Every night when I would go to sleep, I would make sure that my closet door was shut. This was a ritual that I did for years, the last thing I would do before going to bed, making sure that my closet door was shut tight and the closet light was turned off.
The reason for this is very simple, for every little kid knows that its possible that the boogey man can live in the closet.
Boogey men only come out at night, so in order to make sure that he wouldn’t come out, I had to keep the closet door shut!
Every night I would do this and every morning I would wake up to see the closet door cracked open! And making matters worse was the fact that sometimes the closet light was on!
This could only mean one thing! I knew beyond a shadow of doubt that the closet door was closed and the light was turned off, so there must have been a boogey man living in my closet.
I couldn’t prove it, because every morning I would carefully look in my closet before I would get out my clothes and each time I couldn’t find a boogey man, but I knew he was in there!
I told my parents and my brother that there was something in the closet that shouldn’t be there and they all looked around and pulled back the clothes, but they couldn’t find anything either. But still, I knew something was there.
And each night as I crawled in my bed, I started to get a funny feeling. A feeling that wouldn’t go away until I found myself in the middle of dreamland.
A feeling that made me jump at every sound I heard during the night and a feeling that made me grab my baseball bat before checking my closet the next morning; I felt fear!
There is nothing worse for a little boy or girl than fear. Sure, now we don’t worry about things that live in the closet, and if we do we go to Pettigrew hardware and buy a trap, but we don’t fear the closet.
We don’t fear the boogey man, maybe the tax man, but certainly not the boogey man in our closets or under our beds.
We don’t experience fear like we used to, we’ve grown, matured, we’re adults with knowledge and life experience, our fears are more universal, like sickness and failure in our career or relationships.
These fears are present but certainly not so overwhelming like a six year old boy terrified of the boogey man in his closet.
We know that boogey men don’t exist, but for a six year old boy, every evil and bad thing in the world can and does exist in the form of a creature known as the boogey man and he makes his home in the closets and under the beds of little children.
And every night, we those children go to bed, when they are the most vulnerable, he comes out.
And that is fear.
Lets take ourselves back to when we were six years old. For some of us, this may be more difficult to do than for others, but try to remember when you were that little boy or girl hiding under the covers.
You may not have had a boogey man, but I’m willing to venture that there was something that overwhelmed all of us at one time or another;
Something that gave us fear.
Do you remember what it was like? Do you remember crying out for mama and daddy because you thought you would never see them again; because something gave you that much fear?
Do you remember praying so hard pleading with God to make this thing go away?
Can you still feel the pounding of your heart, beating so hard that you can see it beating in your chest?
Do you remember such fear?
I saw fear several times this week. A fear that didn’t come from things like the boogey man, a fear that wasn’t make believe, but a fear that was very real.
Fear that came from the eyes of a six year old boy. Fear that came from the closet. Not because there was a boogey man there, but because that is where he was hiding from strange people with guns coming after him.
Fear that came from the eyes of Elian Gonzalez as federal agents came to take him to his father.
Regardless of what side you stand on in the case of the little boy trapped in the world’s largest custody battle, nothing can take us away from those eyes that were stricken with fear last Saturday morning.
I doubt that many of us in this sanctuary this morning can give an answer as to why this situation has dragged so long and what should be done about it. I know I can’t.
And I know that little Elian can’t either.
When I was six years old, I worried about men that lived in my closet. When Elian was six years old, he had to worry about men coming to get him FROM the closet.
Huddled tight with his arms around a fisherman, hiding behind locked doors keeping quiet; not knowing what had happened and not knowing what was going to happen.
Fear.
There were ten men gathered in a small room. The door was shut tight and locked. Movements were kept to a minimum and the voices were soft.
They were hiding.
I used to love to play hide and go seek. As I got older and did youth ministry, the game was modified to entertain older kids and it was called sardines.
We would break up into groups of ten and every five minutes a group would be released in the church. Now the church that I grew up in had close to two thousand members so there were a lot of places to hide.
Now the church was totally dark, and the first group of ten would find a good place to hide and would bundle together like a bunch of sardines.
They would have to keep quiet and be very still so the other groups couldn’t find them.
