Dr. Seuss Sermon Series
July 26, 2020
Matthew 26:36-39
“What Was I Scared Of?: Fear and the Christian Life
This Dr. Seuss story always reminds me of an encounter I
had almost 20 years ago when I lived in Philadelphia. I lived at 36th
Street and during the summer that I was there started taking a two-mile walk in
the evening down Walnut Street to 23rd Street and looping back over
to Chestnut Street to come back. One time, as I was coming along 23rd
Street, this guy came out of a building and turned right in front of me. At
that time in my life, I was a notoriously fast walker. I think it was a safety
mechanism: I wasn’t going to let fear keep me from walking in the city by
myself, but I was going to move and stay alert and stay safe. I also don’t like
people walking right in front of me, so when this guy came out right in front
of me, I started walking faster. I caught up to him at the next intersection
and as we both stepped off the curb at the same time, he turned to me and said,
(a cleaned-up version), “Shoot, you walk faster than me. Both of us scared of
each other and so we’re trying to walk our butts off. Have a good one, man.” I
smiled and laughed and we went our separate ways. This is almost the same thing
as what happened in the story “What Was I Scared Of?”, except for the narrator,
it happens multiple times, and neither the narrator nor the Green Pants ever
talk to each other until the very end. Instead, they stay in fear of each other
through multiple encounters.
Fear is one of our basic human emotions. It has served us
well over the centuries, protecting us from harm and keeping us safe. At the
same time, though, it can also be a hindrance. When you circle the wagons to
keep safe, like the 19th century settlers did when traveling out
west, it protected everyone in the group against an outside danger. However, at
some point, they had to un-circle the wagons in order to continue their journey
westward. Sometimes, though, we circle our wagons and we keep them circled. It
protects us, but it also means we’re stuck in that one place. We can’t move on
until we un-circle. Fear protects us and it limits our potential and our
capabilities until we’re willing to overcome it. The problem is that we also
feel vulnerable when we feel afraid and that can make it hard to look past our
fear and move on.
There are many, many Scriptures verses that address fear.
“Do not be afraid” is a common refrain throughout the Bible, spoken by God and
by angels. At the beginning of the month, knowing that I was going to preaching
on fear in a few weeks, I started paying attention to when fear came up in my
daily devotional readings. And you know what? It started popping up all over
the place when I was looking for it. I found verses about asking God for the strength
to face fears, about God loosing the bonds of fears, being delivered from fear,
prayers asking for God to transform fear.
One
of the places we find that prayer is in the passage we read this morning from
Matthew. This is Thursday night of Holy Week. It’s after the Last Supper and
after Jesus has told Peter that he’s going to deny him three times. Jesus goes
to Gethsemane to pray and asks Peter, James, and John to come with him. It’s
late; they’ve had a big meal. Peter, James, and John fall asleep, causing Jesus
to feel even more alone. He knows what’s coming, what’s imminent. There are a
variety of adjectives used to describe how he’s feeling, depending on which
translation you read. He’s feeling sorrowful, troubled, overwhelmed,
distressed, depressed, heavy, anxious, grieved, anguished, sad, despairing,
agitated, upset, and crushed. Those adjectives all fall into two basic
categories of emotions: sadness and fear. Jesus is feeling sad and he’s feeling
fear, thinking about what’s about to happen: betrayal, crucifixion, and death.
Being fully God, he knows that’s not the end of the story. Resurrection will
come in three days. Being fully human, he’d rather skip straight to it and not
go through the cross. Jesus prays, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup
of suffering be taken from me. Yet not what I want, but what you want.” Jesus
faces his fears head on. He does not run away from Gethsemane or go hide. Jesus
does not let his fears keep him from pressing on and following God’s will.
How often, though, do we let our fears keep us back, let
our fears keep us with the wagons circled, unwilling to press on? How often do
we pray for what we want and not add
that what God wants is more
important? “Thy will be done,” not
mine. Sometimes our fear keeps us from effective Christian ministry. We’re
afraid to speak up, lest we be ridiculed. We’re afraid to help out, lest we be
rejected. We’re afraid to give, lest we not have enough. During the pandemic,
our giving to the church has gone down by 20%. Thankfully, our expenses have
also gone down by 20%. You know what’s gone up? Our church giving to other
charities and ministries, like food banks and shelters. Our outreach team has
stayed busy figuring out how we can help during this time and there has been enough.
If our offering were to increase, we would increase how much we give away.
Helping others is important and we don’t want to be afraid to help. “We cannot
fulfill our calling if we are paralyzed into inactivity by a fear of getting
hurt, or making mistakes, or getting involved in messy or complicated
situations. That is the path of fear, not the path of faith.”[1]
There’s a saying you may have heard: “Fear knocked on the
door. Faith answered. There was no one there.” I would say that’s not entirely
accurate. Faith does not make fear go away. Faith gives us “the disciplines,
confidence, and courage to move forward in spite of our fears.”[2]
It might be better to say: Fear knocked on the door. Faith answered and, with a
degree of stubbornness from the Zax, said, I’m going to do this, anyway. I’m
not going to let fear stop me. That was Jesus there on Gethsemane, who, shortly
after that prayer, was betrayed by Judas with a kiss and arrested.
The only way to overcome your fears is to face them. Name
them. Talk about them. If you’re not sure who will listen, call me. Let’s talk
out loud about what we’re afraid of. Let’s share advice from lessons learned
about previous facings of fears. Let’s transform them and pray that prayer, “Let my fears be cast out;
let them be transformed. Let me speak only truth, that I might live with
integrity.”[3] Psalm
5:9 says “Not a word from their mouth can be trusted,” and it reminds me of my
favorite line from the movie Frozen II. Elsa learns about the history between
her kingdom and the people of Northuldra. She hears the memory of her
grandfather, King Runeard when he said, “The Northuldra follow magic, which
means we can never trust them…Magic makes people feel too powerful, too
entitled. It makes them think they can defy the will of a king.” Elsa responds,
“That is not what magic does. That's just your fear. Fear is what can't be
trusted.” Fear is a feeling and feelings just are. Another line from that movie
is when Sven says, “You feel what you feel and your feelings are real.” It’s
all about what you do with those feelings and how you act on them.
We live during an extra fearful time because of COVID-19.
The pandemic has heightened our sense of fear and people are responding in a
variety of ways. Take some time this week to name your fears, especially about
the coronavirus, and examine how you’re handling that fear. Is it sucking life
out of you? Or are you managing it in healthy, life-giving ways? I saw a meme
last week that said, “Fear does not stop death. It stops life. Worrying does
not take away tomorrow’s troubles. It takes away today’s peace.” Another way to
put it would be to quote Franklin Delano Roosevelt, “The only thing you have to
fear is fear itself.” In “What Was I Scared Of?” the narrator tries denying
that he’s afraid, he tries lying about it, he tries the circled wagon approach
where he stops going his favorite places and doing his favorite things. But
once he finally came face to face with those Green Pants, they got to meet each
other and get to know each other and found out that they really had a lot in
common and they could be friends.
This last prayer is a paraphrase of Psalm 140, “Deliver
me, O Giver of Breath and Life, from the fears that beset me. Help me confront
the inner shadows that hold me in bondage… that distract me from all I yearn to
be, and hinder the awakening of hidden gifts that I long to share with others.
For I desire to be a channel of peace; to reflect the beauty of Creation! O,
that I might show your love to all whom I meet, and mirror your mercy and
justice! Guide me, O Beloved, that I may become spiritually mature; Love me
into new life!”[4]
Amen.
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