(Notes of a sermon preached by Rev. Jan Croucher – Rowland’s
pastor-wife – at syndal Baptist Church, Sunday morning July 5th, 1998).

This poem by Judith Viorst from her book ‘How Did I Get to Be Forty
and Other Atrocities’ is entitled ‘Three O’clock in the Morning’

At three o’clock in the morning I used to be sleeping an untroubled
sleep in my bed, But lately at three in the morning I’m tossing and
turning, Awakened by hypochondria, and dreams, and nameless dread, Whose
name I’ve been learning. (worry)

At three o’clock in the morning I brood about what my cholesterol
level might reveal, And the pains in my chest start progressing from
gentle to racking, While certain intestinal problems make clear that the
onions I ate with my meal Plan on counter attacking.

At three in the morning I look towards the future with blankets
pulled over my ears, And all of my basic equipment is distinctly
diminished. My gums are receding, my blood pressure’s high, and I can’t
begin listing my fears Or I’ll never get finished.

At three in the morning I used to be sleeping but lately I wake and
reflect That my childhood has gone and I’ll now have to manage without
it. They tell me that I’m heading into my prime. From the previews I do
not expect To be crazy about it.

Do you identify with this? What do you worry about?

Well, let’s explore the world of worry and anxiety – it’s a world
filled with people like us. Then we will conclude with attempting to
apply God’s wisdom in helping us to cope with this very human condition.

The word ‘worry’ comes from an old English word meaning ‘to
strangle’, so participating in this particular pastime has that effect
upon our whole being.

Worry can be addictive, because we are capable of tormenting
ourselves with imagined fears, like a husband who was awakened by his
wife’s ongoing concern that she heard a burglar downstairs. One night as
usual he slowly got up, went grumpily downstairs and found himself
staring down the barrel of a gun. The burglar ordered him to hand over
all the household valuables and then started to leave. ‘Please Sir,’ the
husband blurted out, ‘before you go I’d like you to come upstairs and
meet my wife, she’s been expecting you every night for the last thirty
years.’

We have to admit we all worry more than we need to. Most of us
recognise that the things we worry about almost never happen, but that
doesn’t stop us from worrying. And when worry consumes our thinking we
are hindered from effectively dealing with the problem. Just ‘stopping’,
is easier said than done. Worry can’t be turned off voluntarily and
automatically.

What then can be done about this universal problem?

FIRST let’s look at some things the psalmist tells us not to worry
about and why,
THEN let’s find ten antidotes he gives for worry.

DON’T WORRY ABOUT

OTHERS: Those who seem to have no thought of God or good or justice
or care for others, often seem to prosper more than those who are honest
hard workers . Even those who have cheated us seem to prosper. Some may
have got promotion over you when you know there were unethical aspects
to their C V. Eugene Peterson translates 7b as ‘ Don’t bother with those
who climb the ladder, who elbow their way to the top.’ Check other
verses listed if you want to jot them down.

INJUSTICE: God will sort it all out. Don’t worry if the wicked seem
to be getting away with it when they inflict injustice on you
personally. v6 ‘He’ll validate your life in the clear light of day and
stamp you with approval at high noon. v9 Before long the crooks will be
bankrupt; Yahweh investors will soon own the store’ (Peterson)

POSSESSIONS (16) – The psalm is not condemning wealth but stating
that righteousness is more important than owning lots of stuff.

The Russian novelist, Leo Tolstoy was something of a modern
prophet. He lived throughout the major part of the 19th C and sensed the
ferment that was stirring in the depths of the Russian soul. He detected
the restlessness and the materialistic vision that has shaped so much of
our own century. But Tolstoy did more than just see all this. He also
‘saw through it’ to where it would inevitably lead. He conveys his
insights in a remarkable short story entitled ‘How much Land Does a Man
Need?’ A Russian peasant has lived all his life on someone else’s land
until he hears one day of an unbelievable opportunity. A nobleman was
breaking up his estate and offering little parcels of land for sale to
peasants. Soon he was the owner of 20 acres about which he could say
‘Mine’ and do what he pleased with it. But after a while the excitement
waned as he became initiated into all that went along with ownership –
the age-old experience of getting to do as you please, and then not
being pleased with what you do. He got what he wanted but now did he
really want what he’d gotten?

He thought then that having more might do what having so little had
failed to do. So when a traveller came by with news of much cheaper land
somewhere else he sold his 20 acres as a down payment on 200, relocated
his family again and commenced the experience of expansion all over
again. This time however the excitement lasted an even shorter period of
time and the complexities that went with greater responsibility were
much heavier. Still not much wisdom was gained and when another
traveller came and told of a very distant region where people were not
at all acquisitive and where there was such an abundance of everything
that no-one had to be selfish, and where vast tracts of land were going
for almost nothing, his restless imagination was fired again, and he
found what exceeded his fondest dreams. The people were generous and
hospitable, and the chieftain took such a liking to this peasant that he
made him a remarkable offer – he would sell him all the land he could
walk around in a single day, for only a thousand reubels. The only
condition was that the man had to get back to the place he started from
before sundown or the whole proposition would be off.

