I was taught never to put all my eggs in one basket. I was told, as a young person, that I needed to be careful not to commit myself to one and only one thing. I was to stay open to a variety of choices.
When I started earning money, my parents taught me not to spend it all on any one interest, but to use my few dollars for various things. So, as a boy, I collected stamps, I bought smelly ingredients for my chemistry set, I added to my horde of comic books, and occasionally invested in a model airplane or a new car for my train set. It seemed like a good idea not to put all my resources into only one thing.
When I got to be a teenager, my parents said the same thing about girls. They said I was too young to be tied to just one young lady, that I should get to know quite a few. Don’t get too committed to just one person too soon. It worked well enough, although I must confess that I was one socially awkward puppy, and at the dance class my parents made me go to – can you imagine a Baptist family in the 1950’s actually pushing ballroom dancing? – at the dance class I zeroed in on a young lady who was more or less related to me and made her life miserable while I was making mine more comfortable by focusing only on her. But I heard what my parents said – don’t focus on only one thing, only one person, only one interest. Play the field. Sit loose. See what comes along. There may be something better. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.
But, brothers and sisters, you cannot stay in that mode forever. You cannot keep all your options open forever. The time comes when you must make a decision. The time came when I had to decide what profession I would enter; I have told you many times how the Lord got my attention when I was twenty years old, and I’ve never even wanted to look back on that. A couple of years later someone named Margaret got my attention, too, and we married when I was only twenty-three and she was twenty-two. We made a life commitment to one another, and we are as persuaded today as we were on that May day in 1961 when we joined hands and hearts. And you and I made a covenant with one another in the summer of 1986, for I knew then, as I still know, that this was God’s place for me. I have never regretted that covenant, nor have I tried to escape it.
There comes a moment when it is absolutely necessary to commit all that you have to only one thing. There is a time, in our lives, when we know that this is our calling, this is our place, and it deserves all that we have and ever hope to be. All.
What a weighty word, that one. All. Every. What part of “all” do we not understand? “All,” as in “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” I’ve proved that one! And “all,” as in “cast all your anxiety on Him, for He cares for you.” Can I really put all that I am, all that I ever hope to be, into the hands of God? Can we truly commit all to Him? What does that mean for you and for me at this time in our lives?
I’m using the same basic outline that I used nearly twenty years ago, when I preached on this text in my first sermon as Interim Pastor here. The development is different by far, but the essentials are the same. I said then, and I say now, that, first, we must cast on God all our anxiety about the things that threaten us; that, second, we must cast on God all our anxiety about the things we imagine will threaten us; and finally, that the key to victory is to give to God our ultimate anxiety, our anxiety about death, our fear for our lives and safety. Brothers and sisters, we at Takoma need to see all over again how to trust God and cast on Him all our anxiety.
And if we do trust Him, He will prosper us, He will save us, He will grow us, and He will lead us. But if we do not trust Him ... or, if we trust Him only part-way ... if we trust Him less than “all”, we will find ourselves miserable, unhappy, and failing. Let me get specific.
I
First, we must cast onto God all our anxiety about the things that do threaten us. We must begin with trusting God for the daily nitty-gritty, tough, things that trip us up and keep us from moving forward. We must cast onto God all our anxiety about what it means to live and to survive.
Have you ever been unemployed? You needed a job so badly. You did everything you knew to do to find and hold a job. I hear you, by the way; once I finish here, it will be the first time in fifty years that I have been unemployed! Wow! I think I need a break! But if you were unemployed, have you discovered that when you are anxious and you go to a job interview, your anxiety will come across and, even without your saying so, you will communicate fear and even hostility to the interviewer? That’s one reason why it’s easier to get a job when you don’t actually need one than it is to get one when you really do need it! Your anxiety jumps across the interviewer’s desk and makes him think you are not going to be stable. So you don’t get the job.
But if you know that God cares for you, whether you are employed or unemployed; if you learn that God’s care for you is unconditional, God loves you just as you are, without one plea; then you can relax. You can be confident. You can believe in yourself as a child of God. And guess what? Likely you will get the job! Cast all your anxiety on God, trust God, and fear melts away.
There are some folks here who are anxious about the future of this church. There are some folks who are afraid of unknown days ahead. Who will be pastor? What kind of worship style will we have? Will I be able to count on the new pastor in seasons of distress and grief? Those are real fears. Those are genuine anxieties. I would not minimize them in the least.
