Any translation will use words appropriate to the day to translate the original Greek. The Greek word translated as “be anxious” is “merimnate” - and though the word anxious didn’t appear in the King James translation, by the time of the Revised Standard Version published in 1952, and presumably therefore the American Standard Version of 1901, “do not be anxious” was the accepted best translation.
In fact, anxiety became a word in English somewhere around the 1520’s, deriving from the Latin root “anxius” meaning “uneasy, or troubled in mind”. I’m not surprised that it should have been too new a word to be used when the King James Bible was produced less than a century later, because it took quite a long time to be used much in every day speech. In fact, it wasn’t much used as a word until the 19th century. But then from about 1904 it acquired a more technical usage: “anxiety” became identified as a condition by psychiatrists. And when I took a few weeks off stress back in 1993 the word actually used on my doctor’s note was “anxiety”.
We could therefore think of anxiety as “being so worried it makes us ill”. But we shouldn’t forget that the word “anxious” doesn’t always have to have a negative meaning. As a host, I might be anxious to ensure my guest has an enjoyable visit, and is fed and watered as he or she should be. That doesn’t have to mean I’m worried about what they might think or say if they’re not - just that I’m looking out for their welfare, and wanting to do my best to make sure they’ve enjoy their visit.
So it occurs to me that Jesus is not saying to his disciples that they should not be anxious, full stop, but that they should be anxious for the right things.
In which case, what are the things in our lives that cause us anxiety? A quick trawl through the magazine that helpfully came through my letter box as I was sitting down to write this suggests that we’re not short of people looking to persuade us into anxiety about the right things to eat and the right things to wear, like in our reading. And we may also be anxious about the right car to drive, the right watch to wear, or the right perfume to splash on ourselves. All in the ads in my magazine: advertising and anxiety are closely connected in today’s society - some of the most effective ads either latch on to our perceived anxieties or even create them. What will people think of us, if we don’t drive this, or wear that, or serve this to our families at tea time? Along with - just at the moment - look at these people enjoying themselves in sunny Tenerife or Bodum or Rhodes: we could be enjoying ourselves too, if we booked with whoever it might be.
But maybe we have some more serious anxieties: what will happen now we’ve left the EU, for example - you don’t have to have been a remainer to worry a bit about what leaving might mean in practice. Or there’s global warming; or hardening attitudes in world politics, radical Islam, increasingly illiberal regimes in (say) Russia or America. What about the perceived threat from immigrants who won’t conform to our ways, or the latest pandemic to emerge in China or Africa? The list is endless, and what’s on it probably depends on what newspaper you read, who you watch on TV, or who you last spoke to down the pub. And then we’ll all have our more local and personal anxieties: Is my job secure? Will I get on with the new people who’ve moved next door? Can I afford to get that gutter fixed? Am I eating too much cake? And so on - some of it trivial stuff, but not all of it; there’ll be individual anxieties that are really important and maybe quite scary.
In other words, anxiety is a fact of life, and we can’t escape it. If it gets out of hand, it disables us, both as individuals and also as communities and societies. Some of the most horrible things that happen in our world - ethnic cleansing in Bosnia or Rwanda, for example, began with a shared anxiety that was then stoked up and allowed to run rampant.
But anxiety can also be a force for good. It can change our lives and our choices in good and healthy ways, too. Greta Thunberg and David Attenborough have in their different ways encouraged not just awareness of global warming and anxiety about it, which is useless if all we do is wring our hands and tear our hair, but practical response - by individuals, by communities, and even by governments: maybe not enough yet, but a move in the right direction, even if some like Mr Trump remain to be persuaded.
So Jesus is telling us to be anxious for the right things, to be anxious in the right direction. And in particular, he says to us, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness” - or, in the version we heard, “Set your minds on God’s kingdom and his justice before everything else.” In other words, instead of being anxious about things that aren’t really all that important, be anxious for the one thing that really is important - that God’s kingdom is proclaimed and built where we are.
And how will that happen? The kingdom of God happens whenever and wherever people are doing God’s will. Martin Luther King said this: “When we see social relationships controlled everywhere by the principles which Jesus illustrated in life - trust, love, mercy, and altruism - then we shall know that the kingdom of God is here.” And that starts within ourselves. Albert Schweitzer wrote: “There can be no Kingdom of God in the world without the Kingdom of God in our hearts.” So to be anxious for the kingdom of God means to let Jesus into our hearts, and into our lives, and to give ourselves in our living, in our behaving, in the choices we make, to be as like him as we can be.
The theme for today, the Second Sunday before Lent, is not anxiety - although that of course was there in our reading - but creation. The state of God’s world is a major thing to be anxious about, and an important thing to be anxious for, for all of us.
Paul wrote to the Church in Rome that, as he saw it, “The whole created universe in all its parts groans as if in the pangs of childbirth.” There’s such a lot of anxious groaning around us today, and - to be honest - lots to validly groan about; in fact, we’re surrounded by so many and such huge problems they could just stifle and paralyse us. It’s too much, too big a task!
But Paul is writing not just about the agonies of the world, but also about opportunity. God is bringing something new to birth, he tells his readers in Rome. And Jesus tells his friends, “Be anxious for the kingdom, and God will give you all you need for the task ahead.”
So be anxious for the good things, be anxious in the right way, be anxious for the kingdom of God; and though what I might do, and what you might do, might seem not very much, might seem too small, what we can do together can be (and surely, in the cause of the kingdom, will be) earth changing. So let me end with one of my favourite quotes, from Archbishop Desmond Tutu: “Do your little bit of good where you are; it's those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.”
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