Thursday May 22, 2014

Woody Allen — Image by © Elena Seibert/Corbis

Matthew 6: 25-34 

Today's reading flies in the face of our culture's preoccupation with worrying.  Don't worry! Don't worry about what you will eat or what you will drink or what you will wear?  Doesn't Jesus know that is only the beginning?  To quote from the MACLEAN's magazine article, The New Worry Epidemic (Feb. 5, 2014):

Worry. Never has a society worried about so much—and so little—simultaneously. We’re tied in Gordian knots of worry, every Twitter refresh delivering new fretting points. “Frost quakes” and polar vortex, the scary new term for winter, have been added to climate change fears. . . Everybody has his or her own worry list, which might or might not contain H5NI, vaccine fear, bioterrorism, your kid passing his finals, cyberterrorism, those grey hairs, the grid going dark, drivers who text, stock market collapse, job loss, gluten, debt, that guy eyeing your job, your RSP, E. coli in packaged salad.

Worrying is endemic, mental health professionals will tell you.  The term "worrying" has replaced "thinking" says California-based clinical psychologist Daniel Peters.  "People don't say, 'I'm thinking about this' anymore; they say, 'I'm worrying about this.'

Surely Jesus' advice seems naive at best, even irresponsible.  Don't worry; trust God.  On the other hand, his observation that "who here can claim to add even an hour to his life by worrying?" seems accurate.  

These teachings of Jesus about "don't worry" come in the midst of the Sermon on the Mount. That's the same section as the Beatitudes which boldly proclaim that God's kingdom is different from the kingdoms of the world.  In God's kingdom we are invited to trust rather than worry and our trust is to be placed in God rather than financial security.  In God's kingdom we commit to different priorities - like taking responsibility for the earth and each other rather than obsessive self-interest; like generosity rather than greed; like trust rather worry.  Easier said than done? Of course.  And so we pray that God's kingdom come and God's will be done, on earth as it is in heaven and risk being transformed by God's grace and love.

Marilyn Malton