April 20, 1980

LIFE AS SCARDY CATS: Lately, I have been noticing how much human life in general and my life in particular are dominated and motivated by fear. Sometimes, it is the kicked in the chest feeling of terror. More often, it is the day in and day out slight nausea of worry and anxiety. The focus of our fears is sometimes quite specific. We know what's scaring us. On other days, it is nothing in particular, just a general uneasiness that life may not hold together the way we want it to. As Luke tells it, even when the resurrected Jesus encountered his disciples, instead of being joyous that God was making a move in their lives, they were scared out of their wits, thinking they were seeing a ghost. Indeed, ghosts and the big bad wolf are about the only things that don't frighten most of us from time to time. 

One day, Charlie Brown goes to see Dr. Lucy in her doctor's – "c please" – booth. His complaint is that he feels afraid all the time. In good medical form, Lucy wants him to be more specific about his symptoms. She rattles off a list of possible phobias which might be his trouble. “If you are afraid of heights, then that's acrophobia. If it is close places, then it's claustrophobia. Strangers, xenophobia. Blood, hemaphobia. Or maybe you have pantophobia." Charlie asks, 'What's pantophobia?" Dr. Lucy responds authoritatively, "Oh, that's the fear of everything." Charlie gasps, "That's it!"

We may or may not be able to be more specific about that which scares us. But most of us can agree with the definition of fear given by Dr. Willard Gaylin, a professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia Medical School: "Fear is the anticipation of a painful experience.” Fear is a lot easier defined than lived with. After all, the painful experience that we anticipate with worry and dread may be death. It may be financial collapse. It may be the loss of a loved one or a relationship. It may be being a failure, being humiliated, It may be something so private and personal that only you can fill in the blank. 

To be sure, Dr. Gaylin affirms, fear is not always bad. It is sometimes what he calls. "a signal for survival. " It comes helpfully on occasion to give us fair warning to get our health problem checked out. Our fear warns us that we have a problem in a relationship with someone which needs attention. Fear warns us to slow down when the tires squeal or the policeman is spotted. Fear, along with its buddies of worry, dread, and anxiety, nevertheless overstay their welcome in our lives, come into play in tricky ways, and do us harm.

For example, the daily on-guardedness, on the defensiveness, we feel is a manifestation of fear. It is basically a fear of the persons and situations around us in the present. We stay on the defensive because we fear someone might take advantage of us, get ahead of us, find us out, stop loving us, or leave us. It's hard to let go and enjoy life when you wonder what will happen next. We stay on edge with the comments of others making sure they aren't criticizing us or making us an unknown butt to a joke. Sometimes we operate like a hair trigger gun, ready to fire at anyone who seems to cross us. A minister friend of mine is known as and often kidded about being a touchy guy. Walking down the street with some other ministers once, one teased: "Howard, why are you so hostile?" Taking this seriously, he whirled around: "Hostile? What do you mean hostile. I'm not hostile!"

Fear also comes in the masks of our neuroses. We may laugh about people being neurotic. But the truth is that we are all a bit neurotic, a little weird, in one way or another. One way to define neurosis is this: "You are neurotic when you take a normal human feeling and go overboard with it. One reason we go overboard with our feelings is due to our fear and worry about the uncertainties and the certainties of the future. Some for instances: Although it is normal to want to look good, we betray our fear of being old and unwanted when we become obsessed with staying young, avoiding wrinkles, gray hair, or no hair. Concern for financial security is normal. Yet, when getting and having money is our mania, when we measure our worth and everyone else's by its standard, we show our fear of losing our status and security in life without it. So it goes with the normal concern for physical health. We need to take care of ourselves. And despite the way we stuff, smoke, and pickle our bodies, we want to stay healthy and alive. But constant worry about health is a face of our fear of death. And let's face it: death makes us all afraid and flaky at times. The tragedy is that we become so afraid of dying that we never really live. 

