Don’t Worry, Be Happy

When I was a kid I would occasionally get my hands on a copy of Mad Magazine. You may remember Mad; it was kind of a sophisticated comic book which specialized in sick and dark humour. The thing is, my mother wouldn’t allow me to read it. It was only at summer camp, or during study hall when the teacher wasn’t looking, that I got a chance to look at it. Anyway, the mascot of Mad Magazine was a character named Alfred E. Newman. Looked a little like George W. Bush. And Alfred E. Newman use to say, “What, me worry?”

Maybe Alfred E. Newman wasn’t as mad as we use to think, because he wasn’t the only one to suggest that worrying is a waste of time. “Do not worry about your life,” Jesus said. It will not enhance you life one little bit.

“Don’t worry, be happy.” So said the late Bob Marley in the song which of course inspired the title of this sermon. He sang:

“In every life you have some trouble
When you worry, you make it double.
Don’t worry, be happy.”

There’s a website with the lyrics to Marley’s song. It’s gotten 19,418 hits since December 28, 2007. 19,419 counting my hit! That should tell us something. Lots of folks are worried about one thing or another, and they don’t want to be. So they’re checking out the lyrics to Bob Marley’s song to remind themselves that maybe they don’t need to worry; maybe there’s a better way to live.

Of course there is. Again, Jesus said, “Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?” (Matthew 6:25).

From Alfred E. Newman, through Bob Marley, to Jesus Christ, we get similar advice. There ain’t a whole lot to be gained by worrying. We all have better things to do with our time and energy.

“Do not worry,” Jesus said. “Do not be anxious,” as another translation puts it. Easier said than done. I’ve often appreciated the wisdom of these words while simultaneously shaking my fist at Jesus and saying, “It not that easy, Lord!”

We worry about lots of things: money and work and family; past mistakes and future dangers; too much to do and too little time in which to do it; being the best grandparent or teacher or minister that one can be. There are all sorts of things that we worry about. The day is not yet half over but let’s just do a quick survey: how many of you have already worried about something today?

“Do not worry,” the Bible says. Yeah, right, Jesus.

Now let’s be clear, first of all, that fear and worry and anxiety do have their place. Despite what Jesus said, they do have their place. Last summer we had a young male cardinal who hung out in our backyard. You know, birds often keep their distance from people, but this bird would be sitting on the ground or singing from a low branch or just hanging around without a care in the world. “What, me worry?” Well, you know, we have a couple of cats at our house. We let them out a lot and they really like to roam around the backyard. This stupid cardinal would sit on the fence and he’d chirp right at the cats, as if the say, “You can’t catch me.” One day I went into the backyard and I found a dead cardinal. It pays to be a little worried sometimes; it pays to be a little cautious sometimes.

Five years ago George W. Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq. With considerable swagger and apparently no worries whatsoever, a President who avoided military service invaded a country which posed no immediate threat to the United States in order to kill terrorists who weren’t even there. Five years later, some 4,000 U.S. soldiers are dead and by some counts hundreds of thousands of civilians have been killed, a terrorist problem has been created by the invasion, and the troops are still there. It pays to be a little worried sometimes.

There’s a healthy kind of worry which recognizes that sometimes things do go wrong, so it assess the situation and tries to make prudent judgments about what one should and shouldn’t do. With good judgment you assess the situation, but then you do take some kind of action. That’s not what Jesus is talking about. The kind of worry that Jesus has in mind is the anxiety which freezes us into inaction. It’s the kind of anxiety which makes problems seem much bigger than they are. Like the time that I was walking in the woods and I heard the sound of rustling leaves and crashing branches and I was sure there was a bear just off to my right and I thought, “Oh my God, I’m going to die!” It was a deer. I’d scared her far more than she’d scared me and she was running away.

That’s the first problem with worry: It makes problems seem much bigger than they really are. I don’t know how often over the years I’ve had a meeting coming up or I’ve been planning for a presentation and I’ve gotten so worried about it and then, you know, once you’re in the situation it’s not nearly as bad as you thought it was going to be. Again, Bob Marley’s words:

“In every life you have some trouble.
When you worry, you make it double.”

Life is tough enough. We don’t need to make it even tougher by worrying about things that aren’t likely to happen. Worry makes problems seem much bigger than they really are. Even a little chipmunk makes a lot of noise in the woods. It’ll scare the living daylights out of you if you let it.

