Be with us, O Lord, for if you are with us, nothing
else matters; and if you are not with us, nothing else matters. Amen.
FDR
famously said “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” He said that in
his first inaugural address in 1933 at a time when the nation was in the depths
of the Great Depression. Fear can be paralyzing, keeping us from moving
forward. When we are gripped by fear we do things that we never do otherwise.
When we are afraid of being caught, we will lie. When we are threatened, we
will hurt others to protect ourselves. When we fear that there might not be
enough, we hoard. When we fear death, we end up denying the vigor of life. Fear
narrows our vision and calls out the worst in us. That’s probably the reason
why so often in Scripture we hear the refrain “Do not be afraid.” As author
Marilynne Robinson recently wrote, “Contemporary America is full of fear, and
fear is not a Christian habit of mind.” Today,
the Psalmist puts it this way: “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom
then shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom then shall I be
afraid?”
But
what does it mean to not be afraid? That’s easier said than done. When you have
a full-time job, it’s easy to not be afraid about financial matters. When your
children are safe at home and not out with friends, it’s easy to not be afraid
about their safety. When the world is at peace, it’s easy to not be afraid of
domestic terrorism. When you live in an urban area, it’s easy to not be afraid
of bears, or snakes, or whatever other phobias of nature you have. Fear often
grips us when we have more unknown variables than we do certainty. So when we
don’t know how the stock market will affect our retirement accounts, we become
afraid. When we don’t know if the disease will ever be treated, we become
afraid. When we don’t know what happens after death, we become afraid. When we
don’t know what that really big spider is going to do next, we become afraid.
Fear is future oriented, and is so toxic because it prevents us from living in
the present moment.
We
generally accept the fact that you cannot change the past, and the present
moment only lasts for a fleeting second, and so our minds are so often fixed on
the future. If we are to not be afraid, we need to know that “The God who is
behind us is greater than any problem that is ahead of us.” Or as a Christian
mystic once remarked “All shall be well, and all manner of things shall be
well.” Yes, bad things might happen. Yes, there is uncertainty in the future
financial markets. Yes, cancer will still rear its ugly head. Yes, it is likely
that terrorists will make attacks in our country. Yes, we will all die. But as
the opening prayer to this sermon stated, so long as God is with us, none of
that matters. There is no obstacle, no pain, no rejection, no fear so great
that it cannot be overcome with the almighty and redeeming love of God.
The
Psalm today concludes with “O tarry and await the Lord’s pleasure; be strong,
and he shall comfort your heart; wait patiently for the Lord.” We don’t know
what the future holds for us, other than the fact that God will be with us in
it. This is the story we read from Genesis. A few chapters earlier in Genesis,
God tells Abraham that he will be the father of a great nation and that he
should get up and leave his tribe and move to a new land that God will give to
him. And so Abraham goes, but he and his wife, Sarah, remain childless into
their old age. And so he asks of God, “What will you give me, for I continue
childless.” He is fearful of the future, wondering when this promise will ever
come to pass.
And
then God say “look up and count the stars; so numerous will be your
descendants.” I’ve always found that to be a rather interesting, and slightly
less than helpful, reassurance. Yes, the night sky is beautiful, but how
exactly does that beauty translate to children? It doesn’t. Abraham doesn’t
know that stars are actually flaming balls of gas that are light years away and
that the light he was seeing is actually millions of years old. But in looking
up at the night sky, he becomes aware of something greater than himself,
something bigger than all of his fears and uncertainties. The God who created
those stars billions of years ago is right there with Abraham, and right here
with us, and will be right there with generations yet to come.
Genesis
then describes an odd sort of ritual with a heifer, goat, ram, turtledove, and
pigeon. In the culture of Abraham, this would be clear that God was making a
covenant with Abraham. It’s not quite the proof that Abraham was looking for;
it’s not a positive home pregnancy test. But it is a commitment to always being
present. I’ve shared this quote before and it is worth repeating over and over
again: “what God gives us is minimum protection, with maximum support.”
Heartache and disaster might await us in the future, but so does God’s love.
I
find it to be fascinating that this covenant is made, or at least is perceived,
in a dream. The text tells us that Abraham fell into a deep sleep and then the
covenant is made. This is a theme that we find throughout Scripture, that God
speaks to us through dreams. Perhaps it is because our conscious and rational
minds too often fight these grand promises of God. Perhaps it is because when
we are awake we focus on speaking more than listening. Perhaps it is because
God’s grace is rooted not in our mind, but in God’s heart.
