Sermon preached by Rev. Henley May 25, 2008
Bobby McFerrin wrote “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” in 1988. It was a number one hit for two weeks. I bet every one of us has said that phrase more than a time or two—even if we weren’t born when the song was popular! If McFerrin had a dollar for every time someone said, “Don’t worry, be happy,” I am sure he would be as Forrest Gump might say, a “gozillionaire” by now. When I read our scripture for today from Matthew, I thought about McFerrin’s song.
…
in your life expect some trouble
when you worry you make it double
don’t worry be happy
McFerrin doesn’t say there will not be any trouble, he says there will be trouble, but when you worry, you make it double! And Jesus knew that we have trouble in our lives, “… Each day has enough trouble of its own,” but he said, “…Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.” In other words, be present with God, be God-centered, and God will take care of our worries.
Some of you may remember me saying that Margueritte, my mother, loved to play Bingo. It was her life after she retired, and if you didn’t know where she was, you could assume that she was at a bingo hall somewhere in the Golden Triangle—Beaumont, Port Arthur, or Orange, Texas, and you’d be correct in your assumption. Mother didn’t care what else was going on, if there was a bingo game anywhere close, she was there!
One summer day, I walked into her home after work, and there was my sister Jean sitting on the sofa, intently watching the weather news on television. I said what are you doing and she said, “There’s a hurricane headed toward the Gulf Coast, and mother went to play Bingo, somebody has to worry!”
Sometimes we worry like Jean did, about something we cannot change.
Sometimes we worry because we think it makes us feel better,
Or, we worry because we don’t have anything else to do.
Often we worry about the future.
Sometime we worry because there isn’t anything wrong, and we worry that something is going to go wrong.
Research shows that worrying can directly impact our health in many negative ways. Yet, we still worry.
Rev. Rick McDaniel in a sermon on “worry” wrote that experts tell us that
forty percent of things we worry about will never even happen,
thirty percent of things we worry about are things from the past,
twelve percent of our worries are about our health—when nothing is wrong with us—and
ten percent of things we worry about are too petty and insignificant to really affect our future. That means that only eight percent of the things we worry about legitimately deserve our concern and thought.
As modern people we may think we have a monopoly on worrying. But, worrying must be a part of our make-up from the very beginning of human existence. Maybe, in the very beginning, “worry” was useful. It may have prompted humans to advance, create, and secure their existence. But if Jesus made anxiety such a prominent concern, then there must be more to “worrying” than meets the eye.
What did Jesus say?
… do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. God will provide.
Two things we will consider this morning about worrying.
1. Worrying separates us from God.
2. When we worry, we are not trusting God.
And then we will explore the answer to the questions, “How can we stop worrying and how can we trust God?”
I believe worrying separates us from God. If 92% of the things we worry about are useless worrying, that means that we are spending an awful lot of time worrying, when we could be living our lives in a more serene and centered way—in a more God-centered way.
Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that we are not even close to that statistical figure of 92%, but neither are we close to the eight percent figure, either. That means that we are still worrying too much. What is it that “worries” us? Eckhart Tolle in The Power of Now tells us that it is our busy mind that rules us. Our busy mind keeps us thinking/worrying of things that are absolutely of no consequence to us as spiritual beings. Our busy mind keeps us thinking/worrying of things have nothing to do with our lives in the present moment.
It is in the present moment where we find God. If we are “somewhere else” in our minds most of the time, we are losing precious time to live a serene and God-centered life. Worrying separates us from living in the here and now with THE Ultimate Source of our lives. Worrying separates us from being aware of the presence of God in our lives.
The story of Adam and Eve tells the story of separation well. As newly-created human beings their relationship with God was idyllic. They were serene and God-centered, depended on God for everything. Then life intrudes. They see an apple on a tree, they eat the apple, and all of a sudden they’re worried. They worry about their appearance, they’re worried about their relationship to each other, they’re worried about their relationship with God, they were worried for worry’s sake, I’m sure! Their worry separated them from God. How much does our “worry” separate us from God?
I believe if we worry we are not trusting in God’s ability to take care of us. Jesus said, God knows what we need and God will provide.
It may be easier for us to say, “I’m not worried about me, I want to know how God provides for the homeless and the hungry?” than it is for us to say, “I know God provides for me.” It is always easier to point out a problem that someone else has, than it is to acknowledge a problem in our own lives.
So, let us set aside all those things that are wrong with the world this morning. Let us look at our own relationship with God and ask ourselves, "Do we believe Jesus’ words, 'God knows what we need?'" Worrying 92% of the time, oh, I forgot, we don’t worry THAT MUCH, something less, then?
By worrying we are saying that we don’t trust God to help us, we don’t trust God to be there for us, and we don’t trust God to take away the burdens in our lives. We are saying we don’t trust God to provide for us.
Have you ever heard of the saying, “Let go and let God?” At what point in our lives of worry do we do this? Oh, you say, “It is easier said than done?” Yes, you are right; it is easier said than done. Why? Is it our faith? Are we too sophisticated to accept the words of wisdom of the radical rabbi? Were those words meant for naïve, fear-driven, anxious, worried Mediterranean pheasants? Are we less fear-driven, less anxious, and less worried than they?
Are we less fear-driven, less anxious, and less worried than they?
