Do Not Fear

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was Matthew 14:22-33:

One of my earliest memories comes from when I was probably around 4. I was spending the day with my grandmother and we had gone to the store, and one the way back home we decided to stop at a tasty-freeze for some ice cream. I was sitting in the backseat of my grandparents 1966 Ford Galaxy 500, which was an aircraft carrier, especially when the top was down, but we had placed our order and I looked down and on my left arm was a tarantula. Now in my memory it was huge, although I don’t know if that is because I was small or because of the trauma, but I screamed and my grandmother turned around, saw it and swatted it off my arm. And this I definitely remember, but it then jumped onto the front seat, ran down it, then jumped onto the dashboard and squeezed into one of the air conditioning vents and disappeared. My grandmother used to comment that she never saw it again. And we drove off before we got our order. I happened to be wearing a bright yellow shirt that day, which had a puffy lion on the front, and at the top of the grocery bag was a bunch of bananas, and so best guess is it came out of the bananas saw more yellow and was coming over to check it out. But the moral of this story is that FDR was wrong in his first inaugural address when he said that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself, but that we should fear fear itself and also spiders. We should fear spiders, although while I still can’t deal with tarantulas or any big spiders, I have gotten much better about regular spiders as I’ve aged.

And so, with that we move on in our series on the nots of Jesus, or the things that Jesus tells us not to do, by moving onto the injunction: “Do not be afraid.” Of the things we are not to do, and the things that cause us to get ourselves all into knots, this may be one of the harder ones because fear is hardwired into us. And living entirely without fear is not only unhealthy it can be downright dangerous. There is a reason why we have fear of snakes and spiders and tigers, because they can be life threatening. Fear is a primal urge that comes to us from the most primitive part of the brain known as the amygdala, and located close to the base of the brain at the spine. It’s what trigger the fight, flight or freeze response when we sense danger. And it’s played an important role in keeping us alive and uninjured over time, both as people and as a species. Fear in proper doses, or natural occurrences is healthy and productive. It teaches us to not touch hot stoves, to not play in traffic and to avoid spiders. And so fearing things is not a sin, and in fact not fearing, or living without fear, could just be plain and simple stupidity. And so, we start with that reality because I don’t think that’s what Jesus is talking about when he tells us not to be afraid. But it’s about the what and the why.

Jesus gives around 125 injunctions of things we should do, or not do, and of these, 21 are not to fear or be afraid, or something similar, like to take heart or to show courage.  And, of course, when people are first told about Jesus in the New Testament, what is it that the angels say, “Fear not.” That’s really how the New Testament begins. Additionally, when we look in the Hebrew Bible, there are more than 100 admonitions not to be afraid, And so that leads us into today’s story with Jesus telling the disciples not to be afraid, with a little set-up.

First, as Cathy said in introducing the passage, what happens immediately before this is that Jesus feeds the 5000. Now, besides for Jesus, is there another time in scripture in which large numbers of people are fed miraculously? Yes, Moses and the manna, and keep that Moses thing in mind. And then we also have to know that the last time the disciples were in a boat, which happens in chapter 8, they encounter an enormous storm, through which Jesus is sleeping, and they are terrified, thinking they are all going to die, and so they wake him up and Jesus calms the storm. So, you have to imagine that based on that past experience that they have to be a little hesitant to get back into the boat, because they also know that Jesus is not going to be with them. And the passage actually starts with an interesting line that’s easy to overlook, and that is that Jesus made them get into the boat. Perhaps they didn’t want to be separated from Jesus, and this is the first time it’s happened since he called them, or maybe they’re afraid to get back in, or they want to do or go somewhere else. But Jesus forces them into the boat and off they go, while Jesus goes up a mountain, another Moses theme, in order to pray.

