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.

Christmas Miracles

Here is my message from our Blue Christmas service. The text was Isaiah 9:2-7 and Luke 2:1-20:

Tonight I’d like to share two stories with you.  The first comes from Jenee Woodard, who runs a website called Textweek.com, which gives resources on the weekly lectionary readings.  Jenee was a lay minister working towards a Ph.D. in biblical studies, when she gave birth to Philip, who is severely autistic, requiring her to put her career plans aside, although her ministry now takes place through her website, which has helped hundreds of thousands or perhaps millions of preachers, and gets more than 2 million hits a month.  Here is her Advent story which was written in 2002:

As many of you know, my son Philip has autism. He is 10 years old and is severely handicapped by his disability. Our family learned to slow down at Christmas a number of years ago when he was unable to tolerate *any* of the celebration. He could not handle the changing scenarios - the twinkling lights, the changes in grocery store displays, the changes in the sanctuary at church, presents appearing under the tree, the tree ITSELF, and the moved furniture. He would fall on the floor and scream, unable to move, afraid to open his eyes, almost constantly from Thanksgiving until well after Christmas when it was all over. We carried him through that time his head covered with his coat so we could get through the grocery store, or sat with him huddled in his room, carefully ordered EXACTLY the same since summer, with no Christmas trappings.

Expect A Miracle

Here is my sermon from Sunday.  The text was Jeremiah 33:14-16:

Behold I bring you good news of great joy that shall be for all people.  A 32inch television for $75, an Xbox system for $299, ipad minis for only $199, Bose headphones for $75, kitchen appliances for just $9.99.  Does it get any better or more exciting than that?  And isn’t that what Christmas is all about, getting more good stuff and at such a great deal?  There is certainly an aspect of receiving at Christmas; after all it is the time we remember and celebrate the greatest gift the world has ever received.  But when did Christmas become like our birthday instead of Jesus’ birthday? The best sermon I ever heard was by the Rev. Dr. Peter Gomes, who was and is very influential in my ministry, and that day he was talking about the statement that it’s better to give then to receive.  But the series he was doing was about things we say, but don’t actually believe.  The same might be said about miracles.  We might say we believe in miracles, but we don’t act like we do.  We might pray for rain, but how many of us then start carrying around umbrellas?  We pray for miracles, but do we believe that a miracle will actually happen?

In the movie Grand Canyon, Mary McDonnell’s character finds a baby which has been abandoned under a bush, in talking with her husband, played by Kevin Kline, she tells him that her finding the baby was a miracle, which he discounts.  But she responds that maybe miracles are so rare that we don’t notice them when they occur.  While I love that movie, that line has always struck me as being wrong.  If something is really rare, those are the things we tend to notice? Why was it so exciting for the Cubs to make the playoffs, or for the Royals to win the World Series? Because it doesn’t happen all that often and so we pay attention.  So instead of miracles being rare things, maybe miracles are in fact so common that we no longer notice them, they are in fact so common they we no longer call them miracles, they are in fact so common that they pass us by every single day, maybe even the ones being done by us, but we never even notice they are there.