Fear Not

Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord and turn away from evil.
It will be a healing for your flesh and a refreshment for your body. (Proverbs 3: 7-8)

It’s the beginning of the program year at Trinity, and at churches everywhere. Adult education, confirmation, and choir are revving up and there’s wonderful energy around here. It’s exciting – and scary. Most of the legwork goes on behind the scenes, weeks and months before the first class, or the first rehearsal, or the first Sunday of TK. Curriculum and music are planned, calls are made, postcards are sent out, publicity gets written and published and then we pray.

What if nobody shows up? What if the speaker bombs? What if the topic is a dud? What if what if what if…

There are lots of things to be afraid of and to be worried about. I’m sure you all can think of things in your jobs or in your life that worry you, that you think you may fail at.

And we are living in fearful times. We fear terrorists, we fear job loss, we fear the weather. We fear sickness and loneliness and anything that is strange, uncertain or new.

We know that fear has its place, of course. It is wise for example, for the Californians in the path of the fire to fear it and evacuate. But when fear is the guiding principle of our lives, when we fear so much that we can’t live, that is a path that leads to our death.

In his book Hope Against Darkness, Richard Rohr observes, “People more easily define themselves by what they fear, by what they are against, by who they hate, by who else is wrong, instead of by what they believe in and by whom they love. It’s much easier to build our identity on our group, our wounds, our angers, our agenda, our fear; that’s the more normal way, unless you’ve been taught by the way of Jesus.”

That “way” to which he refers is both radical and hard. It is nothing less than living in the faith that God is God and we aren’t. It is knowing in our bones that God is good, and that in spite of appearances, evil and hate don’t have the final say. Does such knowledge guarantee that we will never again be afraid? Not at all. What it does do is enable us to live with confidence and joy and hope in spite of the things we fear.


God is God and we aren’t. So let God be God. One of my favorite bits of wisdom from Martin Luther goes like this. "Pray as if everything depends on God, but act as if everything depends on you." We do have responsibilities. There are some things to fear. We may fail, and things may fall apart, but God never abandons us in our struggle. And God has arranged for us this promise – no matter what we fear, or how we fail, finally we will succeed safely and joyfully in the arms of Jesus, who gave himself for us, to sooth our minds, to calm our fears, and to save us. Ultimately, we have nothing to fear because our lives are encompassed in the love of God, by the protection of the Holy Spirit, and with the salvation of Jesus.