Learning to Not Worry About the Right Things

Our culture is characterized by an epidemic of worry. There is an entire industry of resources developed by therapeutic professionals targeted to worriers. Books, prescription medicine, websites, meditation--the list goes on and on. Worrying prevention is big bucks.

Our biggest problem today when it comes to worrying is not that we worry too much, but that we worry too much about the wrong things. Our worrying these days tends to be focused on financial, physical, and military security. We worry about the balance of our checking accounts, our income to debt ratio, and our bills. We worry about our health. And we worry about whether we are secure as a nation state from our enemies.

If we are going to worry, we should at least worry about the right thing--the security of our souls. We should be worrying about whether we are living as servants of other people enough, whether we are feeding the hungry enough, whether we are loving our enemies enough, and whether we are seeking God's direction for our lives enough.

Once we start worrying about the right thing--our souls, Jesus tells us that we don't have to worry. We just need to turn to God, accept Christ as Lord, follow God's Spirit, and continue to grow in response to God's grace. Not only will we stop worrying about the wrong things, but we will also stop worrying about the right things.

The Blessing of Not Being Hated By Our Enemies

The gospel lesson from the Revised Common Lectionary contains Jesus' commandment that we love our enemies. Normally, we think about this text in an active manner--in terms of our obligation to love our enemies. But the text also means that the same commandment applies to our enemies. Our enemies are called to love us. This is good news for us. No matter who we are in this world, there are those who hate us. And that is going to be true no matter what we do. We can be the most virtuous people in the world, and there are going to be those who hate us.

God's Spirit is active in our enemies to compel them to love us. In the Wesleyan tradition, we believe that God's Spirit is at work in us even before we know what God's Spirit is; this is referred to as prevenient grace. That means that God is at work within the souls of those of our enemies who do not know God to compel them to stop hating us, and God is at work within our souls to get us to stop hating them.

Jesus' statement that we love our enemies says a lot about God's nature. God's role is not to take sides with us to help us in hating our enemies. God's role is not to take sides with our enemies in hating us. Instead, God stands above us and above our enemies and compels us to all stop hating each other. God does this because God wants us to be reconciled with one another.

The commandment to love our enemies also reflects God's willingness to love us even when are enemies to God. We all sometimes fail to live according to the example of Christ. In those moments when we are enemies to God, God could choose to hate us. In the person of Jesus, God even reached out in love to God's enemies on the cross. Even in those moments and times when we are enemies to God, God's agenda is not to hate us, but to love us. God's agenda is to continue to work within us and bring us grace.

An Imperfect Church

The United Methodist Church has its problems. Sometimes our bureaucracy seems to get in the way of what matters, which is to make disciples of Christ. Our denomination has financial pressures, and these financial pressures are passed down to our local churches in the form of higher and higher apportionments. Widespread disagreements and disputes exist on a denominational level about what it means to be the Church and how to live out that calling in the world.

As disciples, we make lots of mistakes. We are, decidedly, imperfect. Then, we look at pictures of the early saints and heroes of the Church, and we are discouraged, because they do not look like us--imperfect people within an imperfect religious tradition. They have halos, peaceful expressions, and don't ever seem to make any mistakes. They look like they have it altogether.

This Sunday in the Revised Common Lectionary we continue our journey through Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians, Chapter 3.1-9, and we see something remarkable. The early community in Corinth had the same problems that we do, both institutionally and individually. The church in Corinth was divided, with disputes and controversies, and the disciples within the church were flawed and imperfect. And yet despite their imperfections and the imperfections of the institution around them, they did great things. We know that they did great things and that the other communities that Paul founded did great things, because they passed down the traditions of the faith to us. They prayed and read the scriptures and proclaimed Christ crucified and risen and lived as true disciples.

We bear this same duality. We are both imperfect and capable of doing great things through God's Spirit. And in the United Methodist Church, we live out our discipleship in a flawed and imperfect denomination that is also capable of doing great things and does great things. I have a sneaking suspicion that this same duality is present in other expressions of the Church Universal.

When we make mistakes, we should not give up on ourselves because God has not given up on us. And when we are frustrated by our religious tradition, we should not give up on our religious tradition, because God hasn't. And then we should move on and continue to live according to the example of Christ. God will be with us when we do.