Fear and Do Not Fear

Love is His Meaning. All Shall Be Well.

Photo by Fabio Nenci on Unsplash

In everything, God is trying to move us into Christ consciousness. If we are absolutely grounded in the absolute love of God that protects us from nothing even as it sustains us in all things, then we can face all things with courage and tenderness and touch the hurting places in others and in ourselves with love.
James Finley

God of truth uncovered, you trace the sparrow’s flight, and plumb the secret places of the heart: bring our fear and conflict into the light of your presence; help us to lose our hollow life and find our way to you.
Steven Shakespeare

A LITURGY OF READING AND PRAYER FOR TRINITY 3

Opening Prayer

Creator God,
Joyfully making and re-making the world: be creative in us.
Redeemer God,
Embracing all that is broken: hold what hurts in us.
Spirit God,
Animating all that lives: inspire and enliven us.
Triune God,
Dancing through all that is: dance in us.

1^st Readings

Matthew 10.24-39

‘A disciple is not above the teacher, nor a slave above the master; it is enough for the disciple to be like the teacher, and the slave like the master. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household!

‘So have no fear of them; for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known. What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops.

Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.

Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground unperceived by your Father. And even the hairs of your head are all counted. So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.

‘Everyone therefore who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven; but whoever denies me before others, I also will deny before my Father in heaven.

‘Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household.

Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me.

Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.

REFLECTION

My husband is reading the book of Proverbs at the moment. Sitting with a cup of tea together each morning, he often quotes the lines that strike him. It’s a very odd mix. This one gave us a good, perhaps unlikely, giggle.

He that deviseth to do evil shall be called a mischievous person. Proverbs 24.8

It struck us as absurdly comical that evil should be called out so weakly. Like calling the growing number of tyrant leaders in the world naughty boys. And then declaring it a wise saying!

Jesus had a rather firmer view about just how dangerous are those who devise evil: those who would kill the soul. Fear them, he says. Oppose them, even if they are brother or sister or mother. Now that’s fierce. That’s how seriously Jesus takes evil and wants us to take it. But it is also confusing and dangerous when those who follow Jesus see evil in different places.

He also says: Do not be afraid. A message he repeats many times. Do not fear. The Lord is near, counting the very hairs on your head. Fear and do not fear. So which is it? And how does one talk to the other.

Perhaps another proverb would serve us much better here:

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Proverbs 9.10

Standing in awe before realities greater than we can understand is the beginning of wisdom. ‘Fearing’ the power of love to destroy our most cherished views of our own rightness or authority or control is where we start. The crucial question for this passage seems to me to be: Who is this Lord that by fearing I may fear nothing?

A dread warrior, says Jeremiah. Well, perhaps. And some of this passage leans that way. But, more to the point, a suffering servant, says Jesus. The text goes on to suggest that the second must inform the first if we are to wield the sort of sword-like truth that Jesus tells us we almost certainly will. Taking up our cross, dying to self, losing to gain, is a very different starting place from advancing or protecting self-serving or self-righteous agendas.

This is where this passage, and indeed the whole of Jesus’ ministry, pivots from bloody-minded righteousness to a sacred bleeding heart: from sword bearing to cross bearing: from Beelzebub to Christ: from merely being right to the sort of fierce compassion that might change the world, even when we seem to be losing.

James Finley, student of Thomas Merton and clinical psychologist writes:

In everything, God is trying to move us into Christ consciousness. If we are absolutely grounded in the absolute love of God that protects us from nothing even as it sustains us in all things, then we can face all things with courage and tenderness and touch the hurting places in others and in ourselves with love.

Having the mind of Christ protects us from nothing and sustains us in all things. Here is the mystery. That no matter how bad it looks, we are cherished and cared for beyond measure. As Julian of Norwich famously wrote:

Love is his meaning. All shall be well.

