THE RISE AND FALL

RELYING ON A RECESSION-PROOF FAITH

Matthew 6:25-34

The realities of faith are much deeper

than economic realities.

A sermon preached by

Dr. William O. (Bud) Reeves

First United Methodist Church

Hot Springs, Arkansas

February 22, 2009

I like the story about the two brothers who lived up in the mountains; I believe their names were Jed and Fred. One day Jed and Fred spotted a bobcat up in a tree and decided to have some fun. Jed said, "I’ll shinny up that tree and chase him down, and you put him in a cage."

Fred, who may not have been the smarter of the two, agreed, and Jed climbed up the tree. When he reached the right limb, he started shaking, and the bobcat came tumbling down. Fred grabbed the varmint by the back of the neck and tried to put him into a cage. At that point, there arose a terrible commotion. Dust and fur and skin were flying in all directions. Jed called down from the tree, "What's the matter, brother, you need help catching a little ol' bobcat?"

"No," Fred hollered, "I don't need help catchin' him, but I sure need help turnin' him loose!"[1]

Do you ever have a hard time turning some things loose? Worry and anxiety are two things that I sometimes have a hard time letting go. It’s like the old Peanuts cartoon that showed Linus holding on to his security blanket and saying to Charlie Brown, “Charlie Brown, you look kind of depressed.”

Charlie Brown replied, “I worry about school a lot.” He paused and continued, “I worry about worrying about school. Even my anxieties have anxieties.”

I think we can sympathize, don’t you? Especially in this time of economic turmoil, everybody is worried. People are hurting; retirement funds have tanked; businesses are laying off workers and going belly-up. The government is spending a gazillion dollars to help the situation—which I think they need to do—but will it work? It’s just scary. I can’t remember a time when anxiety over the state of the world and the promise of the future was any higher. And if you don’t have any economic worries, there are the old standby anxieties—relationships, health, weather, and death.

Yet you and I both know that worry is destructive. Anxiety is unhealthy physically, emotionally, and spiritually. William Barclay once said that worry is “essentially irreligious.” It’s irreverent, because it takes the sovereignty of God out of life. It’s irrelevant, because it doesn’t make any difference how much you worry about anything. And it’s irresponsible, because it wastes valuable mental and emotional energy that could be used doing something productive. Worry takes us out of our game.

The late Harvey Penick was perhaps the finest golf coach America ever produced. He wrote the Little Red Book which is sort of the “golfer’s Bible.” Penick said that most golfers do not think on the golf course; they just worry. “Worrying is a misuse of your mind on the golf course,” he said. “Whatever your obstacle, worry will only make it more difficult. Worry causes your muscles to tense up, and it is impossible to make a good golf swing when your muscles are too tense. Rather than worrying, be mindful of the shot at hand and go ahead and play it as if you are going to hit the best shot of your life. You really might do it.”[2] That wisdom applies to a lot more than golf.

So today I want to give you some resources for a better game of life. I want to offer you a spiritual stimulus package that will bail you out of worry and fear and anxiety. I want you to understand how faith can set you free from whatever you can’t let go. Our relationship with God overcomes our anxieties and worries, because spiritual reality is much deeper than economic reality.

It’s our faith that brings us PEACE. Whatever trial or trouble is afflicting us from the outside, we can still have peace on the inside. When our outer circumstances are negative, our inner attitude can still be positive.

Humans have been worried since the beginning of humanity. Jesus spoke to the hearts of all humankind when he was teaching on the mountain. He said simply, “Do not worry about your life. … can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?”[3] He looked around and saw the birds flying around and the flowers blooming on the hillside and he said, “Look at the birds of the air. They don’t worry about getting enough food. Yet God feeds them. And Solomon in all his glory was not as beautiful as a flower growing wild. If God takes care of the birds and the flowers, don’t you think he will take care of you, (one of my favorite Greek words) oligopistoi—you of little faith?” Just don’t sweat it.

Several years ago there was a best-selling book called Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff by a psychologist named Richard Carlson. He got the idea for the book one day while driving his six-year-old daughter home from school. They got stuck in rush-hour traffic and just crept along for quite a while. Carlson’s daughter looked out the window at all the other cars and said, “Daddy, why are all the people mad?”

Carlson looked around at all the other drivers, and sure enough, they did look mad. He knew they probably weren’t all mad, but they sure didn’t look happy. He began to reflect on the causes of unhappiness, anxiety, and anger, and he realized that most of the stuff people worry about is not worth worrying about. So he wrote Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff. The full title adds, and it’s all Small Stuff. I don’t totally agree with that; some stuff is big stuff. But our problem is that too often we make the small stuff into big stuff, and then we lose our peace. Ironically, Carlson, after writing a series of best-sellers, died of a heart attack at the age of 45. I wonder if he was following his own advice.[4]

The advice we need to follow comes from Scripture. Jesus said, “Don’t worry.” Paul wrote, “Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”[5]

The second part of the spiritual stimulus package is HOPE. Faith gives us hope. We know that this world and this life is not all there is. We are citizens of another kingdom. One day we will inhabit a place where there is no recession, no depression, no sorrow, no sighing, no sickness, no crying. Scripture says, “Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more,” because God will make all things new.[6] We have hope that the worries, fears, and anxieties of today will soon pass away. We can take the long view of life and live victoriously in the present and eternally in the future.

