June 25, 2000
Remember growing up hearing the old wive's tales? They are now called urban legends — the PC movement has caught up with the old wive's too. There is a historian by the name of Jan Harold Brumbart who has made a living out of collecting urban legends in our time and compiling them into books that read like fiction. One title is, "The Choking Doberman and Other Urban Legends." They contain such stories as "The Woman Who Thought Her Computer CD Player Was a Cup Holder and Couldn't Understand Why It Wouldn't Return," and "The Woman Whose Hairdo Attracted Insects of Various Sorts." There is even one going around now about AIDS patients leaving dirty hypodermic needles in the coin returns in phone booths — have you heard about that one? So far, I haven't been able to find medical documentation of that, but it remains an urban legend.
They are all plausible, very few are true, but people love to tell them. Why is that? It's because they play on our imagination; they also play upon our fears. Each of this Sunday's Bible texts are about people confronting their fears in front of God and being absolutely honest about them.
Before I talk about fear, I want to distinguish the kind of spiritual and existential fear from what you and I feel everyday. This is not to be confused with the kind of fear we might feel if we are driving down I-10 and the proverbial Firebird comes right up behind us about two inches from our bumper. That's a God-given survival instinct. Our intuition enables us to survive — that's also God-given. That's what guides us through those late night encounters in the parking lot. What I am talking about is the kind of fear that prevents us from true relationship with God, true relationship with each other. I categorize it in three different types of fear: one is the fear of losing faith; another is losing control; and a third is losing oneself.
So, why don't we start by looking at poor old Job? Everyone feels sorry for him. He lost everything. He lost his fortune; he lost his family; he lost his reputation and his friends. To top it off, others blamed it on him or something that his ancestors did. And then to top it all off, he said, "I have this rash." Most of all, Job is afraid of losing his faith. He can't believe that all of his calamities are due to something that he did, and so he asks the question that I think any of us would, "Why me? Why me?" He comes short of saying, "Well, if God were so loving and so wise, he would not allow this to happen to me." But, he asks an honest question and God gives him an equally honest, yet a gentle answer: "Were you there, Job, when the universe began? Were you there when I created the heaven and the earth?" It reminds me of a conversation between a parent and a two-year old — "Because I am the parent, that's why!" The two-year old is incapable of comprehending the big picture. Neither can Job. He can't see the end of his story anymore than he can see the beginning. God understands that and helps him find faith.
God helps us find faith just as he did for the writer of the 107th psalm which is unique in the psaltery because it contains four different groups of people invited to talk about God's mercy. The first group had been beset by hunger and thirst; the second group had been prisoners; the third had been deathly ill; the fourth had been lost at sea — and God provided faith for them. Now, if you have ever been lost in a storm at sea, you can relate to this because it speaks to losing control. We all love having control, and at sea you don't have it. In a storm, even an aircraft carrier can feel like a cork. Those who find themselves in this situation tend to go through a couple of stages. They find the adversity, and they try everything they can to fix it. But, there are only so many things you can do before the inevitable cry to God is uttered. And then, when people find deliverance, in one way or another, there is the praise to God as we find in the psalm. What the psalm doesn't record is what most of us say afterwards, "Well, maybe God had a hand in that or maybe again, it was my excellent seamanship that got me through."
What the psalmist is talking about and what is underneath Job is the quality of God that the Hebrew people call God's "hesseth" — God's loving providence. The people who recorded the Old Testament experienced God's hesseth both on the individual level and as a people because when they appealed to God's hesseth, his loving providence, they found faith.
There is a third common fear that we all have and that is of losing ourselves. Have you ever heard this from one of your friends leaving a relationship or a marriage? — "I had just lost myself in that relationship and I had to get away from it in order to discover who I am." In the Gospel, we find two stories, back-to-back, of people who have not only lost faith and lost control, they lost themselves.
In the first story, the disciples are on a boat when up comes a storm. Jesus pops up and rebukes the storm and then turns around and gripes at them for not having faith. All they can think of is why Jesus is not concerned. And the demoniac? He is afraid of being rejected. He has already lost himself because he is rejected. He is outcast. Nobody wants him around. Have you ever known anyone with a mentally ill family member? They'll tell you about this. Ask them about their pain, what they go through, what it's like to be imprisoned by fear. And so they wake Jesus up. They put Jesus in front of the demoniac and this is what he does. Jesus uses his fear to teach him. He does not allow his fear to imprison him, to limit him, to keep him from doing what he came to do. He overcame his fear in the Garden of Gethsemane knowing what would happen the next day, but he never allowed the fear to inhibit him; he allowed the fear to teach him. What a wonderful way to live! He used the fear that he sensed from the disciples when they woke him up from the storm to say, " Whoa, wait a minute — these people aren't just afraid of dying out here, they're afraid that God has abandoned them. They are afraid that they have lost their faith." And so, Jesus uses that fear to reconnect with his disciples.
In the case of the demoniac, anybody confronted with this kind of individual is right to be afraid. But Jesus stops, he listens and then he names the demon. "What is your name? Get out of that body!" He names the fear and when we name the fear, we can live with it and use it to teach us. When we are afraid of losing our faith, Jesus will help us find it. When we find ourselves in our storms, when we are confronted with our demons, Jesus will enable us to work through them. When we fear losing control, Jesus will remind us that the control was never ours to have. The control belongs to God. When we fear losing ourselves, it is Jesus who reminds us that as children of God we exist only in relationship with God and therefore, we cannot be lost.
Our fear, rather, is of being discovered and Jesus will help us work through that too. It is not an urban legend, it is fact. It is a common experience, day in and day out. I invite you to allow your fear to be your teacher, to allow Jesus Christ to teach you how to work through your fear and find it redeemed. AMEN
The The Rev. Sean Cox
seancox@stmargarets.org
25 June 2000