A Fourth Church Sermon by John Buchanan

February 25, 2007 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

You Will Not Fear . . .

John Buchanan
Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 91
Exodus 14:5–14
Luke 4:1–13

“You will not fear the terror of the night,
or the arrow that flies by day,
or the pestilence that stalks in darkness,
or the destruction that wastes at noonday”

Psalm 91:5, 6

Certainly, God remains “the Lord,” sovereign in all ways.
Nonetheless, God is also “our Lord,” a divinity we can imagine
holding shares in our enterprises, caring what happens to us.
Is any thought more consoling? What are human beings that
God should care for us? . . . These are deep matters, ultimate
mysteries, driving to the roots of what it means to be human.
If we derive from the providential will of a God all-powerful
and all-good, then our lives may make great sense, despite
their apparent chaos. If God holds our hand, then even though
we walk through the valley of the shadow of darkness,
we may fear no evil.

John Carmody
Psalms for Times of Trouble

“The Secretary of Homeland Security has elevated the Homeland Security Advisory System Threat Condition to High, or Orange, for all domestic commercial aviation.”

Now I don’t know about you, but that is not information I’m particularly happy to have as I’m waiting to board an airplane. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do with that information. We contacted the Department of Homeland Security with that question, and there is a list of things you are supposed to do, including reviewing your own emergency disaster plan and making sure your emergency supplies are adequate. But at the moment, waiting to board the plane, all I can do is look a little more carefully at my fellow passengers—on one occasion, recently, several of whom were returning to Chicago from the Super Bowl and were unhappy but not dangerous, I concluded. What am I supposed to do with the information that the threat to my safety has been raised? I suppose I could cancel my flight and rent a car. I conclude that all I can do with the information is be afraid, so I board the plane, take my seat, and ponder what a strange place we are in these days.

“You will not fear the terror of the night, or the arrow that flies by day,” the psalmist promised, “or the pestilence that stalks in darkness, or the destruction that wastes at noonday.”

Lent invites us into the deeper waters of our faith. We begin this morning a journey that leads to a big city where a young teacher and healer comes and there is arrested on trumped-up charges, tried before a kangaroo court in the middle of the night, and summarily executed on a Friday afternoon on a hill near the garbage dump. Lent is the time when we ponder the central, defining affirmation of our faith, namely that God was in that drama, that innocent death, that suffering; that the whole story is not so much a tragedy as it is good news, very good news of God’s saving love. Lent is the time to walk for a while with him as he moves slowly, relentlessly to his destination on the cross.

In times past, Christians did that by sacrificing, by “giving something up for Lent.” In the early church, for instance, believers fasted daily until 3:00 p.m. Fasting, obviously, is not a very popular discipline these days—although perhaps it ought to be for our own health.

Writer Nora Gallagher describes walking into an Ash Wednesday service and remembering how hard it was to give up smoking, which she did one Lent. A friend of hers quipped earlier that day, “Anne’s giving up drinking, Terri’s giving up chocolate, and I’m just giving up.”

Traditionally on this first Sunday of Lent, the story is remembered and retold of Jesus in the wilderness, tempted by Satan. The Spirit leads him into the desert for forty days and nights. It is a frightening place, lonely, dry, arid, windy; a place where a man could panic, break down, go mad. I’ve always imagined the wind howling out there, almost like a ghost, and Jesus shivering, cold, uneasy, frightened. God leads Jesus into the desert and leaves him there alone, with his fears.

Centuries before, the same thing happened. Moses has led God’s people out of their slavery in Egypt. Now they face the waters of the Red Sea and, on the other side, wilderness: desert, danger, the unknown. And now, 600 Egyptian chariots are bearing down on them. “In great fear the Israelites cried out to the Lord. They said to Moses ‘Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness?’” They are scared to death, terrified. And Moses says, “Do not be afraid. Stand firm and see the deliverance that the Lord will accomplish for you today.”

Fear is a major topic in the Bible, mentioned no fewer than 300 times. Walter Brueggemann says you can summarize the whole Bible in two words: “Fear not.”

The psalm we read together this morning, with its dramatic images of threat and danger—the terror of the night, the arrow, pestilence, and destruction—promises that there is nothing ultimately to fear: “Because you have made the Lord your refuge . . . no evil shall befall you.”

I once attended a lecture Walter Brueggemann was delivering. Brueggemann is one of the preeminent Christian thinkers of our time. I sat back with pen and pad in hand, expecting a scholarly dissertation on some arduous topic. Instead he began by asking every one of us to put down our pens and recall a time when, as a young child, we were frightened, lying in bed at night, sure that the shadows on the bedroom wall were of a burglar at the window, or a monster, and the bumps and creaks on the stairway surely a warning of something horrible about to happen. And we called out to our mother or father out of the darkness, in our fear, who appeared and took us in his or her arms and said, “It’s OK. Everything is all right, I’m here. Don’t be afraid.”

That, Brueggemann said, is the fundamental, primary, and consistent message of the Bible: “I’m here. Don’t be afraid.”

We’re born with fears, and by and large they serve us well. We have a built-in fear of falling, for instance. And I have observed over the years that we have a built-in fear of abandonment. When my daughter places fifteen-month-old Alex in my arms, he is not very happy at first. He looks worried, maybe even terrified; he watches her carefully, to make certain that he is not being abandoned.

