Anxiety

October 30, 2016        Reformation Sunday                           John 8:31-36

Anxiety is a powerful force.  In some sense it rules our lives.  Anxiety is at the root of most if not all psychiatric issues.  How would you feel about a psychiatric hotline that answered with this message:

Welcome to the Psychiatric Hotline.

If you are obsessive-compulsive, please press 1… repeatedly.

If you are co-dependent, please ask someone to press 2.

If you have multiple personalities, please press 3,4,5, and 6.

If you are paranoid-delusional, we know who you are and what you want.  Just stay on the line so we can trace the call.

If you are schizophrenic, listen carefully and a little voice will tell you which number to press.

If you are depressed, it doesn’t matter which number you press.  No one will answer.

If you are delusional and occasionally hallucinate, please be aware that the thing you are holding on the side of your head is alive and about to bite off your ear.

(from anxietyguru.net)

Of course psychiatric disorders are nothing to laugh at.  And I’m going to be so bold as to say that what we consider to be normal and healthy about anxiety is also being ruled by a state of fear.  However it is a state of fear so subtle that a normal person would vehemently deny it, no matter what you say.

In our gospel reading Jesus is having a confrontation with some Jewish people.  He tells them that if they believe in him they will be set free.  They say they’re children of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone.  We’re probably supposed to laugh at that because the Jewish people had been enslaved by just about every empire that ever existed in the Middle East.  And right then they were basically the slaves of the Romans.  But this little joke is just opening to door to their real slavery.  Jesus says, “Very truly I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin.”  What is this sin he is talking about that they don’t get.  It is the same enslavement that we face, even if we do consider ourselves to be psychiatrically healthy – the slavery to anxiety.

In many ways anxiety makes the economy run.  Without anxiety there would be no interest in being fashionable or cool or successful.  Without anxiety you wouldn’t care how you looked or what other people thought of you.  If it weren’t for anxiety about invasion and terrorism we wouldn’t have a military.  In big and small ways anxiety drives us each and every day.

I’ve talked to a number of senior citizens who said that when they were young they worried about getting established and making it.  Then when they had kids they started worrying about them.  When their kids had kids then they started worrying about their grandkids.  You never get beyond a state of worry of some sort.  You never get beyond anxiety.

Anxiety is a powerful force for evil in the world.  Never underestimate how powerful and clever it is.

Our scripture poetry for today was Psalm 46.  Psalm 46 has a lot to say about anxiety.  Psalm 46 was Martin Luther’s inspiration for writing the hymn A Mighty Fortress Is Our God, which we will sing later.  Look at how that psalm begins.  It points us to God as the source for refuge and strength – not our possessions, not our money, not our insurance policies, not our military and not our friends.  It is God and God alone.

What all can threaten us?  Well, there are natural disasters, but the psalm says God is with us in them.  The psalm also brings up war and conquest.  God is with us then too.  The psalm also brings up divine wrath, an interesting thing to do; but are we to fear even that?  No.  God is with us, always, forever: a refuge, a stronghold, a fortress.

Many Christians will take these words and think it means that God will keep you safe in all circumstances.  They think that if God is on your side your life will be good and fun and complete.  I don’t know where they get that idea, because history and the Bible teach something very different.  How many of Jesus’ 12 apostles died of natural deaths?  Only one – St. John, and church tradition tells us that was only because he managed to survive when they tried to poison him to death.

How about St. Paul, the great theologian of our faith?  How safe and normal and secure was his life?  Here’s what he writes in 2 Corinthians 11:

“Five times I have received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one.  Three times I have been beaten with rods; once I was stoned.  Three times I have been shipwrecked; a night and a day I have been adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brethren; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure…”  (2 Corinthians 11:24-27)  And he goes on.

Does Paul live to some great old age and enjoy a wonderful retirement?  Nope.  Church tradition says he was beheaded.  Some modern historians think he was captured and killed by bandits.  Whatever the case, this was not a sweet life.  I know I ruffled a few feathers last week when I said God wasn’t too interested in your happiness.  Paul wasn’t exactly a happy man, but he was a whole and fulfilled man.

Let’s turn to the author of A Mighty Fortress.  What was Luther’s life like?  Arrests, trials, a kidnapping, hiding out, rejection and excommunication.  And what seems to me to be worst of all, Martin Luther saw how his writing and preaching and teaching had led to war, riots and rebellions.  In the movie Luther that came out several years ago it suggests that he was aware that over 100,000 people were dead because of him.  That’s not an easy thing to have on your conscious.

At one level Psalm 46 could be called the biggest lie in the Bible.  Yet on another level it reveals a deep and powerful truth:  The Lord of hosts is with you.  The God of Jacob is your refuge. 

Visible or invisible, God is at work in the world.  And God is working for good.  Safe or unsafe, God is with you.  Dead or alive, God is with you.  Nothing can ever separate you from the love of God.

St. Paul wrote about his calamities.  He also wrote about God’s never-failing love.  You’ll remember this passage from Romans 8 from funerals, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?  Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?  As it is written, ‘For thy sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.’  No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.  For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of god in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  (Romans 8:35-29)

Slaves to anxiety are blind to it, though society may call them healthy and normal.  But you want to be free.  True freedom is not getting to do what you want whenever you want.  True freedom is to be whole in God.  It is to be free of anxiety.  We’ve talked about this many times before.  It is to know that you are God’s forever.  You are loved.  You are safe.  Nothing and no one can touch you.

That will not lead to a life of relaxation and comfort.  It will probably be a life of high adventure.  But it will be rewarding and fulfilling like nothing else.

May you make God as your source of refuge and strength.  And may God protect and keep you every day as his child.