“WHAT FAITH DOES TO FEAR”

Scripture: Luke 8:22-25, 40-56

INTRODUCTION

The season is Lent and we are on our way toward Jerusalem, traveling alongside Jesus and His first disciples. Thus far, the gospels of Matthew and Mark have served as our guide, and have helped to provide us with a sense of direction in talking about our theme, “The Stages of Life, Death and Resurrection.” Our sermons have focused on “Our Struggle with Stress,” “Letting Go of Loneliness” and about how we can move from “Hostility to Hospitality.” Today we pass the baton on to Luke who leads us forward as we concentrate our attention on “What Faith Does to Fear.”

According to Webster’s Dictionary, fear is “a painful emotion, alarm and agitation, caused by the expectation or realization of danger.” The most common Hebrew word for fear in the Old Testament is “yare,” signifying both reverence and awe of God and also human terror. In the Greek New Testament, “phobos” is the word for fear, from which our English language has derived a long list of phobias, including acrophobia – a fear of heights, and claustrophobia – a fear of being in close places, and a new phobia which haunts this world today called terrorism.

Between the Old and New Testaments, says Dr. Lloyd Ogilvie, retiring chaplain of the U. S. Senate, “there are 366 ‘Fear Not’ verses in the Bible – one for every day of the year and an extra one for leap year!” (From “Living Without Fear,” by Lloyd Ogilvie, Word Publishing Inc., 1987, page 24).

And as Christians, we know that is one of the major themes of scripture – “Fear not!” Even so, I think most of us can identify with the poet A. E. Housman who put it rather succinctly this way:

“I, a stranger and afraid,

In a world I never made.”

Which takes us back to the creation story in Genesis, chapter 3, after Adam and Eve have eaten the fruit of the forbidden tree. The authors of that ancient story envisioned what it might have been like when our original human parents chose the darkness instead of the light:

And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves…but the Lord God called to them and said, “Where are you?” And they said, “We heard the sound of Thee in the garden, and were afraid, because we were naked, so we hid ourselves (Genesis 3:8-10, paraphrase).

And that has been our situation ever since – fearful of the darkness, anxious in the daylight, as God continues to come looking for us to set things right and show us the way back home again through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

A little girl, terrified by the lightning and loud thunder of a severe storm, was relieved when her mother came into the bedroom in the middle of the night. The mother said, “Don’t be afraid. This will pass over. Meanwhile, Jesus is here to protect you.” The daughter replied, “Okay Mom, then you stay here with Jesus and I’ll go sleep with Dad.”

You see, it all starts at an early age, and you’d think that by the time we are all grown up, our fears would subside, and possibly even go away. But they don’t. Anxiety, dread, fright and apprehension persist throughout all the stages of our lives. And that is why, that is where our faith can help us face our fears.

It was the Danish theologian Soren Kierkegaard who once observed that “faith sees best in the darkness.” And surely that was so on the Sea of Galilee a long time ago when Jesus and His disciples were caught in a storm.

Luke reports that As they sailed across the lake, Jesus fell asleep. But suddenly, the sky turned dark and a storm of wind and sheets of rain came down on them, so the boat was starting to sink. In sheer panic, the disciples woke Jesus up and cried out, “Master, we are perishing!” Then He rebuked the wind and raging waves, saying “Peace be still” (Mark 4:39), until all was calm. Looking at them, Jesus asked “Where is your faith?” And Luke says that they were still afraid, but marveled at Him, wondering “Who is this, that He commands the wind and the water to obey Him?” (Luke 8:22-25, paraphrase).

Now I find it interesting and important to note that in the three gospels where this story is recorded – Matthew 8, Mark 4 and Luke 8, our text for today – Jesus didn’t say to His disciples, “Be not afraid.” There were other times when He said those words, knowing that their fears were mostly figments of their imaginations.

But not here, because this was a fierce storm, they were in real trouble, and there was good reason for them to be afraid. In fact, that is the way God made us, with an internal warning system that goes into red alert when the forces of nature or the evils of humanity are unleashed and our lives are in danger. At that moment, we had better find a safe harbor and seek protection until the trouble passes over. If you have read the book or seen the movie “The Perfect Storm,” then you already know how the captain of the fishing boat Andrea Gail disregarded those warning signals when Hurricane Grace hit New England in October of 1991. Lacking a “healthy sense of fear,” that captain pushed his crew into the eye of the storm and all of them were lost at sea.

So Jesus didn’t say to those fishermen on the Sea of Galilee, “Be not afraid.” What He said, instead, was Where is your faith? And that was the right thing to say, because He wanted them to know that He was with them in that boat and would help them in the storm, come what may. And that is still true for each of us and all of us here today.

When the storms of life strike and we don’t know where to go or what to do, Jesus Christ has promised to be with us and to help see us through. Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me. That is the Lord’s promise to each of us and all of us today, especially to our military personnel and every one of those civilians in this terrible war in Iraq. And it is a promise God will keep if we but trust in Him.

II.

