Sunday, September 23, 2018
James 3:13-4:3, 7-8a
Mark 9: 30-37
Every time I have heard someone preach on this gospel text, the focus has been on welcoming children. And as someone who spent more than a decade of my life doing ministry with children and youth, I agree that a major focus of our faith communities needs to be on teaching and welcoming the younger ones among us and children and youth outside these walls. We need a regular reminder that “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me” (9:31a) as Jesus said. So it is good that countless sermons have been preached on this text. And my hope is that this church which sings about the welcome they have for children each Sunday when children are invited up to these steps, my hope is that this church is a place where children are welcomed and where children know they are loved.
What caught my attention in my recent readings of this text was this line- “But they [the disciples] did not understand what he [Jesus] was saying and were afraid to ask” (9:32). Once I began looking at resources on fear, the options were overwhelming. Fear is everywhere in our culture. We are encouraged to live in a state of fear-always looking over our shoulders, always wondering what someone will do. We are encouraged to buy things out of fear so we are prepared for whatever may come. Fear is not always bad. It is a natural reaction. We need to decide how to respond to our fears and not to let them rule our lives.
Back to the 1st century disciples, “But they [the disciples] did not understand what he [Jesus] was saying and were afraid to ask” (9:32). Like the disciples, most of us do not like to admit what we don’t understand or don’t know. And we certainly don’t want to admit to each other when we are afraid. What if just one of the disciples had raised his hand or tugged on Jesus’ sleeve and said, “I don’t understand what you are saying. Please, explain it to me because I love you and want to follow your teachings.” What courage that disciple would have required to ask Jesus and to ask in front of the rest of the disciples.
And the disciples let the fear rule their actions. They didn’t ask what Jesus was talking about. They didn’t beg for clarification. They were afraid. And while I’m sad that the disciples gave into their fear, I don’t blame them either. Jesus was talking about betrayal, being killed, and rising again. Those aren’t easy topics to hear about from anyone much less your teacher, your leader, the person who you dropped everything to follow. Did they understand Jesus was talking about himself? Did they get so overwhelmed just by hearing betrayed and killed that they didn’t even hear “will rise again”? We don’t know. What we do know is that they were afraid and let fear determine their future actions in today’s story.
“Doubt, as it turns out, is not the opposite of faith; fear is, or at least that kind of fear that paralyzes, distorts, and drives to despair” David Lose
And Fear is nothing unique to our times. “The words fear or afraid appear over four hundred times in scripture” (39). Often it is found as Do not be afraid for the Lord is with you. As people of faith, we know this and yet there is much to fear.
Fear of-
Money-usually not having enough, How can I pay all the bills? Do I have enough money to retire? Now that I have retired did I save enough? When will my money run out? Will I be a burden to others because I don’t have enough money?
Disappointing Others-Am I good enough?
Failures-Can I do this? Should I even try?
Not Being Loved-Does anyone love me? Would they still love me if they knew the real me?
Death-What happens when we die? Will I really go to heaven? If heaven for real?
Change-anticipatory grief
Future-What will the future look like with the environment, the possibility of war, the stock market, the job market, etc?
Not Leaving a Legacy-Am I doing enough with my life?
Not Being Remembered-Will anyone remember me when I am gone?
Growing Up
Aging
Pain
Unknown
So I wonder what fears are holding you back? And what fears might be holding this congregation back? Don’t worry! I am not going to ask you to name them out loud because I do not feel that is my place since I am not your pastor. I do encourage you to talk to Pastor Dale about your fears for yourself, for your loved ones, for your community, and for this faith community. And know that we all have fears and worries about the people and places we love. Former churches I have served have named fears such as-We don’t have enough children in Sunday School. We don’t have enough money to run the church. We don’t have enough people to serve on the council. Our community has more needs than we can meet. We don’t know our neighbors. Naming those fears out loud can help us move from being paralyzed by them to working to change them. They can energize us.
As I was thinking about this sermon, I heard Adam Hamilton on the radio talking about fear. He is the pastor of Church of the Resurrection United Methodist Church in Kansas and is a prolific writer. The book he was talking about that day was his latest book, Unafraid: Living with Courage and Hope in Uncertain Times.
