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Sermon: The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost (A) - 7th August 2011
St Alban's Anglican Church Epping 7 am and Epping Uniting Church 9.30am
Readings: Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28 Psalm 105:1-6, 16-22 Romans 10:4-15 Matthew 14:22-36
Recently, on many church noticeboards I have seen a poster that showed, on the left, a roaring lion, with the words “Scared?” Implying are you scared of the lion. While on the right-hand side, are words, written in answer to a somewhat rhetorical question, “Fear the maker!” In other words, if you are scared of the lion, you had better be scared of the lion’s maker: God.
What sort of God do the designers of the poster believe in and want us to believe in? I think that they want us to believe in a God that scares us witless, a God who is hard, judgemental and distant. While I understand the God is holy and therefore God is an important part of our lives and consciousness, the fear that I have is of respect and awe. The God I believe in is also loving and gentle, caring and considerate, a God of love. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” (John 3:16)
In the early morning light Jesus, “came walking towards (the disciples) on the lake. … they were terrified saying, “It is a ghost!” and they cried out in fear. … Jesus spoke to them and said, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.”
On the first Easter morning, in the half-light of dawn, in a graveyard, it might have been tempting to believe that their eyes were playing tricks. But, the body the women had come to anoint was indeed gone, and the proclamation rang out through the eeriness and emptiness of the place: "He has risen”.
Mary Magdalene and the other Mary fled from the tomb "with fear and great joy”, according to Matthew's account. It was a case of mixed emotions entirely appropriate to the occasion. The women were bursting to tell the news to the other followers, and yet they were afraid of this awesome truth that had been revealed first to them.
Before they ever reached the others, they encountered their risen Lord. He greeted them and then offered the words of reassurance they most needed to hear: "Do not be afraid”.
The words are common in the biblical narrative. At the time of Jesus' birth, another time of uncommon joy and fear, Mary, Joseph, Zechariah, and the shepherds in the fields all received the words as reassurance. "Do not be afraid" was part of Jesus' invitation to Peter to be a follower, and the same words rang out over a storm when the disciples became fearful and an overly brave Peter stepped out to walk on water.
Jesus regularly reminded his followers not to fear their enemies or the uncertainties that lay ahead. He invited three trembling disciples at his Transfiguration to discard their fear, and said to the ruler Jairus at his daughter's healing, "Do not fear, only believe".
After Jesus' crucifixion, fear ran rampant among his followers. According to John's gospel, Joseph of Arimathea, owner of the tomb, asked Pilate for Jesus' body "secretly, for fear of the Jews.” Nicodemus came with spices to help prepare the body for burial, but only under the safe cover of night. And the inner circle of Jesus' disciples, who had abandoned, and in Peter's case even denied, their Lord, remained hidden behind closed doors.
Even the authorities who had put him to death were fearful. Great care was taken to securely seal the tomb. When the news reached the chief priests that Jesus had risen, they devised a cover up, offering money to the tomb guards to spread the story that Jesus' disciples had come and stolen his body.
Against this fear and fraud was the simple faithfulness of the women, who had stood at the cross, watched as the stone was rolled over the tomb, and come at dawn to anoint the body. The reward for their faithfulness was the blessed gift of being witnesses to the Resurrection.
"Do not be afraid" were Jesus' first words to them. The message attended his birth, his ministry, his death and Resurrection. And it comes to us today with the same gentle and compelling clarity with which it was offered on that first Easter morning.
There is much around us that is awesome and awful. We know too well the divisions and suffering that plague our world. We have seen that the authorities today use tactics similar to those employed 2,000 years ago, and many people scheme to play to our fear, destroy our hope, and seal off our joy. But we have the confidence of our faith. We have seen the risen Lord!
Mary and Mary Magdalene loved with such a perfect love that they shed their fear. Empowered by their faith and their encounter with the risen Christ, they ran on to proclaim what they had seen and what they knew to be true. As Jesus had reminded Jairus, they knew they could not both believe and fear. They were among the first to know the truth that John later put to words: "There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear" (1 John 4:18).
They challenge us to love and to believe: to love Jesus with a perfect love and to believe in the power of his Resurrection and his love. Certainly they grieved and experienced their hope flagging during the dark moments surrounding Jesus' death. None the less, they never lost their faith. It remained a small, steady flame that was fanned to brilliant, bold new life in the light of that Easter dawn.
All these people who were told not to fear so long ago, invite you and me to such faith. Their testimony stands through the ages. It is a reminder to "rekindle the gift of God that is within you ... for God did not give us a spirit of timidity but a spirit of power and love" (2 Timothy 1:6-7). With courage and joy, let us claim that same spirit that dwelt within our sisters and brothers, the witnesses to the wonder of following the One who is the Son of the living God of love.
Those witnesses tell us that we need not fear because, “This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him while we are walking in darkness, we lie and do not do what is true; but if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.” (1 John 1:5:10)
This sermon based upon the work of Joyce Hollyday to be found at http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm? action=magazine.article&issue=soj8704&article=870410h&mode=sermon_prep&week=A_Proper_14.sojo.net