Poolesville Presbyterian Church
10.09.11; Rev. David Williams
With the passing of Steve Jobs this last week, the world lost an amazingly creative, focused, and committed innovator and entrepreneur. His relentless pursuit of excellent shiny new handsomely priced electronic gadgetry has had a measurable impact on my own life. Were it not for Steve, my wife would not have to repeatedly remind me that it’s Thanksgiving dinner, and to just put my iPhone away already.
Since I first got this odd little device, I’ve noticed that it really can become something of a compulsion. Maybe that email I’ve been waiting for has arrived. No...wait...not yet...hold on. Maybe something is happening in the world, just a second, wait, let me check my CNN app. Maybe that bike part I’ve set my Craigslist app to RSS update has finally been put up for sale. Maybe I’ve gotten a text back from that guy about the thing. You know, that thing that I was talking to that guy about. Just a sec. Maybe I can...finally...knock over...that stupid tower...with those stupid egg stealing pigs. It’ll just take me a second. Hold on.
Perhaps the worst of all of them, for those of us with retirement plans or investments, is that pesky little CNBC app. Every day, minute to minute, we can tie in to the endless mosh pit of shouting panic on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. We can watch the Dow soar 180 points because Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke sighed contentedly after finishing a large lunch. We can watch it plummet 250 points just a few moments later, as the market realizes Bernanke was eating spanakopita at a Greek restaurant. The market tears back and forth, a mad flock of trader pigeons spooked to exhaustion by the slightest movement, and we stare at our little screens and take that in, fretting about our futures and our retirement and our children.
That’s the problem with smartphones, and has been ever since Research in Motion introduced my wife to her own Crackberry. On the one hand, they mean you’re plugged in. You can know whatever you want. The ‘net becomes your memory. You can know anything anyone knows, whenever you need to.
On the other, those shiny little touchscreens in your pocket gnaw and worry at the back of your subconscious mind. It’s like being ten again, with that baby molar that’s not quite ready to come out. It just dangles there, hanging by a thread of flesh, and you can’t help but fret and tease at it with your tongue. It’s insistent, always there, whispering in your ear.
It’s a form of anxiety. And we all know anxiety. It’s that worry that something is happening, something we really should be doing something about, and we’re not. It’s that feeling that we’ve missed something, that we’ve not gotten something right. Our ability to reasonably assess what’s going on becomes clouded, and we begin to imagine every possible thing that might go wrong. It can paralyze us, governing our lives with fear. There’s a reason Anxiety Disorders have their own little corner of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual that clinicians use to assess mental illness. They can consume a life.
You would think that having access to all the information in the world would reverse that fear. You can know anything you want! Whenever you want! Wherever you want! But it can have the opposite effect. We know there’s more information out there, and we don’t know it. It becomes too much, and we can just...seize up.
Being focused on the right thing makes all the difference when it comes to anxiety, and that’s a significant theme in today’s reading from Paul’s letter to the church at Philippi. The section you heard today comes as Paul is wrapping up this letter to this well-loved Christian community. As tends to be the case at the end of formal letters in the ancient world, this concluding section begins with a direct address to people known to the writer.
Here, Paul addresses two women directly, with a request that they make some effort to get along. He names Euodia and Syntyche directly, which means he held them in some regard. It’s clear that he viewed them as co-workers and equals, but that somehow along the way they’d managed to start not getting along with each other. It’s just a human thing, one that afflicts and has always afflicted humankind.
After commending a few other souls, Paul gets down to a few little key bits of advice for the Philippians. He reminds them of the importance of celebration, of realizing that faith is a source of joy. He reminds them to continue to be known for their welcoming, hospitable, compassionate, and kindly way of being together.
And then, he talks a little bit about anxiety.
He reminds them not to worry, but to instead focus on joyous connection to God, from whom peace will come. These are nice words, calm words, pleasant words. They are only remarkable words when you consider that this don’t worry be happy message is being delivered from prison, and that Roman incarceration was not necessarily the most pleasant experience.
It’s easy to say “don’t be anxious” when you’re sitting with a fretting friend on your sofa in the living room of your twenty-first century home. It is considerably harder to say it and mean it if you’re facing the real possibility of an unpleasantly first-century Roman execution. Having a heart that is at peace in those circumstances is, as my 13 year old might say, kind of epic.
But that is precisely what Paul seems to manage, and what he commends to those who read his words. He seems to manage this non-anxious attitude through a combination of factors, which are worth laying out.
He reminds the Philippians the importance of where we focus. The essence of anxiety, after all, is being drawn inexorably towards the negative that you do not know, but that might be. Are your children not home from school yet, and their bus should have been at the stop fifteen minutes ago? Anxiety spools up visions of flaming, tumbling buses. Do you have a particularly important presentation to give to a key client? Anxiety spools up visions of you not only forgetting to load the presentation onto your laptop, but also forgetting to wear pants. Anxiety whispers in your ear: think what might go wrong!
Paul, on the other hand, reminds us to focus...not on the worst that is not, but on the good that is and might be. “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, is there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”
It’s not the quantity of information, but that we have the wisdom to focus on that which is most conducive to joy. That doesn’t mean being ignorant of the negative. Paul is not asking us to be naive. Rather, don’t be consumed by the negative. Similarly, don’t be distracted by the irrelevant and meaningless.
It couldn’t be easier, and yet...it’s remarkably easy to give in to the negative, the whispering, and the “what if something went wrong.” If you’re an overthinker...and overthinking is the great Presbyterian plague...then getting your mind to focus on those things that are true and positive can be hard.
Paul also reminds us that the path to Christ’s peace is in the doing of those things. “Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me,” he writes. Not just the thinking about them, or in the forming a committee to discuss them, or in the writing a memorandum to lay out the advantages of considering forming a task force to implement them. If you want the God of peace to be with you, and to bless you with that peace that surpasses all understanding, then you have to act on that focus.
Focus your thoughts on the good that is God’s intent for your life. Let your actions follow that focus.
It’s not always easy, because our fears and the endless whirlwind of distractions that pour at us can scatter us and shatter us. But if we keep our hearts and minds turned towards the One who formed and keeps us, then we can both think it and do it.
Let it be so, for you and for me, AMEN.
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