Pentecost 17 - Philippians 4:4-13

Dear Friends in Christ, Anxiety and worry can be destructive emotions. Have you ever noticed this to be true? Let me give you an example of what I mean: On a given day, you might have a plan and a list of thing you need to do, but then something happens that sets you off down a path of worry; perhaps you go to get the mail and notice, among the envelopes a rather large bill that you can’t afford to pay. Or perhaps during the course of the day your phone rings, and the person on the other end of the line has some bad news that somehow affects you or someone you love. Or maybe at work or at school there is some large project or event that you are responsible to complete and that you must see through to its end. These sorts of thing (and others) causes you to worry. All of a sudden, there are thoughts of uncertainty about your performance, whether or not you can meet your obligations; you feel the weight of being unable to control how a situation will turn out, all these things lead you into fear so that you spend the rest of the day fretting, afraid, worrying about the result and all the things that will happen because of that result. “I won’t be able to pay that bill, if I don’t pay that bill then I’ll lose my house or my car. I won’t have money to live.”. -or- “What if I fail that test, then what will happen? I will feel like a fool, my parents will be upset, I will be wasting my education, I will drop out of school, I will be an utter failure, my life will be ruined.” And so it goes. Fear and uncertainty about the future and our place in it ruins and destroys who we are… “Have no anxiety about anything,” “Have no anxiety about anything,” instead, says Paul, instead of worry and anxiety Paul proposes that we pray. “With prayer and petitions let your requests be made known to God.” Give your worry to God. Leave the outcome of this situation that is too big for you in His hands. Trust him to care for you. Trust him to provide for you. Beyond that, don’t worry about it. You see, worry does not have to be so overwhelming. It does not have to take over our lives, the way that it often does. God has given the Christian an alternative. Present our worries to him. Lay our worries at his feet. Trust Him to take care of what we need. Beg him for help. Cry out to him for mercy. Know that he loves to help and he thrives on showing mercy and leave it in his hands. Doing that is easier said than done. After all, our human nature has a way of convincing ourselves that we are in control. I have noticed that this is especially true in the world of sports, athletics. Those who spend any time playing football or basketball or baseball thrive on this way of thinking. The entire culture is built around it. We have a way of convincing ourselves that we have the power to control everything that happens in our lives. When good things happen, it is because we have been good, it is because we have done everything the right way, it is because we have worked hard and done our best. When bad things happen it is always because we have not worked hard enough or because we have slipped up and made some sort of an error somewhere. We always are convinced that we are in control. It is this false sense of control that enables our worry to get the best of us. I can do it. I have the power. I got myself in. I can get myself out. It’s all up to me. And so, when things start to happen that we can’t control, when things start to happen that remind us that we are out of control, when there are things that are bigger than we are, worry sets in. Our confidence gives way to uncertainty, uncertainty to doubt, doubt to anxiety, anxiety to despair, and all of a sudden we have gone into a tailspin. We feel like we are falling, out of control, spinning, unable to do anything about it. Paul tells us to pray. He tells us to “Rejoice”. “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again rejoice!” Rejoice like you just made it into the end zone, like you just hit the last second 3 pointer to win the game, like you just shot par. Don’t let worry take you. Instead rejoice. Why? Because you just accomplished something spectacular? No! But because of what Christ has done for you and in you and sometimes, I suppose, through you. Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again rejoice. Have you ever notice what happens when you start to worry? You see it out on the football field all the time. When anxiety sets in, it has a way of interrupting your good mood. Sports analysts call it team chemistry. When things are going well everyone gets along. When things are not going well, it’s like the wheels have fallen off. Team members get irritable, they yell at each other, they point fingers, they make mistakes, they lack concentration. Does that happen to you when you worry? It does to me. When we are overwhelmed with worry and anxiety and fear we start to say and think and do things we wouldn’t normally do. We don’t respond to one another with love and care and mercy. Notice what Paul says here in our text. Don’t worry, instead pray. Rejoice and be joyful because of what God has done. Present all your requests and lay all your worries at his feet, and then, as you are working together and serving the Lord side by side with your fellow Christians, be reasonable, be gentle, merciful, loving with one another. Let that be your reputation and your persona. Dear friends, that’s hard to do. That is hard to do in our personal lives, as we interact with our families and coworkers or classmates, I suppose also with team mates. These are also things that we struggle with in our congregational life together as Christians in our congregational St Paul fellowship. The question of how to pay our bills has increased our anxiety. If we can’t pay our bills we will be overwhelmed with debt. If we are overwhelmed with debt we will lose our programs. We will be forced to close our school. We will be publicly shamed. We will lose members. We will lose our ability to attract new members. The whole thing will come to ruin. And so our fear and our uncertainty has taken away from us our joy. It’s hard to go to church lately, isn’t it? Everyone is talking about how bad everything is. How bad it is getting, how bad it is going to be. It brings us down. It makes us want to stay away. Our worry has also taken away our gentleness, our reasonableness, our mercy. Instead it has moved us to point fingers; it’s the school, it’s the congregation, it’s the pastor, it’s the members. Truth be told, it’s all of us. We have been taken in, we have fallen victim to worry, to our own sinful nature. We have been robbed of our joy, we have abandoned our mercy. We have failed. Thanks be to God. Thanks