And so, the disciples get past their fear, or what I’m thinking is their fear, of going back onto the water, and they deserve a little credit for that because when we think about fear it’s not about not having fear but about being able to move through it to do what needs to be done, to get the spider out of the bathtub. And why is it that spiders spend so much time in bathtubs and showers? The world may never know. But, anyways, then what the disciples fear the most happens, another storm comes up, and the translation we heard says the boat was battered by the waves. The Greek literally says the boat was being tortured, and so you can imagine why the disciples are scared, and while the NRSV says that it’s early in the morning that they then see Jesus, it’s actually during what is known as 4th watch, so between 3 and 6 am. And seeing the person on the water has them terrified. And so, to give some more context to this, we have to understand that water is seen as the chaos, uncontrolled chaos, that can only be tamed by God. And so, walking on the water must mean that this is a deity that they are seeing, or something supernatural, like a ghost. And notice that they don’t say anything to this apparition on the water, instead it is Jesus who says to them “take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.” And again, we miss something in the translation because of verb constructions in Greek that we don’t have in English, but the words translated as it is I, are exactly the same words that are found in the Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, in the Exodus story when Moses asks what God’s name is, and we know it as God saying I am. And so, we have the completion here, of sorts, of Jesus and Moses and parallels, except that one of the things that Matthew does is to set Jesus up as being even greater than Moses, who is the great prophet of Israelite history. And so, Jesus is taming even the chaos, the untamed waters, which is more than Moses could do, as he could only part them, but Jesus can walk on them, and what’s more he can get others to walk on them.

And so, Peter says “if it’s you” which perhaps there is some doubt there, unclear what that statement means, at least to me, “command me to come out onto the water.” Now doesn’t that seem a little ridiculous? And yet, I don’t think this is Peter being his normally impetuous self. A number of years ago, the then COO of Facebook Sheryl Sandberg wrote a book entitled Lean In which was supposed to be about creating equality in the workplace, but the term leaning in became one of the business buzzwords that sort of got separated from its original beginning. But I think the term is important for us here. Because when we get scared, what happens? When that spider comes down from the ceiling in the midst of your shower, do you lean in closer to it? No, you scream and jump backwards. When we are afraid, we lean back, we shy away, we pull away, but when we lean in we put an entirely different face to the world. When we pull back the world pulls back, but when we lean in, the world leans in too.

And that’s what Peter decides to do, and, again we maybe should applaud him for this. Last week when we talked about the injunction not to doubt I said that 100% of the disciples were doubters. And here we should note that 92% of the disciples stay in the boat. Only one has the faith to step out, and huge notice he actually walks on the water! Peter walks on the water, and then what happens, he pays attention to the wind. It’s not the waves or the fact that he’s doing something that until this moment was impossible. He pays attention to the wind, and you want to shout out, why are you paying attention to something that doesn’t matter? Keep walking man. But he sees the wind, which means he took his eyes off Jesus, and once again we are told that he was frightened, and because of that, perhaps he pulls back, and then begins to sink. And in sinking he cries out “Lord, save me.”

And much like what we think of what Jesus says to Thomas about his doubt, we too often think of how Jesus responds as a rebuke of Peter and his faith. After all Jesus says he has little faith. But just a few chapters later in Matthew Jesus will say, if you have the faith of a mustard seed, what can you do? Move mountains. So, it seems like having just a little bit of faith is a good thing, and after all Peter had enough faith to actually get out of the boat. And then Jesus says, “why did you doubt?” and again, the common interpretation is that this is a rebuke of Peter for not believing he could walk on water, for giving into his fear. But, I think this is a rebuke, if we even want to call it that, although seeing this as a statement of grace might be better, is that Peter seems to think that he had to call out to Jesus to save him, as if Jesus wouldn’t already do that. That his doubt is not about faith or fear or walking on water but about Jesus’ ever abiding presence and desire to save. That Peter might think that Jesus would let him sink. Jesus was always going to save him, but Peter has to know and recognize that. That Jesus was going to be with him, and the other disciples, and with us, through the midst of the storms of life, and knowing that should make it easier for us to overcome our fears and trust and climb out of the boat.

Stepping out does not mean that we won’t face troubles and high winds and more fear, but it’s to know that Jesus is right there with us and that it is Christ himself who is calling us out of the boat. Bishop Will Willimon said “If Peter had not ventured forth, had not obeyed the call to walk on water, then Peter would never have had this great opportunity [to be rescued] by Jesus. I wonder if too many of us are merely splashing about in the safe shallows and therefore have too few opportunities to test and deepen our faith… If you want to be close to Jesus, you have to venture forth out into the sea,” you have to be willing to step out of the boat. And that ultimately means we have to move past our fears and trust, and that is so hard to do.

