“Neither Nervous nor Naive”

Philippians 4:4-7

Philippians 4:6, 7 (The Message): Don’t fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God’s wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life.

Malcolm Tolbert: “Anxiety” is a contradiction of the life of faith. It is the destructive, self-defeating worry about whether our needs are going to be met. It expresses itself in the idolatry of things… The cure for anxiety is a confident trust in a loving heavenly Father whose provision for our welfare far exceeds our poor power to ask or think… Anxiety causes us to have divided loyalties and divided, warring, and conflicted thoughts.

William Barclay: Peace can never be of [our] contriving; it is only of God’s giving. The way to peace is to take ourselves and all of whom we hold dear, to take all life, and to place them and ourselves and it trustingly in prayer in the hands of God.

Ernest Scott: The peace of God will do more for us than any careful planning of our own.

Robert Wicks: Nothing is more disconcerting [than] the way our faith in the future has been shattered by the colossal stupidity of [humanity].

[Prayer]

Jesus said, “Be not anxious about tomorrow.” Paul wrote, “Rejoice in the Lord always; and again I will say, rejoice.” Jesus said, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give as the world gives.” Paul wrote, “And the peace of God which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

Don’t be anxious. Don’t worry. Don’t fret, especially about those things over which you have no control. Stuff happens. It happens to everybody. But whatever stuff life might hand you, don’t allow it to take away your joy in Christ. Thank God for all that he has done and all that he is doing. Trust God to as William Barclay wrote by placing all of your life and all that you love in God’s hands.

Anxiety is a form of idolatry that puts things ahead of God. Anxiety leads us to doubt ourselves and God. Anxiety pushes us, on the one hand, to act without thinking, and on the other, to delay necessary actions because we’re suffering from the paralysis of analysis. Anxiety leads brilliant people to do stupid things. Anxiety can lead people, institutions, governments, and even churches to behave insanely. Anxiety robs us of sleep, damages our health, and makes us vulnerable to addictive behaviors. The attitudes of Jesus and Paul toward being anxious can be summed up in one word: don’t.

As hinted at above, the cure for anxiety is trust, but not just any kind of trust. Anxiety is only dispelled by trusting that the Lord our God is always on our side and at our side. It is in such trust that we find peace, and not just any peace. Trusting God enables us to experience that peace of Christ that passes all understanding.

Or as William Barclay translates it, that peace which is beyond not just our understanding, but our contriving. It is a peace that cannot be manufactured, a peace beyond even the wildest imagination. We can’t bring it into being or speak it into being or dream it into being. We can only find it in a prayerful trust in God that is firmly rooted in our relationship with Jesus Christ. There we find what Eugene Peterson paraphrased as a sense of God’s wholeness, of everything coming together for good that comes and settles us down.

“Rejoice in the Lord always,” wrote Paul, “again I will say, rejoice… do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” When I selected that text I was thinking in terms of two things: financial stewardship and today’s Harvest Thanksgiving Celebration. What I didn’t and couldn’t anticipate was the homecoming of Daniel Friemayer coinciding with today’s service. Talk about the fruits of prayer and supplication: there are probably people here today who’ve never prayed so fervently or faithfully in their lives. I’m confident that I’m speaking for all of us when I say that no bunch of people has ever been more thankful than this group gathered here today.

So, yes, we’re rejoicing today, just as we’ve been rejoicing about every major and minor bit of progress that Daniel has made since mid-July. And all along the way, even when doubt and darkness – extreme anxiety – fell upon us as hard as they could, there has been a trust in God that has brought peace and joy into our lives. It wasn’t that we were naïve or that we looked at the world through rose-colored glasses. Nor was it a matter of ignoring harsh realities. It was a matter of placing Daniel in God’s hands and trusting God to do what was best for everybody involved, especially Daniel.

But even as we celebrate and give thanks for Daniel’s healing, and even as we continue to pray for his further healing, there are other potential sources of anxiety around, among, and within us. There is that disaster that is the global economy. Not a whole lot of good news there. There’s a new President who will take office on January 20^th. Even those who voted for him are a bit nervous. For better or worse his inauguration will bring change. And change, be it viewed as positive or negative, is always scary. Throw all the wars, rumors of wars, saber rattling, natural disasters, famines, and epidemics into the mix and what you get is one great big overwhelmingly stupendous mess, some of which can be directly attributed to the arrogant stupidity of the human race.

There is no magic wand that anyone can wave right now and make everything that is so wrong in our world go away. There is no economic, political, or governmental band-aid that we can apply to our world’s hurts that will make them all better. If we are placing our trust in such things, we are not only naïve we’re also idolaters. We are allowing our anxieties to lead us astray. And what did Jesus say about being anxious? Be not.

So what is a Christian to do? Get all nervous and afraid? No. How about that old don’t worry be happy approach? Is it effective? No, it’s naïve. Ignoring reality and simply thinking happy thoughts is not the Christian approach. Neither is assuming that the Lord’s going to return any day now and fix it. He might. He might not. It’s not our call. God does what God does when and as God chooses to do so.

True Christian faith is neither nervous nor naïve. True Christian faith is trusting God no matter what. True Christian faith involves not allowing human events to steal its joy. True Christian faith finds joy and peace not in the things of this world or the circumstances of life but in Christ. True Christian faith neither fears the future nor bets on it. True Christian faith expresses itself in prayer, letting God know its hurts, fears, hopes, and joys. True Christian faith accepts all that is good as a gift from God. True Christian faith turns all that is bad over to God. True Christian faith sings, dances, beats drums, shakes tambourines, and joyfully offers its first fruits to God. And it does so in the face of all that is evil, destructive, and life threatening.

Today we celebrate the harvest of God’s goodness. We celebrate Daniel. We celebrate God’s ability to bring life out of death and light into darkness. We thank God for all that he has done and all that he continues to do. We present our gifts to him not out of a sense of guilt or duty, but as an act of adoration and thanksgiving, as expressions of our love of the One who first loved us.

Today is not a day to fret about budgets, pledges, Music Directors, or building maintenance. Actually no day is a day for fretting about anything. This day is about thanksgiving. This day is about celebrating the goodness and generosity of God. This day is about that peace that passes all understanding, a peace we can only find in Jesus Christ. Amen.