A sermon preached by the Reverend Sarah Grondin at St. Jude’s Anglican Church, Harvest Thanksgiving, Sunday October 13, 2024.
May only the truth be spoken and only the truth be heard. Amen.
If you’ve ever had to try and calm someone down who was really upset and distressed, you may have learned the hard way that telling them “to calm down” is more likely to get you in trouble, than be helpful.
And there’s a good reason for that… when someone is experiencing that level of distress, you can’t logic with them, and if they could calm themselves down they would! But you can help them by gently encouraging them to focus on the physical reality around them… it’s a practice called grounding.
When you’re helping someone to ground themselves, you can encourage them to focus on their breathing, name objects that they can see, count with you, ask them to tell you about their day and what’s planned for tomorrow… anything to bring their attention to the present moment instead of whatever is going on inside their head.
This past Thursday, October 10th, was World Mental Health Day, which is organized by the World Federation for Mental Health. Their core mission revolves around fostering a greater global understanding of mental health, and advocating for meaningful changes while championing recovery-oriented approaches.
The organization aims to heighten public awareness about the significance of mental health, improve attitudes towards mental health disorders, and promote mental well-being.
Now you might be thinking, this is helpful information to have, but what has this got to do with our readings? Well, if you’ve ever had the experience of trying to tell a distressed person to “calm down,” I can tell you it’s just about as effective to tell someone who is consumed with worry, to stop worrying. It just doesn’t work like that.
As far as I know there’s no magic switch to turn off those kinds of feelings and concerns… and as a person whose middle name might as well be “anxiety,” believe me, I’ve tried!
When I hear today’s gospel reading and Jesus telling the disciples not to worry about things like food, drink and clothing, my first instinct is to raise my hackles, with a retort of “easier said than done!” But there’s more to it than that if we keep listening.
So, in light of World Mental Health Day, and the fact that as Christians we don’t often talk about how our faith relates to our mental health, this morning I want to look at today’s gospel and what I think it tells us about how our faith can help “ground us,” when the world is just too much.
The portion of Matthew’s gospel that we read today is situated in the middle of a long string of teachings that Jesus is delivering on the heels of the Beatitudes.
When Jesus is talking to his disciples, and the others who have gathered around, he tells them not to worry about their lives, about what they’ll eat or drink, or what clothes they’ll wear… and he asks them, “Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?”
Jesus is trying to encourage his listeners to put their trust in God, and to believe that God will take care of them. But if you’re a worrier like me, when you hear today’s gospel passage it might make you a little uncomfortable, because what Jesus is saying seems impossible. How are we supposed to just suddenly stop worrying?
I mentioned earlier there’s more to it if we keep listening, so let’s unpack things a little bit. The word that Jesus uses for ‘worry’ is merimnan, which is important to know… because this kind of worry is an anxious kind of worry, the kind of worry that keeps you up at night, the kind of worry that sucks the joy out of everything.
Jesus is by no means forbidding prudent foresight, or encouraging people to be thriftless and reckless. Jesus is forbidding the kind of anxious worry that takes over our lives… because if we’re consumed with this kind of anxious worry, there’s no room left for the serenity that comes from trusting God.
In the passage that we heard, Jesus provides five arguments and two defenses against worry. I’m not going to spend time going over the arguments, because as I mentioned before, telling someone who is consumed with worry “to stop worrying,” isn’t likely to be very helpful.
Instead, I want to focus on the two defenses Jesus lists for combating that anxious worry that can take over our minds and affect every part of our lives. There’s nothing to be gained by pretending that it’s not there, but allowing our faith to help “ground” us can make all the difference in experiencing the joy God wishes for us.
The first defense against worry that Jesus gives is to seek first, and concentrate upon, the Kingdom of God. Earlier in Matthew’s gospel we learn that to be in the Kingdom and to do God’s will is one and the same.
Jesus is pointing out to us that when we concentrate on accepting and doing God’s will, we can defeat worry. Great love has a beautiful way of driving out other concerns. This kind of love can inspire our work, purify our lives, and dominate our whole being. Jesus wants us to know that worry can be banished when God, and God’s love, becomes the dominating power in our lives.
So how do we actually practice that? If we think about some of the different ways that we can “ground” ourselves when our minds aren’t playing nice, there’s a few that fit quite well with making the Kingdom of God our focus. Jesus even mentions one of those ways in our passage.
We can help ground ourselves and defeat that paralyzing worry by paying attention to the physical things around us. Jesus tells us to consider the birds of the air, and the unmatched beauty of the flowers in the field.
We could also watch for those small daily acts of kindness that often go unnoticed… and I’ll let you in on a secret, the more you look for them, the more you’ll find them all around.
God cares for all of creation, and when we recognize how much beauty is all around us, and how God provides, we can see God’s love overflowing in the world… and when we let that love inside and place our trust in the power of God, we drive out that anxious worry, and allow joy to take its place.
The second defense that Jesus offers against that deep sense of worry many of us struggle with, is to learn to live one day at a time. In my experience that advice prompts one of two responses: the first one is how can we possibly stop living life in advance, and the second one is that sometimes even a single day feels like an eternity of worry.
If the second response is something that resonates with you, and the thought of letting go of that anxious worry for a whole day seems impossible, live one hour at a time. Take smaller steps.
And if an hour still seems like a lot, live one minute at a time. Set yourself up for success. Remember there’s no light switch to suddenly turn off anxious worry, we have to work at it, and we’re not all at the same place on the journey.
If the first response resonates with you, and you need to have a plan in place for all possibilities that might (or might not) occur, and you find yourself anxiously worried about things that haven’t happened yet, learning to live fully in the present is a huge shift.
So how do we live into Jesus’ instruction to live one day at a time? We can help ground ourselves and defeat that paralyzing worry of tomorrow and the tomorrow after that, by focusing on something that will keep us in the present moment.
One way to do this is to combine the practice of prayer with your breath. When we focus on our breathing, in and out, in and out, we are fully in that moment. And when we combine that focus on our breathing with prayer, we are with God in that moment.
Breath Prayer has a very long history, and we know from the medical world that our brains are constantly transforming and are shaped by what we focus on.
For example, while anxiety begets anxiety, focusing on peace can lead to a sense of peace. We also know that deep breathing directly impacts the part of the brain where stress dwells, encouraging our nervous system to slow down and eventually return to the present moment.
Breath Prayer is a very simple practice that uses a short phrase of your choice, bringing to mind the first half on your inward breath, and the second half on your outward breath. A common prayer choice for this is to use the prayer: Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me. Spending time with God in breath prayer can help ground us in the present when that anxious worry starts to take over.
The phrase “Let go and let God,” makes a good bumper sticker, but anyone who has ever struggled with “letting go” of anxious worry knows that pithy aphorisms are as helpful as shouting “calm down.” But our faith does have an important role to play in grounding us so the gift of God’s joy can fill us.
Jesus tells us not to worry, because if we’re full of anxious worry, we’re not focused on God. But Jesus doesn’t leave us to figure out how to do that on our own. Jesus is not unaware of the struggles of daily life, and that’s why he leaves us with those two ways to drive out that worry.
So I encourage you to think not just about your physical and spiritual health… but your mental health too. What does your mind need to help you trust in the power and love of God when worry is taking over? What does it need to live one day at a time and trust that God will take care of tomorrow?
Let your faith help ground you when the world feels like too much, and remember that God will fill us with as much joy as we make room for… because each one of us is of great value to God, and God wants us to feel that sense of belovedness from our head to our toes.
We just need to let it in.
And on this Thanksgiving Sunday, that’s a most precious blessing to count. Amen
