot become the other, what might that cost you? “Be faithful unto death,” Jesus says, “and you will receive the crown of life.” “Be faithful unto death,” He says, but we’re worried about much smaller costs. So we hoard our money and keep our heads down and hope we can somehow outlast the enemy. We are the men without chests, gorging at the trough of late-stage America while pointing the finger at those who indulge more, as though they are the gluttons and we are innocent. All this is the worship of mammon (which is more than money). Mammon is the stuff of the world, and the status and convenience of our easy lives.

The water poured out onto the heads of Madison and Arun and Jacob today is itself a sermon, Jesus telling them and you, “Be not anxious!” Why? This is the voice of the Father saying, “You are my dear child; I will never leave you nor forsake you. When you go through danger, I will be with you. When you go through the fire, it will not scorch you. You’ve got this, but only because I’ve got this. My Son, the Lord Jesus, was betrayed by a friend for you. He was lied about for you. He suffered the mob’s abuse for you. He was unjustly condemned for you. He was pierced for you, spit upon for you, went to hell for you, trampled down death for you. Therefore do not worry!” All that is the sermon preached by the baptismal water.

The first disciples of Jesus, when He was crucified, hid behind locked doors. They worried crucifixions were also in their future. And they were right! In their future was loss of property, loss of livelihood, loss of friends, stonings, flayings, crucifixions. The resurrection of Jesus did not take away what they feared. The resurrection of Jesus took away the fear itself. Why? Because death and hell, Satan and sin had lost their power. Christ is risen, and they no longer had anxiety, for their resurrection was a certainty.

Because of this, the first among these men, Peter, wrote to us: Cast all your cares—your worries, your anxieties—on God, for He cares for you (1 Pet. 5.7).

Anxiety is us falling into the delusion that there is no resurrection, there is no god, so I better cling to my money and my safety because that’s all I have and all there is.

None of this is to say, “Don’t work,” or, “Don’t make plans.” Rather, it means, “In your work and your plans, in your concern for your work and your family, be faithful to what God commands. Even if it costs you everything, you’ve lost nothing. For the God whom you serve is renewing the world. He raises the dead. So don’t worry about anything outside of your control. He controls it all.”

Be not anxious! You are baptized. You are already ransomed from death. You’ve come under the protection of the One who drive away demons, gets money from the mouths of fish, and serves feasts in deserts. Be not anxious! +INJ+