SEVENTH SUNDAY OF EASTER, YEAR A Casting Your Cares On Jesus

Casting Your Cares    1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-115:6 Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, so that he may exalt you in due time. 5:7 Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you. 5:8 Discipline yourselves, and keep alert. Like a roaring lion, your adversary, the devil, prowls around, looking for someone to devour.  Sermon: “Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you” (I Peter 5:7 NRSV). How many times have you heard that?    How many times have you said it, or something like it?  Leave your worries at the foot of the cross, for example.  Give it over to Jesus.    There are lots of different ways to say this fairly simple idea. We hear it and say it all the time.    But here’s the real question – “How do you do it?”  How do we surrender ALL?   Digging a little deeper, we find a number of things in the text from 1 Peter that might help us understand what he is calling us to do and understand.    1 God is bigger than just your stuff.  The word that in so many translations is rendered as “anxiety,” but in the King James Version as “care” is, in fact, singular.  The Text better reads Cast all the stuff that has Us  worried and  Us anxious to the feet of the Cross.  Or maybe even Stop worrying about the Republican and democrats the Proud Boys and Christian Nationalists and Revive your prayer life. We can stop worrying about the governor in Florida and our governor here in South Carolina who said this week at the GOP Convention knowing the history of SC. McMaster repeating one of his favorite GOP lines: "I look forward to the day that democrats are so rare, we have to hunt them with dogs."   Stop trying to make the racial hatred, the size shaming, the LGBTQ hatred, about you. They don’t even know you they are hating Us. They are hating the collective they don’t hate you because you are black, they have been taught sometimes by their church to hate all black, all immigrants, to hate all indigenous people.  2. Power is the realization of Faith without Fear. It You Believe that God can Act through the portal of holy Ghost Prayer and Spiritual Action.   Peter isn’t suggesting that we should stop caring; the verse itself speaks of how much Jesus cares.    He suggests instead that we should stop worrying.    He is remembering, no doubt, when Jesus said the very same thing: “Do not be anxious.”   Black Americans have been disproportionately affected by the coronavirus pandemic. This has been compounded by the tragic deaths of Black men and women — lives cut short at the hands of police and vigilantes. Thus as a church and as a community these days we have some collective cares and or collective anxiousness.   Ahmaud Arbery shot while jogging. Breonna Taylor killed in her home. George Floyd suffocated as the world watched. Rayshard Brooks asleep in a Wendy’s parking lot. Robert Fuller found hung from a tree in Palmdale, Calif. We lament the Black lives lost, past and present.   Repeated trauma and stress have real effects on health, both physical and mental. Though the dialogue surrounding mental health is changing, it’s often it is still considered a taboo subject in the Black community. Navigating the intersections of Black identity has always been layered and complex.