Less
than two weeks ago the Pope released a new book about the childhood of Jesus of
Nazareth. I haven’t read it. But, you may have heard that the contents of
the book have provoked a bit of controversy.
For example, the Pope points out that the Gospels make no mention of the
presence of barnyard animals at Jesus’ birth, and that the scriptures say that
the angels speak rather than sing.
Further, the Pope explains that December 25th was most certainly not the
date of Jesus’ birth. None of this is new
information. One tabloid newspaper
decided to run with the headline, "Killjoy Pope crushes Christmas Nativity
Traditions." That seems more than a
little unfair.
Beneath
this manufactured controversy, there is a deeper question that has to do with
what sacred texts are and how they’re supposed to be read. I don’t read the Bible in order to become
informed about what happened thousands of years ago. The point of reading scripture is not to find
out about things that took place in the past.
For me, the point of reading scripture is to become a bit more
thoughtful about the human condition.
As
Unitarian Universalists we have an exceedingly broad definition of what
constitutes our scriptures and holy texts.
This past week we were visited by a comparative religion class from a
Catholic girl’s high school that was taking a field trip to learn about worship
practices in different religious traditions.
They stopped here and I spoke with them about what our worship services
are like. One girl asked whether we had
a sacred text. I had each of the
students open up to the back of our hymnals where, in the span of just two
pages, they could find readings from a contemporary female poet, an Inuit
shaman, Ralph Waldo Emerson, a poet of the Harlem Renaissance, a Catholic
liberation theologian, a Bengali author, the Hebrew prophet Isaiah, and a guy
whose named I confessed to them did not even recognize. (I looked him up later and discovered that he
was a British nature writer from the nineteenth century.) Ours is a very broad understanding of
scripture, indeed. We turn to many
sources to inform our understanding of human experience and the human condition. In just a minute I’m going to get around to
talking about fear, but I think this broad understanding of scripture says
something about a lack of fear on our part.
We are not afraid to imagine that the holy might speak in many different
lands, in many different tongues, in ways that are alien to us.
I
want to tell you about how I chose the subject of my sermon this morning. Each year when the calendar turns to
December, I always find myself rereading and revisiting the accounts of Jesus’
birth as told in the Gospel according to Matthew and the Gospel according to
Luke. Each time I reread those stories,
I’m always struck by the repetitive appearances of angels, and by the fact that
each time an angel appears in the Gospels, the first words spoken by the angel
– or sung by the angel, because we don’t have to be scriptural literalists – are
always the same. Spoken or sung, the
first words are always, “Be not afraid.”
I always find these words to be somewhat striking. For one thing, I think it is an interesting
thing for an angel to say. And, for
another thing, the spoken words of the angels always remind me that we live in
a world where fear exists. They say
something about the human condition.
So
now you have an idea of how the brain of a minister, or at least of this
minister, works. Only, I’m pretty sure
it’s not just me. A few days ago I was
having a conversation with an esteemed minister in our movement. We were talking and she suggested that I
should preach a sermon on the subject of fear.
What a coincidence, I replied, explaining to her that it was the theme
for my service this morning. She shared
with me that she once did an entire sermon series on fear in the month of
December. And did I know, she asked,
that whenever an angel appears in the Bible the angel’s first words are always… “Be not afraid,” I said, finishing her
sentence. It’s like there was this
uncanny, freaky, Vulcan mind-meld going on between us.
Fear,
as we all know, is present our society today.
Incidences of senseless and random violence in public places lead some
to a certain degree of nervousness or a heightened vigilance. Economic confidence continues to be shaky and
people experience economic insecurity.
From arsenic in rice to mercury in fish to concerns about the
genetically modified foods, there is fear about what we put into our
bodies. Our fears have to do with
weather and climate, with privacy and identity, with health and wellness. For some in our society, shifting racial
demographics are seen as a threat and as cause for alarm. In the past four years our nation has seen a
troubling increase in the activity and number of hate groups, a fact that is
appropriately frightening to people of color as well as anyone who cares about
racial justice. To these fears we might
add our own personal ones that lurk in the dark recesses of our imagination. That fear is so abundant might strike us as
perplexing if we would only take a wider view and realize that we live at a
time and in a place that is extraordinarily safe in comparison to most of
recorded human history.
