PSALMS : OVERFLOW OF THE HEART PART THREE: “THE ANXIETY OF PRIVILEGE”

CRISIS MANAGEMENT?

I often wonder if what we’re most in need of in many of our lives is a real crisis. I’m
being serious. I often wonder if what some of us need (my self included) is some good-
old-fashioned-suffering.

Just think about this with me for a second.

What are some of your daily frustrations that cause you to feel angry, or moody, or
stressed, or that cause you to lose your inner peace?

When I think about the things that annoy me, that vex me, that own me, they are
usually superficial things.

For instance, the number of times in a week that I get frustrated about a train
running late-- or when I do finally get on the train and the air conditioner is busted.

Or when they finish my drink at the coffee shop and the flavored syrup dripped
down onto the outside of the cup and my hands gets sticky.

The fact that no matter how crisply ironed a linen shirt is when you put it on on the
morning, it’s wrinkled as soon as you bend your arms. (on a side note: Why did the
Jesus prefer linen instead of cotton? What a terrible fabric choice).

I’m ashamed to admit it, but these things move me. They eat at me.They stack up in
me. They affect my peace and my equilibrium. People can’t see it on the outside, but
inside, things like these alter my state of calm and togetherness.

To be fully honest, there are times where a string of things like this compound in my
morning commute and I wind up at the church office feeling frustrated and uncentered.

Doesn’t sound very spiritual, does it?

You’re right, it isn’t.

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But hold on a second! What about you?

Your ongoing disappointment with the square footage of your apartment.

So and so went to Greece this summer, tanning on an exotic beach, and you’re
spending the summer in New York again, dodging used diapers and hypodermic
needles in the ocean at Brighton Beach!

Those sweat stains in the armpits of your dress shirt that you got running at light
speed, late to meet clients at dinner because the N train turned into a Q train halfway
between Penn Station and Union Square without any warning.

Your door man who had an attitude when you asked him a simple question, and you
though to yourself, “Who does he think he is?! Doesn’t he know that my rent pays
his salary!”

The waiter or waitress who you gave a lesser tip to because they didn’t treat you like
royalty.

Yeah. Yeah. You’re not perfect either you wicked thing!

We can deny it. We can say we aren’t moved by these kinds of superficial things, but I’m
calling us out this morning! I’m calling me out this morning!

We need help. We’re superficial people. We’re materialists.

DIFFERENT KINDS OF ANXIETY

Today, we are looking at a psalm that has some things to teach us about stress, and
anxiety, and worry, but before we dive into the passage fully today, I think we owe it to
ourselves as thinking beings to call our anxiety out for what it really (often) is.
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You think of all that’s going on in our world today. The millions who are starving. The
millions who lack access to clean water, or just courts. Oppressive governments,
fundamentalist regimes. Racism. Sexism. Elitism.

Our own country isn’t without it’s own challenges either. Even some people in the US
lack access to life’s necessities.

It’s common in churches (and has been for a very long time) to give general teachings on
anxiety and worry. I’ve given a few of them myself from this very platform. I think that’s
good, but each time I do I often wonder if we’re lumping too many types of anxiety
together, and if it might be useful to slice the topic a little thinner.

There are different kinds of anxiety. And there is a big difference between anxiety that
the young Mother in Angola faces when her husband contracts malaria, and the anxiety
that is felt when you or I realize that the new sofa we just purchased doesn’t match the
rugs or the window treatments.

There is a big difference between the anxiety of a single Mom in the U.S. who can’t find
work because of the schedule of her children, and the anxiety of the person who has
three or four employment opportunities on the table and they can’t decide which one
they like the best.

Over and over again, as I sit with people and I hear their stories and the things they are
anxious and worried about I see a trend that is undeniable. What’s even more daunting
is that as I analyze my own conversations with friends, or between my spouse and I,
much of what I am anxious about and stressed about contains the same trend.

That trend is that a bulk of our anxiety is tethered to materialism. Meaning, that as
humans in a (for the most part) prosperous Western context, the things we are often
anxious about are the material things that we want that we don’t yet have.

