May 04, 2003 - Third
Sunday of Easter
1 John 3:1-7
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CEV
Luke 24:36b-48
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“We Have Nothing To Fear”
“Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts?”
Good question. Could our fears today be
fueled by the SARS outbreak? Time magazine’s cover this week
asks, “How scared should you be?” If not that, there’s till the reality of
a flat, or worse, economy and a 6% unemployment rate, which in itself may not
really reflect how bad the job situation actually is. And even though the
war in
There is no question that we live in
frightening, sometimes even perilous, times. That said, we could also
acknowledge that these are far from “the worst of times” and situations similar
to our own have been faced before. As I studied the Scripture lessons for
today and gave thought to this time with you I recalled President Roosevelt’s
words in his first inaugural address. In fact, remembering a day in this
pulpit when I quoted “off the cuff” and attributed wrongly, I looked up the
address and found his remarks rather timely. When
Fear, we know, is an emotion. Those who have studied the human psyche, from Aristotle in The Rhetoric to William James, Sigmund Freud and beyond, have placed fear among the primal human emotions that motivate us, for good or ill, to certain behaviors or reactions. The word comes to us from Old English, Old High German, and Icelandic roots meaning ‘danger,’ ‘mischief,’ and ‘plague.’ One definition offered is that ‘fear’ is a “painful emotion or passion excited by the expectation of evil, or the apprehension of impending danger; anxiety.”
If emotions are primal, natural parts of the human psyche, how can we learn to deal with something like fear? First, we have to remind ourselves that we can discriminate between fear that is healthy and that which isn’t. Fear, as in awe or reverence or respect is healthy. We can ‘fear’ God or have a reaction of fear to that which imperils our persons, or those of whom we love, so that we react appropriately. Those fears are healthy. Unhealthy fears are those that lock us up, paralyze us and keep us from acting at all. It is that sort of fear that we must confront and overcome. That kind of fear can often be described through the use of an acronym I came across using FEAR: False Evidence Appearing Real. Unhealthy fears feed on our doubts, our insecurities, and our perceived shortcomings and make them more than they are.
Jesus confronts the unhealthy fears of the disciples, and ours too, when he stands among them. His words of greeting are the same ones he had instructed them to use, “Peace be with you.” Shalom, irene, peace, which is so much more than the mere absence of conflict, anxiety or dread. Jesus’ greeting is the very fullness of the Divine presence. To rest in the presence of God is to know peace and Jesus brings that presence into the heart and life and conduct of all who are drawn into relationship with him.
The fourteenth century was not lacking in fear – plague and brutal conflict were everywhere. In the midst of that fearful world a young woman had a vision that continues to speak to us six hundred years later. Julian of Norwich had an encounter with the living Christ that led her to understand the depth and breadth of God’s nature. She discovered, as one contemporary author says of her, “If we properly understand God’s nature and God’s action in history, then we will no longer be held back by fear, because God’s nature is, as she puts it, ‘kindness’: ‘God is kind in his being’ (chapter 62).” [F.C. Bauerschmidt, Theology Today — April 2003, p. 73]
When Dame Julian says this of God she’s not just talking about an affect, ‘being kind.’ As Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt tells us:
. . .in Middle English the word “kindness” has a very complex set of meanings that today are largely lost to us: it indicates the benevolence that we mean today when we speak of someone as “kind”; it also indicates the nature of a thing, what “kind” of thing it is, as when we speak of “humankind”; and somewhere between benevolence and nature, it indicates the relationship between those who share a common nature – thus the words “kin” and “kindred.” In any particular instance, the word “kind” may well carry all of those meanings. To say that someone treated you ”kindly” would be to say that she acted in a benevolent way (kindly), as if you were her relative (kindred), and in a way that is only nature to someone like her (her kind). Julian’s use of this term encompasses all of these meanings. Thus, when she says that “God is kind in his being” she is making a claim not only about God’s benevolence, but also about God’s relationship to us, as well as naming God, not as a created nature (natura naturata) but as nature’s creator (natura naturans), and thus making a claim about the nature of reality as a whole.
[Theology Today – April 2003, p. 73]
The entire world around us is good because God is good and God is the ground of all being. The relationship that we are drawn into with God in Christ allows us to share in the presence and in the peace. We are God’s kindred and, thus, have nothing to fear.
John the “beloved disciple,” the elder who is the one apostle not to suffer martyrdom, writes of this relationship when he says that, “we are God’s children now.” This, then, is the love that the Father has bestowed on us that we are drawn into God’s family. The love expressed in Christ, in his life, in his death and resurrection, and in his continuing presence through the Church, is the sign of God’s absolute identification with the human condition. God’s willingness to be one with us, and Julian uses the term ‘oned’ again and again, opens us to the possibility of transformation, renewal, and peace. We have nothing to fear because fear itself has been transformed for us in Christ, who has confronted this primal emotion and transformed it by his self-giving love.
“God is love,” John tells us, and if we are God’s children – after God’s kind – we are to be love in our world. Our response to God’s action, God’s gift of love in Christ, is to be disciples, followers, who continue loving in the same concrete ways that Jesus himself did. “We are God’s children now: what we will be has not yet been revealed.” Those words point us to the wonder of the future, but remind us that our living is in the here-now. We live in the present toward the future as we continue to make the presence of God real, enfleshed, through our actions and attitudes.
“Jesus himself stood among them” and stands among us still, for “we are God’s children now.” That living presence is the ground and the guarantor of our covenant community. Jesus’ sharing food with them not only gave us the great sacrament of the Eucharist, the Lord’s Supper – which we ought not to neglect nor to share infrequently – but also imparts a sacramental character to every meal shared among Christians. When we gather, Christ is in our midst and the fullness of God’s presence and God’s peace should be evident. We have nothing to fear.
On