Sermon by Dr. George Bryant Wirth

October 14, 2001

Scripture: Psalm 23; I John 4:7-21

Before we pray and read from the scripture lessons, I want to tell you that I had planned to preach a different sermon today, but this past week, I changed the title and scripture lessons. That doesn’t happen often, but these are unusual and difficult days in which we are living.

So our sermon today is about fear and the title actually comes from a television program that was aired on NBC this past summer entitled "The Fear Factor." Some of you may have seen it, and then all of a sudden it was gone. I called the Atlanta Journal Constitution and talked with a reporter in the entertainment group whose name is Phil Kloer. He said that NBC had decided not to continue to air "The Fear Factor" program in the fall, in part because of the terrorist attack on September 11, and because there is already a great deal of fear in this country. That is what our sermon is about today, and how our faith can help us deal with the fears that we feel especially now. I believe that if we are willing to listen to the voice of God’s Spirit and if we are ready to open our hearts and minds to God’s Holy Word, that we will find the strength and confidence we need, the healing and hope we need at this time of national and world crisis.

Last Sunday afternoon, following the second worship service, I got on the MARTA train and headed out toward the airport. Someone had told me, as I was leaving the church, that the bombing had begun in Afghanistan, and suddenly, I began to feel it all over again.

By the time I arrived at Hartsfield, it was pervasive in the main terminal – people standing in long lines, waiting to go through the scanning machines; security personnel checking out each passenger and every piece of luggage carefully; folks casting glances back and forth, looking for suspicious characters; and by the time I arrived at the gate, the television monitors were broadcasting video images of Osama bin Laden, warning Americans and other nations of a holy war and more retaliation.

The flight to Newark was uneventful, but as we descended nearby to the New York skyline, all of us in that plane were looking at the empty space where the two World Trade Center towers once stood. And for the first time in my life in the United States, as I got off the plane, I saw soldiers with guns over their shoulders patrolling the corridors. All at once, I realized as my heart was beating faster and my palms were perspiring, what it was. It was fear – an overwhelming, palpable sense of fear which had swept into those airports and has invaded all of our lives.

Years ago, I used to be apprehensive about flying in planes, anxious about careless mistakes the ground crew might make, about bad weather or pilot error or air traffic control confusion. And so I started wearing earplugs and saying extra fervent prayers and every now and then having a sip of chardonnay. But this was and is different – it’s the fear of terrorism which has attacked our country and threatens the stability and security of a way of life that we, most of us, probably took for granted.

I.

In 1947, the year I was born, the British author W. H. Auden wrote a poem entitled "The Age of Anxiety" which described the world as he saw it. The allies had defeated their enemies in a long and devastating war, and as the nations began to rebuild and restore the hope of international peace, underneath it all, wrote Auden, was an undercurrent of "anxiety."

Growing up during the following decade in eastern Long Island, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, I didn’t know how to describe that anxiety, but I sensed it all around me. As little children, we were taught in school to get down underneath our desks, close our eyes and put our hands over our heads during air raid drills, preparing for a Russian attack. The Cold War had begun, and as our family watched the little black and white television screen, somebody named McCarthy, who looked angry and mean, was telling us that Communist spies were on the loose in Washington, D.C.

That suspicion came even closer to home during the first presidential election that I can remember. We had an "I Like Ike" poster on our front door, but the neighbors put a "Vote for Stevenson" sign on their lawn. We were conservative Christian Republicans, they were liberal Jewish Democrats, and somehow that meant we were right and they were wrong, or so I was told.

And in the mist of it all, I could tell that my parents were nervous about something else. They would talk at the dinner table about a place called Korea, and my mother would look at my father, who was a Naval officer in the Second World War, and ask him if he had heard any word about going over there. I didn’t understand, but I could feel the apprehension in both of them, until the following year, 1953, when the truce was signed and they didn’t discuss it ever again.

There was one thing more – it was 1954, and I saw something on TV about "Negro children" trying to go to public school in the south. I knew that was a problem, because even though our elementary school was integrated, when the bell rang at the end of the day, white children and black children went home a different way. We didn’t play together; we didn’t really know each other. And the truth was, of course, that racial tension, separation and fear was widespread in the north, just as it was down here.

All of those memories and so much more remind us that W. H. Auden was right when he wrote 54 years ago that we lived in an "age of anxiety." And anyone who wants to look back with nostalgia at "the good old days" of the late 1940’s, the 1950’s and the early 1960’s needs to remember that, although life may have seemed simpler then and more clearly defined, we in our families and as citizens across this nation were trying to find a way to live in peace and security, not only here in America but also with other countries and people throughout the world.