But let me remind you what God can do. Let me remind you of how our God treats those who put their trust in Him. Eighteen years ago the Lord took a fellow who had never been the pastor of a church before and put him into this place! Yes, I had served a half-dozen interim pastorates, but just preaching on Sundays and attending deacons’ meetings, that’s not at all the same thing as guiding a church’s life. Some had anxieties back then, and rightly so. So did I! But look what the Lord has done in keeping us together and holding us on the mark for two decades! It has not been perfect, and we have already offered our confession to God and asked for forgiveness. It has not been perfect; but have we not experienced His power and His presence over these years? Have we not seen Him at work, as men and women came down this aisle to receive Christ as savior and enter the waters of baptism? Have we not experienced the guidance of the Spirit, as we made deeper commitments to missions? I shall always be proud that during these years, I estimate we have given a million dollars to missions, because to give to missions you really do have to trust God. You have to believe that He is guiding missionaries we will never meet and reaching people we will never know. I am pleased with that. We have not starved, we have not suffered financial crises, we have not fought one another, we have not foundered on any treacherous shoal, because we trusted our God.
Who has done all this? Who is responsible for all the good things we have seen over these years? Don’t you dare say that your pastor did it! Say that God did it! Say that Christ did it! Shout out that the Spirit of the Living God has done it. We’ve come this far by what? By faith, leaning on the Lord; He’s never failed us yet. And He never will. Today is not about your pastor. Today is about the love of God, richer far than tongue or pen can ever tell. It goes beyond the highest star, and reaches to the lowest hell. Our God is able!
So cast all – ALL – your anxiety on Him, for He cares for you, Takoma. He cares for you. He knows what threatens you. But He cares for you.
II
Yet, at the same time, I am intrigued by the way in which we are also anxious about the things that likely will never happen. I am captured by the idea that anxiety so often focuses not on real threats, but on what our active imaginations conjure up. We are afraid most about the things that will never happen, because they will happen only if we are disobedient.
Let me run that past you again. We crank up our anxiety about things that might happen; but we are in control of whether they will happen. So if we are obedient to what we ought to do, they will not happen, and there is no reason for anxiety. But if we are not obedient, we will create what is called a self-fulfilling prophecy. We will cause the very thing we are worried about.
Let me illustrate with two of my very special guests this morning. My extra special, wonderful guests, my granddaughters. The other afternoon Margaret and I took care of them for a couple of hours. It was our task to see that they ate their dinner. Olivia, bless her heart, got a little stubborn and wouldn’t eat. Margaret resorted to something that all of us have used from time to time – “You don’t want daddy to come home and find out that you have not eaten your dinner!” Olivia’s answer was wise; she said, “No, daddy will whack my bottom because I did it on purpose.” Now that’s a real anxiety; yes, daddy would whack her bottom. And so she became obedient and began to eat. Not five minutes later, however, young Jackie, not yet two years old, who had been eating with gusto, suddenly stopped, got a worried look on her face, and announced, “Daddy will whack my bottom.” Now Jackie, that’s an imaginary anxiety. That’s not necessary, because you have been obedient. You were doing what you were supposed to do. But because your sister felt anxiety, you felt it too.
Takoma, there is a reservoir of undeserved anxiety here today. Some of us fear things that are not going to happen, unless we become disobedient and let them happen. And our anxiety is likely to infect other people.
I have heard some of you say, “Well, I know which way we’re going now.” Which way is that? What do you think you know? Some think it means that we will get into a worship style that, as one of our recent guest preachers called it, goes bumpety-bump. My stars, most of us cannot even manage plain old bump, much less bumpety-bump. That’s an imaginary anxiety.
Some think that the choice of a new pastor has already been made, and you don’t like the outcome. Great day, surely you cannot believe that our search committee, with some of the finest, brightest people in the church, could be stampeded? They know that often the pastor who follows a long-tenured pastor will have a rough time and will not stay long. They are bright enough and prayerful enough to select very carefully, and with great sensitivity. I trust this search committee, and you should too. They intend to save you from a mess. That’s an imaginary anxiety.
Still others suspect that the next pastor will come out of a different philosophy than what we are used to. Some fear that he or she will expect to command things and get whatever they want. In fact, I probably fed that fear by teaching recently, in our combined adult Sunday School session, about how some pastors today are moving toward an authoritarian style. Well, let me come down on this one by suggesting that the time has come for Takoma to invest its pastor with at least a little executive authority! Let me ask you to think about the notion that if you want leadership, you need to give the leader some latitude. Here in this passage of Scripture Peter admonishes us to accept the authority of the elders. Yes, of course he teaches those elders to use their oversight in a Christlike way. But Takoma needs to learn to follow leadership and not simply sit on new ideas until they die of starvation. There is an anxiety about giving someone too much power. But it will only happen if you let it happen. If you cherish leadership, and trust God, God will give you a dynamic relationship. Do not give in to imaginary anxiety.