Old-time baseball fans remember the name Tug McGraw. Today Tug is better known as the father of country music star Tim McGraw. But back in the 1970’s, Tug McGraw was a relief pitcher for the New York Mets. He coined the motto, “Ya Gotta Believe,” during the Mets’ run for the 1973 World Series. He is also renowned as the relief pitcher who threw the final strike for the 1980 World Champion Philadelphia Phillies, an accomplishment not matched again by the Phillies until last fall.

One reason Tug McGraw was successful was his “frozen snowball” theory of pitching. Tug explained it like this: “If I come in to pitch with the bases loaded, and a heavy hitter is at bat, there’s no reason I want to throw the ball. But eventually I have to pitch. So I remind myself that in a few billion years the earth will become a frozen snowball hurtling through space, and nobody’s going to care what that batter did with the bases loaded!”[7]

One of these days, Wall Street and Washington are going to be part of the frozen snowball, and people of faith are going to be rejoicing in heaven. So we can take an eternal spiritual perspective on whatever is happening in our world at the moment. Paul shares this perspective in 2 Corinthians: “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed… So we do not lose heart… For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.”[8] This is a hope we can trust.

Because of our faith, we can walk with COURAGE. Courage is the practical application of faith in difficult circumstances. It doesn’t mean the times are not scary—they are! But courage is the ability to act on principle in spite of our fears. Hardship, fear, worry, and anxiety do not have to change how we fundamentally behave in the world. We act on the principles of love, faithfulness, compassion, and justice. These are not values that rise or fall with the economic indicators. In fact, the hard times we may experience are opportunities to show our true selves to the world in a way that makes a powerful witness. The Psalmist sang, “Be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!”^{^[9]} Strength, courage, and faithful patience will carry us through the panic.

One of the most courageous people in the headlines recently has been Chesley B. Sullenberger III, the pilot who landed USAir flight 1549 in the Hudson River. It has been called the “Miracle on the Hudson.” Shortly after takeoff the jet ran into a flock of birds that knocked out both engines. “Sully” was able to land the plane in the Hudson River, in full view of the Manhattan skyline, and every person on board was rescued. This incredible act of courage on the part of the pilot teaches us three lessons for our crisis times.

First, he didn’t turn around. He obviously changed course, but he kept going until he could make an emergency landing. We cannot go back to some golden age of prosperity. We may have to adjust our course a bit, but we are where we are. The only direction to move is forward.

Second, Sully didn’t panic. Katie Couric asked Sully if he was praying, and he said no; he figured that was being covered in the rear of the plane. He was totally focused on the job he had to do. When the plane was in the water, the captain was not the first one out of the plane, either. In fact, he made two trips back into the cabin to make sure everyone else had gotten out. Sully didn’t rest until he had a full accounting of all 155 passengers.

Finally, when the crisis came, Sully Sullenberger did what he knew how to do. He had been trained to land a plane in an emergency. He told Katie Couric, “I had to force myself to use my training and enforce calm on the situation. My entire life up to that moment had been in preparation to handle that particular moment.”[10]

As people of faith, this is how we walk with courage. Don’t turn around. Don’t panic. Do what you know how to do. We don’t know how to fix the economic mess we’re in. But we know how to follow Jesus, and that’s what we need to be about.

It all boils down to FOCUS. Where are you going to center your life? A life centered on God is an unworried life—a peaceful, hopeful, courageous life. Jesus said, “Strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.”[11] That’s where our focus needs to be, on the Kingdom of God and what that means today. Put God first, and take it one day at a time.

Let me close with a devotional that appeared in The Upper Room just this week. Harold Lemley from Georgia got the news on the Monday after Thanksgiving that he was being laid off. Harold is 62 years old. He was hoping to retire from that job. He knows how hard it is for a 62-year-old to find a new job. So in the face of this crisis in his life, he made this witness:

We had to trust God to provide for us. God had already begun to do so by placing in our lives wonderful friends and family who have all responded to our need. To say that I was not worried would not be true. Like most people, I had tried to solve all my problems on my own. I knew what Jesus said in Matthew 6:33—“Strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”—but when I read it during this time of struggle, it became a light shining out of darkness for me. I realized that God is in charge and my worrying ceased. Because God knows what my family needs even before we can ask, I am confident that God will meet our needs in all the years to come.[12]

We know how to do this. Don’t worry about things. Put God first in your life. Take one day at a time. That is a recession-proof faith, and you can rely on it. Amen!