The Age of Anxiety

In The Age of Anxiety, a rather lengthy poem, the poet W.H. Auden provides a telling commentary on modern life by describing four solitary drinkers in a wartime New York bar: a Canadian airman, a world-weary bank clerk, Rosetta who is a buyer for a department store, and a young naval recruit. Over six sections – a prologue, a life-story, a dream, a dirge, a masque, and an epilogue – they meditate on their lives, their hopes, their fears, and their anxieties. It’s basically an overheard conversation in a pub, where four strangers sit in a booth together, get slightly inebriated and stagger back to Rosetta’s place. There they have too much to drink, and dance a bit until the two older characters drift home, and the younger man professes his undying love for Rosetta and crashes out on her bed. Auden writes, ‘She looked down at him, half-sadly, half-relieved….’

The poem explores the theme of anxiety precipitated by the fragmentation of the lives of these four characters. It is not that the world seems strange and inhospitable, or that they struggle with the precariousness of a world war, or that in the face of overwhelming societal threats, a chance meeting in a wartime bar offers little by way of comfort or consolation. It is not simply that the modern world is frightening and that they are afraid. Auden’s poem explores the fact that each of these four characters cannot work out who they are or what their place in the world is. They may have identities, memories, desires, fantasies, even sophisticated ways of interpreting themselves, but none of them have really worked out who they are. And they are overwhelmed by anxiety.

There are resonances in this poem with our scripture readings today. St Paul writes to the Philippians from prison. He has been incarcerated in the face of persecution. And he is writing to a community in turmoil. We don’t know why these two women, Euodia and Syntyche, have fallen out, but they have. And Paul urges them to be of the same mind, to adopt a common pattern of thinking – the Greek phrase here is one of the conventional ways in which you would describe a friendship, by being of the same mind. So this is more than a theological disagreement. When Paul tells them ‘to be of the same mind’, he is urging them to be friends again. As he says, they ‘have struggled beside me in the work of the gospel’. Their friendship matters to Paul. These women are valued colleagues and co-workers, along with Clement and others. And in spite of these internal arguments and divisions, the church of Philippi faces persecution and all sorts of external threats. Now we would expect a character like Paul, so zealous, so vehement, and so severe to be telling the Philippians a few home truths. Indeed, it would be easy for Paul to express some anxiety at this point about his own predicament, but he does not.

On the contrary, St Paul goes on to say, ‘Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything …and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus’(Phil. 4.4-7).

Preaching on this passage, St John Henry Newman reflects on the disposition of soul described by St Paul. He describes this in terms of equanimity. For Newman, equanimity is that deep, enduring peace which is rooted in one’s faith in God and a detachment from worldly concerns. Christians possess the grace of equanimity because they recognize that this world is not their permanent home and that the promises of the Kingdom put earthly success and failure, anxieties and disappointments into perspective. They know in their hearts that love always wins, that even in the face of evidence to the contrary, the world is orientated towards the peace of God – and because of that their lives are characterized by calmness, moderation, fairness, gentleness, cheerfulness and freedom from anxiety. By contrast when people are anxious, they can become fearful, defensive, resentful, prone to lash out.

Now one might assume that such moderation, the idea that the truth is in the middle, hold your horses, wear navy blue, while quintessentially Anglican, is essentially rather dull. But we should not assume that equanimity means complacency or apathy. This is no emotional indifference. This is not a rather stoical indifference in the face of suffering. Newman had ministered through the first cholera pandemic in the 1830s. He knew grief and suffering. He knew the reality of pain. It was this experience that perhaps caused him to think again about the rather simplistic evangelicalism of his youth. In his sermon, he compares the Christian soul to the ocean: although storms may disturb its surface, its depths remain tranquil. We may experience sorrow, grief, anxiety, or agitation, but ultimately are hearts are anchored in the knowledge that our identity comes from the peace of God. We discover that our lives are hidden with Christ in God. And that is the source of all our joy and peace.

But then there is the gospel reading, and if truth be told, there is not much evidence of equanimity in this story. In fact, it is rather more like my disposition as I was battling through barricades in North Oxford in order to open up the church this morning. The story is familiar, a wedding feast is organized, and no one shows up. Disaster. The guests are distracted by so many concerns and anxieties that they are unable to enter into the king’s joy. So the king presses on and tells his servants to invite everyone else to the wedding feast, to enter into his joy. Everyone is invited. All are included. You can imagine everyone breaking out into song, with a rendition of Fr Faber’s, ‘There’s a wideness to God’s mercy like the wideness of the sea’ and waving the banners of equality and inclusion. Just like the University Church on a Sunday morning.  

But in reading the story, so often we pass over the difficult bits. Because when the esteemed guests don’t turn up to the wedding feast, the king’s disposition is hardly one of equanimity. Matthew says that the King was enraged. He sent his troops, destroyed the people who had maltreated his slaves, and burned their cities down. And then we come to this poor soul who was not wearing a wedding robe. At this point, the grace of equanimity seems to have deserted the king completely. 

So how do we make sense of this uncomfortable tale?  Well, parables are not meant to be interpreted literally. They are often exaggerated stories, even tall tales, which are supposed to make a telling point. So ancient commentators suggested that if the story of the wedding feast was a parable of the kingdom, then the wedding robe was a figure of the baptismal robe which the new believer was given to wear at their baptism. So the traditional understanding is that the parable is saying that only the baptized will inherit the kingdom. Many are called, but few are chosen. 

But I wonder if the poetry of Auden offers us another insight. We might expect many of the guests in the story who had filled the wedding hall to be wearing the wrong thing. The issue is that this character is not poorly dressed or sartorially challenged. The point is that when the King said to him, ‘Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?’, he was speechless. 

In other words, he was unable to articulate why he was there. He was overwhelmed by anxiety. Attending a wedding, without wearing a wedding garment, is perhaps an emblem of the sense of fragmentation identified among those four solitary characters in a New York bar with which I began. 

He was there, but he didn’t really understand why. He was unable to give expression to the grace that he had received. He had turned up, but had failed to recognize the possibility of communion, to acknowledge the peace and joy which God offers to us lavishly and extravagantly. The tragedy is that he was speechless, because the identities upon which he had relied upon in the course of his life were not sufficient to equip him to express that joy. His speechlessness was its own tongue-tied sermon, perhaps a fitting tribute to an age of anxiety.

Of course, we also live in an age of anxiety – the climate emergency, the threat of war, the cost of living crisis, political instability, the uncertainties around artificial intelligence, forms of religious extremism. It is easy to be anxious. We can so easily feel overwhelmed. But Paul reminds us that we need that same disposition of equanimity. The world today could do with a bit more equanimity. That’s why Paul tells us to stand firm. This is not dull or wishy-washy. This is what the Christian character looks like in the face of adversity. Whatever the pressing anxieties of our own age, Paul instructs us to cultivate ‘a pattern of simplicity, meekness, cheerfulness, thankfulness, and serenity of mind’, because we have been given the assurance that ‘the peace of God will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.’ So we can take heart because the resurrection of Jesus Christ has changed everything. The gift of equanimity is the disposition which expresses that fundamental confidence in the hope at the heart of our faith, the hope of the resurrection.