The Roots of Anxiety

Scripture: Ecclesiastes 11:7 – 12: 8; 1 Corinthians 15: 53-58

Sermon: The Roots of Anxiety

Topics: anxiety, fear, death, remembering, newness

Preached: August 31, 2014

Rev. Mike Abma

Preamble:

This sermon is the first of a series of 3 sermons around the theme of Anxiety.

Anxiety.

This morning we will look at its roots.

Next week we will look more closely at some of its antidotes.

And the last sermon will look at living in the strength and power of God.

But today we start with the Roots of Anxiety.

For that we turn to Ecclesiastes, which likes to get to the root of lots of things.

For the whole book thus far,

the Teacher of Ecclesiastes has basically said,

“Hey, everything is hebel — the Hebrew word for vanity, meaningless,

mist, or vapor, ……everything is ephemeral….

So enjoy life while you have it.”

Now here at the end of the book, he says the same thing, just in the opposite

order:

“Hey, enjoy life while you have it,

because everything will end.

and in the end, everything is hebel – vanity.”

Ecclesiastes 11:7 – 12: 8

7 Light is sweet, and it is pleasant for the eyes to see the sun.

8 Even those who live for many years should rejoice in them all; yet let them remember that the days of darkness will be many. All that comes is vanity.

9 Rejoice, young man, while you are young, and let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth. Follow the inclination of your heart and the desire of your eyes, but know that for all these things God will bring you into judgement.

10 Banish anxiety from your mind, and put away pain from your body; for youth and the dawn of life are vanity.

12Remember your creator in the days of your youth,

before the days of trouble come, and the years draw near when you will say, ‘I have no pleasure in them’; 

²before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars are darkened and the clouds return with the rain; 

³on the day when the guards of the house tremble, and the strong men are bent, and the women who grind cease working because they are few, and those who look through the windows see dimly;

 ⁴when the doors on the street are shut, and the sound of the grinding is low, and one rises up at the sound of a bird, and all the daughters of song are brought low;

 ⁵when one is afraid of heights, and terrors are in the road; the almond tree blossoms, the grasshopper drags itself along and desire fails;

because all must go to their eternal home, and the mourners will go about the streets;

 ⁶before the silver cord is snapped, and the golden bowl is broken, and the pitcher is broken at the fountain, and the wheel broken at the cistern, ⁷and the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the breath returns to God who gave it.

 ⁸Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher; all is vanity.

1 Corinthians 15: 53-58

⁵³For this perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality. ⁵⁴When this perishable body puts on imperishability, and this mortal body puts on immortality, then the saying that is written will be fulfilled:

‘Death has been swallowed up in victory.’ 

⁵⁵ ‘Where, O death, is your victory?

   Where, O death, is your sting?’ 

⁵⁶The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. ⁵⁷But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

58 Therefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labour is not in vain. 

This is the Word of the Lord

Thanks be to God

INTRODUCTION

Verse 10 of our Ecclesiastes passage says

Banish anxiety from your mind

Banish anxiety from your mind.

That sounds like such a good idea.

But then, what does this Teacher of Ecclesiastes proceed to do?

He proceeds to describe in detail our bleak future.

How the skies will darken.

Pleasures will subside.

Strength will weaken.

Productivity will grind to a halt.

How our eyes will grow dim.

Our ears will grow deaf.

And only our fears will become more acute.

And these are simply the prelude to our inevitable end

when the silver cord snaps,

the golden bowl breaks,

the pitcher shatters,

the wheel stops turning,

and our life comes to an end.

Then, to add to this cheery thought,

the Teacher of Ecclesiastes adds,

“Vanity of vanities. All is vanity.”

How are we supposed to banish anxiety from our mind after all that?

Sort of reminds me of the book Nothing to Be Frightened Of, by the English writer, Julian Barnes.

You pick up that book,

you read the title and think,

“Sounds like a nice comforting book – Nothing to be Frightened Of.”

And then you read it and discover

Barnes spends all 243 pages of that book detailing how he has had a life-long fear of death.

Barnes and the Teacher of Ecclesiastes are both lovers of irony:

Nothing to be Frightened Of — yeah, right.

Banish all anxiety from the mind – yeah, sure.

FEAR AND ANXIETY

Those two things, fear and anxiety, are closely related.

Last year the New York Times had a year-long series of articles on Anxiety.

One of those articles explained the difference between fear and anxiety.

Fear refers to those feelings that arise when there is a real and present threat of

danger.

Fear takes two different pathways through the brain:

A fast one through the frontal lobe,

that tries figure out the appropriate response;

and an even faster one through the amygdala of the brain,

sort of the “primal panic pathway”

that causes us to instantly flee, or fight, or freeze.

So fear is what we feel when there is a real and present threat of danger.

Anxiety is what we feel when we anticipate a threat of danger.

The danger may not be there, but we think it is.

Let me try explain the difference.

This summer we did some hiking in the Bruce Peninsula in Ontario.

It is that peninsula that sticks right out into Lake Huron.

It is rocky and rugged and beautiful.

We camped and hiked there before.

In fact, the last time we were there several years ago,

I almost stepped on an Eastern Massasauga Rattlesnake while hiking.

Yeah really. This park is known for having quite a few of these rattlesnakes – and

yes, these are real, venomous snakes with poison in their bites.

I am not sure what saved me.

