“Be not anxious”
Jesus’ words are comforting words that speak to an anxious world. What are our anxieties? Quite simply, they are our cares, the things which, quite literally, occupy our thoughts. The first Books of Common Prayer (1549, 1552) use the phrase “be not carefull,” as derived from William Tyndale’s translation of the New Testament. The King James Version of the Bible, produced four hundred years ago in 1611, uses the phrase “take no thought” to capture the Greek word about how our thoughts are so easily taken captive or occupied, possessed, we might even say, with various concerns. The phrase, “take no thought,” became the version in the Books of Common Prayer from 1662 onwards until 1959, when in Canada the word “anxious” was introduced in its place, a word which has 17th century provenance in English but which has been given a much greater weight of interpretation in the 20th century, no doubt, through the influence of the psychology of Sigmund Freud. The German word angst has entered into our contemporary vocabulary with a vengeance. We are anxious about our anxieties, stressed out about our stresses; in short, self-absorbed.
Our anxieties are the cares which choke and oppress us and preoccupy us. Our problem, it seems, and the cause of our anxiety is that we are often too careful, quite literally, too full of cares about the wrong things and/or in the wrong way. It is not too much to say that out of self-preoccupations arise no end of disorders and troubles: anger and depression, recklessness and stupidity, meanness and selfishness.
The cares of this world beset us but Jesus would have us view the world and its cares in a new way. The passage here from Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount recalls us to the great and grand theme of God’s Providence by way of reference to Creation and the Fall.
Providentially, it seems to me, this Sunday’s readings connect with two other religious commemorations: Rosh Hashanah and Michaelmas, just past. In our liturgy we are carried on Angel’s wings into the love of God for us in Jesus Christ. “Therefore with angels and archangels and with all the company of heaven, we laud and magnify thy glorious Name.” They are such familiar words but I wonder if we think enough about them or, as it were, care enough about their significance. What is being said is profound. We are part of a spiritual company that is far greater than we can comprehend. We are being reminded that we are spiritual creatures who find our truth with God. We are not cosmic orphans cast adrift in a material universe of fatal indifference.
The simple message here is that God’s cares. That is an astounding statement and yet it lies at the heart of the Christian proclamation. God’s care or love is the cause of the being of the universe and everything in it. God’s care or love belongs to the very nature of the Divine Goodness without which there is nothing. God’s care or love is the Divine Goodness that is greater than the evil of the day, the evil of our hearts and souls. For what is that except our turning away from the Divine Goodness that is right before our eyes?
This Gospel is the antidote to our fears and anxieties. Why? Because it sets before us in “large letters”, we might say, the strong verbs of perception and desire that open us out to the reality of a moral and spiritual universe in which we find our dignity and freedom. Those strong verbs are “behold, consider and seek”. They challenge us about our cares and worries whether it is the economy or health, whether it is the pressures and demands of everyday life or the regret about the things that we can no longer do at all.
We are literally with the angels in thinking the thoughts of God, especially those thoughts revealed to us in the witness of the Scriptures. But we have to be opened to the hearing and the seeing of these things. For what really is our problem? Simply that we are too preoccupied with ourselves. Too full of cares, too caught up in our own thoughts to think what is most needful.
Rosh Hashanah celebrates the Jewish New Year. Part of that celebration involves recalling the story of Creation and the Fall. Michaelmas is the feast of St. Michael and All Angels and in the lesson from the last book of the Christian bible, the Book of the Revelation of St. John the Divine, we are reminded of Creation and the Fall. “There was war in heaven,” we read, a staggering concept, to be sure, and one which might add greatly to our anxieties. After all isn’t war on earth hard enough to bear, not to mention the wars in our hearts? Yet, “Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not.” Who is this dragon? John tells us. It is “that old serpent, called the devil and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world.” We are instantly taken back to the story of the Fall, to our wilful rejection of God and his creation through our disobedience, having yielded to the insinuations of the serpent in the Garden of Eden. What is that serpent except the cunning of our reason in seeking to subvert God’s will to our own?
The story of the Fall describes the human predicament. We discover ourselves as selves but only by way of separation from God and from one another. Our eyes are opened only to discover our nakedness as well as suffering and death. We are the predicament. The problem is with ourselves. But in the large letters of Scripture, both of the Old and New Testament, we are reminded of something greater than our sin and evil. It is signaled for us most powerfully in this Gospel passage. We are reminded of God’s care for us. We are reminded of who we are, namely, spiritual creatures made in the image of God, creatures who know and love.
“Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,” Jesus says. There are troubles and hardships, sufferings and deaths. There can be no mistaking that. But to be reminded that we are more than these things and to realise that we are God’s children and part of a spiritual company of angels and men is saving grace. Michaelmas reminds us of the victory of Good over evil. “There was,” not there is, “war in heaven.”
What is God’s care for us? In the reading from Revelation, Michael and his angels overcome evil “by the blood of the Lamb,” the blood of Christ. That is the deep love and care of God for us.
It is what our liturgy constantly proclaims. The necessary antidote to our preoccupations is our meditation upon the story of human redemption, a story that encompasses Creation and the Fall. To ponder these things is to discover the grace of God.
Dante, in the Purgatorio of his spiritual classic, the Divine Comedy, speaks about those who are preoccupied. It is, you see, a spiritual problem. In Dante’s poetic imagination, the penitent sinner can only journey in the light of the day. Before the preoccupied can properly begin their ascent of purification, they have to wait each night in the Valley of the Kings. Three stars shine upon them, giving way to four other stars in the early morning. The three stars are images of the three theological virtues: faith, hope and charity. The four other stars are images of the classical or cardinal virtues belonging to human excellence: temperance, courage, prudence and justice. But under the influence of those three theological virtues of divine grace, the preoccupied are bidden to watch a spectacle, a play. Like Michaelmas, it is a re-enactment of the divine drama of our redemption: the angels overcome the serpent but only by the blood of the Lamb.
The simple point is that we need to contemplate the pageant of human redemption. We need to think more about God’s Providence and less about our preoccupations. We need to be reminded of the triumph of good over evil. We need to be recalled to the providential care of God for us in Jesus Christ. This is the antidote to our anxieties. “Teach us to care and not to care,” as the poet, T.S. Eliot reminds us. “Behold, consider and seek,” Jesus tells us, for only so can we “be not anxious.”
Fr. David Curry
Trinity XV, 2011