Fear Not!
Sermon for June 19, 2005
1. Good Morning. Let’s pray. O Lord, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing to You O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
2. How much is fear a part of your life? Does it haunt many of us daily? Some people are driven by fear – fear of exposure, fear of rejection, fear of failure, fear of debt, fear of death, fear of an accident, fear of old age, fear of abandonment, fear of divorce, fear of a terrorist attack, fear of food poisoning, fear of a car accident, fear of cancer . . . and so the litany goes on and on and on! Fear plays a huge part in the human condition.
Today God wants to speak to us about fear – the one emotion that all Christians should be free of but many aren’t! It’s a truism isn’t it that fear still haunts most of us?
We’re going to be focusing on the Gospel reading but before we do let’s look briefly at our Old Testament reading and the passage from the Psalms:
3. Focusing on Scripture: Let’s begin with Jeremiah 20:10-13: In this passage all those about Jeremiah are against him – looking for ways to entrap and ruin him. In this particular passage we hear Jeremiah reflecting upon the difficulty of his vocation as a prophet – a truth teller – to his culture. Terror is everywhere but what does he say in the face of this?
11
But the LORD is with me like a mighty warrior; so my persecutors will stumble
and not prevail. They will fail and be thoroughly disgraced; their dishonor
will never be forgotten. . . . 13 Sing
to the LORD! Give praise to the LORD! He rescues the life of the needy from the
hands of the wicked.
Good
old Jeremiah! He wasn’t about to
surrender to the fear of those about him who wanted to terrorize him.
Now listen once again to the our
Psalm reading: King David is bemoaning
his plight. But listen to how he
concludes his cry for help:
Psa.
69:8 I am a stranger to my brothers, an alien
to my own mother’s sons;
9 for zeal for your
house consumes me, and the insults of those who insult you fall on me. 10 When I weep and fast, I must endure
scorn;
Psa.
69:14 Rescue me from the mire, don’t let me
sink; deliver me from those who hate me, from the deep waters.
Psa.
69:17 Don’t hide your
face from your servant; answer me quickly, for I am in trouble.
Psa. 69:33
The LORD hears the needy and doesn’t despise his captive people. 34 Let heaven and earth praise him,
the seas and all that move in them, 35 for God
will save
Both Jeremiah and David are in deep doodoo because of their zeal for God!
But they
also know that their God is with them and will most certainly rescue them. This is faith in the face of terror!
Do you and I have this sort of faith? Can you and I in the face of a real trial say
with Jeremiah – “Sing to the Lord! Give praise to the Lord! He rescues the life of the needy from the
hands of the wicked?”
4. Focus on
the Gospel: Now we’re ready to zero in on our Gospel
reading. Let me read it once more and
I’d like you to notice that Jesus calls his listeners to “fear not” tree times
in the space of 8 verses.
Matt.
10:26
“So don’t be afraid of them. There’s
nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made
known. 27 What I tell you in the
dark, speak in the daylight; what is whispered in your ear, proclaim from the roofs.
28 Don’t be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the
soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in
hell. 29 Are not two sparrows
sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the
will of your Father. 30 And even
the very hairs of your head are all numbered.
31 So don’t be afraid; you’re worth more than
many sparrows. 32 “Whoever acknowledges me before men, I will also
acknowledge him before my Father in heaven.
33 But whoever disowns me before men, I
will disown him before my Father in heaven.
Again we hear “zeal for God” and “fear or terror” being placed in parallel together! – for “zeal for God” brings a response of “intimidation” from the world!
In this Gospel reading Jesus is recognizing that His disciples are going to have many reasons to fear thrown at them but they must learn to discern what is really to be feared! There’s godly fear and there’s ungodly fear and Jesus is reminding them and us to reject the ungodly fear!
The fact is that the Christian gospel puts all who believe in it into a situation just like Jeremiah and David!
You see, our message is
at odds with the world. It’s a message
that necessarily will attract hostility or perhaps even disdain. At its worst we might suffer martyrdom and at
its best we will suffer disdain from the unbelieving world.
And it’s these fears
that keep most of us in the shadows of mediocrity as it relates to the expression of our faith! We just don’t step out and therefore don’t
become a target of the world who hates Jesus and all that He stands for!
Am I overstating this case? Is it really that bad to be a dynamic and active Christian in this world today?
·
Ask Mike
Warren,
Director of Rescue
He’s an urban terrorist if ever I saw one! (sarcasm)
·
Ask
anybody
who has been overtly evangelical in the workplace. Ask them how much real freedom there is to
share the good good news that Jesus died for them!
· Watch people around you when you say “grace: in a restaurant or cross yourself in public or place your Bible on the restaurant table. Watch their looks.
·
Talk with
your next door neighbor about Jesus and run the real risk of losing a
friendly neighbor real fast.