So worry is to be avoided first of all because it makes problems seem much bigger than they really are and secondly because it discourages action. It’s kind of like the deer caught in the headlights: so paralyzed by fear that she just stands there in the middle of the road. Actually, the last time that I caught a deer in my headlights it was a young stag with a small but beautiful rack of antlers and he just sauntered across the road, as proud and as calm as could be. But sometimes, you know, you get a deer caught in your headlights and she just freezes because she’s so afraid. The rabbits in the novel Watership Down had their own word for this syndrome: “tharn.” It means “to be petrified with fear.” And worry will do that to you: you’re so worried that you’ll do something wrong that you don’t do anything at all. You’re so worried about something bad happening in the future that you don’t take the kind of action which might enable something good to happen in the future. And then the bad thing happens as a self-fulfilling prophecy. Worry discourages the kind of action which might allow good things to happen.

It’s like the one time that I went skiing. I’d go down the hill a little bit and then I’d fall. So I’d pick myself up and I’d go down a little bit more and then I’d wipe out again. I was so afraid that I’d hurt myself that my legs were all tense – they were all stiff – and I’m told that your knees need to be kind of bent and flexible in order to ski. But if you’re all uptight about wiping out, then your legs will stiffen up and you will wipe out. I guess they need to be like shock absorbers so the bumps on the hill won’t knock you over. Well, I was so worried that my legs were more like rigid 2x4’s, and every time I hit a bump – boom – over I went. But when I could see the bottom of the hill, then I’d relax and I’d ski like a veteran. An instructor pulled me aside and he said, “You’re doing pretty good at the bottom end of the run. But you know, that’s the steepest part of the hill!” If you worry about not making it down the hill, then you freeze up and you don’t make it down the hill. But when you let go of your anxiety, you relax; and then sometimes amazing things happen.

“Don’t worry,” Jesus said. But you can’t simply stop worrying – snap! – just like that. We all need some help. As Bob Marley sings:

“I give you my phone number.
When you’re worried, call me;
I make you happy.
Don’t worry, be happy.”

Except that sometimes we’re quite reluctant to call someone when we’re worried or we’re hurting or things are otherwise not going well. “Oh, nobody wants to be bothered with my troubles,” we’re likely to say. If you’ve said something like that, I’ve got news for you: you’re wrong. People are concerned about you. God is concerned about you. God is so concerned about you that God has written your name on the palm of his hand (Isaiah 49:16). If you’re worried about something, it’s okay to pick up the phone or send an email and share your worries with another person. It will help. The Bible says that in the Church we should bear one another’s burdens (Galatians 6:2)). Or maybe we need to be calling you. Maybe the church needs to be calling you. Because, you know, sometimes a member of the church does call another member and it turns out that a loved one is in hospital or you’re worried about a friend and you just needed to talk to someone. As the church, we need to make sure that we’re staying in touch with each other. And some of us are already doing a wonderful job of this. But even if you’re not an elder or a member of the Pastoral Care Committee, it never hurts to pick up the phone and call someone and say, “How’re you doing? How’s it going? I’m just checking-in.” As the church we can relieve one another’s worries by sharing each other’s burdens. It’s one of the ways in which we can be the Christ for each other.

The trouble with worry is that first of all it tends to exaggerate the problem and secondly it discourages action. And taking action is really what this passage is all about. Some people think that Jesus is saying, “Like the lilies of the field, you don’t need to work; what you need will simply appear.” But that’s not what Jesus is saying. He isn’t saying, “Don’t work,” he’s saying, “Don’t worry.” The key thing about the lilies of the field is not that they don’t work but that they don’t worry. Indeed, Jesus is encouraging us to work. The whole idea of letting go of our worry is that it frees us up to seek the kingdom of God. “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and all of the things that you really need will be received by you in good time.” That’s what Jesus is saying. Because, you see, if you’re worried about church finances, the temptation is to cling to the money instead of putting it to work for the kingdom. If you’re worried about the security of the church building, the temptation is to lock it up rather than putting it to work for the kingdom. If you’re worried about there not being enough time in the day to do the 20 things that you have on you’re list, maybe you need to lose the list and make sure that you do one thing today for the kingdom. Like picking up the phone and checking in with someone. Or writing a letter to your MPP and telling him or her that we need more money from the province for affordable housing. Or praying. And when you pray, ask for the assurance that God is with you always. As the prophet says in Isaiah 43:2, “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you…when you walk through the fire you shall not be burned…”

Don’t worry. Instead, seek the kingdom of God. And be happy; or, to say that another way, be blessed. Amen.


Text: Matthew 6:25

Preached by Bruce D. Ervin

17 February 2008

Please note: The song whose title has been borrowed for this sermon has been falsely attributed in the sermon to Bob Marley. In fact, the song is by Bobby McFerrin. We apologize for the error. Many thanks to the reader who drew this correction to our attention.