Sermons July
July 20, 2025

“What, Me Worry?”

Matthew 6:25-34

A couple of weeks ago, a significant storm cell passed through Ashland. We had been watching the weather report on the news, and it certainly looked like this orange/red/yellow mass of weather was headed our way. So, after dinner, Sam, Paula, and I headed out to our back porch and waited. Soon, the wind picked up, followed by some rumbling in the distance. Not long after that, it began to rain. Thunder and lightning followed with much more frequency. We watched the show for about half an hour before going back inside. As the storm tapered off, however, so did the lights. The power was out. We found a few ways to entertain ourselves for a bit, then decided it was best to go to bed early. I slept well for the most part.

This lasted until exactly 2:14 a.m., when nature's call came. After my trip to the bathroom, I went back and lay down, trying to go back to sleep, but instead I began a “Worry session” - you know, when you start worrying about everything in the world? First, I began to worry about giving the eulogy at the memorial service for one of my faith mentors, Suellen Stewart. Then, I began to worry about fixing our church facility and a potential building project. Then I got concerned about our 150th celebration on Sep 6-7. Then I started wondering if the thunderstorm and lightning we experienced a few hours before had produced any lightning strikes that could have led to potential fires. Then my mind turned to concerns about my country and the people running it. Then I fell into some irrational thinking, all because I had seen a commercial earlier about the need for a portable generator. In that commercial, a man in camo pants held a new Patriot Generator in his hands and asked me, “What are YOU going to do when the grid goes down? Keep your loved ones safe with the new, powerful Patriot portable generator.” I began to wonder if the grid would be down for a while, or even if this was the beginning of a larger nationwide collapse. After all, we had been without power for almost 6 hours. What if it didn’t come back on? What if this wasn’t just the weather? What if there had been an attack on our power grid system? How can I protect my family without one of those generators, especially when the zombies come? Fortunately, my rational side kicked back in, and that worry faded quickly, but the others remained.

As I tossed and turned, I asked God for help to get back to sleep, for God to assist me with the things that were worrying me. Then I suddenly remembered a hymn that we used to sing in the youth group Suellen helped lead. “He’s Got the whole world in His Hands”. And so I sang to God in my head, “You have the service for Suellen in Your hands. You have the Ashland Presbyterian church in your hands.  You have our 150th in Your hands.  You have my family and my house in Your hands. You’ve got the whole world in Your hands.” In just a few minutes, I was finally able to fall back asleep.

Worries come to us, often at night, when we find ourselves awake with nothing else to occupy our minds. Worry can sap our energy and become a primary focus for us if we aren’t careful. It seems to me that when I worry about an activity or event, it has to do with what I think is best in a situation. Having the whole world in my hands, versus trusting God with an outcome, and trusting God’s hands to be working on whatever it is that is worrying me. Worry and trust are connected, related. When we don't trust God for an outcome to a struggle or a personal situation, worry is just around the corner. Amidst my fears, do I truly trust God?

Last week, we opened the church time capsule, which was filled with items from the founding of our old church, as well as some items from 1962, when this current sanctuary was completed. I found a silver quarter dollar from 1857. I wonder if perhaps this was one of Rev. Moses Williams’ coins, since 1857 was the year he arrived in the Rogue Valley. I noticed the coin was missing a familiar phrase, “In God we trust.” I decided to do some digging, historically, to find out when that phrase was added to our nation’s money.

“In God We Trust” was first added to U.S. coins during the beginning of the Civil War, when religious sentiment was on an upswing and concerned Americans wanted the world to know what their country stood for. Many wrote to the Secretary of the Treasury, Salmon P. Chase on the matter, and he agreed with their arguments. Congress passed the act requesting the addition of “In God We Trust,” adapted from a lesser-known verse of Francis Scott Key’s “Star-Spangled Banner,” and the first two-cent coin with the phrase was minted in 1864. The reason “In God we trust” is not on this coin is that it was already in use seven years before Congress enacted it. This is an old coin!

In God we trust. It is written on our money, but is it written on our hearts? Today’s passage is about worry and, more importantly, about trust. Jesus’ words, recorded in Matthew, concern our lack of confidence in God and God’s love for us —that is, the fact that our lives are in God’s hands. Jesus’ words in Matthew for today come amid the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus has already given us the model for prayer, known as the Lord’s Prayer, in which He tells the disciples to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.”  Following the prayer, he gives instructions on not storing up possessions and being overly worried about our lives, what we shall eat or drink, about our bodies, and what we shall wear.

