February 15, 2004
Jeremiah 17: 5-10
5 Thus says the LORD: Cursed are those who trust in
mere mortals and make mere flesh their strength, whose hearts turn away
from the LORD.
6 They shall be like a shrub in the desert, and
shall not see when relief comes. They shall live in the parched places
of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land.
7 Blessed are those who trust in the LORD, whose
trust is the LORD.
8 They shall be like a tree planted by water,
sending out its roots by the stream. It shall not fear when heat comes,
and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought it is not
anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit.
9 The heart is devious above all else; it is
perverse-- who can understand it?
10 I the LORD test the mind and search the heart,
to give to all according to their ways, according to the fruit of their
doings.
I Corinthians 15: 12-20
12 Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the
dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead?
13 If there is no resurrection of the dead, then
Christ has not been raised;
14 and if Christ has not been raised, then our
proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain.
15 We are even found to be misrepresenting God,
because we testified of God that he raised Christ--whom he did not
raise if it is true that the dead are not raised.
16 For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has
not been raised.
17 If Christ has not been raised, your faith is
futile and you are still in your sins.
18 Then those also who have died in Christ have
perished.
19 If for this life only we have hoped in Christ,
we are of all people most to be pitied.
20 But in fact Christ has been raised from the
dead, the first fruits of those who have died.
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Drew Barrymore and Adam Sandler star in a new
movie, 50 FirstDates. I have not seen the movie yet, but I am fascinated with the
plot. Adam’s character, Dr. Henry Roth described as someone who
is not ready to settle down sees the light one day, and meets Lucy, who
he falls in love with, but of course there is one hitch, Lucy cannot
remember who he is the next day, why? Because she was in a car accident
and suffers from short-term memory loss. She cannot remember who he is.
So even though he is afraid of commitment, he tries to find ways to
help her remember him so he can have a long term relationship with her.
There are many who suffer short-term memory loss,
to one degree or another. For some children, like my daughter Susy,
they have deficits in their learning, and cannot retain information, it
is like that old saying in one ear and out the other. This can
frustrate Susy, and us, when sometimes she does retain certain details
but has complete memory loss in another. For those with Alzheimer's
disease, short-term memory can become more and more severe as the
disease progresses. One person I know has said it like this, my
forgetter is working overtime. In the case of my grandmother, she
forgot who my grandfather was, even though they were married for over
50 years.
For many, the older they grow, the more anxious
they become about their memory. They are afraid that because they do
not remember as much as they used to , they are showing signs of a
mental deterioration. Recently, research has shown that there are
things we can do to keep our minds sharp, using both sides of the
brain, left and right means not only reading, but doing puzzles,
exercises that use both sides of the body, keeping active in some way,
all help in using what we have to the fullest. And of course, research
has found that being an active church member leads to better health and
longer life.
Why is that I wonder? What is it about being a
church member that causes such positive results? The Scripture for
today gives us insight into the health tonic that is our faith. First,
as Jeremiah so clearly point out, those who trust in God are blessed.
“They shall be like a tree
planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream. It shall not
fear when heat comes and its leaves shall stay green.”
For those who suffer from anxiety, the world can be
a scary place. Believe it or not, I have struggled with anxiety in
various forms all my life. I suffered from panic attacks, a moment of
intense fear, usually with symptoms of sweating, feelings of
depersonalization, (being detached from oneself), palpitations, hot
flashes and sometimes dizziness. I also suffer from Social
Anxiety disorder, which is a marked and persistent fear of one or more
social or performance situations in which the person is exposed to
unfamiliar people or to possible scrutiny by others. This fear often
leads to panic attacks. The symptoms are usually a result of
being under stress and during my seminary days, I finally found out
what they were, and sought professional help. With a combination of
therapy and medication the symptoms have occurred much less, from two
or three times a week to once or twice every three months. And I face
this anxiety each and every time I preach, because I fear doing
something that will be embarrassing or humiliating.
What I have discovered in my path to keeping
anxiety at bay, is that I need to constantly remind myself to trust in
God. Anxiety feels very much like I am all alone, and no one
understands. It cuts me off from my faith in God, and it feels
overwhelming. As a Christian it feels like I am somehow deficient in my
faith, because in Matthew’s gospel, Jesus says: “Do not
worry about your life...” Yet this causes only more anxiety. What
does work, however, is to be able to confess this anxiety to God, to
work with my doctor in finding medical interventions that help change
my brain chemistry so that anxiety is no longer prohibiting me from
experiencing the joy of life, and to talk with others who can listen
non-judgementally and offer me support. I have to be what William
Glasser states, “positively addicted” to all the ways that
keep me connected to God and lessens the anxiety in my life. If I
don’t, then the anxiety takes over my functioning in life, I
become less patient, less focused, less attentive to the needs and
hurts of the world, and in short, I live as one who is apart from a
faith in God. My anxiety causes me to have short-term memory. I forget
that God loves me, I forget that there is more to life than worry, I
forget that there are those who love me and care for me, I forget that
there are others who suffer, I forget that life is full of joy. What
about you? What keeps you from fully trusting in God? What sin wedges a
chasm in your relationship to the life giving, love of our Creator? And
what do you do when you find yourself out of touch with God? Rollo May,
a Christian psychologist, wrote a book on “The
Meaning of Anxiety,” which has
been of great help to me. He says that often we try to divert ourselves
away from facing the anxiety we have. We become rigid in our
understanding of the world and afraid of change because it taps into
the unexplored anxiety we feel.
The antidote, I believe, is to remember the words
of Paul from our Corinthians scripture. The resurrection of Jesus
Christ is the foundation of our belief in God. For Paul, Jesus’
resurrection is an historic and not symbolic event. Furthermore,
Jesus’ death was not an event that happened only to Jesus
himself. Rather Jesus’ resurrection is described as a first fruit
of the larger resurrection harvest that will come later to all. Paul is
clear that if there is no resurrection of Jesus, not only is there no
resurrection for the believer, but the entire proclamation of
Christianity is found to be null and void. For Paul, the essence of
Christianity is not a morality or an ethic, but a statement about the
nature and purpose of God and the power of Jesus Christ over sin and
death
What that means for me is that although I have to
battle anxiety, I trust that God can use me even still. It means that
although I cannot know how exactly God uses my weakness of fear and
doubt for good, I trust that the God who raises Jesus off the cross,
also can raise me up and bring me out of the times of anxiety. It means
that I believe in the power of God to transform lives of all those who
may feel left out by society, forgotten and betrayed by others who
cause them suffering. I believe in the power of God to heal the mental
illnesses of all the people of the world, and that you and I are part
of the ministry to all those who suffer from depression or paranoia, or
anxiety or whatever it is. I also, trust God that I am not defined by
my anxiety. God loves all of me, values all of me , and from God there
is no separation, there is nothing I have to keep hidden. Further, I
feel called to bring this good news to others, to all who suffer, to
all those who are searching for meaning and value in their lives, for
all those who feel lonely, and are afraid of approaching God.
On February 25th we will start the journey to
Easter. From that day on, we have the opportunity to look carefully at
our lives, to examine ourselves and face our fears, look at how we can
strengthen our trust in God. It will be for us 40 days of first dates,
of using each and every day to fall in love with God, to remind
ourselves each day of all those fears, and anxieties that keep us from
being united to God, to confess these, to wait for resurrection so we
can be renewed in mind, in spirit and in heart. It will be for us 40
days of listening to God in a new way, so that our lives will be
changed.
