Fear and God's Children, my first sermon

This might be a little tough to read, it was spoken. I think it went well. In reflecting it really is a heavy burden to preach and teach...SO MUCH IS AT STAKE.

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. (Psalm 23:4)
Fear is a big business. Contemplate for a second what we Americans spend per year on locks, alarms, self defense, video surveillance and weapons. We are bombarded by a twenty four hour prattle and rattle from news media that by its very nature and relentlessness attempts to instill fear in us, in all of us, and sadly they are successful a lot of the time. (amen)
• Right fears left
• Left fear right
• Anglo fears Latino
• Latino fears African American
• Jew fears Catholic
• Catholic fears Protestant
• Christian fears Muslim
• Straight fears gay
• Rich fears poor
• North fear south
• States fear Washington
• Churched fear un-churched
• Non believers fear believers
• This fears that
The list goes on and on. We are trained to view with abject terror anyone who looks differently, acts differently and thinks differently from us. Here is an obvious newsflash; in our human failing, we are all, different.

• You are different than you, and you and you, and you and me, all different. (amen)

We all come to where we are along unique, beautiful, and difficult and dare I say it, at times, yes fearful paths.

Each of us is made in God’s image, with Christ’s spark in our hearts but all of us broken, failing and fearful.

So what exactly is it that makes us fear?

Is this feeling of fear something new in our experience?
Scripture tells us no. Fear has been part of our nature since the fall.
In Genesis, in the garden, after Adam and Eve have eaten the fruit of knowledge; they are fearful. They hid from God, knowing that they’ve sinned and one might even deduce that Adam compounds his sin by trying to lay the blame on Eve.
8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the LORD God called to the man, "Where are you?"
10 He answered, "I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid." Genesis 3:8-10
Had God not been a loving God, then God would have ended it right then, God didn’t.
21 The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. 22 And the LORD God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever." 23 Genesis 3:21-23
God clothed humanity, God took care of a basic need.
We see God’s comforting words at work through Moses in Exodus. God knows that we’ll have our failings like Adam and Eve, but he doesn’t forsake us.

Exodus 14:13
Moses answered the people, "Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again."

How scary is this? Trapped between Pharaoh’s army and the Red Sea and in the wilderness, but God, our God is steadfast in love and delivers God’s people to safety. Ultimately they will get to the land of milk and honey, but the path will be a long one filled with doubt, failings and dare I say it, a long time in the very frightening wilderness. A wilderness where they the children of Israel will:
• Stumble
• Fall
• Fail
• And fear.
How many of us find ourselves living in a fearful spiritual wilderness?

(Isaiah 41:13)
For I am the Lord, your God, who takes hold of your right hand and says to you, Do not fear; I will help you.
God’s words in Isaiah are meant to comfort a weak and politically insignificant Israel.

An Israel who is facing vast and powerful enemy neighbors who will conquer, loot and inevitably disperse her population into bondage, forcing the people to cope with different people with different customs and strange expectations. That said; the ever loving God of Israel assures steadfast love in the face of no matter what. God knows in their humanness that Israel is fearful but as a father holds a child’s hand God holds Israel’s hand. What a lesson for us in our relatively comfortable and safe corner of central North Carolina.

Isn’t it amazing in this book, this Bible, that we find God’s love affair with humanity. Our story, our combined story moves from one fraught with fear in the Hebrew Bible to one filled with love in the New Testament. God’s ultimate sacrifice for God’s beloved children is meant to erase all fear forever.

Do we recognize and understand that when we buy into fear instilled in us by others that we are turning over the power that God, our God has given us as his followers and disciples?

Do we think about how we fail in God’s commission to us through his Son, our Savior, our Messiah, to go out into the world.

(Mark 12:30-31) also found in Deuteronomy 6:4Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these."
There is also NO FEAR FOUND IN these verses. Amen.

They don’t say Fear the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and all your mind.
These verses don’t say fear your neighbor and lock yourself behind doors all the while fearing God and God’s children.

Are we carrying out God’s command if we sit glued to television, locked behind bolted doors, clicking on the internet to keep up with the latest tragedy du jour?
On Wednesday in Durham two weeks ago there was a terrible tragedy in north Durham in the Hardscrabble neighborhood.

A father, killed one of his children, tried to kill two other children and he also tried to kill himself. Within minutes there were all sorts of comments, commentary and rhetoric on WRAL’s discussion board on line. People were angry, hurt, fearful, venomous, hate filled, argumentative and over engaged.
• How do I know this?
• Where was I off and on during the day?
• What was I engaged in?
• Did I post comments?

Not hate filled comments, but I was in the fray.
One might say that I was over engaged.
One might say that there were better things that I could have been doing, should have been doing like praying or offering myself in service to this family and community is so much pain.
So why the venom and verve from my fellow message board posters?

Why did so many feel the need to indict a family embroiled in a terrible tragedy?

Why did so many at their key boards clamor for blood justice and not see that there was mental illness and complete isolation and brokenness at work here?

Could it have been fear?
• Parents fearful that perhaps within them there may be a kernel of the capability to harm their own children. Think about Abraham on that one and his test, he didn’t have to go through with it…AMEN
o God said to him, "I swear by Myself, declares The Lord, that because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed Me." (Genesis 22:16-18). Isaac was released unharmed.

