An Alternative to Fear--May 28, 2024

An Alternative to Fear--May 28, 2024

"For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption...." [Romans 8:13-15]

In a sense, you and I get to decide how much we want to be ruled by fear. As odd as it sounds, perhaps, fear is not the inevitable driving force of our lives any longer--you and I have to make the conscious choice to keep running back to fear's cold arms if we really want to be trapped in its grasp.

And sadly, that is precisely what we still do sometimes.

We choose fear. Or at least it is fair to say we choose to let fear have dominion over us--closing the doors and windows, crushing us smaller and smaller and enclosed on all sides by its grasp. We give ourselves over to the weight of all the "what ifs" and we let them bury us. As the line famously attributed to Martin Luther says it, "You cannot stop the birds from flying overhead--but you can stop them from building nests in your hair." And once again, our older brother in the faith is right on the money. We cannot stop every momentary fleeting anxiety or worry or fear from flitting through the synapses in our brains... but we do get to choose how much we want to be ruled by those fears, how much room we clear away for them to starting brooding, and how much of our lives we will rearrange in order to let the fears roost in our hearts. We do get to choose that--and in truth, not deciding is deciding. Not choosing to shoo the power of fear away is a choice to let it stay, and like a mother cuckoo hiding her own eggs in another bird's nest, or like a virus multiplying from within our healthy cells, we let fear incubate in our own hearts and then when it hatches, we treat it like it is our own, rather than a parasite.

It's the way fear whispers in your ear after you have an icy drive and says, "It's too dangerous to drive at all! Stay in and never go out of your house between November and April!" And sometimes, we listen.

It's the way fear whispers to the man walking down the street on a city block some night, and says, "That person coming your direction in that hooded sweatshirt up ahead... that person must be out to get you--you have to stop them now!" And then a fearful stranger pulls a trigger and ends the life of a teenage kid who was just walking home from the convenience store.

It's the way fear whispered to the official gatekeepers in the US and in Cuba 85 years ago yesterday (May 27, 1939!) when a transatlantic ocean liner the St. Louis carrying 900 Jewish passengers fleeing the Third Reich and seeking refuge in America and said to those who met them at the docks, "No--don't let them come ashore! They could be dangerous! They are troublemakers!" And the officials on land listened to the fear... and sent back more than 900 Jewish people seeking refuge back to Europe, left to their own devices against the Nazis, hundreds of whom are believed to have been killed in the death camps.

It's the way fear of being rejected keeps us from admitting our struggles to the people around us who really do love us, and it's the way our fear of strangers leads us to see "the other" as a threat to be avoided, rather than a neighbor to be loved.  It makes our lives unnecessarily miserable, and yet we keep signing up to let fear animate us--letting it possess us like a demon.

Fear has a way of crippling us, making us bitter and paranoid, and then convincing us that we are only being "reasonable," only being "realistic," only "playing it safe." We slide into fear so easily, and we let it happen every day, every time we do not consciously choose to live in the freedom and courage that the Spirit of God offers.

Paul has been saying that to us for the better part of two millennia now, too: "You did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear!" he says. We who have been captivated by the news of the empty tomb and filled with the Spirit of Pentecost do not have to live in the old fear any longer! We do not have to be controlled by it, hamstrung by it, contained by it... except that we let it, every day. And when we let fear rule us, soon enough we lose the ability to notice just how much of a stranglehold it has over us. We end up choked to death without flinching, because we have slowly been desensitized to how we allow fear to squeeze and constrict.

But it doesn't have to be this way! It is not meant to be this way! We have been given the Spirit of Christ, the same Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead! The Spirit keeps speaking an alternative message to us, meant to get our attention over against the insidious whisper of fear. The Spirit keeps saying to us, "You are beloved children of God! You are not meant to live ruled by fear anymore!" The Spirit keeps saying to us, "Don't let the fear shut you in and lock the door! Don't let the fear hold you prisoner! God has the power to raise the dead, after all--what can anybody else do to you, honestly?" And for every message the fear speaks, the Spirit of God speaks a counter-message.

The question, then, is whether we will listen to the voice of the Spirit or the voice of the fear. That's the long and short of it all. Will we take what the fear tells us as the gospel truth, or will we accept the Spirit's message about the world and our place in it? This should be a no-brainer, and Paul thinks so too. He says, "All who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God--just let the news sink in that you are children of God, and you will begin to feel the freedom of not having to do what the fear tells you to do!"

But in all seriousness, it really does boil down to this: which voice will we take to be more authoritative in our lives? Will it be the voice of fear, or the voice of the Spirit? If you had to pick one, who gets your allegiance? And if they each call to you, to whom will you answer?

That's the question for you--whose voice gets to claim you--the living God, or the power of fear?

Holy Spirit, let us listen for your voice, and as you speak, pull us out of our old captivity to fear.