Not only is that true in the face of danger – it is also the case as we deal with our fears of disease and declining health. Luke tells us that when the storm was over, Jesus and His disciples went across to the other side of the lake. As He encountered the crowds that were waiting for Him, a woman who had been hemorrhaging blood for twelve years – probably a hemophiliac – pushed her way through the throng and touched the hem, the fringe of Jesus’ robe. Luke says that she was healed and when Jesus discovered who she was and why she had reached out to Him, He looked at her with love in His eyes and compassion in His voice and said, Your faith has made you well.

We’re not talking here about hypochondria - all of those imaginary pains about which we love to complain and actually caused one person to put on their gravestone, “I told you I was sick.” We’re not talking about that today. We’re talking about real illness, about suffering and sickness, just like that woman in the gospel of Luke.

Now there’s a dilemma with this story, and as Christians, we cannot, we must not avoid it. Over the thirty years that I have been privileged to serve as a pastor in the church, and to minister to and pray with people and their loved ones who are sick and suffering all sorts and conditions of health problems, some of them recover and get better and sadly, there are others who don’t. But never, not once in my own experience, have I ever seen anyone lose their battle with cancer or heart disease or sickle cell anemia or any other illness due to lack of faith. To the contrary, the prayers have been fervent, the hope for healing has been lifted up toward heaven and everything that could have been done was done.

So what can we say and how do we react when those for whom we pray and pull out all the “medical stops” do not come back and get better? The only answer I can give is that there are different forms of healing and different ways of dealing with the physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual dimensions of our lives. And in each and every case, we can know beyond the shadow of a doubt that Jesus Christ cares and is right there alongside us.

Dr. Richard Selzer, in his book “Mortal Lessons,” writes about one situation that says it all for me. Please listen:

“I stand by the bed where a young woman lies, her face postoperative, her mouth twisted in palsy. A tiny twig of the facial nerve, the one to the muscles of her mouth, has been severed. She will be thus from now on. The surgeon had followed with religious fervor the curve of her flesh: I promise you that. Nevertheless, to remove the tumor in her cheek, I had to cut this little nerve.

Her young husband is in the room. He stands on the opposite side of the bed, and together they seem to dwell in the evening lamplight, isolated from me, private…Then the young woman speaks:

‘Will my mouth always be like this?’

‘Yes,’ I say, ‘it will. It is because the nerve was cut.’

She nods, and is silent. But her husband smiles. ‘I like it’ he says. ‘It is kind of cute’ and all at once, I know who he is. I understand, and I lower my gaze. One is not bold in an encounter with the Holy.

Unmindful, the husband bends to kiss her crooked mouth, and I am so close I can see how he twists his own lips to accommodate hers, to show her that their kiss still works.”

Who is the Holy One there with them in that hospital room? His name is Jesus Christ, and He has promised to be with them, just as they promised to be with each other the day they were married – “In plenty and in want, in joy and in sorrow, in sickness and in health, as long as they both shall live.”

You see, sometimes our bodies cannot be cured of disease, but we, all of us, can be healed – healed in our hearts and souls and minds, knowing that nothing can separate us from each other or from God who has promised to bind us together in His love.

CONCLUSION

And that leads us to one last thought as we deal with our fears, and it is this: just as God has promised to help us handle the fears of danger, disease and distress, He will surely come alongside us as we face our own fear of death.

In the final scene from the 8^th chapter of Luke, a religious leader named Jairus pleaded with Jesus to intervene for his daughter. She was 12 years old and sick unto death, and by the time Jesus arrived at her home, the family and friends who had gathered there said she was gone.

But Jesus spoke to all of them saying, Do not fear, only believe and she shall be well. And he went into her room, took her hand, revived her spirit and brought her back to life.

Now I believe that scene was and is a foreshadowing of what will happen someday for you and for me. When we have finished our journey on this earth, and prepare to meet our maker, His Son our Savior Jesus will come to take our hand and lead us toward heaven.

Do you believe that today? Martin Luther King, Jr. believed it. He said so in many ways, but especially the night before he died, April 3, 1968, Memphis, Tennessee. Remember?

“I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life; longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land. And I’m happy tonight. I’m not worried about anything; I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!”

(Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “I’ve Been to the

Mountaintop,” the eve of his assassination,

Memphis, Tennessee, April 3, 1968)

You see, when our time comes, there will be no need to resist or to be afraid, for our work on this earth will be done. We will have fought the good fight, finished our course, and the final race will have been run. And like John Bunyan in “Pilgrim’s Progress,” we will be able to say with great joy that “When the day that he must go hence was come, many accompanied him to the riverside, into which as he went down he said, ‘Death, where is thy sting?’ And as he went down deeper he said, ‘Grave, where is thy victory?’ So he passed over, and all the trumpets sounded for him on the other side.” (From “The Pilgrim’s Promise” by John Bunyan).

That is God’s promise to you and to me through His Son, our Savior Jesus. And when the time comes we will finally discover that the promise is true. And what a wonderful day that will be!

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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