We have actual, emotion-altering, blood-pressure-changing, brain-debilitating, body-

paralyzing, panic-inducing stress about our material things. Chasing them. Obtaining
them. Maintaining them. Keeping them.
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We can say that our anxiety is only linked to deep and meaningful things, which much
of it is, but the truth is that we often behave as materialists who carry around in our
consciousness great amounts of fear, and anxiety, and stress about temporal, material
things. Not things eternal.

You know that God doesn’t care about your morning coffee and if it’s made to your
standards?

You know that God doesn’t care about the color of your furniture?

You know that God doesn’t care about the creases in your pants or if the cleaners
used heavy starch on your collars?

Write it down. Tweet it. Shout it from the rooftops. God doesn’t care about your
armpit stains.

You know what he does care about though (and very deeply)? He cares that those
things so easily disquiet you and I.

God cares that those things cause us anxiety because he wants a life for us that richer
than that.

And that is what is both wonderful (and terrible) about the scriptures. They are not
meant to merely provide us with information. They are meant to change our lives. They
are meant to cause such a shift in the order of our being that people can’t help but ask
us, “Why are you living like this? Please tell me why your life has a depth and substance
to it that mine doesn’t?!”

The scriptures invite us into a deeper relationship with God, requiring us to journey
into the often uneasy spots in ourselves that we are so skilled at glossing over.

And this is the vantage point that I would like us to look at this topic of anxiety from
today-- stress and worry that is caused by our materialism that is often out of control
and that we make excuses for.
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PSALM 94

Our Psalm for today says this:

17
If the Lord had not been my help,
My soul would soon have dwelt in the abode of silence.

18
If I should say, “My foot has slipped,”
Your lovingkindness, O Lord, will hold me up.

19
When my anxious thoughts multiply within me,
Your consolations delight my soul.

This passage speaks of three things we are in need of taking to heart about our
materialism and the anxiety it creates in our lives.

The first thing this passage invites us to is a dialogue with God, based on the knowledge
that God wants to help us.

If the Lord had not been my help,

My soul would soon have dwelt in the abode of silence.

You know that God is waiting each day for you to share with him how you are feeling?
God is wanting you to use your intellect, your emotions, and your vocal cords to talk to
him about anything that is overwhelming you or stressing you out, or causing you to
worry.

The New Testament says it this way,

1 Peter 5:7 says, “Cast all your anxiety on him for he cares for you.”
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The word “all” is an interesting word in that sentence. It doesn’t mean to just share your
anxieties about world peace and starving children with the God. It also means to share
your worries, even about material things with God. All means all.

We must first believe that God cares for us, and wants to hear our honest, unedited
thoughts. He is wanting to hear from your own lips how you are feeling. It is humbling
to practice such a thing on a regular basis. To hear your own lips say out loud, “God, I’m
overwhelmed by X or Y and I just want you to know how I’m feeling.”

God wants us to break the silence.

God invites us, and desires for us to share with him openly when we are feeling anxious,
and to share our worries and fears with him, regardless of their source.

And here is why God asks us to do this.

We often are often able to clarify our feelings more easily when we say them out loud
without any reservation. This is actually at the root of psychoanalysis. I think that
sometimes God is wanting us to voice our struggles not so he can hear, but so we can
hear ourselves say it outloud.

When we make this a practice, we are often able to see things about our anxiety when
spoken out loud, that we are unable to when we just hold onto those things silently in
the area of our feelings.

For instance. We may think inside. “Boy, I would really like a bigger apartment so I
could have more space for more stuff.”

But when that is only internal, and just something we hold onto inside, we don’t really
see how materialistic it may be, and yet it may be causing us a great deal of anxiety and
stress every time we think about our apartment. But when we say the same thing out
loud to God, we often see the real reason for our anxiety.
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The second thing this passage invites us to practice is to openly acknowledge where
we’ve made mistakes. It asks this of us because of what we were asked to practice in the
prior verse.

