On Wednesday last week there was a photo of a trader on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange with his hand over his mouth and an expression on his face that reminded me of that famous painting  The Scream by  the Norwegian artist, Edvard Munch.  Seven straight days of triple digit declines in the Dow Jones Index and similar drops in the European and Asian markets have brought panic not only to the titans of the financial world, but to ordinary investors who see their retirement savings or in some cases the investments they count on right now vanishing before their eyes.  My guess is that an investment in pharmaceutical corporations that produce anti anxiety medications would be a good bet about now.

Ours has been called the age of anxiety, but every age presents challenges and hardships that lead to worry.  My parents lived through the Depression when unemployment rates were four times as high as right now, and when the safety net was almost non existent.  That experience shaped the thinking of an entire generation, and it may be that part of our current problem has to do with having forgotten some of the hard lessons that came from that time.  Wild speculation, buying on margin, little regulation of the financial industry led to a crash in the market.  Sound familiar?

I was listening to National Public Radio this week and Stephen Covey who wrote The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People was speakngi about a new book he has written called the The Speed of Trust in which he said that when trust fails everything slows down in the world of business, and sometimes grinds to a halt.  If we can’t count on one another, no one loans any money, and virtually every business needs loans at one time or another to function.

The Apostle Paul in this passage from Philippians is not thinking about capital markets when he writes, “Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made know to God.  And the peace of God, which surpasses understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” But then again, he might be, since that is causing a great deal of worry in our world, and he wants to empower us to live free of worry.  William Willimon in writing about this passage says that it is a call to trust in God and not in Mammon, the name of a Canaanite deity that basically symbolized wealth.  When we worship wealth we are bound to be disappointed.  Jesus said we cannot serve God and Mammon.

The amazing thing about money or stock or any other commodity we associate with wealth is that the worth of whatever it is totally dependent on whether people think it is worth anything.  If people think the dollar is valuable, it is.  If they don’t, it isn’t.  The same goes for corporations, stocks, and commodities.  Even commodities thought to be immune from loss aren’t.  The price of gold rises and falls, sometimes dramatically.  So too does the price of oil.  Why would you or I put much trust in something so ephemeral and unstable as that?  I love what Isak Dinesen says in her book Out of Africa when writing of pride as confidence in the idea God had in making us.  A person with no concept of God’s idea in making him has to take his worth at the quotation of the day.  He trembles with reason before his fate.  (p. 267  Out of Africa)  Haven’t we all fallen into that place of insecurity when friends dropped us or made fun of us at school or in our social circle?  We hope that we grow out of that, but sometimes I wonder.

If the worth of my investments yo yos up and down, dependent on what the fickle market feels they are worth, and the worth of my person does likewise, dependent on whether my classmates, or office mates, or acquaintances, or worse yet,  friends and family members, think of me, I am in a bad place. No one understood this better than Jesus who was rejected by his home town synagogue, and yet was hailed as a hero in the villages of Galilee where he taught and healed. The crowds of Jerusalem threw down their cloaks and palm branches and cried, “Hosanna to the “Son of David! on Palm Sunday, and five short days later they shouted, “Crucify him!” as he stood before a reluctant Pilate who finally caved to their demands.  Jesus did not swerve from his mission to do the will of God because the one voice of approval that mattered to him was the voice of God who said at his baptism said, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.”  That same voice of approval sounded on the mount where Peter, James and John saw him transfigured before them and God said, “This is my beloved Son.  Listen to him.” And God raised him from the dead, putting his stamp of approval on all that Jesus said and did.

So when Paul bids us to rejoice in the Lord always, or as N.T. Wright renders this, “Celebrate in God always,” he is directing us to the one who can free us from the worry of being devalued by the whimsical likes and dislikes of the crowd for us or our investments.  God’s love for us is steadfast and sure, a very present help in trouble (Ps. 46:1)  The one characteristic of God most heralded in the Hebrew Scriptures is the steadfast love of God.  The Hebrew word is chesed, and is sometimes rendered mercy, goodness, kindness, loving kindness.  The psalmist says that steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting (Ps. 103:17).  And the phrase from Psalm 23: surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life translates that same Hebrew word. When Paul urges us to let our gentleness be known to everyone (Phil 4:5) he is asking us to imitate God, to show mercy, to extend kindness to others.  Then he goes on to say that the Lord is near.  Not in a spatial sense, but in a spiritual and temporal sense.  Paul believes God reign is near, and he believes that the Spirit of God is at work in the lives of the followers of Jesus at Philippi.  He wants them to remain unafraid of their enemies, and to be united in spirit, and that is why he urges Euodia and Syntyche to be of the same mind in the Lord.  In a word, he wants them to live worthy of the Gospel of Christ. (Phil 1:27)