In his book, Hamilton shares three principles he has learned about the fear of failure. “Most things are never as hard as your fear they will be” (86). For the disciples, this one seems very appropriate. While it might have seemed hard to ask Jesus for an explanation, how hard would it really be? The biggest thing holding them back seemed to be the fear of being seen as a failure by Jesus or by the other disciples.
The second principle is “‘Successful people [however you define success] are willing to do things that unsuccessful people are unwilling to do’. Fear keeps many people and organizations from ever reaching their real potential” (86-87). One of the disciples would have needed to do what the others were unwilling to do-admit what he didn’t know and ask for help in understanding. By admitting what one does not know, we can grow and learn. By one disciple taking the risk of looking dumb, all of them could have learned what Jesus was talking about and their fears may have been eased.
“And the third principle, which I’ve hard with many leaders over the years, I call ‘discernment by nausea’. Often when you come to a fork in the road, a decision you have to make between taking this path or another, you’ll find that one path seems easier, safer, and more convenient. More often than not, though, the other path—the one that’s harder, riskier, more inconvenient, the one that leaves you feeling a bit nauseous when you think about it—is the one you should take. Jesus used different language to comment on the same phenomenon. He noted that life tends to present us with two roads we could take. One is broad and easy, yet it leads to destruction. The other is narrow and hard, but it leads to life” (87). If you have ever been in a situation like this one the disciples find themselves in, “discernment by nausea” perfectly describes how they must have been feeling. The easy answer is to not ask the question, to hide in the back, to let the fear rule your choices. The hard answer is to look at Jesus, ignore the feeling of nausea that is creeping up from your stomach, and ask the hard question knowing that this answer leads to life and understanding.
Fear is a natural reaction for the disciples then and Jesus’ disciples today to have. Fear is healthy. There are things we should be afraid of and avoid. Snakes, bears, spiders, alligators, so for me they are basically animals. My husband added laundry to this list which I don’t love to do and don’t count as a fear to be avoided at all costs!
And sometimes our fears start to run our lives
In my work as a hospice chaplain, family members and patients may be afraid to ask the big questions. So I ask the question is anything worrying you today? This is my way of encouraging everyone to name fears without saying the word fears, so we can work on the worries together. Sometimes I get answers like, “I’m 95. What do I have to worry about? I know I’m dying, and I know where I’m going.” I often hear people who worry how the family will get along or cope after their loved ones dies. I hear from people who have financial concerns. Some people are sad they won’t be present for upcoming events in the lives of those they love. And some of them worry that God can’t forgive them or doesn’t love them enough or what if heaven doesn’t exist? All normal questions to ask and worry about and even be afraid of as you are facing your own death or the death of a loved one. So in my work, I encourage people to ask these big scary questions. Say them out loud. Put them out in the open. And they become a little less scary, a little less powerful, a little less reason to be afraid. There is something about naming our own fears that makes them less scary.
What if, in today’s Scripture, one disciple had the courage to name the fear, to ask the question that all of them were wondering?
Where does the fear lead the 1st century disciples? To seek superiority. They don’t want to admit that they were afraid so they argue about something ridiculous. Can you imagine telling Jesus you were arguing about who is the greatest. This is Jesus who is the King of the humble list and self-less and his students are arguing about something that is the opposite of his teachings. All of this happened because they were too afraid to ask a clarifying question.
The word fear is also used in the Bible to describe how we should respond to God. Hamilton said in his book, “When we fear God—when we revere, respect, and stand in awe of God—we fear everything else a little less” (208). Dorothy Bernard is quoted as saying, “Courage is fear that has said its prayers.” Those two ideas are what connect the words from James with what we have been thinking about from Mark’s gospel. When we have a reverence, a healthy respect for, and stand in awe of God, it changes our focus. We have prayed and have the courage to move from fear to wanting to seek God’s wisdom. We want to be those who are “peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy” (3:17).
As those who are surrounded by things we could fear and instead join together in courage to seek God’s wisdom and peace. I’d like to end with the words of the World Peace Prayer.
Lead us from death to life,
From falsehood to truth,
From despair to hope,
From fear to trust.
Lead us from hate to love,
From war to peace:
Let peace fill our hearts,
Let peace fill our world,
Let peace fill our universe. Amen.