This was an offer he couldn’t refuse. He hardly slept a wink the
night before and as soon as the sun was up he set out in a dead run from
the point where the chieftain had dropped his fur cap. He saw fertile
field after fertile field that he encompassed pretty quickly and started
to say ‘This is mine’. In fact he became so intoxicated with this easy
method of acquiring that he didn’t bother to stop to eat or drink. The
further he went the more fertile the land became and before long he
realised it was probably mid afternoon and that he had better head back
to the starting point. Had he left it too late? Had he gone too far?
Was greed going to be his undoing? Had he tried to gain so much that he
was going to end up losing it all? Worry anxiety and panic set in, and
caused him to push his body unmercifully. As the sun was going down, he
ran harder than he had ever run in his life, and just as the last glint
of sunlight was fading he managed to make it back to that crucial fur
cap and toppled over with exhaustion. Those awaiting his return
approached his inert body only to find he had died of heart failure. So
the answer to the question ‘How much land does a person need?’ in this
case was simple: ‘Very little – a plot six feet long, three feet wide
and four feet deep – just enough to bury him in.’

This peasant in a sense, is the archetype of 20th C Western human
beings. We have spent ourselves circling larger and larger areas of
possessions, but along with our affluence we have also acquired a
nervous twitch, and ulcers and the inability to go to sleep at night or
have authentic relationships with our children or with anyone else for
that matter. We have not only driven our bodies to destruction , but it
is becoming more clear that we have raped the earth itself in our
acquisitive passion and our once abundant resources are dwindling. And
at the bottom line of it all is the question: ‘Have the 20th C affluents
become happy and joyful human beings because of all this “more”?’

I find this rather sobering, and I’m pretty sure we’ll have to face
it more and more as we enter the next millennium. Let’s look at verse 16
again: ‘Better is a little that a righteous person has than the
abundance of many wicked.’ This truth came home to me quite a few years
ago when I inherited a beautiful opal brooch from an aunt. My eldest
daughter just loved it. She put it on and paraded in it. I later went to
have another look at it myself and found that it was not in the place I
had appointed for it. I went in anxious haste to my daughter to ask
where the brooch had been put, and of course it was in the correct
drawer but at the other end. Owning such a valuable item led to anxiety
and I pondered again over what the saints have always said: We each have
a simple choice – poverty or anxiety .

What comes through so clearly in Scripture is that more material
things in themselves do not have the power to satisfy the human spirit
completely. They simply do not have within them all that a human being
turns out to need. .St Augustine put it memorably: ‘Thou hast made us
for thyself, O God, and our hearts are restless until they find their
rest in Thee.’ Inspite of all our materialism and the fact that we are
physical and emotional creatures, we are also something else. We have
been touched by the Spirit. We have in us a capacity for God that means
we are capable of standing face to face with our Creator. Perhaps the
greatest tragedy of this century is that we have not understood our own
needfulness sufficiently and the hunger we feel, and are trying to
satisfy by circling larger and larger territories of possessions, is
really a hunger for God, which can only be met as we come to recognise
him as the true air that our spirits must breathe in order to live.

THE FUTURE: God promises to provide (18,19), even for our children.
We can trust God with them too.

So the psalmist is saying, even though there are mysteries here and
lots of things that we can’t figure out we can leave all these things,
(things that others do, injustices to us, possessions and our future) to
the Lord.

THE TEN ANTIDOTES FOR WORRY

1. FAITH – Trusting in the Lord (3,5) God says worry is faithless.
He knows what he is doing.
2. ACTIONS – Obeying the Lord by doing
good (3,27,34) If we determine to be obedient, implying doing good,
worry tends to dissipate – we have a new orientation. A lot of our worry
is self concern.
3. WORSHIP – Delighting in the Lord (4), because
the Lord delights in us (23) – wonderful antidote
4. STILLNESS –
‘Resting in the Lord’ (7) – shed in back garden – oratory. Worry
exacerbated by business.
5. CHARACTER – Refraining from anger (8) –
Be in control of our emotions – in charge of own life
6. GENEROSITY
– Giving/lending to others (21,26) – relating to our possessions
knowing that we really only own what we are willing to give away.
7.
PROTECTION – Three metaphors for protection: God holds your hand (24)
He’s your refuge in trouble (39) He rescues you (40). God is with us –
closer than breathing, nearer than hands and feet.
8. HOPE – You’ve
got a future! (29) This world is a temporary home – our real one is not
here.
9. WISDOM – Watch your tongue (30)
10. SCRIPTURE –
Internalise the Word of God (31)

But recognising our true nature and our needs and making the changes
necessary to prevent worry is not something that we can do or have to do
by ourselves. Jesus challenges us to ‘Strive first for the kingdom of
God and his righteousness , and all the things we need will be given to
us as well. So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring
worries of its own . Today’s trouble is enough for today.’ Mt 6:33,34

But I do not have it in me to cease worrying like that. He who
created me must teach me and the Good News is that he will, if we are
willing to admit our need, and if we take the time to let the Holy
Spirit change us as we internalise his Word to us.. If we, unlike
Tolstoy’s peasant will acknowledge that there is no ultimate human
fulfilment down the road of ‘more, more and more’, and set our highest
hope on what God can do, rather than on what we or our possessions can
do, I believe healing would begin.

When Carlyle Marney preached on this great Psalm, particularly vv 3,
4, ‘Trust in the Lord and do good; so you will live in the land, and
enjoy security. Take delight in the Lord and he will give you the
desires of your heart’; he paraphrased that last statement – ‘and he
will fix your wanter’. This may be our deepest problem – that what we
want is not in fact what we need. We know so little about ourselves and
what we really need, what we think we have to have. Jesus said to ‘seek
first the kingdom of God’, to set our hope on his kingly rule and he
will set right what has become so tragically confused. He will provide
what you really need. Delight yourself in the Lord then; that is, put
your highest hope in him, and what? He will give you the desires of your
heart.’

Remember Paul’s words to the Philippians (4:6) ‘Do not worry about
anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving
let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God which
surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in
Christ Jesus.’