Why We Worry, Why We Judge
As a mom, I’ve spent a lot of years coaching kids who have been worried about their interactions with friends. I think that a smart phone in the hands of the average 14 year old makes anxiety about fitting in, having friends, and being with the right group of friends, so much more pressing.
What if my Instagram post doesn’t get likes?
Do I look ok in this photo?
Why did my friend post THAT picture of me?
I can see that my friends read my text, why aren’t they responding?
One of my daughters shared this week that among young adults, it is now the norm to have location tracking on their phone for their immediate friends and roommates. They see it as a safety precaution, but it also leads to moments of great self-doubt.
Why are those two friends together at that place? And was I not invited?
Why is she with THEM right now?
Sometimes in my own head and heart, I want to make this a developmental issue – as in, eventually we all grow out of it.
But do we?
Do we really?
Our scripture for this week is long. It feels like a laundry list of practical teaching. It is, in many ways, a list of wisdom teachings sort of like Ecclesiastes or Proverbs.
Don’t store up treasures on earth.
Your eyes are the lamp of the body.
You can’t serve God and mammon (or wealth as NRSV translates).
Worrying gets you nowhere.
Today’s trouble is enough for today.
Don’t throw your pearls before the swine (a personal favorite).
Ask. Search. Knock.
You are beloved.
Your Father in Heaven sees you.
There – 27 verses boiled down to 9 lines – sort of...
But the scripture is so rich. Simple yet so complicated. And so very hard to live out.
You’ve heard me struggle these months with the chapter titles that author Brian McLaren sometimes assigns in We Make the Road by Walking. I happen to love this one.
Why We Worry, Why We Judge
The answer – because we don’t accept that we are fully loved and fully loveable.
If we actually got really good at knowing that we are loved and loveable, made in God’s image, we would spend far less time concerned about our stuff, the trappings of material security, and casting sideways glances at what OTHERS do, have, think, say.
There’s the punchline. Right at the beginning. Grossly oversimplified. But I stand by it. It’s a good takeaway.
You are loved and loveable. Made in God’s image. That is enough. Act that way.
In our Friday noon study of Amy-Jill Levine’s book on the Sermon on the Mount, one thing that we are noticing is how Levine approaches the text of the Sermon on the Mount - all three chapters or 110 verses - as an interwoven whole that doubles back on itself again and again, reaching backward to what it means to be blessed, and then forward to what it means to not worry, and then backward again to how we are called to pray.
I don’t know about you, but in most of the teaching I got in the church of my youth, the bible was presented to me in short, predefined chunks that were supposed to mean something all on their own. It was seminary and well into adulthood when I learned to look at a whole book or even at the way the book sits within the cannon and within lived history.
I am finding that this set of teachings is so much richer when I stretch to take in how it all builds and interweaves.
Levine looks at these passages of wisdom that you heard today and draws attention back to what comes right before these verses in the text – instruction about how to pray.
Last week we talked a bit these instructions– instructions for disciplines that help us to grow our relationship with God so that we are rooted and grounded.
And Levine takes her readers back to this instruction when considering how to avoid worry and judgement. She points to the instruction about how and what to pray as one way that we center ourselves in God.
When we center ourselves in God, when we pray for our daily bread and we remember that we need to forgive as well as be forgiven, our worldview tends to shift.
When we center ourselves, we are reminded who we are and whose we are.
When we center ourselves, we are more apt to act from a place of loving respect for the other.
So this teaching from Jesus isn’t just “don’t worry, God’s got this,” but it includes practice that helps us. And practice is the key word.
Because somewhere along the line, most of us have absorbed a bunch of other messages about whether or not we are loveable.
The media suggests we don’t look like we should.
The marketplace tells us we don’t have enough, that our grass is not green enough.
Society tells us our skin color is too dark or our native language too foreign.
Our mortgage banker tells us we don’t earn the right amount.
Who among us wakes up each morning fully confident that we are, just as we are, enough?