We can’t do that if we are weighed down by worry.  Worry pulls us into ourselves and pits us against others and blinds us to their needs because our needs loom so large in our minds.  The economic downturn presents an opportunity for followers of Jesus to show kindness, to remain unafraid, to give as freely as we have received from God.  The world will take note of that, just as it did when Christians ministered to the sick during the frequent plagues that laid waste the cites of the ancient world.  The wisdom of our faith that tells us to owe no one anything except to love one another (Romans 13:4) of which I spoke a few weeks back is precisely what we need to observe.  These passages that have been part of our lectionary readings for each Sunday are amazingly appropriate for the present hour, or any hour.

So how does worry free living work itself into our lives?  As I said above, we are called to celebrate joyfully in the Lord all the time.  That is how N. T. Wright renders verse 4.  Whether the market is up or down we sing God’s praise each week, and remember the Sunday last winter when we lost electrical power and met nevertheless, sharing sweaters and hugs to keep warm?  The verb here is in the second person plural, as almost all the commands of the Bible are.  Celebrate together, sing together, serve together, pool your resources and respond to the needs of your community together.  Friday night I sang and prayed with other believers at the Taizé service hosted by Mayflower Presbyterian Church. Saturday from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. I met with our session and Parish associate, Chris Williams,  to pray and think and work through how we will work out the staffing of our church so that we can pursue our mission to grow in Christ, celebrate God’s love (there is that word celebrate again), and extend God’s love (there is that word chesed again) and God’s word to others.  I am proud of our session and their willingness to give of their time and effort and love for our church.  They inspire me.  I feel the same about our church staff and parish associates and pastoral assistant.  I look at our church and realize that we have no debt, we have lived within our means eight of the last nine years, and if you add expenditures together over that period we have lived within our means, and we have given about 15% of all gifts received to ministries beyond ourselves, and want to see that percentage grow in the years ahead. God’s faithfulness has been shown in the service, celebration and stewardship of our congregation and will continue to unless we take our eyes of God and focus them elsewhere.

I confess that I sometimes worry.  I have lost sleep over how we will proceed together as a congregation into the uncertain future.  I worry that we might get at odds with each other and hinder the movement of the Holy Spirit in our midst.  But every time you and I start to worry we have an opportunity to translate it into a prayer: “In everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.”  We need to practice what is called force field analysis, to take the problem of worry and make it into an opportunity  to trust and pray, with thanksgiving that God invites us to cast our cares upon God for he cares for us (that is what Peter says in 1 Peter 5:7 to a people facing severe persecution).  Jesus speaks often of the futility of worry: “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. . . And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?. . .But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” (Mt. 6:25, 27, 33)

Jesus was speaking a deep truth when he asked how we could add to the length of our life by worry.  In fact, we diminish the quality of and shorten our lives by worrying.  Hans Selye pioneered study in how stress kills us. Our bodies release noradrenaline when we perceive a threat or danger, which is meant to give us strength to fight or flee the danger.  But most of our dangers are imagined and we stew in our own juice and add plaque to our cardiovascular system. More people die in America of cardiovascular disease than any other malady.  Worry, a poor diet, and a sedentary lifestyle make for a witch’s brew we do well to avoid.

I have printed out four biblical passages on trust on a half sheet that is available in the narthex of the church.  Pick one up, take it home, commit those verses to memory. I guarantee you they will come in handy many times in the living of your life.  If you wake up in the night, recite those verses, translate your concerns into prayers, and write down any action that God brings to mind that might be part of God’s answer to your prayer.  Prayer is often the setting in which God nudges and instructs us in the way we should proceed.  Commit to memory the Serenity Prayer written by the distinguished Reformed Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr and used in some many Twelve Step groups:  “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”

When you were a child you were often frightened.  Darkness, strange sounds, a movie that had monsters.  But when your mother or father came to your and assured you that you were not alone you believed them and got over it.  Donn Moomaw, my pastor in college told of a time when his son, Danny was up in a tree and couldn’t get down and panicked.  Donn said to Danny, “Look at me!  Now jump and I will catch you.”  That is how Danny got down from that tree and I guarantee you that two time all American linebacker Donn Moomaw did not fail to catch Danny safely in his strong arms.  That may seem childish and an inadequate metaphor, but Jesus bid us learn from children how to enter the kingdom of God.  Not by looking at our shrinking savings, not by projecting how much worse things can get, but by seeking first the face of our faithful God who knows what we need and will give us the wisdom and strength to partner with God in meeting or needs and also the needs of others.