But the reality is that it often takes some sort of cross or loss to find that meaning. It is the stripping of even the most subtle attachments to ego that allows us to touch that love and to defend it aright. Sometimes we are challenged to choose that cross. More often,I think, life puts us there. In both cases, only then are we are poised to find that impossible reserve of resurrection love and presence. Only then, I think, are we in a position to pick up the ‘sword’. Truth divorced from love is not the sword Jesus bears.

And so bearing it might look like very different things.

Like Jesus, we are called to defend those who in their loss are shattered and hopeless. We oppose those who abuse and manipulate and seduce for their own power. We quietly tell the truth when silence would be safer. We stand alongside those who are excluded, ignored or scapegoated.

But, also like Jesus, we listen before judging. We forgive when every instinct cries out for revenge. We care for neighbours even of very different persuasion. We resist our instinctive impulse to deny or control when we are in pain.

Two conversations I had, just this week, bear out what I have been trying to say. One with a man who is dying of cancer. The other, with a woman who has been betrayed by a church system that considered public opinion, driven by fear, more important than pastoral care and the compassion she so obviously needed.

What I witnessed was that by prayerfully embracing their suffering rather than becoming embittered, they had - in very different circumstances - found a richer perspective, an unshakeable sense of love, the gift of life. Neither did that make them passive. I witnessed that woman oppose her mistreatment in the most fruitful way. She was bearing a cross-shaped sword arising from allowing the wounding itself to become cross-shaped. These conversations moved me deeply. They mirrored what I myself have sensed and known, in my own difficult times.

Whether bearing suffering or opposing wrong - and in a very real way they go together - there are no easy answers. Just the paradox of the cross which we are called to contemplate and to live in some small and often inadequate way, day by day. Just this enormous challenge to lose and to find, to die and to live and to love. When we accept this challenge, we bring more of what might actually change the destructive trajectory of the world. We bear witness to a deeper reality.

Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.

…

By the way, hubby reckons he’s trusting God rather well at the moment, according to Proverbs 28.25b:

…he that putteth his trust in the Lord shall be made fat. : - /

Now that’s mischievous!

Ponder. Pray. Practice.

What could losing your life to gain it mean to you today? What would bearing your cross look like?

Are there ways in which you might oppose in love those who hurt others - even in the smallest ways?

Contemplative Corner

Wordless prayer is a sort of stripping of our power - drawing us nearer the one who sustains us in all things.

Find some time for silent letting go this week whether by sitting in prayer, walking in nature, slowing right down to notice every detail of what you might be doing… Whatever you do, imagine that God who is counting the hairs on your head, with cherishing fondness.

Widening the Circle

Giving thanks for grace received, in prayer or in life, take some time to pray for the people and places on your heart today: and especially that we might learn to bear what is ours to bear and to oppose what is ours to oppose: all in the Spirit of Christ.

The Lord’s Prayer
for Trinity

Source of All Life, may your name be kept holy.
Your Kingdom, the compassion and justice of Christ, come.
Your Will, in the strength of the Holy Spirit, be done
on earth as in heaven.

Nourish us with your wisdom and truth. Set us free, even as we set others free.
Deliver us from our static certainties and heavy heartedness,
Enliven us this day with your music.
and lead us into your dance…

For you are Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer - now and forever. Amen.

Julie Dunstan

2nd Readings

I’ve shared it before. A top 10 for me. Perfect for this week.

The Place Where We Are Right
Yehudi Amichai

From the place where we are right
flowers will never grow
in the spring.

The place where we are right
is hard and trampled
like a yard.

But doubts and loves
dig up the world
like a mole, a plow.
And a whisper will be heard in the place
where the ruined
house once stood.

The Uses of Sorrow
Mary Oliver

(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)

Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.

Blessing

May we cherish our darkness and find the gift.

May we dig up the hard ground of ‘rightness’ and hear the Spirit’s whisper.

May we both bear and oppose as we must, knowing we are sustained in all things.

And the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all now and evermore. Amen.

Music:

Note to reader: Thanks for joining me at the Streams. I’ve persisted with a liturgical format in order to invite you to slow down, to breathe, to receive, to pray. I hope you will find somewhere to do this. If not here, where? x