Based on Acts 1:6-14, 1Peter 5:6-11, John 17:6-11
Poet laureate, W.H. Auden, characterized the 1930s as “the age of anxiety”. Auden would go on to write a book-length poem by that same name and publish it in 1947. That book won the Pulitzer Prize in literature in 1948. There was much to be anxious about in the 1930s with the U.S. in the throes of the “Great Depression”, Europe trying to rebuild from the “Great War”, a national socialist uprising in Germany headed by a charismatic leader, and a rapidly changing society brought about by electricity, telephones, motorcars and airplanes – not to mention talking motion pictures.
I’m a student of world and church history and I can think of many ages that were anxiety producing – including our own. Multiple times each week I am engaged in conversation with a person who is anxious about at least one current issue. People are more than just concerned about the things happening around them – they feel that life is out of control, and they don’t see a way to get it or other people back in control. Life happens really fast right now, and the amount and slant of news and social media feeds yield no relief for stressed out and thus vulnerable people. They come to talk to me to vent, to get my views, to pray and to often try to get me as agitated and anxious as they are – perhaps so that they feel accompanied in their misery. I disappoint them, however, because I have learned over many decades how to be a non-anxious presence in the world. This presence comes from seeing God working in my and through me and trusting implicitly that Almighty God is in control of what happens in my life and in the world around me.
This isn’t some Pollyanna-ish world view that all shall be well (though it ultimately will be according to Revelation). Rather, it is a deep and abiding understanding of the teachings of the Bible and the ways that God has cared for me and continues to care for me and all of creation. Case-in-point, is our celebration of Ascension Day today. It is that day where the Christ was lifted up to be once again with his Father and our Father. The great good news about the Ascension of the Christ is that he did not leave us abandoned – he cared so much that he sent the Holy Spirit to live in us (more on that next week as we celebrate Pentecost).
Our scripture readings for today are good reminders of God’s abiding presence and care for us. In the Gospel according to John, Jesus is finishing his farewell soliloquy. Jesus is praying for his disciples, then and now, in our reading for today. He prays that all of us may know eternal life here on earth by getting to know “the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent”. Jesus prays protection over his flock saying, “Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name, the name you gave me, so that they may be one as we are one.” Jesus knew that when we get to know God in our lives that we would feel protected by the presence and care of the One true God.
The reading from the Book of Acts is the traditional one for Ascension Day. Jesus tells the Disciples that they will receive the Holy Spirit and are to stay in Jerusalem until that happens. God’s caring presence will be with them and will lead them in grace and in truth. They gathered together in the Upper Room and were constantly in prayer while they awaited the coming of the Holy Spirit.
The writer of 1Peter is finishing his letter with one last admonition to the leaders of the communities of faith. The writer reminds the shepherds to care for those that God has given them by being good examples. The believers are reminded that the Adversary is always at work. They are to “resist him, standing firm in the faith”, because others around the world are undergoing the same kind of suffering. The faithful are reminded to “cast all your anxiety on God because he cares for you”. In this way they can humbly serve and in due time be lifted up by God.
Our spiritual ancestors lived through hundreds of years of persecutions for following the Christ. They could have chosen to spend their lives in anxious dithering, or they could choose to trust that God was Almighty and lovingly cared for them – untold numbers chose the latter. Theology professor, Amey Victoria Adkins-Jones, helps us to understand how God’s caring presence can make a difference in our lives and world writing, “…the cares of this world seem only to multiply - at the level of the personal, the familial, the communal, and the global. But there’s something here in today’s set of axiomatic couplets that does bring me comfort - and more importantly, more comfort than that of swallowing my anxieties until they are all consuming. And that is the reflexive action: God cares for you.
Here, we aren’t the only actors trying to develop yet another habit that will give us our best life. Instead, the image of God here is one that reminds us of our own tenderness. ‘I care about you’ might perhaps feel like a copout - except that we have seen love at work, a force that extends beyond death back to life.
And the shift in language here - from translations that describe casting one’s cares to casting one’s anxieties - feels profound in this moment. I care about so very much in the world right now, and it so often seems in vain. Strategic overstimulation and desensitization and infinite access to all of the things all of the time have caused what some have called ‘compassion fatigue.’ (Here, I know what it is to be tired and overwhelmed by the wounds of the world, which I would argue have compelled me toward more compassion, rather than fatigue - instead of being ‘too tired to care,’ I’ve come closer to being galvanized, as Fannie Lou Hamer described, by being ‘sick and tired of being sick and tired.’)
The invitation isn’t to stop caring. It’s to shift the weight of that care off of any individual’s back and to leave one’s worries to the One who we will never have to worry whether or not he cares. Jesus does…In a world seemingly more and more devoid of compassion and lacking any ethics of care - in which empathy is declared toxic - there is still God…who [also] offers to wipe my tears away. Even in a Lenten world, we are reminded to be a resurrection people - and even as those sent to care for the world, we are reminded that we too are worthy of care. Sometimes the littlest things point best to the greatness of God.”
Because God cares for us and for the whole world equally and well, we are freed to humbly offer care as we are gifted and called. We do not have to care for more than our share of all of the world’s issues, we just need to extend the care that we can. When we trust that God will empower others all across our world to do the same, then we can let go of some of our anxieties and let God care for us.
When I’m confronted with someone feeling anxious about the state of their lives, our shared human condition, or my own disquiet about the state of my life and our world, I offer up the wisdom contained in a prayer that is now almost 100 years old. A prayer that captures the ability for us to do what we can for our world because God cares for each of us equally and well. That prayer is “The Serenity Prayer” which is attributed to theologian Reinhold Niebuhr and was written in the 1930s during that “age of anxiety”. It is a prayer of comfort and consolation, but also one that empowers people to do what they can in their lives and world through God’s caring presence. It is used by 12-Step programs worldwide to help those in recovery continue to seek care from a Higher Power and live into their sobriety.
Niebuhr wrote, “God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed; courage to change the things which should be changed; and the Wisdom to distinguish the one from the other. Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time, accepting hardship as a pathway to peace, taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it, trusting that You will make all things right if I surrender to Your will, so that I may be reasonably happy in this life, and supremely happy with You forever in the next. Amen.”