Anxiety and the Kingdom
Matthew 6
This is part of my series thinking through the sermon on the mount in particular in relation to Pennington's book on it. (Posts 1, 2, 3)
It's probably helpful at this point to map out how Pennington sees the structure of the sermon, in terms of the main body from 5.17-48 being about "Greater Righteousness for God's people", then 6.1-21 as "Greater Righteousness in Personal Piety" and now (6.19-7.21) "Greater Righteousness in relation to the World". That highlights how Greater Righteousness functions as a motif that works its way through various areas. It also illuminates how today's section (6.19-34) fits.
In 6.19-21 we have both the conclusion to the previous section and the introduction to the next. "Where your treasure is, there your heart is also" - this neatly sums up the danger of practices of personal piety - if they are done for social conformity and status, you get your reward right then and there! Their true orientation is a whole-hearted devotion to God played out from the heart and in secret. The theme of treasure segues beautifully into the next topic, the danger of treasuring treasure.
People would generally like if Jesus mostly spoke about love. But two of Jesus' favourite topics are Money and Hell. Why does Jesus talk about Money so much? I suspect it's because money, and its concomitants, the 'goods' of the world, exercises perhaps the strongest of all pulls upon our hearts. It is pervasive and pertinacious and persistent and pernicious. And so 6.22-34 is Jesus making the case for why you shouldn't worry about money, about food, about clothing. Here again reappear the themes of wholeness, of single-minded or single-hearted devotion, and the way this expresses itself in heart-orientation. No matter how often we hear "No one can serve two masters", we keep trying.
Jesus says "do not be anxious" in several iterations through this section. I think anxiety is a complex issue in general that deserves its own treatment, and let me remind you of a good book on the topic (When the noise won't stop), but here let me say that I read the commands not to be anxious in the Scriptures as also being invitations. I think that helps us hear and feel them differently. Can a command be an invitation? Sure can - just imagine someone gesturing to a seat and saying, "sit down" in a kind and welcoming tone. So too, Jesus (and Paul in his own place), invite us to not worry.
But how? Pennington: “Herein lies a deep irony of human existence. According to Jesus’s teachings, when people seek to keep everything together and provide for themselves apart from God, the result is not the sought-after peace, but rather, anxiety. That is, there is an organic connection between the warning against greed in 6: 22– 24 and the exhortation against anxiety in 6: 25– 34. Greed causes anxiety" (p252)
It is precisely our running after "all these things" (Martha...), our pursuit of the security of things that in fact always and ever perish, that is the cause of our anxiety. The very things we want to secure us against anxiety are the things generating it. The enemy is inside the walls! Jesus' teaching here contains a paradoxical wisdom - it is only in letting go of our tight grip and grasping reach for these things, and instead reorienting our hearts towards his reign and the ordering of a life in relation to his reign (his kingdom and his righteousness), that our sought-after peace becomes ours, that hungering and thirsting for righteousness, we shall be satisfied.
Thank you Seamus. You write beautifully. I wonder : it may be true that all greed begets anxiety but it is perhaps too far to say that all anxiety comes from greed. I wonder what you would say on that ? Also I wonder about the wider methodological relationship between exegesis and claims about mental health experiences. Exegesis is a bewitching craft.