Howard
Memorial Presbyterian Church
February
2008
II
Timothy 1: 3-14
I.
These past weeks of Lent we have
been talking about our culture and the gospel truth – specifically, lies that
culture passes as truths. Truths by
which we all from time to time live by and through. The claim, as we have discussed, of the
Christian faith is that the only truths to which we should be finally subject
are the truths that are revealed to us through the life, work, and resurrection
of Jesus Christ and the Word which proclaims to us those truths. In other words, the past four weeks we have
been trying to grab people’s attention by making them more aware of what is
going on around them.
And today we turn our focus towards
fear and the role that it plays in the world around us. Fear.
Simple. Four letter word. There are times when fear is good. We are afraid of the consequences of say,
bank robbery, so most of us don’t choose to steal. We are told to be afraid of crossing the
street when we are little when we are not holding an adult’s hand, so we learn
that there is safety in numbers. Fear
can be useful.
Problem is, fear as a tool of
instruction is out of control in our culture.
Ours is a culture of fear. “Fear
this” the bumper sticker says. Our advertisements
teach us to be fearful of everything from body odor to personal image to being
with the wrong stock broker to ordering from the wrong pizza place to shipping
with the wrong company. Behind the ads
it says loudly – aren’t you afraid of what you are missing by going with
company or brand X instead of ours? Just
like our political campaigners, those with opportunity have seized upon our
cultural short-sited ness and instead of proclaiming the virtues of their own
identity or product, they sell us on our fears in shortcomings of the other guy
or other brand.
II.
The result is that we are afraid. Fear of those different from us, so we
self-segregate ourselves into neighborhoods and social groups where everybody’s
the same. Fear of being too large, too
skinny, too dumb, too smart, too bad, or even too good. People are afraid of everything from success,
to failure, from being penniless to being rich and lonely. Fear is all around and it becomes the basis
for all our decisions – of all the cultural lies that we will talk about, the
proper use and place of fear is the most pervasive.
To make matters worse, culture has
taught us that knowledge casts out fear.
And this, is a lie. Knowledge, as
I see it does very little for fear.
Kathleen Parker, a columnist for the Orlando Sentinel, recently wrote a
column about her fear of flying. There’s
a web site she wrote, about fear of flying, and most of the web site is
dedicated to calming the fears of those afraid with mountains of statistical
data. Facts like more people die in car
crashes each month in
Personally, I can tell you about
seeing the movie Poltergeist when I was 9.
For four years I slept with one eye open, focused on my closet, because
in the movie the closet was where the monster came from. I was convinced he was coming after me. Twenty years later, I no longer think much
about ghosts or evil ghosts or evil spirits – rather I put my trust and in
faith in the saving power of God almighty as given in the unmerited and
gracious gift of Jesus Christ – and through him I believe and I know, in other
I now possess knowledge, that I can do anything and there is nothing in the
world that I fear --- except let me crawl into my bed at night and let that
closet be cracked open just a bit and let that closet light be on and shining
through that crack and I am paralyzed for 30 seconds or so. Despite my knowledge, fear gets me.
III.
The first letter of John writes that
there is only one antidote for fear – perfect love. Perfect love writes II Timothy is found in
Christ Jesus, and there we can place our trust.
“For God did not give us a Spirit of cowardice,” it writes, “but of love
and power and self-discipline.” If we
are going to overcome our fears, if we are going to make decisions based upon
anything but fear, we are going to need a confidence rooted deeply in love
whose source is stronger than any power or battery or anything we can imagine.
And that is the truth about
fear. Another truth about fear is that
fears with either consume us and rule our lives, or we will find courage and
overcome our fears. Still another truth
about fear is that when people use fear as a motivation tool to influence us
there are usually tipping us off to their own brokenness. St. Frances de Salles said this most
succinctly, “people who loved to be feared, fear to be loved.”