Jesus says, “Don’t worry about what you need for life.” The Greek word used here for “worry” _merimnao merimnao means “split attention” or “have divided concern.”  If our attention is focused on our concerns and worries, rather than trusting in God’s providence and care for us, our fears will overwhelm us.

When I was about 15 years old, I had the privilege of learning how to rock and mountain climb with my uncle Andy. I began my learning on some cliffs overlooking Moonstone Beach up above Eureka, CA, in Humboldt County. My uncle gave me a climbing harness and then showed me how to tie the rope to my carabiner. He pointed out a route to climb on the face of the cliff, then grabbed the other end of the rope, which was connected to a bunch of ties on the rock. He belayed me, using his weight to counter mine on the rope, just in case I fell, which I did NOT want to test...He told me I needed to trust my equipment, trust my rope, and trust him.

Now, part of the reason I wanted to try rock and mountain climbing was to overcome a bit of a fear of heights- it made sense to me to conquer this fear by tackling it head-on. So, I began my ascent up the rather steep face of the cliff, got up about 40 feet, then got stuck. There was an overhang, a rock that went out from the face. My uncle tried to show me how to climb up and over it, but I was so nervous that it was hard for me to grasp anything. My heart was pounding, my muscles tight. I tried to grip the overhang and pull myself up, but quickly found myself falling. After about a 15-foot drop, I stopped- the rope, my Uncle, and the harness kept me from falling very far. That, my uncle said, was a good lesson to learn when climbing- trust. I had to fall to learn to trust in my equipment.

In this life, I’ve fallen many times. I've fallen a lot farther than I thought I ever would, a few times, in the loss of our first child, the death of both parents, as well as a few other challenging times, and I wondered if I was about to hit the ground. Yet in every crisis I have experienced, I have found the rope held, and I have learned through each of those crises to trust God more and more. Theologian Wolf Hart Panneburg said, “Trust is one of the fundamental aspects of life for human existence...only trust allows the soul room to breathe.”  I have been able, at times, to trust God with all my heart, which allows my soul to breathe in all circumstances. It’s those times when I question or fail to trust that my anxiety blows the roof off my house.

This passage also addresses our consumer culture and our needs. Do we really have all we need?  COSTCO doesn’t think so. Stockpile those cupboards, freezers, and fridges! We went there not long ago and got a lot of things we absolutely didn’t need, but wanted, or at least thought we needed.

According to USA Today,

Americans spend a significant portion of their income on essential and non-essential items. Here's a breakdown of what Americans spend on average each year:

In verse 32, Jesus notes that it is the “Gentiles” who strive to have more and more nonessentials, a reference to the pervasive Roman culture of the day, which valued ostentatious wealth above all else and even saw it as a sign of the gods’ pleasure and blessing. In contrast, Jesus tells the disciples to trust that God knows what they need and has supplied it in all ways on this fertile earth. 11th-century Cistercian abbot St. Bernard of Clairvaux said, “Theirs is an endless road, a hopeless maze, who seek for goods before they seek for God.”

This morning’s message is to place all of your worries and concerns in God’s hands and to trust God with what is needed in this life.

But the times we live in are so worrisome! Shouldn’t we all have backup generators, just in case? Or perhaps it's time to invest more in secure assets, such as gold coins, to provide a bit more for retirement, especially if tariffs are coming back. Who knows what the economy will be like tomorrow? Surrounding myself with non-essential items (for me, these include old classic video games, old video game systems, and old baseball memorabilia, among other things) makes me feel better when I worry about the world and my life.  I can trust in a signed baseball or a Colecovision system. Those things bring me peace of mind and evoke fond memories.

 I want to encourage all of us to memorize this passage of scripture. Proverbs 3:5-6: "Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to God, and your paths will be made straight."

We believe we need more because we only see a portion of the whole picture in our lives, but God sees the entire image and provides us with what is required. When we worry and focus on our own needs, we miss the signs of God’s providence and care around us; we fail to trust and do not see the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, instead focusing on worries and trying to fulfill all our needs. Kindred in Christ, our concerns, our desires, our wants, and needs- all of these are in God’s hands. St. Augustine said, “Trust the past to God’s mercy, the present to God’s love, and the future to God’s providence.” Alleluia. Amen.