Anxiety

Luke 10: 38-42

J. Michael Smith—St. James UMC, Danville, IL

Mary and Martha.  Two sisters.  One seems happy and carefree.  The other is a worry-wart.  Poor Martha—she’s always fussing and anxious about this and that.  I’m sure glad I’m not like Martha, aren’t you?

I’m…  not like Martha… I mean… I… I don’t worry about my relatives… Well, maybe I worry about my mom, who turns 92 this week, and she’s pretty vulnerable.  I maybe I worry about my daughters and brothers and nephews and nieces—our family has to cope with stress and loneliness and unhappiness and financial pressures and health problems—just like every family.  And I guess I worry about my grandchildren and the world they are growing up in.  Oh Martha! What are we going to do?

I worry about our politics.  I feel like we’re walking down the yellow brick road:  one party has no courage, the other has no brains, and most of us who are trying to choose between the two have no heart.  Oh Martha, you were right to be anxious.

All of us here at St. James are in an anxious time.  You have just gotten a new pastor and you have no idea how much damage he may do here.  And I have been assigned to stay with you for a whole year—and I have no idea how much trouble you may cause me.  

For my part, if I hear you like something, I’m anxious I might upset you if it needs to be changed it.  If I hear you don’t like something that’s been going on, I have anxiety I may not be able to change things to suit you.  I look at the money and see we are spending more than our offering is taking in—and I feel anxious.  I have anxiety that I might not be able to bring more young people into the church.  Some people tell me they want me to change how we have arranged Sunday morning—and others have told me to not dare change it.  I have anxiety I might not be able to please all the people all the time.  Some have reminded me, “We have lots of conservatives in this church—don’t cross any lines with them.”  Others have said, “We have a lot of radical liberals in the church and you will be in trouble with them if you don’t pass their litmus tests.”  Some people have warned me that if the sermon goes too long, I’ll lose members.  It helps that I have convinced people that I’m just a crazy old man—most people let me get away with stuff because of that—but I’m still anxious.

Maybe my days off will help me with my anxiety.  I’ll go home and enjoy my garden:  the flowers and the abundant vegetables—and the deer eating my okra and the squirrels stealing my tomatoes and the Japanese beetles attacking my green beans and the morning glories choking out the lilies…  Sister Mary, sister Mary, wherefore art thou?

But honestly, where would we be without the Marthas in our lives.  And how could we survive if we didn’t unleash the Martha within us?  Someone has to earn the money, mow the grass, pay the bills, and repair the plumbing.  In a world without any anxiety or fear, we would all starve, catch diseases; people would get pregnant at the wrong time.  Without a little fretting and caution, like Martha, we might elect the wrong leaders, or get run over by trucks and trains.  Fear can be good.  Martha knows that.  

Years ago, we were on a family vacation to Colorado.  Our daughters were in grade school, my mother-in-law was with us.  At that time, I had a big Crown Victoria, rear wheel drive.  And we decided to drive up Mt. Evans.  The road up Mt. Evans is the highest paved road in the United States—winding its way up the mountain, if you slip off the highway you will tumble hundreds of feet downward to your demise.  I’m afraid of heights.  And as I drove up the mountain, I began to panic.  I didn’t have the courage to keep driving—even though many other people were making their way up the road just fine.  I pulled off into a broad rest area, got out of the car to walk around.  See if I could pull it together.  My nine year old daughter Alison got out of the car and walked over to me.  She wanted to know why I had stopped.  And I told her that the height of the mountain scared me a little.  And she told me that it was okay—that we could keep going because she would help me out.  Now, that didn’t mean I was going to let her drive. But witnessing her confidence, which was clearly more rational than my anxiety at that moment, fortified me.  And we went on. Twas grace my fears relieved. 

After another half hour it started to snow.  And ice started to accumulate on the road.  And I was driving a monster of a car that had rear wheel drive.  And as soon as I could, I pulled into the first parking lot, which happened to be a glacial lake.  And we got out and took in the beauty of it.  And then we went back down the mountain.  Twas grace that taught my heart to fear.  

There is healthy anxiety, and there is toxic anxiety.  Poor Martha:  not all anxiety is healthy.  I imagine Martha suffering from panic attacks, clinical depression, exhaustion, psycho-somatic pain, guilt, and shame.  The Marthas I know—including those within myself—also embarrass easily, become obsessed with grievance, feel powerless, tend to play the blame game when things go wrong, slip into destructive defense mechanisms, handle criticism poorly, and have little immunity from being offended.  Their anxiety becomes toxic.  