Last week when we talked about faith, I quoted from others who said that the opposite of faith is not doubt but its certainty or control, that we want things we can trust and count on. We want faith to be black and white. To know that everything is firm and it’s not going to change and that we can comprehend and understand it all, and it all makes sense, and fits in this nice small little box with a bow wrapped around it. Our fears force us to want the same thing as well.  And so Max Lucado says that “fear, at its center, is about a perceived loss of control.” I’m not sure that I’m willing to concede that every fear is about a loss of control, mainly because I want to hold onto some of my own irrational fears, but I do think he’s right. And I for one, can say that when I have lost control, that I don’t deal with the situation very well, and want to get control back as soon as I possibly can, by either trying to get away or trying to wrest some control back. 

Think about all the problems that some politicians and certain television commentators want us to be concerned about. Nearly every one of them is about things that we don’t have control over, seem to have lost control over, and probably never had control over, but their solutions all seek ways to give us back control, or at the very least the appearance of having some control.  And that is the biggest problem with fear and control, Lucado says, because when we have lost control, when we are fearful, then we seek control and safety becomes our god. It becomes the thing we search after and seek, rather than seeking after God, and even worse it means we seek the risk-free life, and you cannot have lots of things, including faith and love, without being willing to take risks, without risking losing it all.  When we feed our fears, we starve our faith, Lucado says, but when we feed our faith, our fears will starve.

But there is one other key piece of information, by overcoming his fear, not only was Peter’s faith changed, but the faith of the other disciples in the boat was also changed.  We are no longer told that they were afraid, and when Peter and Jesus climb back into the boat, they all worship Jesus.  Peter’s courage changed them as well.  Which means that the fear we may have about doing something that we are called to do may not only be hurting our faith, but it may also be hindering the faith of others who look to us, it’s about showing courage, which is not the absence of fear, but the movement through the fear, away from what can’t be, to what might be.  In 1 Timothy, we are told that “God has not given us a spirit of fear.”  Instead we are called to recognize our fear and to know that Jesus is right there with us, calling for us to move beyond our fears into the life that God has called for us, and so here are a few simple steps.

First is to simply name your fear. What is it that you are afraid of? What’s holding you back. By naming it we take so much power away from it because it is no longer just this unknown thing out there. Say what it is, not just in your head, but out loud, or write it down. Name your fear, and when you do often it will lose its power over you. The second is to play a sort of worst case scenario. If what you fear would happen, actually did happen, what would be the result of that?  Sometimes the worst case scenario is worse in our minds that in reality, and then ask what are the real chances that is going to happen? There are lots of people who fear terrorism, but you are more likely to be killed by a cow or your television, or to accidentally suffocate in your own bed then you are to be killed by a terrorist. Next, tell your fears to someone else, someone you trust, to either help you work through them, to help you make these steps, or just simply to help you carry them. And then finally, or maybe you should do this first, is to take them all to God in prayer and turn them over to God. What these steps will do, most importantly, is to bring your fears out of the darkness into the light of the day, and things often don’t seem as scary in the light as they do in the darkness because that’s where fears dwell. And we don’t dwell in the darkness because we are people of the light, as we read in the letter to the Ephesians because we worship and follow Jesus who is the light of the world.

When Jesus tells us not to be afraid, I don’t think he’s telling us to live fear free, because that’s not only not healthy, it’s dangerous. But, instead he’s telling us to move through our fears in order to step out in faith. The safest place to be is in the boat, but miracles happen by setting out. Peter expands his life and accomplishes the impossible, and if he had also trusted that Jesus was there the whole time, perhaps he could have even done more. But at least he stepped out. and so we have to remember that there are going to be storms in our life, that’s inevitable, but Christ is there for us in the midst of it, saying come to me and trust, and know that the chaos will not rule forever, that God has the final word and it is Jesus who ultimately saves, and if we are going to overcome our fear we have to be willing to step out of the boat and get a little wet and to know that Christ is present for us, not there shivering in the boat with us, but standing there shining a light into our darkness, calling us to come and saying to us “take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.”  I pray that it will be so my brothers and sisters.  Amen.