The Way Out of Fear
Speaker: Rev. Matt Henry
Location: Whitney United Methodist Church
Date: May 24, 2009
Okay, put your thinking caps on this morning. I’m going to open up with a riddle so see if you can guess what the answer to this riddle is. I want to tell you about something here that is, it’s one of the most common of all things but it is neither animal nor vegetable nor mineral. It is neither a solid, a liquid nor a gas. It contains no mechanical parts, no motor, no springs yet it is always moving. It reproduces itself incredibly effectively but it is not alive and never will be. It can be seen, felt and heard. It can destroy us all yet we cannot live without it and, while it is not part of us, most of us can’t produce it with incredible ease. What is it? Wait a minute…I heard fire; smile, oh that a pretty good answer. I like that actually. Smile. Love, okay that’s pretty good. Oh, that’s getting there I think. So love, it can destroy us all yet we can’t live without it. Can love destroy us all? Can a smile? Well, maybe. All depends who’s smiling, right? What other answers did you have? Faith, word, greed, oh very good. What? Oh, gossip, that’s getting pretty close here. Actually my friends what it is, it’s fear.
From the prospective of the early churches telling this story the enigma concerning Jesus was that he wasn’t what anyone expected. Even his closest associates, The Twelve, who are in the prime position to understand who he is and what he’s about can’t get beyond their own personal agenda which is based on fear. And in the second telling, Luke’s take two of this scene, they ask him the question that represents their fear. Now, I’m going to paraphrase it a little bit….is this the time when you’ll kick Roman booty? That’s their concern. But eventually his believers come to understand that the reason behind his incarnation was the fulfillment of God’s grand plan as foretold in their own Scriptures, and it involved what Christians to this very day fear the most….having to tell others that they are loved and forgiven and that suffering leads to real life. I’m going to repeat that. What they inherited involved what Christians to this very day fear the most….having to tell others that they are loved and forgiven, and that suffering leads to real life.
Now, this is absolutely anathema to a culture drunk and addicted to retribution and fear of an al Kaida, a CLU, Hammas and Hezbollah, humanists and homosexuals, alcoholic parents seeking absolution on their death beds, employers whose employees are merely figures on a spread sheet, manipulated to keep their shareholders happy until the next crisis comes along. No, brothers and sisters, we cannot do what we fear most.
Now Luke wrote this epic work concerning Jesus in two parts. It was, and in fact is meant to be, read as a whole….Luke and Acts. But just in case his readers never got past the first volume, Luke ended his Gospel, volume one, with this tiny, clean, uplifting ending. Then Jesus led them out as far as Bethany, and lifting up his hands, he blessed them. While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into Heaven. And they worshipped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and they were continually in the temple blessing God. That’s the story told by Ozzie and Harriet but after that scene has run it’s almost as if the director had stood back and said, “No, that’s nice but it’s not entirely realistic.” So Luke ends his Gospel, volume one, with this tidy, clean, uplifting ending because as we know, after all brothers and sisters, we are Americans after all and every movie must have a happy ending, right, or we’ll bomb it into submission until we get it, like Vietnam ending with an honorable peace with our favored trading partner as opposed to 55,000 dead GIs. I wonder what our world would be like if GIs sent politicians into battle. How many wars would we actually have if that was the case?
But for those who read on into Luke’s second volume, appropriately titled The Acts of the Apostles, the acts of the Apostles, he picks up the scene where he left it off in volume one. But now there is no mention, notice, of great joy and continual blessing. That’s been edited out. In fact it is a scene fraught with fear of an unknown future. Their only question at the end of the road they’re asking him is, “Is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” Is now the time when you will restore our glorious past because we’re afraid of venturing farther ahead into an unknown future that entails suffering, forgiveness and real life. Mistakes are high for them. They are, after all, enemy combatants. They’re hiding out in the capitol city, their leader dead, their dreams gone with them, and they are afraid of showing themselves in public for fear of the same thing happening to them as it did to him. And their only thought is to get back home to their families and forget the past three years. In other words, to return to the past.
But Jesus…Jesus never lets anyone off the hook that easily. For his part he realizes that the fear of suffering is us, our humans’ natural tendency. He realizes we can’t, on our own, tell others they are loved and forgiven no matter what they’ve done and that suffering leads to real life. He realizes that without him the cause if lost. Someone on the Lay Advisory Team for our Building Bridges project who was editing the congregational profile (which you will all soon get) summarized at the end (and you’ll get a chance to read this) what this church needs in a best scenario pastor. And they wrote, “Someone,” I’m not taking this too personally, “Someone who doesn’t dress up in blue tights with a large yellow S and who checks their red cape at the door. And you know, as I thought about this, I realized this person was exactly right in that the church doesn’t need a superman. No, it needs 150 of them, empanelled with the power of the Holy Spirit as promised by Christ to leave Jerusalem behind and take that good news of forgiveness and real life out there where it’s needed to be heard the most, amen? (Moves to open door to yell) You are forgiven. And given eternal life. Because you’re loved that much. Many of you know I sit at the doorway and yelled out there before so this isn’t new. Jesus has promised to give us the blue tights, the yellow S and the red cape we need to do the job. He promised us the Holy Spirit and he isn’t a liar, is he? So Jesus supplies all light but we can refuse the gift.
A man once went to see his Doctor in an acute state of anxiety, thinking he had cancer. “Doctor,” he said, “you have to help me. I’m dying. Everywhere I touch it hurts. I touch my head and it hurts. I touch my leg and it hurts. I touch my stomach and it hurts. I touch my chest and it hurts. You have to help me, Doc, everything hurts.” The doctor gave him a complete examination. “Mr. Smith,” he said, “I have good news and bad news for you. The good news is you are not dying. The bad news is you have a broken finger.” Sometimes the thing we fear the most is not what is wrong, amen? So, let us not ever fear the future. Let us not fear succeeding. Let us not fear doing more than feeding and clothing people and sharing in suffering for it is that which we fear most that leads to real life. Let us seek and receive the Holy Spirit and dare to bust on out of the known of Jerusalem, for it’s not the blue tights and the red cape we need to leave behind. It’s the fear that we nurse so well.
These words I speak to you this morning I give to you in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.