 Talk about a fearful experience then tempered by faith.
• Fear that in this seemingly upper middle class neighborhood that THIS could happen and no one saw it coming.
• Fear that this could happen right next door and then we’d have to cope with the tragedy in some more tangible, real way.
o Face to face instead of hidden behind a key board and computer monitor.
• Fear, that it is easy to stand brave, to stand in judgment, in cyber space.
o One can say and believe anything and rarely is one called into account.
• Fear, that it might be happening to them, to someone they know and that they are doing NOTHING to stop the madness and perhaps they believe that there is nothing that they can do.
o That belief that one is helpless is terrifying isn’t it? Amen
Mark 14;32
32They went to a place called Gethsemane, and Jesus said to his disciples, "Sit here while I pray." 33He took Peter, James and John along with him, and he began to be deeply distressed and troubled. 34"My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death," he said to them. "Stay here and keep watch."

He, Jesus was deeply distressed and troubled? Yes, He was fully God but also fully human. Was it perhaps that humanness, that human in Jesus, in that garden, the night before the ultimate sacrifice, that night before the ultimate act of love, that even He was afraid, the human He.

• God wasn’t afraid or deeply distressed; God had authored what was to be.
• God the beginning and the end the Alpha and the omega, the one who with God’s words set all of it in motion; God knew the outcome and what it would look like and feel like. Amen.
This is where we, as disciples are called to action by His example, the example of Jesus.
God put God on earth as man, as Jesus so he’d experience the ultimate in fear.
• The torture
• The humiliation
• The grief
• The alienation
• The loss of friends
• The denial by friends and loved ones, amen.
• Maybe beyond fear…maybe even terror.
William Blake, quoted by Bishop Carlton Pearson in "The Gospel of Inclusion."

In the universe there are things that are known and things that are unknown and in between there are doors.
If that is the case then the doors remain ajar through which the curious can peak.
The tragedy of theology and our culture is that these doors have been closed.

With respect to the cross and the gift that was given by God at Calvary. Christ's sacrifice at the cross was God opening a door for humanity to peak through; to get a glimpse of what it is to love, sacrifice and give, to be the ultimate Good Samaritan.

That action by God enables human kind to wrap its arms around the ultimate act of love as an example to live by. I believe by that action we are commanded to be Christ like. We are charged to strive for perfection, knowing that in our lives most of us will never be called to sacrifice as Christ did.

So, when we're commanded to be a Good Samaritan and Christ-like and sacrifice in a small way, through an act of
• kindness,
• generosity,
• hospitality,
• a smile,
• being polite,
• loving the Christo-eclesia folks who attend church on Sunday with whom we might have friction or disagreements or out right hostility, it is indeed a very small challenge in light of the gift and love and passion of Calvary;
• a small challenge in light of the bedlam we face in our world second to second, minute to minute, day by day to simply love them.

Imagine the wonders that we treat others to when we offer a glimpse through that door with a small act of kindness. Think about the example we lead when we
• Pass our lunch out the window of our car to the homeless person begging at the side of the street.
• Think about the gift of a jar of jelly for a food pantry that can only provide peanut butter sandwiches.
• a donation to a soup kitchen,
• Picking up a piece of litter.
• Think about the gift we give when we smile and engage a store clerk, that smile disarms fear.
• Think about the difference any of us could have made if we might possibly have been able to reach, interact, and pray with that very, very troubled father in North Durham. That father who snapped and murdered his child.
None of this is a call for works salvations it is a call to set an example of what a follower of Christ is called to be.
As important, is how we treat those with whom we "share belief."
Often we share a common belief in Christ as a savior but we get mired in the nonsense of personal opinion.

These opinions that often have NO BIBLICAL FOUNDATION.

In our fear with our brothers and sisters we slug it out over
• Liturgy
• marriage
• abortion
• salvation
• sexual orientation
• divorce
• smoking
• alcohol
• the sacraments
• the clothes we wear to worship
• the music we sign or don’t sing

All the while losing site of the cross, the death, the suffering, the Resurrection and the church as bride of Christ.
We need to knowingly nod to our brothers and sisters NO MATTER WHAT THE FORUM;
We need to let them have their say, respect their stance, value them as human and love them without judgment, hostility or fear.
We lose nothing by letting them have their say, their opinion and conversely they lose nothing by letting us have ours.

If nothing is lost then there is NOTHING to fear and even if something is lost, then so what.

These seemingly insignificant examples are priceless gifts to opening the door and looking into Christ-like service. In light of Christ's sacrifice these small gifts seem like nothing but in fact they are excellent illustrations of how simple how fearless it can all be.
There is no fear in any of these simple acts. There is no room for it.

If we can overcome our self doubt, our fear of being found out; our fear of people knowing what and who we really are, then we’ve won the day, we’ve won the war. The war played out for the souls of our world.

Our commission in our weakness, in our brokenness in our fearfulness is to be the light of the world, to be Christ with skin on. To go out into the world, a place fraught with fear and pessimism and meet it head on. To show them, those out there, those who don’t know the love of God, that with God, that with Jesus there is nothing whatever to fear.

(2 Timothy 1:7)
For God gave us not a spirit of fearfulness; but of power and love and discipline. AMEN