It is easier said, “Let go and let God,” than done. To do that we have to trust that God will help, that God will provide. Scary, huh?
Do we look at the Universe and say, “It is too vast, too complex, too mysterious to believe that God will provide for something as minuscule and insignificant as me?” This interdependent world in which we live, which God created, somehow, takes care of the birds of the air and the lilies of the field; why is it so hard to trust that God will take care of us. Because nature is nature and our lives are man-made? Because birds don’t drive their children to school and the lilies of the field don’t pay mortgages?
It is all God; it is all Life; it is all our interdependent, interconnected web of life.
I don’t know how God provides, what I do know is that if we cut our finger, our entire body knows it is cut. And all kinds of physiological events begin to take place in our body to protect that cut finger and to heal our body.
I don’t know how God provides, what I do know is that what happens to one species in a symbiotic ecosystem causes something to happen to the entire co-adapted, and interrelated system.
I don’t know how God provides, what I do know that all of this, all of our modern world, with its buildings and highways and stock markets and insurance companies and fashion design and grocery stores that sell food grown in every part of our globe MAY LOOK MORE SOPHISTICATED AND COMPLEX THAN THE NATURAL WORLD, but we know it isn’t.
I do know that if we can find a way to “Let go and let God,” that God really does provide what we need—whatever that is.
How can we stop worrying and let God in our lives, and how do we “Let go and let God?’
We need to put God first in our lives. We can recognize or accept that God IS the source of our very lives. We can recognize or accept that God is in control, not us. An Imam told me once, “We think we control our lives, but that is a joke. God is there at the beginning, God is there at the end, and God is there in between.”
When we put God first, our family second, everything else falls into perspective. We can achieve a serene, God-centered life. How do we do that? We pray; we meditate; we contemplate. We set aside time each day to acknowledge that God is important to us. In short, we spend the time we need to achieve the serenity of knowing God in the present moment. Worrying, then, no longer consumes us. Our priorities are understood. Our life becomes, not only serene and God-centered, but we are able to trust God, we are able to “Let go and let God.”
Humankind, in all ages and all cultures have worried. They have also recognized that trusting in God brings about the serenity and perspective we need to live the kind of lives that God wants us to live.
Reading I
Our first reading from the First Peoples Oglala Sioux demonstrates how humankind has always depended on God for everything:
Grandfather, Great Spirit, once more behold me on earth and lean to hear my feeble voice.
You lived first, and you are older than all need, older than all prayer.
… The good road and road of difficulties you have made to cross;
and where they cross, the place is holy.
Day in and day out, forever, you are the life of things.
...You have said to me, when I was still young and could hope,
that in difficulty I should send a voice four times, once for each quarter of the earth, and you would hear me.
Right there, where the good and the bad meet, right there is God, and all we have to do is trust that he is there with us.
God hears us, God loves us, and God takes care of us. Don’t worry, be happy.
Reading I
American Indian -- Oglala Sioux – Black Elk - 1930
Hey-a-a-hey! Hey-a-a-hey! Hey-a-a-hey! Hey-a-a-hey!
Grandfather, Great Spirit, once more behold me on earth and lean to hear my feeble voice.
You lived first, and you are older than all need, older than all prayer.
All things belong to you - the two-leggeds, the four-leggeds, the wings of the air and all green things that live.
You have set the powers of the four quarters to cross each other.
The good road and road of difficulties
you have made to cross;
and where they cross, the place is holy.
Day in and day out, forever, you are the life of things.
Therefore I am sending a voice, Great Spirit, my Grandfather, forgetting nothing you have made, the stars of the universe and the grasses of the earth.
You have said to me,
when I was still young and could hope,
that in difficulty I should send a voice four times, once for each quarter of the earth, and you would hear me.
To-day I send a voice for a people in despair.
You have given me a sacred pipe,
and through this I should make my offering.
You see it now.
From the west, you have given me the cup of living water and the sacred bow, the power to make live and to destroy.
You have given me a sacred wind and the herb from where the white giant lives - the cleansing power and the healing.
The daybreak star and the pipe,
you have given from the east;
and from the south, the nation's sacred hoop and the tree that was to bloom.
To the center of the world you have taken me and showed the goodness and the beauty and the strangeness of the greening earth, the only mother - and there the spirit shapes of things, as they should be, you have shown to me and I have seen.
At the center of this sacred hoop you have said that I should make the tree to bloom.
With tears running, O Great Spirit, Great Spirit, my Grandfather - with running tears I must say now that the tree has never bloomed.
A pitiful old man, you see me here,
and I have fallen away and have done nothing.
Here at the center of the world,
where you took me when I was young and taught me; here, old, I stand, and the tree is withered, Grandfather, my Grandfather!
Again, and maybe the last time on this earth, I recall the great vision you sent me.
It may be that some little root of the sacred tree still lives.
Nourish it then, that it may leaf and bloom and fill with singing birds.
Hear me, not for myself, but for my people; I am old.
Hear me that they may once more go back into the sacred hoop and find the good red road, the shielding tree!
In sorrow I am sending a feeble voice,
O Six Powers of the World.
Hear me in my sorrow, for I may never call again.
O make my people live!
Reading II “Do Not Worry” from Matthew Chapter 6
25"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? 26Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life[b]?
28"And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? 31So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' 32For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.