We are, just as we are, created in God’s image.
We bear the spark of the creator within each of us.
Who among us carries that 24/7?
I think not many.
But I am compelled here to say a word about privilege. If you, in your skin color, your body type, your gender identity, your physical ability, and your sexuality represent the dominant culture – which to be clear in the US is
white,
fit,
cis-gender (meaning your gender expression and appearance match your birth sex),
able-bodied,
and heterosexual –
you are more likely to be affirmed in your daily life by the world around you as loveable.
The more of those boxes you can check, the more you have been affirmed by the world around you.
You are likely to have received more messages since you were very small that you are ok than someone who cannot check as many of those boxes.
Whether or not you are aware of how you have been affirmed and receive and accept that you are ok is a matter of personal development. But your appearance and presence in the world has been affirmed in ways others’ have not had their identity affirmed in this world.
And so, for those of us who resemble the dominant culture, it is important to remember that even on the days we feel badly about ourselves, we carry some privilege that others don’t.
It might be even harder for others around us to feel beloved.
I ask that we carry that with us, not as a source of shame or doubt, but as a challenge for how we hear the struggles of others around us, how we understand what it means to “do unto others…”
The basic truth for ALL of us is that when we struggle to feel loved, we live from places of anxiety and judgment, worry and accusation.
Here’s Jesus in Galilee, 2000+ years ago, teaching a next generation of leaders that they are loved, and that remembering their beloved-ness is key to not worrying, not toiling, not fretting, and frankly, to treating others with dignity and respect – do unto others as you would have them do unto you. This is vital and baseline teaching for the future church right here.
Since the first of the year, I have been working with a coach and a small group of women clergy leaders to develop positive intelligence muscles. That basically means that we are working with some psychological models that help us to activate a more positive outlook about everything as we move through the world.
It’s all rooted in evidence-based practice, material that is standard at places like the Stanford Business School.
But as we have lived with it, we as clergy women recognize it as another expression of much of the truth we know from scripture. We are loved and loveable, created that way.
This week, one of my practices focused on remembering who I am. For me, that means remembering who I am as a child of God…
Shirzad Chamine, the instructor, shaped my mediation this week with these words:
You were born with a unique beautiful essence which is more evident in childhood pictures.
Your essence has never changed and will never change.
As you look at this picture, notice your beautiful essence, your true self.
Notice how worthy this child is, worthy of your unconditional love, meaning this child should not need to perform or achieve in order to be loved all the time without any conditions.
What if we, as a church, as an expression of God’s love in the world, were committed to speaking these words into one another’s lives,
into the lives of our neighbors,
into the lives of people we encounter
– you were born with the beautiful essence. God created you and loves you. Just as you are.
What if it wasn’t a message that we waited to share when people show up at our events, our services, our classes, but instead that we shared proactively as we walked through this life as followers of Jesus. In the grocery store, in PTA meetings, in our workplace.
I think if we practice centering ourselves in God, maybe starting with prayer, it might come easier. But we have to practice. Day in and day out. Building our love muscles.
Levine talks about learning to bring light to the situation rather than heat.
McLaren says this: Jesus leads us out of an anxiety-driven and judgment-driven system, and into a faith-sustained, grace-based system that yields aliveness.
For us, and for the world around us.
But we have to practice.
We have to try again and again.
We have to offer ourselves grace when we fail.
We have to offer others grace when they fail.
“Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone? Or if the child asks for a fish, will give a snake? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!
“In everything, do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.”
May it be so.
Amen.
Mark Miller is a musician, composer, and teacher who has grown up in The United Methodist Church. He is also a gay married man, has served as a delegate for the Greater New Jersey Annual Conference to General Conference, and teaches sacred music at Yale and Drew Universities. He wrote the song you are about to hear as a reaction to the way church trials were ripping apart the lives of dedicated Christian leaders throughout The United Methodist Church. It is haunting. It clings to my skin. I invite you to center in it now.
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