In an essay in the Christian Century, Peter Steinke says, “Fear is a wake-up call. It arouses awareness of danger. It puts us on high alert. Yet it can do just the opposite, overwhelming us and diminishing our alertness.”

With extreme fear, concentrated adrenalin floods the body, producing “intense vigilance, riveting the brain on the object of the fear. Now the fearful person is barely able to focus on anything else. Tunnel vision occurs and fear takes over” (“Fear Factor,” Christian Century, 20 February 2007).

Fear is a powerful motivator and a very real market force. Fear sells home security systems and car alarms. Fear of violence motivates people to buy a gun for protection, ironically substantially increasing the possibility that it will be used to wound or kill a family member.

In the dark days of the Great Depression, with the forces of aggressive fascism moving across the world, American people were afraid. And President Franklin D. Roosevelt reminded them that the nation did not have to live out of its fear. “The only thing we have to fear,” he said, “is fear itself.”

Wise and prophetic words. A new book by an Ohio State University Professor of Political Science, John Mueller, raises the uncomfortable question of whether the nation’s response to the terrorist attacks of 9/11 have been proportionately appropriate. In Overblown, Professor Mueller proposes that “politicians, media, the security bureaucracy have whipped the American population into a state of terror.” “Which is the greater threat,” he asks, “terrorism or our reaction against it?” (“A State of Terror: Overblown,” New York Times Book Review, 18 February 2007).

In fairness, as I read the review of the book I thought about the fact that we have not had another incident of domestic terrorism since that fateful day five and a half years ago. But we have also experienced some very significant changes in the way our nation behaves and is perceived by the international community — changes that many believe do not enhance our long-term security at all. In the name of our security and combating terrorism we have insisted that we have the right to torture prisoners, not only a morally reprehensible practice but, as American military leaders continue to warn, a threat to our own servicemen and women.

As uncomfortable as it makes us, the book raises questions that need to be asked and answered, not simply as political questions but questions that derive from our deepest faith.

Good Night and Good Luck, the motion picture about the broadcast career of Edward R. Murrow, was set in a time in our history when the nation was very much caught in the grip of fear. Senator Joseph McCarthy had convinced many people that there were Communists everywhere: in the universities, churches, the entertainment industry, the government, and even the military. Careers and lives were ruined: Constitutional liberties were threatened. Anyone who questioned or dissented was suspect. A few courageous voices were raised in opposition. One of them was Edward R. Murrow, who said in 1954 at the height of the fear and frenzy, “We will not walk in fear. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to associate, and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular.”

I continue to ponder the irony that to the degree that we live out of fear, the people who attacked us have won a great victory. To the degree that we are motivated by terror and not our great and abiding values as a nation, a people, terrorism has won. To the degree that we act out of fear and not out of our commitment to justice and kindness and compassion and peace, a great tragedy has happened to us above and beyond the attacks themselves.

Personal fear is like a prison. It oppresses and limits and confines us. Fear of failing convinces us not to venture something new and risky. In the classroom, fear of humiliation prevents a bright student from raising her hand. Fear of ridicule keeps a passionate young man from speaking his mind. Fear can keep us confined to one place, never risking, stretching, reaching. Someone said that if Michelangelo had been afraid of heights, he would have painted the Sistine Chapel floor.

Fear of rejection even prevents us from saying, “I love you. I need you. I want you.”

Peter Gomes says that “fear, not sin, is the curse on human life, and that when Jesus Christ frees you from your fear, your fear of death, you are literally given your life back.”

That is the final issue for us, is it not—the final fear? What theologian Paul Tillich used to call the “anxiety of non-being.” What is the “terror of the night” if not death, our own death. And the promise of faith is that there is nothing to fear.

“When they call me, I will answer them,” the psalmist promises. “I will be with them in trouble.”

Or, as another psalm so beautifully puts it, “Even in the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.”

The late John Carmody, professor of religion and prolific author, found himself at fifty in a life-and-death struggle with multiple myeloma. He wrote a little book of his experience, Psalms for Times of Trouble.

In the dead of night
I hear the furies howl

he wrote.

Have mercy on me, O God. . . .
If you are a strict accountant
I shall always end up in the red.
So be more than accountant.
Be my helper, my lover, my friend.
I need someone on my side
someone who will never let me down.

“If God holds our hand, then even though we walk through the valley of the shadow of darkness, we may fear no evil,” Professor Carmody wrote.

And near the end:

For me to be
is to be in you
to feel
is to feel toward you
to be quiet
is to flow toward your rest.
(pp. 159–173)

“You will not fear the terror of the night or the arrow that flies by day, or the pestilence that stalks in darkness or the destruction that wastes at noonday.”

Faith in Jesus Christ, trust in the God and Father of Jesus Christ, the God and Father of us all, is summarized in the words “Fear not.”

Fear not the terror of the night.
Fear not terrorism.
Fear not the future.
Fear not the new job.
Fear not the end of the old job.
Fear not the end of the relationship.
Fear not the risk of a new relationship.
Fear not the move to a new place.
Fear not the threat of failure.
Fear not sickness.
Fear not surgery.
Fear not death itself.

The promise of God is that we will never be abandoned.

The dearest, most precious promise of God, God’s covenant with us, is made on the cross: that man living and dying like us, for us, with us, God—going all the way for us.

Amen.