"Worry"

Rev. Matthew Miller

FROM THE GOSPELS Matthew 6:25-34 SERMON “Worry” Rev. Matthew Miller 7.26.2026

Spend enough time on the internet and you’re likely to encounter religious people with very strong opinions about everything from the age of the earth to the role of women in the home or in church leadership, to any number of behaviors and identities they believe to be sinful. What strikes me whenever I encounter these kinds of discussions or arguments is how few of them engage some of the truly troublesome things that Jesus has to say in this Sermon on the Mount that we’ve been making our way through this summer.

By Jesus’ own words blessing has little if anything to do with the kind of ‘name it and claim it’ mentality that equates personal success or material well-being with God’s favor.

Blessings are for the poor, the mourning, the meek and hungry. No one’s idea of their best life. Then there’s this series of things he has to say about anger, lust and even revenge that suggest that they’re just as bad as murder, adultery or the wrongs we think we can make right through retribution. He tells us to love our enemies and to be perfect like God is perfect. But we aren’t supposed to call attention to ourselves as we do. Neither should we give ourselves over to the accumulation of earthly treasure because we cannot serve God if we’re serving wealth. And if all of that weren’t hard enough to consider- If all of that didn’t feel way more controversial than assigning gender roles or policing who people can love- Jesus tops it all off by suggesting we not worry about our basic need for food and clothing.

Have you met us, Jesus? Worry is our national pastime. We worry about what this person has done, what that person has said. We worry about what happened in the past and where things are headed for the future. We worry about guns and pronouns and immigrants and interest rates. Our whole economy is built on worry. Worry about our safety, worry about our reputation, worry about body odor and bad breath and belly fat, and on and on. What do you mean, don’t worry about your life? I was talking to a friend not long ago who has diagnosed anxiety disorder. How does it make you feel, I asked when someone tells you not to worry. They said that when it came to irrational fears, like a child being attacked by a shark while they’re at the beach, saying “don’t worry about that,” makes sense, but doesn’t really help. And saying don’t worry about a completely rational fear is just maddening. Someone else told me that when a therapist suggested they not worry about a scenario they imagined, they replied, “if I could do that, I wouldn’t be talking to you. "In some ways, worry is what has kept us alive- evolutionarily speaking. Our ability to imagine the future is the mechanism that has taught us to anticipate the change of seasons, to store food in winter months, and make clothes and shelter to protect us from the elements. Anticipating the threat of predators kept us from getting eaten. The key to what Jesus would have us consider comes from the first word of what we read. Therefore. Everything that follows about the birds of the air and the lilies of the field is a continuation from the final verse of what we heard in the passage from last Sunday. No one can serve two masters… You cannot serve God and wealth. If wealth, or mammon, are our master. If that is what we serve and give priority to in our lives, we cannot help but worry. We’ll worry if we have enough, if we’ll run out.  And we do that because somewhere deep inside us is the understanding that if all we have to rely on is our own resources to secure our safety or well-being or happiness, we might be in trouble. Markets crash, Health fails. Accidents happen. Natural disasters come out of nowhere.

And everything we thought we had, everything that allowed us to exhale and relax and believe that we were going to be just fine can disappear practically overnight.

Let’s face it, there is a lot to worry about. Knowing that, we are left to worry constantly,

and the worry serves as a continuous prompt. It’s what keeps us forever on the treadmill

chasing after the elusive promise of happiness that we’ve been told is our inalienable right. No matter how much we have, it will never be enough as long as we’re worried about how it can all be taken away in an instant. The late Fred Craddock was a legendary preacher who occasionally liked to embellish the stories he told from the pulpit. He once described a visit he paid to someone’s home. They’d adopted a greyhound who had been a racer. He saw the big old spotted hound lying in the den. One of the kids in the family, just a toddler, was pulling on its tail, and a little older kid was laid out alongside the old dog with his head on his stomach, using it for a pillow. The dog just seemed so content, and as Fred tells it he said to the dog, “Uh, are you still racing any?” “No, no, no,” the dog answered, “I don’t race anymore.” “Do you miss the glitter and excitement of the track,” he asked. “No, no,” the dog said. Fred asked, “well what’s the matter? You got too old?” “No, no, I still had some race in me.” “Well, did you not win?” The dog said, “I won over a million dollars for my owner.” “Then what was it, bad treatment?” “Oh, no,” the dog answered, “they treated us royally when we were racing.” “Then what? Did you get injured?” The dog said, “no, no, no.” “Then what?” The dog said, “I quit.” “You quit?” That’s what he said, “I quit.” Fred asked, “Why did you quit?” And the dog said, “I discovered that what I was chasing was not really a rabbit and I quit. All that running, running, running, running, and what I was chasing, not even real.”

My friend with the anxiety disorder? She knows that worrying about her son getting attacked by a shark at the beach isn’t real. Telling her not to worry doesn’t help. What does help is when someone calmly explains all the mitigating reasons why she doesn't need to worry, that there are people watching her son who will be close by, trained lifeguards and medics, who in case something that is very unlikely were to happen, he’d be cared for. Which is kind of what Jesus does here. He doesn’t just whistle the tune and sing, “Don’t worry, be happy.” He points to what we can see, what we can know. The lilies of the field, those beautiful flowers that just randomly grow wild, they’re not running, they’re not chasing something that isn’t real. They’ll be here today and gone tomorrow, and yet look at how beautiful they are. Look at how God appoints the passing beauty of this world that doesn’t even know or work to be more beautiful than anything we could begin to create. And the birds of the air. Look at them. Really look at them. They don’t have a strategic plan. They’re doing what they’ve always done. What they know how to do because God has already provided everything they need to thrive and survive in this world of God’s making. It would be a mistake to listen to Jesus’ words and conclude that we don’t need to do anything. That sowing and reaping to grow food, or toiling and spinning to make clothes is a waste of our time and we should just forage naked through the world. That isn’t the point he’s getting at. The point is that when we think it’s entirely up to us, when the master we serve is the one comprised of what we make and acquire for ourselves, then we have not only lost the plot, we may lose our lives in the process. Or at least, the life God would provide for us if we were trust in something other than ourselves. Because I don’t know about you, but I’ve been known to let myself down. On more than one occasion. More than that, so much of what there is to worry about is completely beyond my control anyway. Worrying about it won’t change the outcome. It will only make me miserable. But when we turn toward God. When we look at the birds and consider the lilies and recognize how God provides in ways both big and small through a vast array of climates and ecosystems. When we truly look at the intricate complexity of it all and how it works together in endless cycles of birth, life, death and re-birth, we can see that God can be trusted to provide for us. God can be trusted to give us what we need. And one of the things that we need is each other. To keep us from spinning out from worry. To keep us from chasing what isn’t even real. To feed one another when we’re hungry and clothe one another when we’re left naked and exposed. It isn’t worry that’s kept us alive all this time. It’s God, in the face of one another. Today may bring troubles of its own, but so too will God give us daily bread- all that we need in the face of whatever troubles us.