Fear and Love

            If I asked you to make a list of the top ten things you fear, what would be on that list? Once we get past the fear of spiders, or dogs, or the fear of enclosed spaces, or fear of heights, what would be there? Fear of dying? Or maybe fear of dying painfully? Fear of aging? Of getting dementia? Of losing mobility? Anybody fear getting cancer? Or fear their cancer coming back? Anybody fear being poor? Or fear that you will outlive your money? What do you fear?

            Maybe you have bigger fears. Not for yourself, but for the coming generations. For myself, I'm particularly afraid that we're going to hit another economic collapse like the one in 2007-2008, and that this time it's going to be more severe and be permanent. I fear I'm not going to be able to help my children out the way my parents helped me. I fear the economic collapse will lead to the underfunding and eventual failure of municipal infrastructures, like electricity, and water utilities, like is already happening in Detroit, where people live in houses without water or power.

            I fear that we’re living in a period of irreversible climate change, and that we’ve already passed the moment of no return, and that the next generation will never visit cities like San Francisco, or Seattle, or Vancouver, or Manhattan, because they’ll be underwater. I fear that the flooding in Calgary two years ago, and the flooding of New Orleans, and the droughts of California and Alberta, and the forest fires ravaging British Columbia and Alberta and Saskatchewan are not actually unique events, but are the beginning of a new normal.

            And I fear that these coming economic and climate disasters will lead to a worldwide food shortage, which in turn will lead to political collapse, like we've already seen in Egypt and the Arab Spring revolutions. I fear that the global network of food production that puts cheap food on our table - that gets us rice from Indonesia, grapes from Chile, tomatoes from Mexico, and fish from Taiwan - will collapse like a house of cards and that - in my lifetime - we will all be adhering to a local foods diet, not because we want to, but because we have to. And combine that with the coming climate change, and I fear the coming generations will be living lives similar to those during the Great Depression or to the peasants in the Middle Ages. These are the things I fear.

            Which, you know, doesn`t make me all that happy. Living with all this fear is not fun. Living with fear is not actually even really living. I`m sure you`ve experienced this – when you`re afraid of something – either something that`s happening at the moment or something that you are afraid of coming – you don`t really live. You exist – trapped in your fear, and unable to enjoy the life that you have. Fear takes away life – it takes away all that makes our lives worth living.

            And yet, with all of this, we have our Psalm reading today that says, “Fear the Lord, you his holy ones.” What on earth are we supposed to do with this? For one thing, who wants more things to fear? For another, this just brings us back to a theology of God as an impassive judge, sitting on high, ready to strike us down for the smallest infraction, ready to punish us for not being perfect. And that is not the God that we proclaim any longer. We proclaim a God who is among us, who lives with us and suffers what we suffer. Our theology tells us that God is forgiving, and loving, and a Creator who provides what we need. Our faith reassures us that God gives us strength in our weakness, and comfort in our affliction, and that God cares for us and loves us. So how are we to understand the psalmist’s exhortation to fear the Lord? At a time when we live in fear of so many things, are we also to fear the one God who can comfort us?

            I have a feeling that every generation feels that nobody else in history is living with the same fears that they are. My parents’ generation was afraid of nuclear war. Their parents were lived through two World Wars and were afraid of all the suffering that came with that. Before that, generations were afraid of plagues, and wars, and others have been afraid of deadly earthquakes, or volcanoes, or tsunami. Each of us thinks that we are living in a unique time, and that *we* are the ones who are really living in the end times. And I don’t say this to dismiss the current concerns of our age, because I think they are legitimate. Or to dismiss the concerns of previous generations as being overly dramatic and hysterical. Because whether there is cause for alarm or not, the feelings of fear that we experience are all legitimate feelings. I bring this up because I think that how our ancestors in the faith dealt with this fear can help us understand the psalmist’s command to fear the Lord.

            I’m thinking particularly of Martin Luther, of course. Luther, too, thought that he was living in the end times, and that the world was about to collapse. He experienced the German Peasants’ War, in which thousands of peasants burned and ravaged towns, and were in their turn slaughtered by the aristocracy. He experienced a plague that devastated Wittenberg. He believed that the Pope was literally the anti-Christ and he was living at the end of all ages. We might laugh at him now, but he truly thought it was the end.

