I hope you’ll forgive me for quoting this wonderful blog from Nadia Bolz-Weber. On the face of it, her circle and mine (hers is much bigger) do not much intersect: ordained, tattooed, a former addict, divorced, remarried and probably further over on some theological spectrum than I, but she writes and thinks so beautifully that I would recommend her corner of the internet to you and anybody. Here’s the link that should enable you to sign up. And here’s something she wrote a couple of weeks ago, about anxiety:
As a child I worried a lot about quicksand. To be fair, the TV shows I watched made it seem like more of a potential danger in life than it’s proved to be.
And as a teenager I worried that the Soviet Union would drop nuclear bombs on us but I equally worried that I wouldn’t get tickets to see Depeche Mode.
In my early 20s I was mostly worried I’d run out of booze, and that I would not be able to pay my $325 a month rent. Sadly, I did not think to worry about how those two things might be related.
And when I got sober and I worried that I wouldn’t be funny anymore never realizing I wasn’t all that funny before.
Then I was told to worry that Y2K was going to make airplanes just sort of drop out of the sky.
And when 9-11 happened I for sure worried the terrorist attacks would just keep going and by that time I had 2 babies and that made it feel more acute.
Then when the economic collapse happened in 2008 … honestly I was entirely free from worry because I was entirely free of money. So it was very a relaxing time for me.
Then I worried that people would think less of me when I got divorced not realizing they didn’t think that much of me to begin with.
Feel free to go home and write your own biography of worry. It’s a humbling project to undertake.
But also kind of calming.
Because writing my own this week helped remind me how worrying about what might happen didn’t do one thing to make me feel safe, or to prevent bad things from happening or to ensure that good things did. It really only kept me from being present to the gifts of the day I was in.
… worrying about what might happen didn’t do one thing to make me feel safe … It really only kept me from being present to the gifts of the day I was in
But what I really want to tell you about is how our reading from Revelation helped me this week –
The churches in Asia minor to whom John’s Revelation is addressed had some pretty high anxiety levels too – they were living under the thumb of the Roman empire and the book of Revelation was meant to offer them comfort. It’s famous for 7 headed beasts and heavenly battles and whatnot, but If there is an overwhelming message in this, the weirdest book in the Bible, it would be this: that dominant powers are not ultimate powers. Which is another sermon for another time.
The part of today’s reading that I swear lowered my cortisol levels was this:
In his opening remarks, the writer of Revelation twice refers to God as the one who was, who is, and who is to come. That’s it.
“I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.
That is what comforted me this week as I read our texts for today and tried to manage my anxiety while writing a sermon.
That God was and is and is to come.
Or as the hymn goes:
Crown him the Lord of Years,
The Potentate of Time,
creator of the rolling spheres, ineffably sublime.
It helped me this week because it reminded me that this moment we are in is a very small moment in a very big story. A story of God and God’s people that reaches back to the beginning of time, brushes the skin of the present and moves on into a future we cannot see.
What I am saying is that I think I am most anxious when I invest myself too fully in some Johnny come lately story.
Because looking again at my autobiography of worry, I think that at each of those anxious points in my life I was believing a story I was being told; in the media and by my friends and from our culture. Which is understandable, but in hindsight most of the stories did not end up being all that true, they just ended up being quickly replaced by new ones so we never noticed.
What I am trying to say is that the beautiful thing about being a people of faith is how we are a very small part of a very big story. We tell it, we sing it, we eat it, we paint it, we read it, because it’s the most true thing we’ve ever heard. And competing stories will always surround us. Sometimes, maybe a little bit like our siblings in faith from the churches in Asia minor in the 1st century, we too need reminding that the dominant story is not the ultimate story. That that there is only one potentate of time.
When I look back, in all my times of grief and doubt and sorrow and anger and faithlessness, I can in the rear view, see the mighty hand of God.
To be clear, God was not busily arraigning all my desired outcomes. If that were true, had I gotten everything I wanted I promise you I wouldn’t be alive right now, much less standing here in this pulpit.
But what I can see now, is how often I was saved from having the thing happen that I was so sure would make me happy.
Looking back I see how often I was carried through things I thought I couldn’t survive, and how I was guided to beautiful things I wouldn’t have ever even wished for.
Because God is like a shimmering, divine filament woven into our lives that provides spiritual tensile strength, and beauty in each moment, even when we forget to trust him, even when we forget to pray or be grateful.
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