Fear and Living Life

Fear is such a predominant theme in the Bible.  That is so, I think, because it is such a predominant theme in life and such a powerful motivation for us.  It is no wonder that the first words of angels are often “Do not be afraid.”  Both the Old Testament and the Gospel readings for this week deal with it.  “When Saul and all Israel heard these words of the Philistine, they were dismayed and greatly afraid.”  (1 Samuel 17:11)  And again, “[Jesus] said to them, ‘Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?’” (Mk. 4:40)

I have preached many sermons over the years about fear, all of them dealing on some level with my own.  It is a subject that would be hard to avoid.  I once preached what I’m sure was a bang-up sermon on this subject and the threat fear is to faith.  I think it had to do with the fact that human beings come with few natural fears, really only two—loud noises and falling (although I think there are differences of psychological opinion about this).  A member of the congregation, one I thought would wholeheartedly agree with what I had said, made an observation afterwards that has made me think about fear sermons more carefully ever since.  He reminded me that not all fears are irrational, and indeed, some contribute to survival, which would have to make them beneficial.  Fear, he argued, is not all bad.

I’ve struggled with that idea over the years.  I still do.  Here’s where I am now, though.

Fear, it seems to me, is neither inherently bad nor inherently good.  My parishioner is right.  Fear has its usefulness. 

But the issue isn’t the one he posed, whether fear is rational or not.  The issue is whether it gets in the way of living life to the fullest, living the lives we are called to live, living the lives we desire, in our heart of hearts, to live.  And when that happens, whether the fear is rational or not really is beside the point. 

Facing Goliath on the field of battle does not strike me as an irrational fear.  David did anyway.  To do otherwise would have interfered with the life David wanted to live.  A storm on the open sea doesn’t strike me as an irrational fear for people in a small boat.  The problem is that fear got in the way of the disciples’ relationship with Jesus, and that was the whole purpose of being in the boat to begin with.

Rational or not, the spiritual message is that a courageous life is a life more fully lived than a fearful one.  I suspect that is because it is a more fully human one.  The natural fears of human beings, after all, are few.  And faithful fears are fewer still if they exist at all.

Peace,

If You Have to Ask . . .

It was almost four years into marriage before Ginger and I adopted our first child.  Like many newlyweds making a start in life, we asked ourselves when the moment would be that we could afford children.  It is, of course, one of the silliest questions ever asked, when children become affordable.  Like so many things in life, if you have to ask, you can’t afford it. 

Thirty-two years into the adventure of parenthood, I’m still hoping to hit the sweet spot when my children, now well into adulthood, become affordable.  It turns out that they were never more affordable than in those first days when they were so new and their needs were so simple.  Diapers and baby food are nothing next to car insurance, tuition, and weddings. 

It is so like me as an only child to ask whether there would be enough to go around, having never known a time when there wasn’t.  But having grown up without siblings, I had no first-hand knowledge that more people to be cared for would not necessarily put a strain on the ability to care for those already there.  The question children posed for me went beyond affordability to a more basic question of subsistence, maybe even survival.  As ridiculous as it sounds from my very privileged point-of-view, with more mouths to feed, I worried about whether there would be enough.  The logic seemed simple enough.  The things necessary to sustain life are finite.  More people around means less to go around.  The basic affordability question did not look good. 

By the time we adopted our second child, I was in seminary with no income and Ginger was in a low-paying job at the seminary.  There was a good deal less than when the first one arrived to a lawyer father a year away from partnership and a teacher mom just named one of three teachers of the year in the Atlanta Public Schools well-settled in their first house in the suburbs. 

Here’s the interesting thing.  The question of affordability, to say nothing of whether there would be enough, never entered into the discussion the second time.  We just decided to adopt another child.  We had saved the fees from our previous life, and we just had enough experience to know that there would be enough.  Having one just naturally led to the second. 

It didn’t take balancing the checkbook to know that another baby was affordable because we would find a way for it to be.  So we set up the crib and changing table under the loft bed in our very small apartment and went about growing a family. 

The epistle for this Sunday bears repeating:
So then, brothers and sisters, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh—for if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.  For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.  For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba! Father!” it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ—if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.  (Rom. 8:12-17)

I may have once lived by a spirit of fear, especially the vague fear of whether or not there would be enough.  I still fall into it from time to time.  But welcoming Andrew and Matthew into our home so many years ago has given me a glimpse of the spirit of adoption about which Paul wrote and that  urges my heart to cry, “Abba! Father!” and “Ama!” “Mamma!” 