II.

So it still is today, except for two things that are different now. The first is that the United States has been attacked at home – not at Pearl Harbor out there in the Hawaiian Islands – but right here in New York City and Washington, D.C. What we thought could never happen has happened, and this nation has been shaken to its core.

And second, never before have we been engaged in a war with radical religious terrorists. Last Sunday’s New York Times featured an article by Andrew Sullivan entitled "This Is A Religious War." Listen to how he describes it: "This is not a war of Islam versus Christianity and Judaism. Rather, it is a war of (radical) fundamentalism against faiths of all kinds that are at peace with freedom and modernity." (The New York Times Magazine, October 7, 2001, "This Is A Religious War" by Andrew Sullivan, Page 45).

It all still seems so incomprehensible, almost like a nightmare from which we are waiting to wake up. But as the reality of September 11 settles in, the fear that we feel is real and undeniable. It is pervasive in airports and on airplanes. It is ever present in our newspapers and magazines and it fills our television screens. It has rocked the stock market and rippled through our economy. It has crept into our homes and schools and places of work. And if we took a poll today, I think we’d have to say that it has even snuck through the door into the church.

But that is precisely the point where fear is ultimately confronted by faith, because we Christians believe that the forces of fear are no match against the grace and power and love of God.

How do we know? The word of God assures us that it is so. Over and over and over again, from the dawn of creation in Genesis on through the book of Revelation, we can hear God’s voice saying to us, "Do not be afraid!"

King David heard it as he was surrounded by enemies on the outside and plagued with apprehension inside his soul. And the words that were given to him have become the affirmation of hope which we still hold onto today: Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me.

The prophets heard that word, and proclaimed it to the people of Israel. Do not fear, and do not let your heart be faint, declared Isaiah (Isaiah 7:4). Be not afraid, for I am with you said the Lord through Jeremiah (Jeremiah 1:8). Fear not, but let your hands be strong prophesied Zechariah (Zechariah 8:13).

And then, when it looked like the principalities of evil and the powers of darkness had won, God spoke once and for all through the life, death and resurrection of His Son, our Savior Jesus:

Do not be afraid, Mary (Luke 1:30)…Fear not, Joseph (Matthew 1:20)…Be not afraid shepherds! (Luke 2:10) said the angels when Jesus was born. After the crucifixion, when all seemed lost, as the darkness finally turned to dawn and God raised His Son from the grave, the shout went out all over the world, Do not be afraid! (Matthew 28:5).

And it was John who wrote to the church in 70 A.D., after Jerusalem had been destroyed by the Romans and the persecutions of Nero had been unleashed: We have seen and testify that God has sent His Son as the Savior of the world…God is love, and there is no fear in His love, because perfect love casts out fear (I John 4:14, 16, 18).

Christian friends: we need to take those words to heart today! For the love of God in the person of Jesus Christ has come among us to say "Do not be afraid!" His power to lift us up and help us go on is greater than any act of terror that would knock us down or hold us back. The fear factor which has invaded our lives cannot and will not have the final word, because God so loved the world, that He gave us His only Son, that whoever believes in Him will not perish but has been promised everlasting life (John 3:16).

Do you believe that this morning? If you do, or if you want to, then listen to this closing story. There is a legend about a burdened old man who along his way met an angel on the road. The man was bent under the enormous weight of a great burlap sack across his shoulders and on his back. It was so heavy that all he could do was just stumble along.

The angel said to him, "What have you got in there?" The man replied, "In there are my regrets and my fears." The angel said, "Empty them out and let me see them." So with great effort, the old man lowered the sack and emptied it. Out came first yesterday and then tomorrow, and the angel picked up yesterday, threw it aside and said, "You don’t need that anymore, because yesterday is in the hands of God, and no amount of regret can change it."

Then the angel picked up tomorrow, cast it aside and said, "You don’t need this anymore either, because tomorrow is in the hands of God and no amount of fear will change it." And the legend says that the old man straightened up, began to smile and started to walk toward freedom. (From a sermon entitled "School Days," preached by Dr. Robert Cleveland Holland, Shadyside Presbyterian Church, September 18, 1983)

If we really believe that God’s perfect love in Jesus Christ has cast out our fear and set us free, then it’s time that we resolved right here and right now to live that way and to trust in Him. Because yesterday is history, tomorrow is still a mystery but today is a gift which God has given to us. That is why it is called the present! So let us live today, knowing beyond the shadow of a doubt, that God’s perfect love has cast out our fear!

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