Psalm 103:1-5
Matthew 6:25-34
My father almost never raised his voice, but when my brother and I were bickering dad could utter a single word: “enough!” And we knew what he meant – enough of the noise.
Recently I’ve been using a similar word, sufficiency. It’s often used in statistics and economics but I’m feeling sufficiency in my heart and spirit… not too much, not too little… just enough. It’s a wonderful blessing.
As I looked up the root of the word “sufficiency” I learned that one of the Hebrew names for God, El Shaddai, often translated into English as Almighty God, actually means “the one who is sufficient.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Shaddai
Epicurus, the Greek philosopher remarked: “Nothing is sufficient for the person who finds sufficiency too little.”
Cultural voices constantly shout at us that nothing is enough, nothing is sufficient. They emphasize, instead, what we lack – in money, power, popularity, and so much more. These voices, which seem particularly powerful when we approach Christmas, want us to believe there’s something out there we must have, and they can sell it to us, and then we’ll be satisfied. So, we’re seduced into seeing what we lack rather than what we have.
As we anticipate the rush and crush of the Christmas/Holiday season you may already be feeling inadequate. After all, Black Friday is over and you haven’t finished your shopping, have you? Typically, our expectations rise year after year. We try to deal well with the push to buy and give and consume. How many of us – mothers in particular – have come to believe we’re solely in charge of making Christmas work?
It should come as no surprise that anxiety disorders are the most common emotional illness in our nation, affecting at least 20 million adults, and costing more than $40 billion a year in treatment costs. There’s some evidence that the occurrence of anxiety disorders increases proportionately to the standard of living – the more you have, the more likely you are to be anxious. More importantly, our anxiety is usually tied to unreasonable expectations.
Miriam Therese Winter, a Medical Mission Sister who lives here in New England, once spent a year at a convent in central Africa. Andrea and I visited with her at a conference as she spoke of the hours everyone spent every day just to survive – to tend the fields and harvest and store, and the long walks to the nearest place where clean water was available. Curiously, she said, rather than being a burden, this reconnecting with the source became a blessing. She found she was sinking her spiritual roots deeper as she remembered that much of the world’s population must labor like that their whole lives. She reminded us of the wisdom of the bumper sticker, to have more, desire less.
In the words of a favorite hymn, far too often we’re “rich in things and poor in soul.” The ultimate danger of believing we’re self-made and self-sufficient is that we lose our bearings when life throws us a curve ball. We get separated from the source and bound up with anxiety.
So what do we do? Well scientists say they’ve found the gene that causes fear and anxiety in mice.[1] And since humans are so similar, they believe they’ll be able to turn off this gene and prevent anxiety all together. Jesus had a better approach. Today’s Gospel reading is part of the extended section called the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew doesn’t tell us just who was in the crowd of seekers who stopped and listened that day so long ago. We can guess from the examples Jesus used that they were poor. But, history has shown that his message is equally relevant to the rich and the poor.
His topic was excessive, debilitating worry – anxiety. The word itself comes from the Latin and means to choke. That’s how we may feel when we consider some possible event in the future – we may choke with the feeling that something terrible might happen.
What makes us anxious? Well… what doesn’t make us anxious? Specifically, we worry about family, money, work, health; but just as often, we’re anxious about the future in general: free-floating feelings that something might go terribly wrong. When we get in one of those moods we can quickly generate an infinitely long list of possible problems in the future. But remember the observation of an old man who said: “I’ve had many troubles in my life, most of which never happened!”
In the face of these specific and general worries, Jesus said simply:
- God knows what you need.
- This loving God has made birds of the air and lilies of the field, and won’t forget what you need.
- Remember and accept that you’re utterly dependent on God.
- Remember that you haven’t made yourself and can’t save yourself.
- God alone is the source.
- Money isn’t irrelevant, but it’s not enough. Clothing isn’t immaterial, but it’s not enough.
- The only thing that will ease our fears is trust.
- You can handle today’s troubles, and that’s plenty.
Underlying this lesson in the Sermon on the Mount is the assurance that God has brought you safely this far, and won’t abandon you now. You and I have to trust each and every day. Forgetting God’s bounty and grace simply wastes some of the best that life can offer. God will give us the harvest of things we really need, things on which life truly depends. Because we’re used to having much more than we need we feel anxious at the thought of having only enough and no more.
To us Jesus said, “don’t worry.”
Is it possible to simply stop worrying completely, forever? Possible… not easy. Nature hates a vacuum, so you have to empty out the worry and refill the space with something better. Jesus advised his disciples to replace anxiety with trust, to replace fear with faith.
Anxiety and faith are opposites that can’t live side by side. There’s no such thing as anxious faith, or faithful anxiety.
- Was Jesus saying, then, that we must give up any thought of ourselves? No, that would be clearly impossible.
- Was he saying that if we stop worrying we won’t get old, or sick; that we won’t die? Surely, that’s not it.
- Was he suggesting that if we stop worrying and fearing we would automatically receive food and clothing and possessions? No, he wasn’t saying any of this.
Jesus was saying that no one has ever made the world, or one life, or even a single day the tiniest bit better by worrying. Worrying has never solved a problem, but only steals away the strength and courage we need to face a problem.
The best thing you can do is to practice your trust in God. Put first things first: seek God’s realm; look more deeply within yourself, and then everything else will fall into place.
If first we tend to our spiritual life and our relationship to God, then we’ll discover the miracle by which our desire becomes less and our sense of sufficiency says “enough.”
If you seek God, you’ll find God.
If you find God, you’ll trust God.
If you trust God, you won’t fear tomorrow.
If you don’t fear tomorrow, you can live fully today.
I pray that we’ll take the time, in the midst of so much bounty, to remember the birds of the air and the lilies of the field. If God so loves these tiny miracles of nature, how much more does God love you, “O you of little faith?”
Beyond that, we can all take our minds off our own worries by seeing the needs of the world. A couple of my favorites:
- every time you walk by a Salvation Army red kettle, every time, drop in a dollar bill, or a five, or more.
- Or as you do your Christmas shopping keep track of how much you spend on gifts that your loved ones don’t really need; then give an equal gift through our Community Crisis Ministries, or Heifer Project, or Habitat for Humanity.
- Or as parents, before giving your children their gifts at Christmas, start a new tradition of joining them in sorting through what’s already in the toy box and closet and select out everything that sits unused and bring the good usable items to our church’s Children’s Clothing Closet, or to the Salvation Army.
The best way to handle anxiety is to recognize when we have enough – sufficiency – and then to live with the joy that will pass it on so your blessings become a blessing to others.