My
Lenten disciple this year is to read poetry. I’ve never been much a reader of
poetry, but I know that I’m missing some beauty and wisdom in not reading it.
So each day, I’ve been reading a poem from a wonderful collection of poems
called Felicity by Mary Oliver. One
poem, entitled “The World I Live In” has struck me as being quite profound.
I have refused to live locked in the orderly house of reasons and proofs.
The world I live in and believe in is wider than that. And anyways, what’s wrong with maybe?
You wouldn’t believe what once or twice I have seen. I’ll just tell you this:
only if there are angels in your head will you ever, possibly, see one.
In one of his letters, St. Paul
writes that God’s power working in us will do infinitely more than we can ask or
imagine. Only if the dream of God is implanted within us will we ever see it in
the world, and trust it to remain there in the future. If we do not take the
time to focus on the present, to pray, to reflect, to slow down, be still and
know that God is God, then it will be a real struggle for us to see the peace
and presence of God in the future. So pay attention to your dreams. Pay
attention to those moments that seem to demand your attention that you might
otherwise overlook. They very well may be God’s angels speaking to you,
whispering through the noise of your mind and the world that God will always be
with you.
Not
being afraid is about trusting in God’s promise to always be near. Abraham
believed this, and the text says that “the Lord
reckoned it to him as righteousness.” The question posed to us is “where do you
put your trust?” To be clear, trusting in God doesn’t mean sitting on your
hands and waiting for God to take care of everything. To trust God doesn’t mean
that we don’t plant food, or save for retirement, or have insurance policies.
Trusting God means knowing that, in the end, “all shall be well.” Trusting God
means living as if death, or failure, or poverty, or embarrassment isn’t the worst thing
that can happen to us. Trusting God means choosing love at every step of our
lives and not being paralyzed by the fear of what might happen if we do so.
Our
Gospel text today puts it in different terms, that of the fox versus the hen.
The Pharisees come to Jesus to warn him that if he doesn’t stop his ministry, that
Herod is coming for him. It’s likely that the Pharisees, who would also prefer
that Jesus stop, are trying to frighten him into ceasing his ministry. Jesus
responds, “You go and tell that fox that I’ll be finished when I’m finished.” Jesus
refuses to let fear stop his work. He’s going to keep on fighting evil,
healing, and preaching. Jesus also knows that he will be killed for these
actions, but he knows that it would be far worse than death to not accomplish this
work.
Contrasting
himself to the fox, Jesus then says “How often have I desired to gather your
children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings.” A hen has no
fangs, no claws, no rippling muscles. Instead, the mother hen gathers her
chicks under her wings. Her body becomes a shield, with open arms and an
exposed breast. This is the vulnerable position that Jesus takes with his
outstretched arms of love on the Cross. Security is an illusion and safety is
an idol, and so Jesus doesn’t use other Biblical images for himself that might have
been more comforting. Jesus could have drawn from Scripture and said that he
was an eagle or a lion who would stand against the foxes of this world. But he
doesn’t.
To
be sure, we know how this story ends. The fox does indeed come for the hen. The
chicks who are gathered under the wings scatter when the hen cries out in pain.
But the fox does not harm them. The hen knows that being rejected by its own
chicks isn’t the worst thing that could happen. The hen knows that her death
isn’t the worst thing that could happen. The hen knows that the fox does not
get the final say. The hen knows that the world will be saved, not through
power, or might, or cunning, but by vulnerable and open love. The hen knows
that, by God’s mercy, all shall be well.
So
do not be afraid. There are certainly foxes out there, but just as Abraham was
protected under the wings of God, so are we. Fear makes us forget the promises
and steadfast presence of God, and so sometimes God comes to us through our
dreams and still small voices to slip past the fears and uncertainties of our
rationalities. The objects of our fears are not the worst things that can
happen to us, but being prevented from living the Gospel by being paralyzed by
fear is. Our fears are put to rest because our Messiah is a mother hen, making
all things well and gathering us in love.
May the blessing of the
God of Abraham and Sarah, and of Jesus Christ born of our sister Mary, and of
the Holy Spirit, who broods over the world as a mother over her children, be
upon you and remain with you always. Amen.