It reads:
18
If I should say, “My foot has slipped,”
Your lovingkindness, O Lord, will hold me up.

When we break this veil of stressful, anxious, silence about material things, we often
recognize that we are out of balance. That we’ve overemphasized the transient at the
expense of the eternal.

It’s important that we just acknowledge that we see it.

God always forgives. Every time. He does not desire to punish. His heart is always to
restore and to forgive, but he wants us to be honest about where we’ve missed the mark
because it helps us.

And then thirdly, the verse concludes by saying

19
When my anxious thoughts multiply within me,
Your consolations delight my soul.

God’s great desire for us as human beings is that we would have an open dialogue with
him about our anxiety so that he might console us.

Consolation cannot occur without listening. If you are consoling someone it’s because
they’ve shared with you how they are feeling, and in that sharing it opens up a door for
you to console them.
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Dialogue- breaking the silence.

Honesty- about our mistakes.

Listening - for the consolation of God.

This is how God wants us to deal with anxiety.

Is it wrong and sinful that we are so wrapped up in material things? Yes.

Should we be people of greater sacrifice, who are content with less, and who take greater
in joy in giving than in receiving? Yes.

That is God’s will for each and every one of us, no expceptions

But here’s the thing. We are incapable of conjuring that up within ourselves. It’s why the
scriptures say in 1 Corinthians 13:3

“If I give all my possessions to feed the poor, but do not have love, it profits me
nothing.”

The place that God is wanting us to get to is a place where we are obeying his commands
from the heart. Not just going through the motions externally (even if they look
“spiritual” on the surface).

And you know what? That is a long walk. That is a process. It’s about very small, but
very deep bits of change happening over long periods of time as we continue to point
our lives at Jesus.

How do we get there? By doing what this psalm asks us to. By being vocal, and open,
and honest, and sincere, and by keeping our ears open to the consolation of God.

It takes a lifetime. Little by little.

This is an ongoing practice. A rhythm. Not an event. Not a list.

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VISHA

I got an email a few days ago from Visha Thakker, one of our greeters, and what she
wrote blew me away.

I have some connections with a non profit here in the city that fights sex trafficking, and
they notified me about a position they had opening up in their organization. Visha sent
me her resume, being interested in the position and I passed it along to my connections
there, and she wrote this in response.

Did you see it?

It’s funny because when I asked Visha if I could share this email with you today, she said
something to the effect of, “I don’t really see why you’d want to share this. It’s not that
big of a deal.” Her thinking that “it’s not a big deal is what actually makes it “a big deal.”

There’s something very unusual and very powerful going on in this email.

We have here, in print, evidence of a deep work that the Holy Spirit is doing in Visha’s
heart. She is experiencing a sense of discomfort and duty concerning her role in the
marketplace and what she does in her career. She’s come to the realization that even her
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job is not all about her. Even what we do for a living is something we can do in service to
God and to the world he loves.

People live lifetimes never reaching a point like this. Never asking questions like this.
Never even open to the idea that the discomfort that we’re sensing might be the very
hand of God trying to shape us.

And this is one of many great examples about how God is starting to disrupt all kinds of
people. It’s these tiny little miracles that happen in us, where our awareness of the world
shifts, and our perspective of the world changes. It’s a slight change at a heart level, that
changes our lives in big ways, where we look back at something and find that God was
working in us, and we might not have even been aware of it.

Are we open to that?

What would that do to our world if we started looking at our faith that way?

What would that cause in our world?

What signs would your neighborhood begin to show?

What kind of a mark would that leave on our families or our friends?

What would the priorities of the marketplace become if we all approached what we do
from an altruistic angle?

Do you have your stuff or does your stuff have you?

Is your career yours or is it God’s?

Is your life all about you or is it about other people?

Is your anxiety really anxiety, or is it just the discomfort you are beginning to sense
because the Holy Spirit is slowly tearing you away from your self centeredness?

I pray that we open ourselves to change.

PSALMS : OVERFLOW OF THE HEART PART THREE: “THE ANXIETY OF PRIVILEGE”