A
Sermon by Pastor Boettner
The
Fifth Sunday after Pentecost
June
23, 2002
Leonia
United Methodist Church, NJ
In
the Name of the Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier
Actor George
Clooney, one of Hollywood’s brightest stars, has a reputation for
pulling elaborate pranks on his co-stars. So when Brad Pitt was paired
with Clooney for the film “Ocean’s
Eleven,” Pitt prepared himself for some sneaky tricks.
On one occasion, Clooney had
access to Pitt’s hotel room key for about forty-five minutes. Pitt was
sure that this signaled the start of a big prank. Pitt figured Clooney
got hold of the key so he could get into the room and plant a bug, or
hide a video camera, or rig up a booby trap of some kind. So every
night, Brad Pitt spent almost an hour searching his room for some
evidence of the inevitable prank. Finally, Pitt realized that his fear
of a prank was more disruptive than any actual prank could have been. As
he said of Clooney, “His genius in that one was NOT pulling a prank on
me.”
Brad Pitt discovered something
that many of us discover in our lives: The fear of an experience is
often worse that the experience itself.
Jesus said, “Are not two
sparrows sold for a cent? And yet not one of them will fall to the
ground apart from your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all
numbered. Therefore do not fear; you are of more value than many
sparrows.”
“Do not fear . . .”
It
is awful to live in fear. Some people live in fear all their lives.
Stan Mooneyham tells of
visiting a primitive tribe in the jungles of Papua New Guinea a few
years ago that had never had contact with the outside world until the
mid-1970s. Their culture was dysfunctional by any measuring stick. For
centuries, they had lived in jungle isolation by the law of payback,
under which every slight or wrong required retribution, usually a
killing.
If a man suspected another of
stealing from his taro patch, he would hide beside a trail and kill the
thief. This in turn required a revenge murder, which prompted further
escalation in a never-ending cycle. The tribe had become so fragmented
through fear of each other that they were reduced to living in small,
isolated family units. Life was constant terror and hardship.
One day they encountered a
Christian from another tribe who told them that there was a new way to
live--a way which he called “belesi.” We would call it “peace of
mind,” but the transliteration from their dialect is “easy in the
belly.” That’s an interesting way to put it. Living with no fear is
living “easy in the belly.”
This tribe that had been
living by the law of payback asked for a missionary to come and teach
them about living belesi. And when Mooneyham visited their small
community on the banks of the April River, Fritz Urschitz, a missionary
from Austria had been living among them for a couple of years.
Gradually, they were emerging
from their darkness, coming into the light, learning to live by the law
of gentleness and love instead of the law of payback.
What a terrible way to
live--in constant fear of one’s own neighbors, never knowing when a
minor slight might launch a desire for the severest form of revenge. And
yet many people, even clergy, in our world live like that--in constant
fear.
What a terrible, terrible
thing--living in fear, living in insecurity, living with constant
anxiety. I wonder how many people in our own land live every day in real
fear. I wonder how many children go to school where they live in fear of
cruel bullies. I wonder how many live in real fear of abusive spouses.
Do we remember The War of
the Roses, a movie that came out a few years ago about a divorcing
couple and the insane lengths they went to in order to destroy one
another? Famed divorce lawyer Raoul Felder claims that the movie tactics
pale in comparison to what real husbands and wives do to make each other
miserable. He claims that he has known clients who have killed one
another’s pets, put snakes in one another’s beds. Many clients of
both sexes either talk about or attempt suicide in the hopes of hurting
their spouse. He knew one man who put leather gloves and a length of
rope on the bedside table each night before he went to bed. He wanted
his wife to fear that he might strangle her in her sleep.
What an awful way to live. But
there are people who live in constant fear. I wonder how many people
fear getting sick or old because of insufficient resources. I wonder how
many people who work in tall office buildings still have reservations
about going to their offices each morning after the terrorists attacks
of last Sept. 11. How many of us still have misgivings about getting on
a plane? It’s awful to live in fear.
Of
course, some of our fears are of our own creation. There are some
very real fears in this world. Terrorism is a good example. However,
there are many fears that exist only in our minds.
There’s a book by Drs. Burka
and Yuen on the subject of procrastination. The title is Procrastination:
Why You Do It, What to Do About It. Many of us could probably profit
from reading this book--if we could ever get around to it.
In their studies of confirmed
procrastinators, the authors of this book saw this consistent fact:
Procrastination is purposeful. “In other words, while people may not
realize it or want to admit it, when they slow down or avoid doing even
the most necessary things--like taking their high-blood-pressure
medicine or depositing their paychecks so checks don’t
bounce--there’s a purposeful decision to ‘not’ do those things.
