『The Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity | St. Matthew 6:24-34 | Cast all your anxieties on Jesus』のカバーアート

The Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity | St. Matthew 6:24-34 | Cast all your anxieties on Jesus

The Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity | St. Matthew 6:24-34 | Cast all your anxieties on Jesus

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The Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity September 13, 2026 Matthew 6:24-34 Today’s Gospel is a well-known passage from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. He says, “Do not be anxious.” These words are in the imperative; they are an order. Do not be anxious, you who have gone back to school and are learning that middle school, high school, or college are much more demanding than your previous years of education. Do not be anxious, you who are newlyweds, who desire children, who’ve purchased homes, or are learning to support a family. Do not be anxious, you who spend more time behind the windshield driving children from one event to another than enjoying time speaking with the child or using your time to get to know your husband or wife more. Do not be anxious, you who have retired and must now learn new routines. Do not be anxious, you who have become a widow or widower. Do not be anxious. It’s easy to say, but when we say it to one another when life is busy and challenging, it seems to make things worse. In the Gospel, being anxious means being apprehensive, experiencing anxiety, or being unduly concerned. Other dictionary definitions add extreme uneasiness, worry, fear about what may happen, or being driven by a strong desire for something. In some situations, a person with anxiety suffers from illness, but in others, it is a feeling or emotion that comes and goes for a person. Yet it’s rising in America and places throughout the world. Some reasons for this are our willingness to discuss mental illness and our feelings and emotions more openly. Even the military has worked tirelessly to remove stigma among those we have long seen as the strongest men and women of our time. Economic pressures significantly impact families, with rising costs making essentials like food, housing, and education less affordable. Students face stress from assignments, achieving high grades, college admissions, job hunting post-graduation, and fitting in. Parents, eager to do their best, increasingly prioritize entertainment over quality family time. Retirees must adapt to new routines and reconnect with spouses, while widows and widowers deal with the quiet of a home once filled with conversation, alongside mountains of paperwork and grieving for their lost spouse. Beyond all of this is the noise in the background of life: the 24/7 news cycle, real-time reports from Iran, and ongoing events around the Strait of Hormuz, along with news alerts streaming across your TV or phone, train your brain to stay constantly alert. Many remember watching 9/11 on TV twenty-five years ago; now, instant news updates are just a tap away. Fifteen years ago, people live-tweeted the operation that killed Osama bin Laden. Today, your phone can instantly connect you to loved ones abroad or to the school bully next door, or it can sit unused, awaiting a text or call that may never arrive. This increased connectivity raises a new concern: an addiction to perpetual busyness. The addiction to busyness is when a person feels they must be constantly engaged in something, always searching for something, always working towards achieving a goal, never unplugging. Never taking rest. Never caring for the body or the soul. There is work to be done, and this type of person is going to do it. Have you ever thought about that? The work or tasks you often find yourself doing are causing you anxiety; it’s the reason you worry about things that are out of your control. It’s why you keep going, because you believe you can control the situation, slog through it, or at least attempt to control it. But any parent that has held a crying child knows that not all situations are controllable. You can, however, entrust the affairs of life to your Father in heaven. As St. Peter wrote, “[Cast] all your anxieties on Him, because He cares for you.” (1 Peter 5:7) And this leads us back to our Gospel this morning, where Jesus says, “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.” Our lives are often understood through a lens of being pulled in multiple directions, which leads us to having more than one master, and when this occurs, anxiety is not far behind. As Jesus stated, “You cannot serve God and money.” A more accurate translation would be, you cannot serve God and mammon. Mammon represents not just money, but also clothing, food, property, and all worldly possessions and desires. When Jesus says you cannot serve God and mammon, He’s simply reiterating the words of His Father when He gave Moses the Ten Commandments, “You shall have no other Gods.” Why? Because He is a jealous God (Exodus 34:14), and He doesn’t put up with anyone serving Him and His enemy at the same time. “Either it is all mine” or “let it all be gone.” These words should strike your hearts and call you to ...
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