“For God did not give us a Spirit of
cowardice,” it writes, “but of love and
power and self-discipline” --
that is the gospel truth. The foremost
scholar in the world on the pastorals – these short letter of Paul – tells us
that II Timothy is primarily about, and that these verses in particular are
about, having confidence. Confidence
that God’s promises are real, confidence in Christ, confidence in personal
response to the callings God has given us, confidence that “God did not give us
a Spirit of cowardice but of love and
power and self-discipline.”
IV.
The way I see it, there is one basic
choice each day when we arise. We have
the power to choose between living our day making our decisions based in fear,
or we can live basing our decisions upon hope and faith. If we choose, fear, then fear becomes our
motivation. For example, we might think,
“Unless I do my best, I’ll never get that promotion, and if I don’t get that
promotion then my time is wasted.” Or,
“I have to start exercising today because if I don’t God only knows what I am
going to look like next year.” Or even
the thought, “She’s so much better that I am, I’ll never make it so why
bother.” Fear can and does motivate us.
Or, we can take the high road, and
live by faith instead. We then say
things to ourselves like, “God has made me perfectly in His love and I am
beautiful and talented and therefore I will do my best, afraid not of failure,
but anticipating success,” or, “I am going to start exercising today because
even though I know it will be hard I believe that I can be healthier and better
and God will stand by me through all those workouts,” or, “Different people
have different talents and I will let mine shine because God has given me
talents that the world and others need for me to share.” Fear leads to doubt and anger. Faith and hope are the expressways for love
and joy.
How we choose is up to us. One of the great thinkers of this century was
a man named Paul Tillich. He wrote a
book called the Courage to Be.
Tillich said that the fear of living was paralyzing. How do we do it, he asked, get out of bed
knowing this day could be the last? Where
do we find strength to live in the anxieties of our lives? It takes courage to live he said, and he
concludes his book with this sentence:
“The courage to be is rooted in the God who appears when God has
disappeared in the anxiety of doubt.” We
find courage, in other words, in the unending and unchanging strength that God
gives us, even when our own doubts have robbed us of our confidence. “For God did not give us a Spirit of
cowardice,” it writes, “but of love and
power and self-discipline.”
V.
One of the great preachers of our
century was Martin Luther King Jr., asked this question in his sermon Antidotes
for Fear, “Does love have a relationship to our modern fear of war,
economic displacement, and racial injustice?
Hate is rooted in fear, and the only cure for fear and hate is
love.” And love for him was found
foremost and first-most in Christ Jesus.
Want to change the world, over come your fears, he wrote. To overcome fear, you’ll need courage and
confidence, he believed. “For God did
not give us a Spirit of cowardice,” it writes, “but of love and power and self-discipline.”
Lastly a story about
possibility. One Friday a number of
young people where we lived went to a party and a number of them drank beer –
under-aged and immature. Then a number
of them, six, got into a car together and they had an accident. I got to talk to one of them, and he told me
he chose to drink that night because he was tired of not fitting in – he wanted
to feel like he belonged. And so, at
least in part afraid of not being accepted, he began to make bad choices,
choices rooted in his fear about what others were thinking about him and not in
hope and faith.
I wonder what would have happened if
one of those kids would have thought, “I believe in faith, that I am a child of
God, worthy of life and joy, and I’m not afraid of telling everyone here that
getting in that car when we have been drinking is the dumbest thing we can
do.” I wonder what would have happened
if only one of them had believed the gospel truth about fear instead of the
cultural lie. I wonder what would have
happened if one of them would have found the courage through faith to change
the moment. I wonder….
“For God did not give us a Spirit of
cowardice,” it writes, “but of love and
power and self-discipline.” All
three of these things were needed in that car Friday night in the place of the
fear that reigned supreme.
So let us go from here and no longer
be afraid. And may others learn from us
so that the untruths about fear might be overcome by the gospel truth whose
lessons are easily forgotten but desperately needed.