ANTIDOTE TOR ANXIETY
luke 12:22-—31
November 17, 1968
Rev. John Ii. Buchanan

From the late Albert Camus, to Norman Vincent Peale, to Charlie Brown's
protagonist - lucy, anyone who is someone in the literary world has had sonething to
say about this matter of “anxiety”. Camus, a brilliant French novelist who was
killed in an automobile accident, designated this as the "century of fear”, and
devoted much of his writing to documenting and probing into the depths of that
ambiguous fear.

Horman Vincent Peale, likewise, has correctly assessed this as an age of
uncertainty, — an age of anxiety, and has profited royally, simply by attempting to
deal with the issue, however superficially.

And Iucy — Lucy operates a 5¢ psychiatric clinic from which she dispenses
counsel and advice to the anxiety ridden characters of Peanuts. On one occasion
she correctly diagnosed Charlie Brown's dilemma as "Pantophobia" - fear of overy-
thing. In a moment of integrity he acknowledged that that really was his problem -
he was afraid of nothing in particular and everything in general. That is — he was
anxious.

Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke to the soul of a nation and also diagnosed a
prevailing anxicty when he said: "We have nothing to fear but fear itself."

Anxiety is one of the definitive characterstics of life in the twontieth
century. And while it is certainly not a new phenomenon there is much about living
at this time that makes anxiety more intense, more acute — and more dangerous.

I would like to make three observations about anxiety: it is not abnormal:
all men experience it: it can be a creative factor in human behavior. Like other
human emotions anxiety exists on two levels - individually, but also corporately.

Like other human emotions, corporate or communal is magnified in intensity and
therefore becomes a very important factor in the affairs of men. Rollo llay, a
leading psychologist and professor at Columbia has noted the clear relationship
between anxiety and the way men behave politically.

WU... we wish to note," he wrote "that (Fascism) is born and gains its power in
periods of widespread anxiety." (p.9, The Meaning of Anxiety, New York, 1950)

\nd Paul Tillich, perhaps the finest philosophic theologian of ‘this
century, discussing the situation in Europe during the 1930's as he expericnced it =
"First of all a feeling of fear or, more exactly, of indefinite anxiety was prevailing.
Not only the economic and political, but also the cultural and religious, security
seemed to be lost. There was nothing on which one could build, everything was
without foundation. A catastrophic break-down was expected every moment. Consequently
a longing for security was growing in everybody. A freedom that leads to fear and
‘nxiety has lost its value; better authority with security than freedom with fear."
(p. 245, The Protestant Era, Chicago, 1947)

Severe anxiety motivates men to do strange things; politically to give up
their froodom in the search for security. That is how, I am sure, history will
explain the bizarre phenomenon of 10 million Americans voting for George Wallace
end Curtis LeMay in 1968. Anxiety is the answer, a nation deeply anxious about a
nagging, impossible war, inexplicable turmoil in cities and on college canpusses
and the overturning of everything that is safe and sure and traditional.

Individually severe anxiety can cause us to seek the security of withdrawal-
or shyness: it can make us become overly aggressive: it can cause us to lash out
irrationally at those we love - or merely stand around sighing and wringing our
hands a lot. It can cause people to seek refuge in alcohol — LSD - or oven television.

Unfocussed anxiety can be so all-encompassing that our lives become a singular
obsession with its resolution.

nom

aes Anxiety is a potent and real force today, corporately and individually. But
what is it exactly? Books have been written defining it, and it is a bit presump tuous
to over—simplify; but Webster says anxiety is “painful uneasiness of mind over an
impending ill." For our purpose today I'd like to deepen that definition to include
the observable, unfocussed fear that is part of the unknow - the future of being
human.

Jesus talked about anxiety, in a very basic and forthright manner. Fortunately
he did not become involved in confusing semantics - a gift rarely matched by anyone
today. Iie presented his case rather simply..."do not be anxious about your life,
what you shall eat, nor about your body, what you shall put on. For life is more
than food, and the body more than clothing. Consider the ravens: they noithor sow nor
reap, thoy have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more
value are you than birds..¥ and later... .. do not seck what you are to cat and what
you are to drink, nor be of anxious mind. Por all the nations of the vorld seck these
things; and your father knows that you need then. Instead, seek his kingdom, and
these things shall be yours as well."

Like many other favorite passages, lifted out of the Bible, vo have problems
with this one - basically a misunderstanding based on a misleading translation. And
before we begin to use the content of the New Testament as an antidote for anxiety
it would be fitting to know what it doesn't say.

