Fear or Faith

Text: Acts 1:6-14

The sudden and unexpected execution of Jesus. His amazing resurrection from the dead. His appearance to the disciples, talking with them and sharing meals with them. Now his being lifted up. Taken from them, the men in white say, up toward heaven. It is a fearful time for the followers of Jesus. Nothing has been what it seemed, nothing has gone the way they had thought or hoped. Still looking for the nation of Israel to be freed and restored—is this the time? they ask—instead their teacher, healer, Messiah last left them, their hopes unfulfilled.

The story at the end of the Gospels shows the disciples gathered, dumbfounded, frightened, uncertain what to do. Shut in a room, safe for the moment. They have a choice: remain huddled, timid, cautious; or to leave, go out, continue the work of Jesus, speaking, healing, confronting and changing the world. Their choice is the essential Biblical choice. I put before you life and death, as it says in Deuteronomy. That is the choice we always must face. Choose life over death, choose love over hate, choose hope over hopelessness, choose compassion over neglect. How shall we live?

Actor Tom Hanks spoke last week to the graduating class at Yale. In his sermon—for that’s what it really was—he talked about fear and faith. He quoted John Paul Jones, who said “if fear is cultivated, it will become stronger; if faith is cultivated, it will achieve mastery.”

We cannot let fear prevail. Fear wishes to rule us. Hanks said that fear lurks in the darkness at the edge of town. Fear captures our hearts and softens our brains. That’s why people who wish to seize or hold power use fear to move us. And why people who wish to possess our time, our money, or our passions—those who wish to sell to us or recruit us—seek to create fear within us.

C. S. Lewis once said that we fondle our hatreds. He might have said the same about our fears. We take our fears out and touch them, keeping them alive. We work on them. When it seems they are subsiding, we wake them up. We keep them excited. We nourish them, as Jones said, so that they might stay strong. It is wicked, but we do it.

Fear is destroying the nation, corrupting and perverting generosity and bravery into greed and violence. Destroying the world. Fear drives us to war. Fear drives us to pull back from helping people in need. Fear drives us into our locked rooms and locked nations, seeking safety, and being diminished.

The sovereignty of fear, its voice, its authority, comes from us. We give it. We do not have to do that.

For against fear stands faith. This is a battle. It is one or the other. Faith is the counterforce, the antidote. Faith puts us in context: remember that we are creatures, that we are mortal, we are small, yet we are blessed. We are children of God along with all other people, making them our brothers and sisters. Our fate is out of our hands; it belongs to God. Everything is possible. The worries that we plot are only fantasies, guesses. New life is possible. Faith makes us free to act surprisingly, with courage. That courage fights against fear.

Courage is not a result of will. We cannot just wish to be courageous. Courage is fed by faith. And faith is fed—cultivated—by two things. One of those is gratitude. The other is forgiveness.

Gratitude is a skill, a tactic, it takes practice. Give thanks for your blessing. Speaking as if you were grateful makes you grateful. Wake up in the morning and say thank you for your life and all the good things in it.

And forgiveness is likewise a skill, a tactic, requiring practice. Speaking as if you forgive others helps you forgive them. Say you are sorry. Accept the apology of others. Tell people you forgive them, even when you are not so sure. You will start to forgive them. Tell God you forgive them.

Thanking God and forgiving others generates courage, nourishes faith and defeats fear.

This past week the yearly assembly of the New England Synod gathered in Springfield. Most of the meeting was going to be devoted to community service projects in this hard-time city. A couple of days before the assembly was to convene, there were as you know tornadoes which destroyed property and took lives. Many people wondered whether the assembly should be cancelled. Tornadoes are scary and dangerous. The city was in disarray. Would we be OK? Perhaps we should all stay home, we thought, where we were safe and things were familiar. Fear spoke to us. But faith called louder, and the assembly was held.

When a disaster like the Springfield tornadoes strikes, people check the news on TV or online. We look at same few dark videos over and over again, and we watch the same slide shows of destruction and suffering. This is not, as I once thought, obscene and voyeuristic. Those pictures and videos and voice recordings call to us because we are trying to figure out how we can help, what we can do. We are built to watch out for each other, to care for each other. In Springfield or Haiti or Japan; in places of famine or drought or disease. The suffering people call to us to defeat our fears and come help. Don’t be afraid, they say, give us some help, they say.

And so in our case about 400 Lutherans showed up this weekend to feed people, raise money, clean up the mess, repair homes, entertain the discouraged. A small victory over fear, but a triumph nonetheless. That’s how it works.

When Jesus ascends to the heavens, the disciples fear they have been abandoned. But Jesus tells them here in Acts, as he also does in the Gospel of John, that the Holy Spirit will stay with them.

And in the end they remember that Jesus has prepared them by praying for them, by teaching them how to pray, how to praise God, how to forgive others. He has taught them how to serve those in need, to heal, and to love even their enemies.

Christians cannot continue to cultivate fear. And we need to resist the world’s efforts to cultivate fear within us and within others. We have been given the tools of faith, instruction in their use, and the power of the Holy Spirit to fight the powers of fear. Before us, as before the disciples, have been set fear and faith. May faith prevail.