Be Not Afraid

The 25th Sunday after Pentecost - 10 Nov 2013

Christian Hawley

Haggai 1:15b-2:9

2Thes 2:1-5, 13-17

Luke 20:27-38

Every good Christian needs a brilliant atheist friend, to keep asking them, “Why do you go to church?”

My friend's name is Junior and he's now a vice president with Citicorp living in London. Every time Junior and I get together, “he inevitably asks me, why did you go back to the church again?” I think Junior might come to my ordination, and after reading this week's scripture I think I have a new answer for him this time:

I came back to the church because I was tired of being afraid.

We are a part of a culture whose mantra is “be afraid, be very afraid.” We hear it every day from all corners:

• The Chinese are poised to take over our economic system – be afraid.
• The ice caps are all going to melt in seven years – be very afraid.
• Terrorists are going to bomb our malls – be afraid.
• Militias are going to take over our government – be very afraid.
• And the list goes on from the extinction of honeybees to advent of the Rapture.

We are constantly told, “It's the end of the world as we know it.” The Thessalonians from today's readings faced similar circumstances. Instead of militias and terrorists they had to contend with Imperial zealots and Sectarian gangs threatening their way of life. St Paul was literally beaten and left to die outside the gates of the next town over. The church at Thessalonika was being persecuted from all sides, and to make matters worse they were under the impression Jesus was coming back during their lifetime (a reasonable expectation if you read the gospels closely).

Fortunately for them they had Paul to say, “do not be quickly shaken or alarmed...stand firm and hold fast in the tradition...live in hope that Christ's love triumphs in the end.” They had a voice of authority and compassion tell them, “Be not afraid.” We don't hear that near enough in our daily lives, and so the screams of “be afraid, be very afraid” leave us with the reactions of either despair or anger.

These reactions became very real to me during my time in the middle east. The end of the world as I knew it happened very concretely in 2003. I remember the reaction of despair vividly as I sat in a bunker in the middle of the night sucking wind through a gas mask that made every breath taste like rubber. I have never felt so afraid and helpless in my life. I had no real hope for that evening beyond survival, and even that seemed tainted if living meant another day subject to fear and trembling before powers that seemed random and absurd.

A month later the reaction of anger overwhelmed me as I watched a live feed from one of our F-15 weapons systems officers. I can still see the greyscale video of a missile detonating over a target and all those little white blobs that had previously been moving around now laying motionless. I remembered how afraid I had been every time I ran to a bunker, and I can still hear myself saying “Good, kill'em all and let God sort'em out.”

When our own mortality is our highest good, being afraid can make us ugly people. When we believe death gets the last word, our conversations can become short-sided, selfish, unforgiving and terribly unimagninative. This was one of Jesus' points with the Sadducees in today's gospel reading. The only way the Sadducees marriage laws make sense, is if there is no resurrection - no ongoing relationship between the living and the dead. But what Jesus is saying here is that relationships don't end with death. The Resurrection means our relationships are transformed in glorious ways we can hardly comprehend.

The lectionary ladies and I spent a lot of time this week talking about what resurrected relationships looked like. I don't think what Jesus is getting at here is that the Resurrection is all halos, harps, and hugs. That somehow familial or marital bonds are done away with in favor of a universal bond, after all, Abraham and Isaac and Jacob were all family and those relationships seem very intact in Jesus' example. What I think Jesus is trying to say is that relationships realize their fullest potential in the Resurrection. In becoming like angels and children of God, we will know perfect reconciliation with our fellow humans and we will love others for their unique expression of divinity.

The Resurrection perfects relationships, and in doing so it opens up hope for those of us still here on earth. The Resurrection allows for forgiveness, for reconciliation, and for homecoming, because our God is not a God of the dead, but a God of the living.

To really believe that relationships continue on beyond death is wonderfully healing for me as a veteran. The only way I knew to get past despair and anger was through the Resurrection. Many of the people I needed to forgive or be forgiven by had died. As long as death had the last word, I had to carry all those wounds and demons around with me. I had to let them haunt my dreams, and second guess my every relationship with the living. The only way I could move forward with my life was to seek reconciliation with the materially dead through a God of the eternally living. I am here to say, it is possible to heal the past and have hope in the future in a world where Resurrection exists.

It was a powerful experience for me to hear someone say out loud, “Be not afraid, for our God is a God of the living,” and so I'd like to share that gift with you all today.

If you served in World War II and are willing and able, I’d like to ask you to stand. Thank you for your service. As you remember the Battle of the Bulge, Normandy, Guadalcanal, and Okinawa, be not afraid, for ours is a God of the living.

If you served in the Korean War and are willing and able, I’d like to ask you to stand. Thank you for your service. As you remember Bloody Ridge and Heartbreak Ridge, Chosin Reservoir and Hill 282, be not afraid, for ours is a God of the living.

If you served in Vietnam War and are willing and able, I’d like to ask you to stand. Thank you for your service. As you remember the Tet Offensive, Khe Sanh, Ong Thanh and Hue be not afraid, for our God is a God of the living.

If you served during Cold War and are willing and able, I’d like to ask you to stand. Thank you for your service. As you remember all those operations we leave unnamed and all those times we almost ended the world, be not afraid, for our God is a God of the living.

If you served in Desert Storm and are willing and able, I’d like to ask you to stand. Thank you for your service. As you remember the battle for Jalibah Airfield, Khafji, Medina Ridge, and the Highway of Death, be not afraid, for our God is a God of the living.

If you served in the Balkans and are willing and able, I’d like to ask you to stand. Thank you for your service. As you remember Tuzla, Sarajevo, and all those other war torn towns of Bosnia Herzegovina, be not afraid, for our God is a God of the living.

If you served in Iraq or Afghanistan and are willing and able, I’d like to ask you to stand. Thank you for your service. As you remember Fallujah and Abu Ghraib, Kandahar and Tora Bora, be not afraid, for our God is a God of the living.

If you have served in uniform, for the United States or any other nation, in times of war or in times of peace, if you are willing and able I'd like to ask you to stand. Thank you for putting service before self. As you remember walking through your own valleys of the shadow death, be not afraid, for our God is a God of the living.

If you are a loved one of a veteran and are willing and able, I'd like to ask you to stand. Thank your for your service and your support. As you remember all those nights of loneliness, all of those days of overwhelming demands, and all of those difficult changes and silences in the ones who came back, be not afraid, for our God is a God of the living.

And now I'll ask that everyone stand as they are willing and able. We all deal with the end of the world at some point in our life. Sometimes its strained family relationships, sometimes its employment crises, and sometimes its an unexplainable evil visited upon us from powers unknown. As we remember loves lost, opportunities missed, words spoken in anger, and wounds left unhealed, be not afraid, for our God is a God of the living, and we, we are a people of the Resurrection. Thanks be to God for that.