It was either my brother-in-law who pushed me out of the snake’s way,

or it was that primal-panic-pathway that kicked into action

so that his push and my jump out of the way

happened simultaneously.

Whatever saved me,

it was close.

That was fear.

That rattlesnake was a real and present danger.

Now this past summer we were back in the same park,

hiking the same trails.

I remembered my close-encounter

and I couldn’t help but imagine rattlesnakes on the edge of every one of the

trails.

That is anxiety.

All mammals have the fear reflex.

But we humans have become masters of anxiety.

We have become masters at anticipating threats

and worrying about them.

BANISH ALL ANXIETY

Now if the Teacher of Ecclesiastes had said,

Banish all anxiety from your mind.

There are no rattlesnakes here.

There is nothing to worry about.

No danger. It’s safe.

That would be understandable.

But the Teacher of Ecclesiastes does not do that.

Instead, he lays out a whole litany of dangers that are in fact waiting for us:

the decay of the body;

the decline of the mind;

the erosion of our courage;

and the growth of our fears and anxieties.

The one fear mentioned that jumped off the page for me is in verse 5:

When one is afraid of heights (vs. 5)

The truth is, when I was younger, I was not very afraid of heights.

I remember jumping off a 60 foot cliff with my brother-in-law —

not the same one in the snake story;

that one tried save me.

This one ….tried kill me.

When I jumped off that cliff with him years ago, I thought nothing of it.

I was young. I was foolish.

Today would I do that?

I don’t think so.

Would I want my kids to do that?

I don’t think so.

In fact, while on vacation I happened to read this news story of a couple in

Portugual who fell off a cliff while taking a selfie.

After reading that story,

our family was hiking part of the Bruce trail,

a trail with all kinds of rocky cliffs.

And our kids were taking selfies ….on the edge of cliffs.

And ….you can imagine what I was thinking and feeling?

The Teacher of Ecclesiastes first says,

“Banish all anxiety from the mind;

Then adds, “put away all pain from the body.”

The irony is that this is ….pretty well impossible.

The truth is we are vulnerable.

Our lives are fragile,

Everything we hold dear is at risk.

So what point is the Teacher of Ecclesiastes trying to make?

MEMENTO MORI

In a very real sense, this Teacher wants us to treasure life.

And one way of treasuring life is being fully aware of its fragility.

We call this Memento Mori – remembering that we will die.

Life lived in the shadow of death becomes

more bright,

more urgent,

more precious.

The ex-CRC, now Catholic Philosopher, Peter Kreeft, calls Ecclesiastes

a bright book precisely because of its dazzling darkness.

He calls it a book of life, precisely because it confronts the reality

death head on.

And this, Kreeft writes, is a needed thing in our culture

which does everything it can to deny death, to cover it up,

to pretend it is only someone else’s problem.

Facing death squarely, then, becomes the impetus for living life fully.

AN ANSWER TO “VANITY OF VANITIES”

There is deep wisdom in that.

But it is deeply unsettling to let Ecclesiastes have the last word.

Is it all vanity, empty, meaningless, a vapor, a mist,

or whatever word we want to use to translate

the Hebrew word hebel?

Do we really want to say “Amen” to

Hebel hebelim hakil hebel – vanity of vanities, all is vanity?

Is there any way to refute the crushing logic of Ecclesiastes:

that all our toil happens under the sun;

as far as we can see, everything under the sun ends in death and darkness —

therefore all our toil is meaningless.

That is the crushing logic of Ecclesiastes.

But suppose there is something new under the sun.

Suppose this newness is in fact stronger than death,

and brighter than darkness,

and powerful enough to push back our fears

and rein in our anxieties.

When we gather in the name of the risen Jesus Christ,

We are in fact gathering in this newness —

a newness from above and beyond the sun;

a newness that entered into our time;

that endured our abuse;

that faced our fears;

that tasted our death and triumphed over it.

Here is a newness that leaves the Teacher of Ecclesiastes speechless,

for the risen life of Jesus is

a life stronger than death.

Here is a love stronger than any threatening darkness,

real or anticipated.

Here is a newness that paves the way

for perishable us

to be clothed with imperishability;

for anxious us

to be clothed with peace;

for shakable, trembling, fearful us,

to be steadfast,

to be immoveable,

and to know that whatever we do in the Lord,

whatever we do in the light of his risen life

in the name of his resurrection power,

whatever we do is not done in vain.

It is not meaningless.

CONCLUSION

After the New York Times spent over a year printing over 70 different essays and

articles dealing with the topic of Anxiety,

the very final essay by Daniel Smith was published on July 13, 2013.

It was entitled, “Nothing to Do But Embrace the Dread.”

Smith’s whole point was to show that there is no way to get rid of anxiety.

The harder we try, the worse things get.

So what should we do?

Accept it, face it, embrace it.^[1]

That is the wisdom of Ecclesiastes.

To this we say, Yes, but ….

Yes, but…..

there is something else.

Yes, but ….

there is someone else.

And He embraces us with His Love.

He Embraces us with His Light.

He is the One who calls us His very own.

Amen

PRAYER

In the silence of our fears,

In the tumult of our worries,

In the paralysis of our panic

Lord, come to us,

embrace us

assure us that we are yours and always will be.

In the name of our risen Lord we pray

Amen

1. Daniel Smith, “Nothing to Do but Embrace the Dread” NYT July 13, 2013. ↑