“OUR STRUGGLE WITH STRESS”

Scripture: Matthew 3:13-4:11

INTRODUCTION

The season is Lent, and we have begun the sacred journey which will lead us to the Last Supper in the Upper Room, to Calvary’s Cross and Easter’s Empty Tomb. Following in the footsteps of Jesus and His first disciples as recorded in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, our sermon series will focus on the theme: “From Here to Eternity: the Stages of Life, Death and Resurrection.”

For surely, that is what our Lord and those who followed Him experienced as they made their journey toward Jerusalem long ago – the joys and the sorrows of life and death and the hope of heaven on the other side. And that is still true for each of us and all of us today, as we celebrate and embrace the mountaintop moments and then hunker down and hold on as we go through the valley of the shadow.

The great promise of our faith is that we do not walk alone, for we know that the Lord reaches out to take our hand and leads us forward into the future. So it is, indeed, a sacred journey that we have begun, with all of its steps and stages unfolding before us.

This past week on Ash Wednesday, we remembered what happened when Jesus was baptized in the River Jordan and blessed by the words He heard out of heaven: This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased (Matthew 3:17). Jesus then took those words with Him into the wilderness, where He was tempted by the devil and discovered the sense of direction for His ministry and life on earth: “Be gone Satan,” for it is written: “You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only shall you serve” (Matthew 4:10).

This morning we pick up the story in the sixth chapter of Matthew as Jesus teaches His disciples and reaches out to the crowd through His Sermon on the Mount, saying:

Do not be anxious about your life, about what you shall eat or drink or about your body, what you shall wear. Look at the birds of the air – God takes care of them. And look at the lilies of the field – not even Solomon was arrayed in such beauty…So do not be anxious, for your Father in heaven knows what you need. Seek first His kingdom and righteousness, and all the other things will begin to fall into place (Matthew 6:25-33, paraphrase)

Matthew tells us that when the sermon was done, those first century people were astonished by His teaching, for He taught them as one with authority…(Matthew 7:28-29). But almost 2000 years later, if Jesus preached that same sermon from this pulpit today, I’m wondering what our response might be?

Barbara Brown Taylor, the Episcopal priest and prolific author from North Georgia who has held forth from this pulpit, she offers her own honest reaction:

“When I hear that passage, I generally want to argue, not only for myself but for the whole worried world. ‘Yes, but…’ is what I want to say. ‘Yes, that is a lovely passage and I really do believe it on some level, but birds do not have bills to pay and lilies do not get arrested for loitering and the grass of the field doesn’t have three children under five to feed and diaper. Yes, God will provide, but meanwhile there are people sleeping between cardboard sheets and eating out of garbage cans who seem to have fallen between the cracks of this passage.’” (From “None of Us Is Home Yet,” a sermon in the book “The Preaching Life” by Barbara Brown Taylor, Cowley Publications, 1993, page 155).

Now Barbara Brown Taylor, who is a Christian woman of deep faith, she isn’t the only one who feels that way. The poet W. H. Auden said in 1947 (the year I was born) that all of us are living in what he called “the age of anxiety” and my guess is that none of us can claim to be worry-free. And of course, that includes me.

Back in 1983, a friend of mine suffered a heart attack. When his doctor sent out the signal that the coast was clear, I went to visit. We talked about stress and tension and pressures on the job, and I listened carefully, because we, he and I, were in the same “business” as ordained pastors.

As I got up to leave, he said, “Wait just a minute! Let me take your blood pressure!” So, he wrapped the pressure strap around my arm, pumped the squeezer, and read the computerized numbers. He looked up at me and said, “I don’t want to alarm you, but it reads 180 over 80. Maybe you ought to have a checkup.”

I was calm and cool until I hit the street, certain I was at death’s door, and then I drove like A. J. Foyt back to Sewickley, called the doctor, and, within a matter of hours, had an EKG, and then a stress test, and then a conference with the physician, who said to me, “I think his blood pressure equipment is broken. You’re in good condition. Don’t worry about it, please.”

But of course we do. We worry about many things – about family and about the economy and about money and about health and about what’s going on in the world around us, especially right now in the Middle East. We worry about living and about dying. None of us can claim to be worry-free, and why is that so?

