Comfort
in Our Anxiety.
Look around.
This place is filled with those who thank God every time they think of you. By
the Lord’s grace and compassion, this place
is filled with those who hold you in their hearts, those whose prayers for you
are filled with joy. Share the peace of Christ Jesus with one another. (From
the service today.)
We have seen all sorts of really traumatic and
difficult things over this past year and it would not be difficult to become
anxious and depressed. Yet we have also seen things that encourage and bring
hope such as the rescue of the soccer team boys in Thailand. So as the stress
and hectic rush leading to Christmas begins to overwhelm us, we are reminded in
scripture not to be anxious. The Apostle Paul tells us not to be anxious—not to
worry—about anything. But we tend to be people who worry about everything.
We worry about what will happen if someone doesn’t
show up for the big family Christmas dinner (and also about what might happen
if they do!). We worry about getting into the right school or university and
about the financial aid package coming through. We worry about the cancer
coming back and about our company being bought out. We worry about the security
of our jobs and the safety of our kids. The congregation I serve has had a
difficult year with the death of a number of deeply faithful and involved
members who had been part of the fellowship for 30 to 40 years and the
distraction of problems with the local Council. I would not be surprised if a
number of our members were worried about what the future will bring and how
long we can last as an entity despite over 150 years of life as a congregation.
With so much to worry about, how is it that St Paul of
Tarsus can tell us not to worry and not to be anxious? When Dietrich Bonhoeffer
sat in his Nazi prison cell, he penned a poem that included these words to the
effect that we fearlessly wait, come what may, because God is with us on every
new day. St Paul, writing to the church in Philippi from his own prison cell,
says something similar. Why is it that we need not be anxious or afraid? Is it
because whatever we are worried about is really “no
big deal”? Or
because God guarantees that everything will turn out for the best? Or even
because God won’t
give us any more hardship or pain than we can handle?
No. St Paul says that we need not be anxious or afraid
because “the
Lord is near.” That
is the good news to which everything else in this text is tethered. “The
Lord (our God) is near,” even while we wait for him to come in
all his fullness. In fact, St Paul says, he is as close as a prayer. And when
God’s
children take their worries and anxieties to the Lord in prayer, he will
exchange their anxiety for his peace and calm their worried hearts with his
love.
The sight of a mother cradling a squirming child in
her arms and singing lullabies over him until he finally goes limp may be one
of the sweetest and most serene things we can witness in this life. It’s a
scene as old as time, and perhaps it is what the prophet Zephaniah had in mind
when he wrote one of the final (and most famous!) verses of his book: “The
LORD your God is in your midst …. He
will create calm with his love; he will rejoice over you with singing” (Zephaniah
3:17). When heard in the context of the other lectionary passages for the Third
Sunday of Advent, God’s often anxious and worried children
can receive these words as an invitation to climb into the lap of their
heavenly parent so that our heavenly parent might sooth them with the songs of
his love and care.
Then, having heard these songs, they might offer him
one of their own, perhaps borrowing words from the prophet Isaiah: “God
is indeed my salvation; I will trust and won’t be
afraid” (Isaiah
12:2). While the Apostle Paul seems to be doing everything, he can to free us
from anxiety, John the Baptist seems to be doing everything he can to create
anxiety in us. John’s words are so full of alarm, he
seems so determined to set us on edge. For John, the news that “the
Lord is near” is
not only a promise that ought to comfort the afflicted. It is also a promise
that ought to afflict the comfortable!
No comments:
Post a Comment