As a “Martha” myself, I feel a responsibility to help everyone out here.  So…let’s take a moment and ponder the brain science of anxiety.  Stick with me:  I promise I won’t use any big words.  

The human brain is composed of four main parts:  factories, warehouses, observation decks, and bridges.  See—I told you I wasn’t going to use any big words.

There are factories all over the place in our brains.  There’s a factory that produces decisions, some good and some bad.  Another factory produces imagination.  Another factory reasons things out.  Another produces creativity.  There is a row of factories that produce emotions of every kind.   One factory does nothing but generate desire.  Another spends all its time producing calculations and estimations.  Other factories produce everything from stubbornness to kindness to humor.  It is a marvelous thing—this human brain—able to produce all it does.

Then there are the warehouses in our brains—where we store things.  We are most familiar with the various memory warehouses. Sometimes I’m looking for a name, and I have trouble finding it in the warehouse.  There are times I’ve lost the keys to even get into my memory warehouses.  Our warehouses also store our common sense, our faith, our stories, our songs, and our traditions.  There are warehouses of wisdom and knowledge.  

Factories.  Warehouses.  And observation decks.  The observation decks in the brain register what the eyes are seeing, the ears are hearing, the skin is feeling, the tongue is tasting, and the nose is smelling.  

And finally, there are the bridges inside the brain.  Without the bridges—the rest of the brain would be useless. For example, there is a bridge that connects the factory producing our anger with the warehouse that stores our common sense.  But if the bridge between them goes out, our anger gets out of control.  Another example:  when the bridges go out that connect the warehouse of common sense, the observation decks taking in network news or social media, the observation decks that are set up to take in the real world, and the factories that produce curiosity and reason—we have toxic politics.  Our whole world can go to hell when the conduits inside our brains don’t bridge everything.  When our array of miraculous factories, warehouses, and observations decks get disconnected—when the bridges go out—the human mind can turn reptilian.  (Alzheimer’s Disease is a physiological phenomenon of bridges physically deteriorating in the brain.)  Toxic anxiety occurs when we get out of the habit of using the bridges that are already there.  We have no cure yet for Alzheimer’s Disease.  On the other hand, we have no excuse for toxic anxiety:  the bridges are still there, we’ve just stop using them.

In the New Testament, written in Greek, the word used to diagnose Martha is mer-im-NAS.  It literally means “a split mind.”  Parts of the mind is disconnected and shut off from each other.  The factories that produce fear are no longer partnered with the factories that produce creativity, or the warehouse that stores our faith, or the observation decks that remain curious.  And when the factory of fear is cut off from all the other brilliant parts of the brain—we have toxic anxiety—and nothing to calm ourselves or put matters in perspective.  Merimnas—the divided brain, the brain of unused bridges.  

Jesus tells Martha that she can overcome her anxiety by making the same kind of choices that Marry is making.  Sassy Mary, disobedient, carefree, creative, joyful, loving, heedless of outer and inner critics, extravagant, independent. Mary looms large in the Bible Story. We see her in some of the people around us, we see her hiding out in our own hearts—yearning to emerge and live free.

And in the Bible story, there is a loving word from Jesus, addressed personally to us, nudging us, calling us forth, urging us to choose something different than we’ve chosen.  

When we look carefully at the words of Jesus in Luke 10:42, we see that a life free from anxiety is not a fate but a choice. Jesus says that Mary has chosen the better alternative.  And what we know from brain science, which I just summarized so irreverently, shows us how to overcome anxiety.  There are, of course, situations where our anxieties have become so overwhelming that we may need a little outside help to overcome the chemical/electrical activity inside our brains.  But normally, we can handle most of the anxiety ourselves, with a little help from our friends and a little help from our faith.  We can choose to slow down and get in touch with those parts of our mind that have been disconnected and forgotten.  We can choose to get in touch with those factories that produce humor and logic.  We can reconnect with those observation towers that take in more nature.  We can draw from those warehouses that hold our traditions of faith, our wise memories, and our moral values.  

We cure toxic anxiety by repairing and using the bridges God has already fashioned in our minds. Paul once wrote:  be ye transformed by the renewal of your minds.  In part, that means restoring those bridges.  

We can use the bridges of our minds to get out of the echo chambers that simply amplify our anxieties and drive us nuts. We spend more time with our wiser friends and less time with our foolish ones.  We can feed our minds and souls with images, stories, and adages found in scripture.  We go on social media and network news “fasts.”  We tell stories of past victories, practice mindfulness, and seek out people who stimulate us with humor. 

We can ponder Mary, respect her, find her within us, let her off her leash.  The good news:  Mary is within each of us, and Jesus himself bids us to choose to be like her.  Thank be to God.