Our
Anxious Toil
Sermon by Brigid A. Boyle
June 1, 2003, Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill
Psalm 127
Matthew 6:25-34
"It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating
the bread of anxious toil; for he gives sleep to his beloved."
Plenty of people are talking about anxiety these days. In fact, I would
even say that it seems a bit trendy- relevant- but trendy. What with yellow
and orange alerts and yellow and orange alerts and back to yellow again,
with regular updates about terrorist chatter and daily reports of security
threats, with violence bubbling up at places expected and unexpected, anyone
whose vocation it is to speak to the human condition would doubtless make
reference to our anxious fears of what could be, of what might be, or of
we know not what. Yet so real as that anxiety is, still, if I am faithful
to my vocation as one who speaks a very specific word to the human condition,
there is more anxiety, and more to our anxiety, than we might read in the
newspaper or hear on the evening news. By way of illustration, there is
there story told of a little boy on the first day of school, "My name is
Donald. I don't know anything. I have new underwear, a loose tooth, and
I didn't sleep last night because I'm worried. What if a bell rings and
a man yells, 'Where do you belong,' and I don't know? What if the trays
in the cafeteria are too tall for me to reach? What if my loose tooth comes
out when we have our heads down and are supposed to be quiet? Am I supposed
to bleed quietly? What if I splash water on my nametag and my name disappears
and no one knows who I am?" Well likely most of us do not share little
Donald's worries, but I am sure that there is more anxiety, and more to
our anxiety, than we might read in the newspaper or hear on the evening
news. Of course, some of it does find its way to public attention, but some
does not. There are those anxieties tied to finance: quarterly earnings
shadowed by quarterly losses, retirement savings which shrink moment by
moment as the cost of health care and education and daily living grows the
same and more and more people existing paycheck to paycheck. There are those
anxieties tied to social problems writ large and writ small: incidents of
violence among children ever on the rise, the reality of drug abuse among
so many, the so-called loss of a moral compass in our society, the over
programmed schedules and over-booked lives with little time for rest or
reverence. And then there are those anxieties tied to the twists and turns
of individual lives: the once satisfying career no longer fulfilling or
even enjoyable, the once secure job now threatened, the collapsed marriage
which removes the promise of a partner for our days, the diagnosis given
which clouds any plans we might have made, the loved one now gone to death
and days ahead imagined without him as partner, without her by our side.
You see, there is so very much anxiety written upon the human heart these
days, written upon our human hearts these days. What word then, for
those who do hold on to this very specific Word given our human condition,
is there for us to speak? What is there to say of our anxious toil and to
our anxious hearts? Of course, and as always, we look to scripture, to this
book so full of words spoken to calm and to soothe. We turn first to
the psalmist. "It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest,
eating the bread of anxious toil …" Oh, how right the psalmist is about
our anxious toil. How right he is about our rising early and going late
to rest, about the exhaustion which accompanies us day in and day out (and
even to worship on a Sunday morning!) about how hard we toil trying to maintain
(and increase) the family income, about how busy and restless we are trying
to ensure our children's well being and establish well round portfolios
of activity for each one of them, about how much time we spend worrying
about keeping it all together and fearing we might drop one of the many
balls we have in the air at any given time, about how anxiously we live
our days in the face of a broken and warring world. Oh, how right the psalmist
is about our anxious toil. But more than making a simple statement about
the reality of how it is that so many of us worry our way through life;
this psalm has more to say to us this day. These words, with their mention
of our vanity which makes this psalm sound more like a proverb or a little
snippet of truth for daily living, remind us that worrying never helped
anyone accomplish anything. Anxiety may, or may not, move us to work harder
or work to change a situation, but anxiety alone doesn't change a thing.
I think, if we are honest, sometimes we have the faint illusion that it
does- that if we worry, this will happen or that won't happen. Such an illusion
is only a small part of our bigger illusion that we really do have control,
but I promise you our anxiety really does not change a thing. In fact, immunologists
have demonstrated over and over again that mostly anxiety serves to make
us sick. The psalmist, long before scientific study confirmed it, tells
us that all our anxious toiling is simply in vain, which is to say that
it is all about us. But for us, we who would gather to worship the living
God, it cannot be all about us, and so the psalm reminds us that all of
our lives, that all our life, is held in God's hands and not our own, that
it is in vain to rise so early every day and go late to rest each night,
fretting both when we are awake and when we ought to be asleep. It is in
vain, the psalmist knows, because it is God who ultimately provides for
us. "He gives sleep to his beloved," reads the NRSV, but "God provides for
his beloved during sleep," reads an alternate translation of our text. God's
provides for his beloved. "What are God's works of providence?"
