Homily for Sunday,
June 24, 2012
Buck Mountain and Graves Chapel
Lessons:
1 Samuel 17: (1a, 4-11,19-23) 32-49
Psalm 9: 9-20
2 Corinthians 6: 1-13
Mark 4: 35-41
The Charlie Brown Christmas
special, which has been airing every December since I was a child, features
those famous Peanuts cartoon
children, creations of the late Charles Schultz. Of course, we come to realize
as we grow older that Charlie Brown and his fellow inhabitants of the Peanuts world are really more like
miniature adults than real children. In the half-hour Christmas special, Lucy
van Pelt convinces Charlie Brown that he needs some advice from his
psychiatrist—that would be herself. She charges a nickel for her services and then
pelts dear Charlie with questions about the things he fears. Finally, she asks him, “Do you think
you have pantophobia?” Charlie
asks, “What’s pantophobia?” and Lucy replies, “The fear of everything.” Charlie Brown doesn’t hesitate a second
before replying, “That’s
it.!” Dear Charles Schultz really
understood the human condition pretty well.
Fear. It is almost always with us, and since fear concerns the
future, what may be, it keeps us from being fully present in the current
moment, where life is, almost all of the time, pretty wonderful. The
future we tend to inhabit in fear is not a real place. God can’t be found
there. When we are lost in our fears, we isolate ourselves from God. Even when
the present time we are experiencing is painful or difficult, staying focused
on what we need to do to get through it and turning to God in prayer will
always have a better outcome than letting ourselves succumb to fear and push
God aside.
Anxiety. Worry. Sorrow. Anger. Fear
can be at the root of all these feelings. If I’m anxious about a task I’ve been
given, it’s probably because I’m afraid I won’t be able to do it—I may fear I
lack the time or the skills to complete the job satisfactorily. If I’m worried about a loved one who is
late in arriving home, I may fear he has been in an accident. Sadness can be the result of fearing
there is no hope, that what I’m experiencing now cannot get better. Even the
bluster of anger can disguise the fear beneath it—a parent may react with a
burst of anger at a child who could have hurt herself doing something foolish
or dangerous. Fear compels. Fear
also fascinates.
Picture this: You are a teenager,
put in charge of your younger siblings and cousins at a family gathering. In a
game of hide and seek or tag, you are IT, and you stalk your prey. When you
come upon a gaggle of the little tykes, you shout “Boo!” They squeal in an
instant of genuine terror, run off in all directions, but then scamper back to
you, giggling and eager for more. We seem to learn as children that fear can be
fascinating fun. Our relationship with fear is a complicated one.
We love scary stories and scary
movies, even though a simple reminder of one, say hearing a few seconds of the Jaws theme song, can send our hearts
racing. I wonder if our childhood
games are descended from the training primitive parents gave their children in
how to hunt (or evade) the very dangerous beasts that inhabited their world.
Prehistoric people lived in a world fraught with immediate danger—surviving
from one day to the next was their sole preoccupation. Fear and the adrenaline-charged responses
to it were lifesaving.
So does human prehistory explain
why fear is still so much a part of our lives? For most 21st century
Americans, at least for those of us here today, simply surviving from day to
day is not a challenge. We sleep in comfortable homes, trust that our cars will
start when we plan to drive somewhere, have access to decent health care when
we need it, and don’t live anywhere near saber-toothed tigers. Yet, we often
persist in letting fear compel our thoughts and motivate our actions. Christ
may very well say to us, as he said to the disciples in the midst of the storm,
“Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” Christ entered history 2000 years ago to offer an
alternative to life-usurping fear.
“Why are you afraid? Have you still
no faith?” Today’s lesson from
Mark is one of those gospel moments when I can’t help but feel a little sorry
for the disciples who awaken Jesus to hear those words. Storm-tossed at sea in
a small wooden boat, they seem justified in their fear. But the key word Jesus
speaks is “still.” They know Jesus, they have seen him perform miracles, and he
thinks they should know by now that He can be trusted to save them. As to the rest of us Christians, fear
comes easily to the disciples when they forget the essential message of our
faith. We no longer need to fear death.
So why does David get it right? Why
is the boy David not afraid of Goliath? Is courage the opposite of fear? To Saul and to David’s brothers (and
probably to every other onlooker) David’s going out to meet the giant Goliath
in battle must have appeared more foolhardy than courageous. This is the people’s first introduction
to David, who will go on to become Israel’s greatest (and most beloved)
king. Over the course of his long
life, David makes some terrible mistakes, but his confrontation with Goliath is
not one of them. He may look like a simple boy with a slingshot, but he is
well-armed. The source of his courage is his faith, and it is faith that is the
opposite of fear. After the ugly
giant taunts and curses him, David responds, “You come to me with sword and
spear and javelin; but I come to you in the name of the LORD of hosts, the God
of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This very day the LORD will
deliver you into my hand, and I will strike you down and cut off your head.” David depends on the Lord for his
victory over certain death, and his faith is rewarded. It is that kind of
trusting faith Jesus wanted from his disciples in the storm- tossed boat.
Paul says to the Corinthians, “I
speak as to children—open wide your hearts also.” In these brief words, I believe Paul is alluding to the
aspect of child-nature that makes faith easy for the young. Children are very
trusting, and that willingness to be vulnerable may be why Christ said, “I tell
you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the
kingdom of heaven.” In today’s world, we wish children were not so trusting,
and parents and grandparents hover nearby, teaching them not to speak to
strangers. We wish fear could always be just part of a game for our children.
Remember how children return to
play so easily even after they have been terrified by IT? They are able to put aside their fear
because they trust that the grown-ups in their lives will always be there to
protect them. The Lord wants all of us, like children, to believe in him with
complete trust, to embrace him like a sister or a mother, a brother or a father,
and not avoid him like a stranger when we are afraid.
We defeat fear with faith. We can
also overcome fear with love.
Like a modern-day soldier, it is
not only David’s love of God that sends him into battle with Goliath. He also loves his country, his people,
and his family. I bet we all have
personal stories of someone we know who stood strong in a fearful situation
because of love. Our best example
of the connection between love and faith is Jesus Christ himself. Knowing the
gruesome cross was coming, he persisted in following faithfully the path before
him so that he could give his life for us. As we say, there is no greater love
than this.
If the fear of death is our most
basic and underlying fear, then we have not fully accepted the self-sacrifice
of Jesus as a price he paid so that we might have life eternal. Like the
disciples in the boat, we still become fearful for our lives in every storm.
Jesus’s words are intended for us: “Why are you afraid? Have you still no
faith?”
He invites us to let go of our fear
and let him protect us. Amen.
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