And some even imagine – may I be utterly candid here? – some even imagine that Takoma will become, quote, just another black church, unquote, whatever that may mean. Oh no, oh no; you cannot imagine how deep in our value system lies our identity as a multi-racial, multi-cultural church. Whoever would try to change that would end up wrecking himself, not the church. You got a kick out of something I said several months ago, so I’ll say it again – that the next pastor of this church ought to be a Spanish-speaking Asian woman with degrees from both Howard and Harvard! I tried that line out on a Chinese minister friend of mine, who said, such a person probably doesn’t exist! But wouldn’t that express our historic commitments? Fearing that we will become just another traditional church is unfounded. Be obedient to God’s dream of a church in which neither male nor female, neither Jew nor Greek, neither bond nor free counts for anything, for we are all one in Christ Jesus. Be obedient to that, and the fears will melt away.
There are all kinds of anxieties about the future. But I urge you to acknowledge that these are unreal. These are things that will never take place, unless you take leave of your senses. So many of the things we are afraid of will never happen unless we stop listening to the Spirit, unless we just sit back and do nothing. For the sake of the Lord, and for the sake of the church, be a part of all that is to come.
Be faithful, in season and out of season, at worship; be faithful in serving others, the last, the least, the lost, and the lonely. Be faithful in offering your witness to those who need to know Christ.
Be faithful and generous with your gifts; the tithe is the Lord’s, and that has nothing to do with who is pastor. Some folks seem to think that giving to the church is all about paying the preacher, and so if we don’t have a senior pastor, we don’t need the money. Wrong, wrong, wrong! You will have a full staff. You will have obligations. You will have opportunities for ministry. The tithe is the Lord’s; that has nothing to do with who is in this pulpit.
Be faithful. That is how you express your trust in God. That is how you put aside all those anxieties about what might happen, but doesn’t have to. William Cowper wrote, in that hymn about how God works in mysterious ways His wonders to perform, a prophetic verse: “Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take; the clouds ye so much dread are great with mercy, and shall break in blessings on your head.”
III
My good friends, at the end of the day, all that matters is this: cast all your anxiety, of whatever nature, on God, for He cares for you.
Cast all your anxiety about the things that threaten you on Him, for we’ve come this far by faith, leaning on the Lord, and He’s never failed us yet.
Cast all your anxiety about the things that really don’t need to happen on Him, for He calls you to obedience, and if you will be faithful, He will supply your every need through His riches in Christ Jesus.
But then, most of all, cast all your anxiety on Him, all your anxiety about the ultimate things, the deep things. Cast all you feel about your life on Him. Trust Him for your salvation, and trust Him now. For He cares for you.
Maybe you are a youth, and you are anxious about the decisions you must make. Who will guide you, who will listen to you, who will send you in the right direction? Trust God, and then trust His church. God cares for you; we care for you.
Maybe you are a young adult, and you feel unsettled about yourself. You’ve tried this and you’ve tried that. Over here somebody says you ought to hear this pastor, he’s really dynamic; and over there somebody says you ought to try that church, where the music has pizzazz! Well, when you have tried them all, and find yourself still strangely empty, then come home. Trust God and trust His church. God cares for you, and so do we.
Or maybe you are a parent, raising children, and you are anxious about giving them the foundation they need in this troubled world. Who will teach them, who will empower your marriage, who will be a resource for your family? Trust God and then trust His church. God cares for you; we care for you.
And maybe you are elderly, and you are anxious about the months ahead. Who will be there to care for you in your last hours? Who will interpret your life at your funeral? Trust God and then trust His church. God cares for you, and by His help, we will always care for you.
Most of all, maybe you are a sinner, in need of grace. You are a seeker, in need of truth. You are depressed and lonely, in need of an embrace. You are a soul all bent out of shape, twisted and distorted. Who will straighten out the mess? Who will give you hope? Who will offer you salvation? Trust God. Trust the God who even while we were yet sinners, loved us in Christ and took upon Himself a cruel cross, for us. He cares for us.
And trust this church, which took an introverted, scared Kentucky boy, from the wrong race and the wrong set of life experiences, and put him in a wonderful place, the pulpit of Takoma Park Baptist Church. That tells me that I can cast all – ALL – my anxiety on Him, for He cares for me. And He cares for you.
And after you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, support, strengthen, and establish you. To him be the power forever and ever. Amen.
All your anxiety. Is there now any part of “all” we do not understand?!