You and I wore weaned on the King James translation which reads: “ake no

thought for your life, what you shall eat, etc. " That, frankly, is an intorpretation -
and the Greek won't bear up under it. The R § V translates, "do not be anxious."
Today's English Version - "Do not worry." There is, obviously, quite a difference

betwoon not being anxious or not worrying - and taking no thought whatever about your
life. Jcsus did not teach that there is religious merit to nakedness or starvation.
There is within Christianity a strong tendency toward asceticism — i.e. a rejection,

or at loast a suspicion of the material, real world. It is perhaps best soon in the
monastic movement in the middle ages. It is based on the unbiblical arsumption that a
hungry, poor man is intrinsically holier than a wealthy, well fed man. I+ was

expanded to include the celibate man or.woman — thus driving a deep wedge between the
spiritual ond the physical. But Jesus didn't teach it. ‘The thrust here is on anxiety —
worry - not on the simplistic act of preparing for the future.

The image of birds here ~— a beautifully poetic illustration - has been
grossly misused also. Consider the birds — millions of them starve to death. In
fact, their entire existence is a continual struggle for survival. This text has
been used to justify idleness - living off the fat of the land. But a bird is any-
thing but idle. Its days are filled with nest building and food hunting: it migrates
hundreds of miles because it is concerned with tomorrow. God provides for the birds —-
but a insy, idle bird will die.

The point is that Jesus was not teaching irresponsibility: he was. not
advising ogainst any plan for tomorrow: he certainly was not recommending idleness,
or parasitic living off the wealth of others.

lie was talking about freedom — freedom from man's all-encompassing anxiety
about security. He was talking about atimeless characteristic of the human organism
that quickly becomes an obsession. He was talking about man's deepest anxicties,
and his concern that this anxiety — this incessant worrying about the fuivre actually
prohibits a man from freely and fully living his life.

I know people like that. I know people so terribly busy assuring their
security in retirement that they don't have time to live in the present. In fact,
sometimes the Church is like that.

It's not a new phenomenon to be sure, and yet anxiety about financial
security is so structured into the American Way of Life that it has become the
chief ond of man. Everything depends on it: everything is geared toward it.

Erich Fromm has written: "Throughout the whole process of education, in
the family and from Kindergarten through college, the individual is made to feel that
the meaning of his life is bound up with something that can be destroyed by a mere
change of fashion or a bit of bad luck."

CBS, several years ago, did a documentary film of American youth
entitled "16 in Webster Groves." That project put to rest many of the stercotyped images
adults have of teen-agers. We are inclined, today, particularly to sce young people
as political and social radicals, idealists who want to change the world, revolutionaries
who refuse to take the system seriously. But in the film person after person after
person — all 16 - came before the camera to say that their goals in lifo were a good
salary - a split level home — and two automobiles; and furthermore that these goals
were s0 important they would do anything to achieve them.

That is the result of anxiety: that is the fruit of a sick socicty, obsessed
with security - ready to sacrifice anything for the nirvana of a fat retirement check.

Ve ought at times to thank God for the Hippies, for those brave souls who call
us back from the edge of idolatry - for those ~ however offensively -— who are trying
to teach us that life is more than food, more than clothing, more than anxiocty.

Christmas is upon us: turn your radio on today and you will be made to
feel that you're not really with it unless you spend a small fortune on those you
love: and you will be told that the finance company is ready to assist you in
acheiving what you really want - a feeling of satisfaction and security. And in
December more suicides will be committed than in any other month of the year.

It is no coincidence. Life is more than food and clothing - anxieties are not
relicved by buying more — but many discover that too late,

You and I experience a lot of anxiety: we are concerned about our mortgages,
our health, our position in the community: we worry a lot = about debits, college
for the children and retirement, perhaps grades on an examination. We won't ever
stop being concerned about these things, and if we did we would be irresponsible.

But we don't have to be obsessed by them. Our concerns don't have to provent us from
living full and happy lives.

Wie can be helped, I believe, by the insight that all anxiety is related:
that wo worry about financial security because deep below the surface we are
anxious about ultimate security. That's what the philosophers mean when they talk
about "angst" or dread. Paul Tillich identified man's fundamental fear — the fear
which gives birth to all anxiety - as the fear of non-being. Death is its ultimate
expression. But non—being, Tiliich taught, also meant meaninglessness, a sense of
not mattcring: a feeling that I don't count, my life adds up to a big fat nothing.

That's our real anxiety - and to combat it we furiously pursuc financial
security. liaterial wealth is a way of saying "I count". It is a way of . denying
my own mortality.

But it docsn't work. Because life is more than that.

God's word for us, from this text, is -— I believe — profoundly simple,

It is this - there is no ultimate security in anything we can buy or achieve. God
is the only ultimate security: he provides for us — now and forever. ‘Je run the
risk of missing the best in life when we are anxious about the future: he has made
us for more than that.

The Antidote for Anxiety? - Jesus Christ. What he taught — but supremely
himself. For he came to be the love of God. He came to act out the love of God for
us. ile came to show that the future is secure — that all things will be added to us.

The Christian life, the life with which we are concerned here, is one of
joyful abandon, a life of freedom from anxiety - a blessed life of trust in God.

May it be so for us. Amen.