asks the eleventh question of the Westminster Shorter Catechism. "God's
works of providence," comes the answer, "are his most holy, wise, and powerful,
preserving and governing of all his creatures and all their actions." You
and I are not always given to understand what comes our way in life, but
God's providence, his preserving and governing, over and over again can
work wonders of goodness and grace out of all that comes our way. So, we
need not be anxious, we need not endlessly fret over the big things or the
little things, not only because it will do us no real good, but because
our lives are held in the hands of a very good God. I think that is
what Jesus was getting after as he talked with his disciples about what
it means to live as faithful followers and teachers. "Look at the birds
of the air: they neither sow, nor reap, nor gather into barns, and yet your
heavenly Father feeds them … Consider the lilies of the field, how they
grow; they neither toil nor spin; yet, I tell you, even Solomon in all his
glory was not arrayed like one of these … Therefore, do not be anxious about
tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day's own trouble
be sufficient." Taken at face value, these words can be a bit troubling.
Like the psalmist's point that our anxious labor is in vain, this passage
seems to abet irresponsibility and even laziness. "Why work at all if God
will provide all?" we ask. What's more, in the troubling sense, is that
this passage assumes that all birds are adequately fed and that all lilies
reach the fullest beauty. We know that is not so. In fact, I read this week
that most birds actually die of starvation! But, like so much of scripture,
these words are not factual prose, but rather faithful poetry. So read through
that lens, these words bid us look to the birds of the sky and notice their
utter dependence on so much beside themselves. They ask us to look to the
flowers sprouting up around and notice the same. They draw us, if we let
them, away from our frantic pursuits of the necessities (and non-necessities)
of life into a calmer vision of God's bountiful care in the natural world,
and so God's promised bountiful care of us. But I know that all of this
is not so simple as regards the living of these days, and the perils within
our days. I recall my characteristically cynical reaction last summer when
I read on a bulletin board outside a church, "If you knees are knocking,
kneel." Would that it were so easy. Would that "Letting go and Letting God"
would be so simple. But you and I know that it is not. I know that one sermon's
perspective will not automatically turn off the anxious mind. You know that
a few verses from Holy Scripture will likely not bring end to the worrying
which from rest. So what then is there to do? What, then, ought we to do?
In the first place, we who live with ever anxious hearts would do well to
remember, and to remind one another, that all we have and all that we are
given and all that we are, is a gift from God to us, that try though we
may, strive though we do, finally most of our lives are not in our control
and our trying to take that control is really quite simply another form
of our sin, of our trying to be God rather than bow down before him. Most
of what happens in our lives, I reiterate, is not held in our hands, but
in the hands of a God who has, in Jesus Christ, promised to be worthy and
worth our greatest trust. I know of no other truth to set the fearful, anxious
heart free. "We used to think," wrote Dietrich Bonhoeffer, "that one
of the inalienable rights of man is that he should be able to plan both
his professional and private life. That is a thing of the past. The force
of circumstances has brought us into a situation where we have to give up
being 'anxious about tomorrow'. But it makes all the difference whether
we accept this willingly and in faith or under continual restraint …" Though
I think the inalienable right of human beings to plan all of life was past
long before Bonhoeffer, rather probably as the waters swirled over creation,
indeed it does make all the difference whether or not we accept this willingly
or under continual restraint. It is, of course, grace that grants acceptance
and grace that grants us courage to rest in the promise of God's provision,
but if, I think, our minds can try to convince our hearts, the heart stands
a better chance of catching up. So in the second place, there is something
that has to do with the mind, particularly, I think, the mind's remembering
and recalling of those times in life when such a grace has been granted,
when we are reminded of our own impotence and of God's power and this we
believe "willingly and in faith." Those times often come, though by no means,
exclusively, at life's beginning and life's end, when human vulnerability
is so visible and God's strength is likewise so visible. I think of a new
babe's very first cry. I think of family together confronting the mortality
of one whom they so love and then gathering 'round her death bed to let
her go. I think of those, and so many other, times in life, happy and sad
in equal number, when grace grants us acceptance of our impotence and of
God's power, of the One in whose lives our days are held, and of the one
who alone can bid our anxious fears subside. Finally, in the end, my
friends, the bread of anxious toil will never satisfy, I promise you. But
what alone will satisfy, I do believe, is this Bread of Life given for our
lives. In this age of anxiety, when we worry as though only the sweat from
our brows will save us, there is no greater food to nourish and to calm,
no greater drink to quench spirits thirsty from the effort, and no greater
Life to remind us what gives us life. Therefore, trusting the love which
calls us, each one, to this table, be not anxious about tomorrow, or today,
or next year, for God's grace does and will provide, for God's grace has
provided in Jesus Christ. Thanks be to God. Amen.
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