It’s what I would expect from a God whose nature is to exist not simply as one but whose oneness is based on more than one, and whose very nature leads God to create the other in order to share.  As the old adage puts it, as Paul knew, and as the nature of God undergirds, “If you ask to ask how much, you can’t afford it.”

Peace,

Change

My grandparents, William and Katie Belle, were remarkable people who lived in remarkable times.  Within their lifetimes the Wright brothers successfully flew an airplane at Kitty Hawk.  After thousands of years of human beings trying to do that, my grandparents were alive and read about it in the newspaper when it happened for the very first time.  My grandparents were still alive 65 years later when human beings set foot on the moon for the very first time.  And if they had stayed awake past 8:00 at night, which they did not, they could have seen two human beings walking on the moon via a live television transmission. 

Now as astounding as it is to have been alive for both the first flight at Kitty Hawk and the first landing on the moon, unfortunately my grandparents did not believe the latter had actually happened.  Their theory was that it had been staged at some remote location in Nebraska.  My grandparents, who never went outside the state of Georgia except the one time my grandmother went to visit her sister in Jacksonville, did not particularly believe in Nebraska either.  But they found Nebraska a whole lot more plausible than people walking on the moon. 

Within the lifetimes of these two somewhat skeptical farm people, the entire reality of the world was changed, both by the events they had seen happen, and even more by the rate at which that change had occurred.  Thousands of years to get to the first short flight at Kitty Hawk.  Just 65 more years to get to the moon.  It is no wonder at all that they didn’t believe it.
 

Whatever the rate of change my grandparents had to deal with, it is nothing next to the rate of change that our ancestors in faith must have experienced in Christ.  For century after century, the people of Israel had waited for the messiah.  And then, onto the scene comes Jesus of Nazareth.  It was a rate of change that made it difficult to believe.  And not surprisingly, as John puts, “although he had performed many signs in their presence, they did not believe in him.”
 

We know something about so much change that it becomes hard to believe, even if we see the signs live on television.  When change comes at a rate so fast we cannot take it in, it makes us anxious, unsettled, and fearful.  One of the ways human beings cope with so much change so fast and the anxiety that comes with it is to cling to what has been instead of what is becoming.  It is the same with the great moon landing hoax brought to us live from the most remote parts of Nebraska as it is with Jesus and his signs brought to us live from the most remote parts of Galilee.
 

Any rate of change that any human beings have ever experienced, like going form Kitty Hawk to the moon within one lifetime or even having experienced the presence of God in the flesh in Jesus is nothing, absolutely nothing, next to the rate of change we must experience in Easter.  In the instant of Easter, everything, absolutely everything changes.  Death is changed for life.  Sin is changed for freedom.  Alienation is changed for reconciliation.  In Easter, everything, the whole creation, is made new.  The powers, the principalities, the forces that corrupt and destroy our humanity are defeated.
 

Jesus himself is changed.  Jesus is so changed in the instant of Easter that Mary, meeting him in the garden on the first Easter morning, mistook him for the gardener.  Jesus is so changed in the instant of Easter that some of his disciples walked the six miles from Jerusalem to Emmaus with him and did not recognize him.  And even after the reality of the resurrection has begun to set in, Jesus is so changed that his closest friends failed to recognize him calling them along the shore of the Sea of Galilee.  In the instant of Easter, everything, absolutely everything, is changed.
 

As much as the historical events my grandparents witnessed in just a single lifetime changed the very nature of the reality they knew, as much as the signs the people witnessed within the lifetime of Jesus changed the very nature of the reality they knew, the event of Easter changes everything of the reality we think we know in the twinkling of an eye.  It is a change that is too unsettling, too disturbing, too unnerving to believe in because it changes the very nature of reality as we know it.  Easter is intended to threaten our reality.  It is no wonder that it makes us fearful.
 

We must choose whether to allow our fear to stand between us and the resurrection.  We cannot proclaim the resurrection and cling to what is old, to a reality that no longer exists, to a reality before the resurrection.  What we have got to do is live into change because at least until the kingdom arrives, change is the only way God has to work. 

Peace,

+Stacy