Yesterday
was World AIDS Day and earlier in our service we heard from a member of the
congregation who spoke powerfully and passionately about observing this day. In addition to his words, I might observe
just how linked HIV/AIDS has been with fear and how important dealing with fear
is when it comes to combating the spread of HIV. Those of us who remember the eighties and
early nineties may remember what a scary time it was, especially for those of
us who happened to come of age during those years. We’re aware in the fight against HIV/AIDS
that this disease is not just physical, but there has also been a social stigma
to address, and I think it can absolutely be said that fear has played an
enormous role in stigmatization and discrimination. I don’t claim any public health expertise,
but I would have to believe that addressing fear and denial, which is a form of
fear, are probably an important part of public health strategies.
In
his book Freedom from Fear the late
Unitarian Universalist minister Forrest Church offers a typology of fear:
Fear,
when it is located in the body, is called fright. It is instinctive fear that causes a fight or
flight response within the body.
Fear,
when it is located in the intellect, manifests itself as worry. It is “produced by our worst
imaginings.” Worry is a thinking form of
fear.
Fear
can be located in our conscience. When
our conscience is troubled by fear, the result is guilt.
In
our emotions, fear shows itself as insecurity; it is “prompted by feelings of
inadequacy.”
Finally,
fear can be localized in our souls. Such
fear takes the form of dread, an existential “fear generated by life’s
fundamental uncertainty.” “Dread,” writes
Forrest Church, is “a particularly crippling form on anxiety driven by the
desire to control things that lie beyond our control… [Dread] takes our entire
future – which really does lie beyond our control – and casts a pall over it. The epitome of negative thinking, dread
paints such a bleak picture that any attempt to shine a light on the subject
seems in vain.”
Fear,
Church continues, darkens the future and ruins the present. He writes, “Even if safety should become our
primary objective in life, to keep ourselves safe is impossible… To be free of
acceptable risk is not life’s goal, but its enemy. By inviting non-being to the party years
before one’s own death day, fear protects us not from death but from life.”
Fear
protects us not from death but from life.
One of my professors used to bring his family’s golden retriever with
him to the office, the gentlest and dopiest creature I’ve ever met. In conversation one day I learned that some
days his dog went to work with his wife, a psychologist whose practice
specialized in helping people to overcome their phobias. Her patients were people whose lives had
become paralyzed by fear. A fear of dogs
meant not being able to walk around the neighborhood. A fear of flying meant separation from loved
ones. Other kinds of fear led her
patients to obsessive-compulsive behavior, depression, isolation, loneliness,
and lack of success in romantic relationships, work, and other life
pursuits. “Fear protects us not from
death, but from life.”
In
Forrest Church’s book, he talks about courage as the key to facing fear. He talks about cultivating the courage to
act, the courage to love, and the courage to be. These forms of courage do not insulate us
against pain, loss, or struggle. They do
not guarantee a life that is easy or a life that is always pleasant. However, these forms of courage move us in
the direction of being able to make our own lives worth living. With the courage to act, “the story of our
life will be something we are eager to develop, not something we are
apprehensive to watch unfold.” The
courage to love involves making ourselves vulnerable, but it turns out that
this is a necessary risk. “To avoid the
risk of love is to cower from life’s only perfect promise.” And, the courage to be involves having the
maturity to live in the face of uncertainty and to accept that most things are
beyond our control.
In
my conversation with my esteemed colleague she said something that I think is
incredibly wise. Great blessings spark
fear, she said. And this is the
meditation I’d like to conclude with.
In
the Gospels, whenever an angel appears, whether the angel appears months before
Jesus’ birth or days after Jesus’ death, the angel always speaks the same
message, “Be not afraid.” And then the
angel announces a wonderful blessing. It
is not that after the angel arrives everything turns out perfectly or becomes
easy. Rather, the angel announces a way
forward that is deeply meaningful, filled with awe and wonder and the
possibility of joy. When the angel says,
“Don’t be afraid. Chill out. Relax.
Don’t panic,” I don’t think it is in reference to the fright of seeing
of angel. It is more of a way of saying,
“There is a blessing before you that will require love and courage from you.”
Great
blessings spark fear. Has this ever been
your experience? You get the job and
then you wonder, “Am I really up to it?”
You start a project and you think not what if this fails, but what if
this succeeds? What then? You receive love and you worry that love will
demand more from you than you could possibly imagine. Has a blessing ever made you afraid? Has the threat of blessing ever made you
shiver? What fears have blessings
awakened? I write these words in
awareness that this fall for me – having become a father and having moved with
the church into this new church home – has included blessings and the fear
awakened by great blessings.
Life
is before you. Be not afraid. May you face it with the courage to be and
the courage to love.