be to God. Because he has not abandoned us. He has not forgotten us. He has not set aside his mercy. He has not set aside his reasonableness, his gentleness, his love and his forgiveness. Instead he is overflowing with those things. He is bubbling over – like a stream or a fountain spilling and splashing out all around us. His mercy is ours today. Dr. John Kleinig has a wonderful insight in his little book, Grace Upon Grace. In his chapter on prayer he takes up the discussion of worry. Usually we think of worry as a negative, as a tool of the devil to toy with us and manipulate us, and often it is. But Dr. Kleinig offers a different explanation. Worry and anxiety are not tricks and tools of Satan, instead they are messengers from God, even gifts from God, as he invites us to come to him in prayers. Worry is God’s way of reminding us to pray. “Have no anxiety about anything. Instead, by prayers and petitions, let your requests be made known to God.” So let’s pray. Dear heavenly Father, We have sinned. As a congregation, we have been irresponsible with our finances. As a congregation we have spent more than we could account for, and perhaps even at times as individuals we have withheld our gifts. We confess these sins to you. We are worried. We are afraid. We are ashamed. We pray for your forgiveness. We ask for your help. Heavenly Father, We also confess to you that we have allowed our worry to interrupt our joy and our mercy and our love for each other. We have pointed fingers. We have passed blame. We have denied others the mercy and the understanding that we have demanded for ourselves. We confess this sin to you and we ask for your forgiveness. For the sake of Jesus we ask you to restore us. Give to us your love. Give to us your mercy. Give to us your forgiveness. Open our hearts to love each other. Open our hearts to work together with one another. Help us to respond to one another the same way that you would respond to us. Restore to us your joy. May our place of worship be for us a refuge, a place of peace, a place of fellowship and friendship with our fellow Christians, with our friends and family who have also received from you that same gift, that same healing, that same joy. May we, once again be able to come to worship, to come to St Paul Chuckery and see it as our home, as our spiritual place of refuge, to see it as your gift and guarantee, as your down payment of the eternal gift of heaven. In your name we pray. Amen. The Lord has heard our prayer. He has answered our cries for mercy and our request for help. He has responded. Before the thought was in our hearts and the words were even on our lips the forgiveness and the mercy and the help and the strength were already here. God has loved us so greatly and so completely that he gave to us the gift of His Son, Jesus, the Christ, the one anointed and chosen to bring healing and forgiveness into this world. God sent Jesus to die for our sin – for our irritability, our finger pointing, our disgruntled blame shifting, let alone our lack of faith and trust that has been set aside in the interest of worry. He has restored us to pristine purity and God pleasing righteousness. And then he has invited us to pray. Where we have personal worries, personal fears, personal uncertainties he has invited us to lay those at his feet, to give them to him, to be unfettered and untied from their solution and to be free from their obligation. God can provide for us everything that we need. God can solve every problem that we face. God can unravel every cord that entangles us. Our worry is nothing more than an acknowledgement that these problems are bigger than we are and it is an invitation for us to take them to the One who has the ability to solve them. And then we are free. You see, our coaches and sports analysts have it all wrong. God doesn’t give us blessings only when we are good. God doesn’t withhold his blessings from us when we are bad. God doesn’t make our righteousness or our obedience a condition of his mercy. God doesn’t reserve his help for those who help themselves. That’s a lie, an illusion, a falsehood made up to convince us that we are capable of success on our own. Instead, God is merciful. He allows the son to shine on the wicked and the good. And his help? His aid? His healing? God gives that to sinners. God helps failures. God heals the sick. God restores the down and out. God lifts up those who are shamed and honors the dishonorable. God helps you. Sure, do your best. Work your hardest at what is laid before you. Let God take care of the outcome. If he will bless your labor, good. You can give him thanks and praise. Then again he might permit you to struggle because he knows that in your struggle you learn to trust. And through all of this he adds to you joy. He gives joy because the result is taken off your shoulders. You don’t have to perform, you don’t have to be great or even good before God will give you his blessing. He already gives to you, exactly what you need. Exactly when you need it. You can rejoice and receive everything as a gift. Where there are things that are pleasurable, rejoice that God has given you pleasure. Where things are difficult and challenging, rejoice that God has taught you to grow. Where there are things that cause grief and pain, rejoice that God has set you aside and saved you for heaven. Acts 16 tells of an instance in which Paul was arrested and beaten and thrown in jail in spite of his innocence. During the night, instead of bemoaning his bad fortune or blaming God for his suffering he prayed and he sang hymns. Then there was an earthquake. The prison doors fell from their hinges, the chains broke free. And the prisoners were so stunned that they stayed put. The jailer – so moved by the faith of Paul and his companion, Silas – desired that faith for his own. He was baptized together with his family. That man, whose life was changed forever by an encounter in a Roman prison was the recipient of the letter we read this morning as our Epistle lesson. He was the recipient of these words: “I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. [13] I can do all things through him who strengthens me.” Empty words? Pie in the sky? A fairy tale? Far from it. This is truth. Gospel truth. This is truth that turns our worry and anxiety from fear into a gift and an invitation to pray. It turns our need to perform into freedom to act, it turns our grief and our pain and even our sin and our irritableness and grouchiness and blame shifting and finger pointing into mercy and love and gentleness and joy. That joy is yours. It is joy in Jesus and it is joy because of Jesus. We can do all things, even those things, through Christ who strengthens us. Amen