In summary, our fears come out in many ways. We stay on the defensive and become neurotic because we fear that others will hurt us, that we will be sick, broke, a failure, unloved, lead or other conditions too private to mention. The signal for survival fear is not always bad, but it can metastasize into a life lesion of worry, dread, and tension which eats us alive. The fear that things are not going to be the way we want them to be can sap our time and energy. Those worries about what is wrong can blind us to what is right about our lives. When you live on the defensive with your guard up and fists clenched you tend to miss the love God is trying to get to you, perhaps through the very people you are suspicious of. Hungry people in the world, honesty needed in business and government, lonely person down the street? No wonder we don't have much concern for them. We are too busy depleting our personal energy resources worrying about ourselves to enjoy people, much less help them. Okay Bill, you've done enough talking about the problem. Are you only going to rub it in? Or is there another side? Just what does Jesus have to do, particularly the resurrection of Jesus, have to do with our human tendency to live like scaredy cats? 

THE SNEAK PREVIEW: I think this human proclivity to live in fear is one thing Luke was addressing in our passage today. In fact, as I have observed the fear in you and the fear in me, I have been struck with how much the New Testament addresses human fears. The angels who announced Jesus' birth to the shepherds: "Don't be afraid. I bring you good news." In Matthew, Jesus speaks to people worried about what they are to eat, wear, and where they are to live: "Don't worry about it. Look at the way God cares for the birds of the air and the lilies of the field. Don't you know he will take care of you if you'll just live in his way. You can't add an inch or minute to your life by worrying. (Matthew 6) John tells about Jesus' words to his disciples who were worried about Jesus' death and their own fate: "Let not your hearts be troubled... Neither let them be afraid...I go to prepare a place for you. (John 14) It really comes then as no surprise when Jesus appeared to his disciples after his resurrection that the first thing he had to do was to calm their fears.But still an embarrassing question must be asked: Why? Why should we believe Jesus and the Gospel writers about letting our defenses down, about letting go of our fears of ourselves, each other, life, death, and all the points in between? The answer to that question is the treasure of Easter. 

You see, in Jesus' time people were a lot like you and me. They worried about themselves, their loved ones, their fate now and later. They feared death. They looked at their world and saw what was there: dangers, pain, wishy-washy people, and death. "You're flying high in April, shot down in in May…” While some people barely stay alive on dog food, others live like fat cat royalty. Even if they believed in the powerful creator God of Genesis, they wondered if God had enough strength and smarts to finish what he started. They wondered if the world wasn't like a Frankenstein monster turned against its maker.

In the Hebrew people grew a hope, a hope that God would set things right in the world. They came to believe in a general resurrection of the dead at the end of time. The resurrection would be the place where God rewarded the good and judged the evil in people. Intertwined in this belief in general, end-time resurrection was the promise of God's Messiah. God, they believed, was going to send his Messiah to be a part of getting things straightened out on earth. With the Messiah and resurrection, God would show that he not evil, not death is in control of the world. Now, there are variations in the ways the Gospels and the letters of Paul say it, but the common proclamation of the New Testament is that JESUS IS THE LONGED-FOR MESSIAH AND HIS RESURRECTION FROM DEATH AND EVIL IS THE SNEAK PREVIEW IN THE MIDDLE OF TIME OF WHAT GOD WILL DO AT THE END OF TIME. Jesus is the sneak preview that God and his love await us at the end not the dreaded, feared darkness of death. Jesus is our hint that we need not fear the future because we can trust God with it. He is the evidence that God is stronger than the hate, evil, and death that seem so in charge at times. The Bible teaches that there is a connection between the resurrection of Jesus and the overcoming of our fears of the present and the future. This is what Luke is trying to show in the scene with the risen Jesus and his frightened disciples, scaredy cats with whom I identify. 

Jesus addresses the fear in his disciples then and now with the words: "Don't be afraid. 