            So what did Luther do with all this fear? Four years after the Peasants’ War and two years after the plague in Wittenberg, Luther published his Small Catechism. And in it, his explanations to the Ten Commandments, all of which start, “We are to fear, love, and trust God above all things.” Luther, with all the things he had to fear, believed that, above all, at the heart of the Ten Commandments, was the command that we are to fear God. But why?

            The key is in the last three words of Luther’s explanation. “Above all things.” Another way to put this would be to say that we are to fear, love, and trust *only* God. In other words, the only thing in life that we should fear is God. Not climate change, or illness, or aging, or economic collapse. We should fear *only* God, because God is the only who can overcome the power of death with new life. Only God can see us through the devastation of memory loss, or cancer, or financial ruin. We may end up on the street, but even that dire condition cannot take away God’s love for us. We may be flooded out of our house, but this will not stop God from being with us. We may forget the faces of everyone we love, including our family, but that will not stop God from being with us and recognizing us as God’s own children. There is nothing to fear *but* God. So we are to fear *only* God.

            More than that, though, Luther says that we are to *trust* God. To fear and also to trust. Because the God we put our trust in is, actually, trustworthy. God does not let us down. What God provides for us is greater than anything we can fear.  God is faithful and steadfast and God’s love endures forever. It is *because* we trust God, and only God, that we need fear only God.   So why do we trust God? Most importantly, because our God is living and is the God of life. This is what our Gospel reading for today reminds us, and why it is such a good counterpoint to our Psalm reading. Our Gospel reading reminds us that our God is God of the living, who sent Jesus Christ to live among us, so that we might know this to be true. Jesus is the living bread, who gives us true life. The text says “eternal life,” but a more accurate translation would be one that says “full and true life.” The meaning of the entire passage is *not* that God gives us life in the days to come, after we’ve died, in a heavenly forever after kind of way. The meaning of the passage is about today. God gives us life *today.* In the midst of all our fears and concerns and anxieties, fears which trap us into thinking only about them, fears which strip away our enjoyment in life, God gives us life *today.* Not tomorrow, or in the next generation, but today.

            As Christians, we receive this life through the presence of Christ in the bread and wine of Communion. We receive *today* the life of Christ. This is not a life where we are trapped by our fear and anxiety. This is not a life that becomes overwhelmed by the reality of a dismal future. The life of Christ was one that, yes, lived in fearful times - there’s nothing quite so fear-inducing as living under occupation with the threat of having one’s capital city and everyone living there burned to the ground at any time. But the life of Christ is one that lived with that fear and also reached out to others in love. Christ, the Son of the Living God, lived so that others would come to know the love of God, which means he lived deeply into the lives of others, and loved who he saw.

            Because love is the only way to live with fear. Love for others, and for the world. Love for friends, and family, and strangers. We can only live with fear when we turn to our neighbours and focus on their needs and arrange our lives to help lessen their fears by walking with them and helping them - by loving them. We can only be freed from our fears when we do as Christ does, and live in the world with love as our main goal.

            Today is the day we live forever, meaning today is the day we have been given to live deeply and intensely into. Today is the day that we acknowledge, yes, there are things in this world that concern us, and that might possibly end us, but that will not stop us from living lives of love. Today is the day that we recognize our fear, and then live with it anyway, by living for others. We take the moment of today and live into it deeply, by loving those who are around us and with us in these moments. We live the life of Jesus Christ, which is to share God’s life and love with everyone, so they too may learn to trust God. And in this love we find that our fear of the world dissolves. Yes, the end of the world is coming. At some point. Either in our generation or the next or in a hundred generations. But in the meantime, we live in Christ’s love. We live in a love that sees other people, and brings them in, and holds them close, and stands with them in their fears. We live in fear, and we live more deeply in love, because we fear and trust *only* the living God who loves us forever and gives us life. Thanks be to God. Amen.