Fear Not!

There are countless Scripture passages which teach us not to fear: Matthew 10:26-31, Psalm 46, and 2 Corinthians 4:16-18 just to name a few. It seems that we who fear God ought to not fear anything else. I am even currently co-leading a study at church on a book by Max Lucado called Fearless (maybe after the study is finished I can share my thoughts on the book).

But yesterday, an event happened in the neighborhood of our church that struck fear into many of us here at Trinity. Two armed men carjacked an employee at the Piggly Wiggly down the street from the church. The two men fled, were chased by police, wrecked the car a few blocks from the church, and ran. Police apprehended one of the two gunmen. Read about it here.

We were holding a staff meeting, when a co-worker stuck her head in the door of the conference room to tell us the news. Immediately, some of us (myself included) ran out of the room to find and update our loved ones. For most of the rest of the day, we were on lockdown in the church- no one could come in or go out.

It's situations like this that remind me how far we fall short of God, who fearlessly loves us. In our nihilistic culture which sees death as the absolute end, we lack any sense of eschatological hope. This has bled over into our churches, where I find very little preaching of eschatological imagination other than simple pie-in-the sky theology. It's too risky, too unknown to profess faith in a God who resurrects and creates newly. So we put our ultimate faith in folks in lab coats and politicians who legislate health care laws. Don't get me wrong, I admire and partake of advances in medical sciences as much as the next person. I am extremely fortunate to see a doctor to cure my ills and do so affordably. But is this really the absolute end? Is our health, our earthly life, all there is? Why can we not see healing, as it was in the Bible, as a sign, which points to the God who makes us new?

Even our naive confessions of pie-in-the-sky fall too short for me. How does thinking that I'll die and play the back nine with Jesus in the sky, be reunited with my old dog, and have tea parties with Aunt Norma shape us as a community of disciples? We've got to think deeper, longer, and more imaginitively about God's reclamation project for all of creation, not just about our whims and desires. Only then can we live with the love which casts out fear. My recommendation: read C.S. Lewis' The Great Divorce.

All the time, I witness God re-claiming a life, making something out of a mess, leading my fellow depraved humans in faithfulness and obedience despite the pressures of the world. How can this not be a sign, a foretaste of a new creation? I have no idea what God specifically intends for us after this life, but as for myself, I imagine myself sitting around the throne of God proclaiming the eucharistic affirmation of the mystery of faith: Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.