Sermon on the Mount conclusion

 

²⁵ “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?

I have saved Matthew 6:25-34 for the finale, even though this is not where Jesus ends or lands the plane in his Sermon on the Mount.  I do this because I am a professional worrier.  If the Olympics ever host and hold a worrying event, I think I have a real chance of medaling.  I can worry about the past, wondering why I said or did that boneheaded thing and will the person forgive me.  I can worry about the present about being late or that I am not doing enough (chronic people pleasing is something many of us struggle with even as we quote the cliché, “You can’t please everyone,” we secretly think, “But I will try!”).  I can worry about the future coming up with countless “what if” fictional scenarios.  What if my sermon next Sunday is a dud ~ never mind the fact I am not even preaching next Sunday…we have a guest.  Oh, I can still worry.  I have forty plus years of cultivating and curating the art of worry.  Anxiety not only picks the radio station I listen to as I go down the roads of life, anxiety is the driver seat.

On the one hand, Jesus telling me not to worry can sound critical ~ like he is saying, “Just chillax, Dude”.  But I don’t hear Jesus getting out his preacher voice; I don’t see him wagging a finger at me with a frown on his face.  I hear Jesus saying the above words softly and tenderly, whispering this to my anxiety which so often just leaves me exhausted and feeling not enough.  Jesus wants to quiet the inner critic.  Jesus brings gospel, good news, that we don’t have to race and run around in a frantic frenzy to earn God’s love.  God’s love is because your first, last, and middle name is, “Beloved”. 

One of the most helpful insights into anxiety/fear is that this emotion (which remember emotions are energy in motion ~ momentum that sets us in a particular direction) is extremely contagious.  Anxiety/fear (like almost every emotion ~ anger, hate, joy, peace, etc…), can reside in four spaces.  These emotions reside in you.  Remember and recall a moment recently when you were anxious ~ perhaps running late or because you had an important meeting.  Or think about a time you were angry or joyful.  Emotions sit on the shelves of our souls ~ or as the Disney movie, Inside Out astutely teaches us, emotions live within us and can control how we respond ~ even as we like to think we are so rational and reasonable.  Emotions are within you.

Emotions can also be in the other.  When was the last time you were around someone who was anxious?  Did you “catch” his/her anxiety?  I can be a sponge to others emotions, especially when the emotion is extreme.  Recall and remember over the last week when you encountered someone who was processing pain did you feel that within you?

Emotions can exist in the space between you and one another.  I think of when someone in my family is having a hard day, I absorb that too.  People I love leave an impression and impact my life.  When and where has this been true for you? 

 

Finally, emotions exist in a group.  Steve Cuss who teaches these concepts so thoughtfully points to the moment when Jesus walked into a mob/angry crowd about to throw stones at a woman caught in adultery (never mind that the law was clear that the man she had the affair with was also to punished, see Leviticus 20:10).  Jesus walks into that anxious and angry crowd and starts sketching in the sand.  I wonder if he wrote “Leviticus 20”?  I wonder if he wrote the word, “Love” or “hesed” – which is loving kindness and the most used word for God in the Hebrew Scriptures.  Whatever he wrote, he eased the anxiety of that crowd and released the woman from punishment.  You have probably been in that meeting where anxiety hung and hovered in the air.  You have probably walked into that room where something was being talked about right before you entered and there is a palpable chill in the silence.

 

I encourage you today to hold the truth of how emotions exist in and around and between us.  And may the love, energy in motion, of the Divine so captivate your heart that we find our way to life that is more than what we wear or do or think or eat.  Amen.