I think it goes all the way back to the ancient biblical story about the Garden of Eden and to what theologians describe as “original sin.” And however it all happened back then, there has been ever since a deep-seated fear in each of us that we are not worthy of God’s love, that we just don’t measure up and that sooner or later it’s all going to come unglued and everything is going to come apart.

That underlying fear, like a low-grade fever, has given birth to the twin sisters of anxiety and worry in the human family for a long time now.

II.

But in this modern era, as the volume and velocity of internet technology, high-speed transportation, business competition and communication systems, especially here in America, have increased exponentially to a level of unprecedented success, we are now dealing with a reality which I have entitled for this sermon “Our Struggle With Stress.” An anonymous poet put it this way:

“This is the age of the half-read page,

The quick hash and the mad dash,

The bright night and the nerves tight,

The plane hop and the brief stop,

The lamp tan and the short span,

The big shot in the good spot,

The brain strain and the heart pain,

And the cat nap til the springs snap

And the fun’s done.”

The Dutch priest Henri Nouwen described it in his book “Making All Things New” with these words:

“…We are busy. We experience our days filled with things to do, people to meet, projects to finish, letters to write, calls to make and appointments to keep. Our lives often seem like over-packed suitcases bursting at the seams. In fact, we are almost always aware of being behind schedule. There is a nagging sense that there are unfinished tasks, unfulfilled promises, unrealized proposals…and a lingering feeling of never really fulfilling our obligations. The strange thing, however, is that it is very hard not to be busy…because being busy has become a status symbol…” (From “Making All Things New” by Henri J. M. Nouwen, Harper and Row Publishers, 1981, pages 23-24).

The truth is, of course, that stress is a part and parcel of all our lives. And like good and bad cholesterol, there is good stress – which is energizing, productive and helps us get things done…and bad stress, which is nerve-wracking, harmful and threatens to do us in.

Now we know that Jesus Christ did not live in a high-tech world. He didn’t have to deal with delayed airplane flights or answering e-mails or trying to navigate traffic out on 285. But He could see into the heart and soul of every human being, and He knew what we needed as history turned from B.C. to A.D., just as He knows what we need at the dawn of this twenty-first century:

· To let go of our obsession with possessions, and let God give us what we need, not what we think we want or deserve – Therefore I tell you, do not worry about what you shall eat or drink or what you shall wear, for your Heavenly Father knows what you need.

· To focus our lives on what matters the most and not to worry about those things that matter the least – See first His kingdom and all the other things shall fall into place.

· To remember that yesterday was history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That’s why we call it “the present.” – Therefore, do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the days own trouble be sufficient for the day.

That’s what Jesus taught us and that’s what we need to learn in our struggle with stress – to center our lives in His love, and having done our best, to simply trust the rest to Him.

In closing this morning, I want to give the last word to a faithful woman who brought humor into all of our lives and learned some lessons which she passed on to us before she died. Her name – Erma Bombeck – and her final by-line: “If I had my life to live over again,” written shortly after she discovered that she was dying of cancer:

“If I had my life to live over again,

I would have talked less and listened more.

I would have invited friends over to dinner, even if the carpet was stained or the sofa faded.

I would never have insisted the car windows be rolled up on a summer day because my hair had just been teased and sprayed.

Instead of wishing away nine months of pregnancy, I would have cherished every moment and realized that the wonderment growing inside me was the only chance in my life to assist God in a miracle.

When my kids kissed me impetuously, I would never had said, ‘Later. Now go get washed up for dinner.’

I would stop sweating the small stuff, not worry about who doesn’t like you, who has more than you do or who’s doing what. Instead, I would cherish the relationships with those who love us and think about what God has blessed us with.”

In other words,

Do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat or drink, or about your body, what you shall wear. Look at the birds of the air. God takes care of them. And look at the lilies of the field. Not even Solomon was arrayed in such beauty. So do not be anxious, for your Father in heaven knows what you need. Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these other things will begin to fall into place.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Book References:

“Managing Your Stress” by Wayne E. Oates, Fortress Press, Philadelphia, PA, 1985.

“Margin” by Richard A. Swenson, M.D., Navpress, Colorado Springs, CO, 1992.

“If I had my life to live over I would pick more daisies,” edited by Sandra Haldeman Martz, Papier-Mache Press, Watsonville, CA, 1992

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