I was once asked to offer the Prayer of Invocation at my
Rotary Club in Seattle and I closed the prayer
with “and I ask all of these things in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.”
I was immediately challenged be one of my fellow Rotarians for ending
the prayer in this way and was ultimately told by our Club president that I
could never offer the prayer of invocation at my Rotary club again if I
insisted upon using the name of Jesus Christ.
The fact really is that religion has been forcibly relegated to the “private” world behind closed doors and has no place – absolutely no place - in the “public square.”
Today’s world wants what Richard John Neuhouse has referred to as “a naked public square.” A public square bereft of any religious talk – a politically correct safe zone in which religious absolutist talk has absolutely no place at all.
The secular world wants a sterile public arena and we, if we respond to the Great Commission to “Go and Make Disciples of all nations,” are the great enemy!
5. And so our strategy of becoming active Disciples of Jesus Christ in the public square and not just ones on continual furlough is, in some sense, frightening for most of us to contemplate! We’re truly going against the cultural flow!
Fear of public disdain or even persecution has kept most of us in what can only be called a neutralized status. Most of us have been silenced haven’t we? And so millions of American are going straight to hell because of our fear and resultant public timidity.
But Jesus warns us that there’s a greater fear to be afraid of! He says instead:
28 Don’t be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the
soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in
hell. 29 Are not two sparrows
sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the
will of your Father. 30 And even
the very hairs of your head are all numbered.
31 So don’t be afraid; you’re worth more than
many sparrows. 32 “Whoever acknowledges me before men, I will also
acknowledge him before my Father in heaven.
33 But whoever disowns me before men, I will
disown him before my Father in heaven.
What is he saying to us this
morning? Don’t
be afraid of anything. You’re so much
more important to me than a sparrow who’s very
alighting on the ground doesn’t occur apart from My will. I’ve numbered the very hairs on your head –
you’re so much more important to me than a sparrow. Fear not – I am with you always to the very
end of the age – Go and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the
name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit – Amen!” (Matt 28:19)
Now I have a story to tell us about one of us – I have her permission to tell this story. It’s a story of one of us stepping out of her comfort zone for a kind of sparrow – it was actually a snapping turtle. It’s a story about God’s love for His creation reaching out through a willing soul. It goes like this:
There once was a snapping turtle who wanted to cross over a busy
road. He made it to the center of the
road with many cars driving over him but not hitting him. “It was a miracle that he wasn’t hit!”
exclaimed Sandy Klossner, the heroine of this
story. She went on, “I felt so badly for
him that I stopped my car, got a large carton and a Frisbee from the trunk of
my car and just as I arrived to scoop him into the carton with the Frisbee the
traffic cleared and I was able to go out onto the road and, scoop him up and
deposit him gently into my trunk. I then
drove him to a park with a small creek and with some effort, I might add, was
able to get him into the creek safely.”
And so ends a saga in the life of one Sandy Klossner
and a lost and forlorn turtle.
When she arrived home she called me (Fr. Robert) and shared her
adventure with me. We reflected together
on what our Lord was saying to her through this experience. Now let me set the context. Sandy and I had just had breakfast with
another member of our congregation in which we wrestled with how to fit our G12
Discipling vision into our already busy lives AND
ALONG CAME THE TURTLE!
Can you guess what our Lord was saying to
“As I thought about all this. I felt like God was
impressing upon me something that he wanted me to learn about G12.
One thought was that if I could have compassion on an animal, how much more should I have compassion on humans made in the image of
God. Another thought was that although I may not be afraid of animals, I
was way out of my comfort zone. It also took effort. One try wasn't
enough. I'm sure as I think more on it, I'll
come up with more things as well.”
Yes, the lost are sometimes like snapping turtles but still they need
to be saved and it takes our willingness to step out of our comfort zones and
to take time away from our chores to rescue them. But we don’t just stop at rescuing them. We, like our Lord, then choose to walk with
them and allow the Holy Spirit to lead us both in the critically important
journey into becoming mature and faithful disciples of Jesus Christ. This is what Discipling
is all about and this is what the G12 Strategy accomplishes.
God won a victory in
How much more important are the human “snapping turtles” all around us?
“It is a serious
thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the
dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature
which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a
horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a
nightmare. All day long we are, in some
degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations . . . There
are no ordinary people. You have never
talked to a mere mortal. Nations,
cultures, arts, civilizations – these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom
we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit – immortal horrors or
everlasting splendors.” C.S. Lewis “The
Weight of Glory”
Yes, it’s to immortal souls God is calling us to share our life with! If we act we offer then heaven! If we don’t they will go most assuredly to hell!
The choice to accept and act upon
His call is ours! So what do we do? We listen to our heart as
Amen and Amen! Let’s Pray!