When the other groups of ten did find them, they too would huddle close together making a larger can of sardines!
The group that was the last to find the sardines lost.
The loser of this game simply lost, that was the end and the game would restart, but if those ten men who were huddled together like sardines were ever caught, the end of that game would be the end of their lives.
Fear.
These ten men were the followers of Jesus. Men that had been with him for two years, walking with him, talking with him, eating with him, hanging on his words for two whole years.
They saw him bring life to those who were dead. They watched as he brought sight to the blind, they were amazed as he turned water into wine.
They were convinced that he was the Son of God as he turned two fish and small loaves of bread into a feast for five thousand people.
Ten men who were horrified by the arrest and trial of Jesus, ten men who watched in disbelief as their Lord hung from a cross and died.
Ten men who were convinced that Jesus was take the throne as the King of Israel and rule with love and authority. Ten men who knew that no one could match the power of Jesus, power that came from God.
Ten men who huddled together, wondering what happened to Jesus and what was going to happen to them.
Fear.
Fear is a common theme in the stories of Jesus. In every single major event in the life of Christ, fear followed.
When the angel appeared to Mary for the first time, the angel said "be not afraid".
The same thing was said to Joseph when he was met by an angel, "be not afraid".
Jesus told the same thing to his disciples and Peter and several occasions. Be not afraid.
The disciples didn’t know about the resurrection of Christ, so when Christ finally appeared to them in that crowded room, after overcoming death, after showing his face to his followers for the first time,
he didn’t greet them talking about the miraculous three days that had just passed and he didn’t talk about the wonders of heaven, but he ADDRESSED THEIR FEAR.
Peace be with you.
In fact, Jesus didn’t say this once, but THREE times, he greeted his disciples with Peace be with you.
No more running, no more hiding, no more wondering what happened or what was going to happen,
No more anxiety with you, no more doubt with you, but PEACE BE WITH YOU for Christ overcame death and established life.
The disciples worst fears hadn’t come true at all, but their hopes and dreams did.
No more fear.
Can you imagine no more fear?
Can we comprehend a peace like that?
Can we hope for a time without fear?
Is it hard for us to imagine because we have spent a good deal of our lives hiding behind a door tightly shut and locked solid?
Is it hard for us to imagine because we are huddled in fear, barely making a sound and moving only when we have to?
Are we overcome with fear because we are alone? Are we overcome with fear because we are uncertain, about life, about love, or even about God?
Are we overcome with fear because there seems to be something living in our closets, boogey men or skeletons?
Are we overcome with fear because that is all we’ve known?
Or are we overcome with fear because of the unknown?
When Pope John Paul died in 1978 after a very brief time as Pope, all of the Cardinals of the Catholic Church met at the Sistine Chapel as they have done for hundreds of years to elect a new Pope.
Every time they vote they burn the ballots, and people will gather for days outside the chapel to see the smoke.
Because if the smoke is black, then the Cardinals have not reached a decision, but if the smoke is white, then a new Pope has been chosen.
Not long of the Italians in Vatican City saw the white smoke a Cardinal from Poland emerged on St. Peter’s Square with the name Pope John Paul II.
With the whole world watching, this new Pope stood before the masses and told them to be not afraid!
To not be afraid of the truth of ourselves, to not be afraid of men, and to not be afraid of God!
Do not have fear, but peace.
After several years of panic over the boogey man that lived in my closet, who would come out at night and forget to cut off the light, I finally overcame that fear.
Instead of shutting my eyes tight out of fear, I opened them, and saw my mother getting out my clothes to wear to school that day, and leaving the closet door cracked so the sound wouldn’t awake me.
And on an occasion she would forget to cut the light off.
It was my mother who opened the door and took away the fear.
It was Christ who opened the door to the disciples and took away their fear and gave them peace.
It is Christ who will open up the door that keeps us locked up and will release us from our fear that overcomes us, and will give us peace, give us rest.
It is Christ who took away the fear of the disciples, and it is Christ who will take away the fear of his children, you and me.
Even if we are locked in fear, Christ has the key.
This is the Good News. This is the Gospel.
Be not afraid.
Thanks be to God!
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen.