Whom Shall I Fear?, The Reverend David R. Williams, Lent II--Year C-- March 4, 2007

Examine us O God and know our hearts; test us and discover
our thoughts, and lead us in the way everlasting.” Amen.
 
Here is a challenging Lenten question.  “What fears have you conquered over the years and what new fears do you have?”
 
A college reunion was held not too long ago.  The former classmates sat in a circle. One of them, now a professor of philosophy, asked the question. 
 
Now there’s an icebreaker. “What fears have you conquered over the years and what new fears do you have?”  Apparently, there was a long silence at the beginning.
 
“The Lord is my light and my salvation: whom then shall I fear?” the psalmist says. 
 
One of the former classmates breaks the silence.  “Mice,” she says.  “I can’t stand the little critters.  I’ve been afraid of them ever since I was very small, but I’m getting better.”
 
“Spiders,” says another.  “I still can’t stand to see them.”  This opens the door for more mammal and insect phobias – snakes, large dogs, even chickens.
 
But then someone offers, “The dark.” 
 
“I have always been afraid of dark rooms, but now I’m not as scared…”  Again, silence in the room.
 
“I was always afraid of being abandoned,” says another person.
 
More recent fears begin to emerge:
 
“I fear being drugged and sitting in a stupor in a nursing home,” one says.
 
 “Dying. I just can’t imagine the thought of it,” another person confesses. 
 
 “A recurrence of my cancer,” someone else quietly offers.
 
After years of separate lives, these classmates meet each other once more. In a new place in time, they reflect together and share a new intimacy.
 
“The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom then shall I be afraid?”
 
“When evil doers came upon me to eat up my flesh,” the psalmist says, “Though an army should encamp against me….though war should rise up against me.”
 
“I fear my cancer will return?”  “I am afraid for the well-being of my aging parents?”  “I am scared to go on living if my loved one dies?”
 
A renowned theologian of the last century, Paul Tillich, writes about three dimensions of anxiety. Anxiety and fear may not be exactly the same, but they are close cousins.  When I am fearful about something, I am usually anxious. 
 
Tillich says that, as mere mortals, we are challenged to confront the anxiety of nonbeing, a fancy word for death, metaphorical as well as physical.  Who am I when my job is terminated? When my marriage breaks down? When I feel failure--flunk a course in school or feel rejected by a friend or inadvertently hurt someone I love?
 
Then, Tillich says, there is the anxiety of meaninglessness, perhaps of sitting alone in a nursing home, feeling taken for granted by people I admire or count as friend or family. Overwhelming problems can leave us numb, not knowing how to care or matter or change what hurts us.
 
Lastly, there is the human anxiety of unpredictability or uncertainty. What will happen tomorrow? Am I destined to have a second heart attack? Or get cancer? Will I get through this last year of high school and do all that I have to do to get to a good college? Will those kids like me?  What if...what if?
 
“The Lord is my light and my salvation; what shall I fear?”
 
In Psalm 27 we hear of slanderers, adversaries, breathers of violence, relatives betraying their own blood kin.
 
We are no different. We are but dust, to dust we shall return. We know the dark. We are confounded by mystery. We wonder, we worry, and we do not yet know.
 
“Though an army should encamp against me, yet my heart shall not be afraid.”
 
The psalmist does appeal an easy platitude.  The person writes this song of reassurance to say more than “Turn lemons into lemonade” or “Tighten your belts and make the best of a tough situation.” 
 
The psalmist calls us to a new mindset of listening. The psalmist tells us of a new place of understanding, a new relationship with the one making my life possible, a new trust in God.
 
My fears become a wake-up call to new truth. 
 
“The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom then shall I fear?”  Is this kind of trust merely a lyrical expression of an ideal remaining impossible or does this song inspire a reminder of a caring and active God. 
 
Abram, filled with fear about his future, is confronted by God’s presence.  We can almost hear the question, “What new fears do you feel, Abram?”  “I am not sure about leaving my old familiar home and going to a new place…an uncertain future.”  Abram is fearful for the “death of Abram’s heritage,” that there will be no future, no children and grandchildren to carry on what he and his wife, Sarah, have begun.
 
The Lord answers Abram’s fears by taking him outside the tent into the open sky. And the Lord says to Abram, “Look up and count the stars.” 
 
Are you anxious; are you fearful?  “Go outside, David, look up on a clear night and count the stars.” 
 
“To behold the fair beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple. He shall hide me in the secrecy of his dwelling and set me high upon a rock.”
 
What a marvelous secret dwelling – counting the stars across a clear night sky.
 
“One day in the concentration camp, Auschwitz, a group of Jews put God on trial,” theologian Karen Armstrong writes in her book A History of God.  “These imprisoned Jews, people of God, charge God with cruelty and betrayal.  Like Job, they find no consolation in the usual answers to the problem of evil and suffering in the midst of this current obscenity.  They can find no excuse for God, no extenuating circumstances, so the prisoners find God guilty and, presumably, worthy of death.  The Rabbi pronounces the verdict.  Then the Rabbi looks up and says that the trial is over: it is time for evening prayers.”  The trial was over: it is time for evening prayers.
 
“When evil doers came upon me to eat up my flesh, it was they, my foes and my adversaries, who stumbled and fell.”
 
“O tarry, and await the Lord’s pleasure; be strong, and the Lord shall comfort your heart; wait patiently for the Lord.” 
 
Amen.