I’m no ghost (or hoax). Here, touch my wounds. I'm for real. The way I taught you to live really is God's way. He has backed me up with the resurrection. Because Jesus has fulfilled the promise of the scriptures and God has validated him with the resurrection, Jesus challenges those disciples to get on with his way of loving God and each other. He bids them to spread the news of repentance. God wants us to repent. Repentance means turning your life around from living scared for self to living unafraid for God and others. Jesus says to spread the news about God's forgiveness. We can live lovingly and forgivingly with each other because God really does love us, he really does forgive us, he really is stronger than death. Furthermore, "You are my witnesses of these things!"

LIFE WITH THE BRAKES OFF: When I was 15, the learning to drive experience was tough for me and my father who tried to teach me. My initial way of trying to drive carefully was a sure fire blood pressure raiser for him. I would try to regulate my speed by gently pushing the brakes with one foot while pushing the accelerator with the other. I'm not sure which got hotter: the brake linings or my Dad's temper. I had to learn that you can't drive a car with the brakes and accelerator on at the same time. You may not hit anything that way, but you'll burn up your car in the process. 

When we live our lives like scaredy cats, it is like driving with our brakes on. The fears hold us back from enjoying our lives. They keep us so uptight and tense that we miss much of the love God has for us, the love he gets to us through people. When we are on the defensive, we miss the people who, if they can't take away our fears, can at least help uc face them. It may not be possible to live without fear. But with the help of God and the others he gives us, we don't have to face them completely alone. 

For us, like those early disciples, the resurrection of Jesus is our sneak preview that we can trust God with our futures and deaths. God will be there; his love will be sufficient. So, we can stop being so afraid of the then that we miss the joy of the now. And speaking of the now, the resurrection, the sneak preview of the end, has something to say about how we live in the now. You see, it wasn't just anybody God raised. It was the particular body and life of Jesus. It was the way that man lived to which God said his death defying YES. It was the fists-down, hands-out way of life Jesus lived that God said you cannot ultimately kill. The Easter message is this: give your energy to your fears and you'll be a ball of nerves and premature corpse in return. Give your strength to Jesus' feeding and hugging way with God's children and you'll be given, life to the brim back, life now and forever.

Jesus trusted his neck and future to God. He spent his nows without being on the defensive, ready to love, laugh, and care. He was willing to love and be loved by those others only cursed and avoided. It wasn't easy; it was risky. Sometimes beautiful things happened as with Zaccheus and Mary Magdalene. Sometimes people let him down like Peter. Yet, he didn't back off. He knew that the only people who feel no pain are the dead or comatose. He knew that people inevitably have their angles, still he was willing to take the risk of listening, getting involved, and trying to help. Jesus wasn't awarded the key to the city by the Jerusalem Chamber of Commerce for his brakes off concern for people on the other side of the tracks. He collided with a cross. But it was that kind of life God said YES to with the resurrection. 

Being God's Easter person is not a cocoon. It doesn't take all the fear away. But it does give you the help of God and others to manage your fear instead of letting your fear manage you. It's risky, it doesn't guarantee a collision-free life. Yet, you just may make someone else's life better and be helped by someone you need along the way. Whatever happens, we dare let our fists down and our hands out because this is the kind of life God said YES to in Jesus. 

Close your eyes for a minute. What are you afraid of today? What's eating on you? Are you worried about yourself? Your health...your job...your marriage...your family? Are you fearing being found out... being a failure...being had... being rejected? Who are you worried about? Picture their face. With whom and where are your brakes on today? Maybe you and I are like those disciples: so afraid that we can't see Jesus with us already to give us his love and strength. Listen, can you hear him: "Peace be with you. Don't be afraid. I'm for real. God is for real. And you can trust us with your nows and futures." Let the tension drain out of your muscles, open your hands, take off your brakes and let God's love work through you. There now, maybe you can feel already God's love filling up your scary places. 

Open your eyes. And go be witnesses of these things.