And where does that decision to ‘not’ step forward come from?
It grows out of one of four types of fear say the authors: >fear of
failure, >fear of success, >fear of being controlled, or >fear
of intimacy.”
Do we see anything interesting
about these four so-called fears? They are not tangible at all.
Nobody’s going to kill us if we fail--or if we succeed, or if we give
in to the need all of us have for intimacy.
Some of the fears that haunt
us are totally irrational. We know, of course, that the number one fear
that people list in surveys is the fear of speaking in front of an
audience. It even beats out death in most surveys. How absurd. I’ve
spoken in front of a group a few times myself and, as you will testify,
I have not always been at my best, but so far nobody’s crucified
me--not with nails anyhow. A few people might have with words, but I can
handle that.
There are people who would
rather walk on fire than give a speech. Why is that? Well, some people
fear looking stupid. Big deal! Nobody ever died from looking stupid. If
they did, our streets would be lined with corpses. In the absence of
real fear, we create fears in our own minds.
And that’s sad. Fear
can be a real paralyzer. Fear can keep us from being all that God
created us to be.
There was a Navy man who
dreamed of writing stories for the movies. He wrote a screenplay about
the naval hero John Paul Jones. He sent the screenplay to Julia West,
who was then the story editor of Paramount Pictures. She rejected it.
Later, this writer told Julia West how disappointed he felt from the
rejection. He came to see, though, that fear could be a paralyzer. He
also learned that the best way to overcome the fear of failure is to go
on with the determination to succeed. In March 1933, this writer spoke
to our nation. He was newly-elected President Franklin Roosevelt who
said: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself--nameless,
unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to
convert retreat into advance.”
Fear can paralyze--whether
that fear is based in reality or whether it exists only in our own mind.
Jesus says that the ideal
antidote for fear is faith in God. “Are not two sparrows sold for
a cent?” Jesus says to us. “And yet not one of them will fall to the
ground apart from your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all
numbered. Therefore do not fear; you are of more value than many
sparrows.”
Many of our fears would
disappear if we knew that we were loved, accepted, secure. Why do we
fear failure? Or rejection? Or intimacy? Is it not because there is a
great insecurity within our souls? How much could we accomplish if we
could be relieved of all our fears and anxieties? If we truly believed
that God was with us? If we knew that what we do really matters and that
we would be accepted regardless of the outcome?
According to Pastor Bruce
Wilkinson in his best-selling book Secrets of the Vine, there are
four areas of life in which we all need some “pruning” from God.
These four areas are the ones which most of us struggle to control. We
don’t want to trust God with them. They are the last areas of our life
that we are likely to turn over to God’s control.
The first area is the people
that we love the most. It’s very hard to admit that our loved ones
belong to God, and that we must surrender them to God. The second area
we struggle with is the right to know why God does what God does.
God is a sovereign God. God’s ways are higher than our ways. God’s
will is perfect. We want an explanation for our suffering, an answer for
our doubts. But God is not obligated to us. God expects us to trust even
when we don’t understand God’s ways. The third area we struggle with
is our love for money and possessions. Things enslave us. True
freedom is found in contentment, in not wanting more. And the fourth
area we struggle with is the source of our significance. Many
times, we find our worth in our appearance, our status, our job
performance, our athletic ability, our money and possessions. But our
true worth comes from being a unique creation of God. This worth cannot
be diminished in any way.
This is what Jesus is saying
to us: Do not be afraid. God cares for the smallest sparrow falling from
the sky. Surely, God cares for each one of us!
A few years ago, motivational
speaker Patrick O’Dooley gave a seminar for a group of business people
in Galveston, Texas. Galveston is a small island just off the coast of
Texas. O’Dooley noticed that some of the seminar attendees had the
letters “BOI” on their name tags. He learned that those letters
stood for “Born on Island.” Evidently, it is a mark of prestige to
have been born in Galveston. Those people with “BOI” on their name
tags hadn’t done anything to deserve their special status. They
weren’t necessarily harder workers, or more dedicated, or smarter than
anyone else. But they automatically received more respect simply because
they had been born on the island.
Maybe we should have name tags
that say on them BTC. “Belongs to Christ.” We would wear these not
for others, but as a reminder to ourselves who we are. We belong to
Christ. Nothing can separate us from God’s love.
It's awful to live in constant
fear. But the solution to fear is found in God's love.
S
H A L O M
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