Fear No More - Rev. Jonathan Warren

The scripture reading this morning is from Romans six, verses one B through eleven.

Let us listen to the word of God.

Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound?

By no means.

How can we who died to sin go on living in it?

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?

Therefore, we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.

For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.

We know that our old self was crucified with him, so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin.

For whoever has died is freed from sin.

But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we also live with him.

We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again.

Death no longer has dominion over him.

The death he died, he died to sin once for all.

But the life he lives, he lives to God.

So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

The Lord turn his face towards you and give you peace.

Make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you.

The Lord turn his face towards you and give you peace.

And keep you.

Make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you.

The Lord turn his face towards you and get a few pieces.

And a thousand generations in your family in your children and the children and the children may his favor be upon you.

And a thousand generations in your family.

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, Beelzebuble, 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 the body in hell.

Are not two sparrows sold for a penny?

Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from 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.

And 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've come to bring peace to the earth.

I've not come to bring peace but a sword.

For I've 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.

This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to them.

Last week I was sitting a few weeks ago, I was sitting in the dentist chair for my six-month checkup.

In fact, the hygienist and I were talking and laughing about our kids driving, and how amazed that so many parents have survived driver Z.

It's impressive.

Many of you remember those days?

Oh.

Everything seemed pretty normal, and then the dentist came to check on my teeth.

He was poking around in my mouth and saying weird coded numbers.

18.

2.

And then came the loaded weapon.

Yep, you're gonna need a filling.

I've been diligently, persistently, and carefully taking care of my teeth, mainly because I fear the dentist.

When I was a kid, I got all these cavities.

Just hearing that drill is the worst sound of my whole life.

While the dentist was poking around, he kept telling me to relax, to breathe.

Without even realizing it, I'd clench my shoulders and my whole body was uh clenched in fear, and somehow I forgot to breathe.

They've been watching that one tooth for 10 years.

And now they say it just needs a small, little filling.

But for me, any size filling with that drill is absolutely too big.

On top of it all, it will also cost me extra money.

I know I'm a bit ridiculous, but but aren't we all kind of ridiculous when it comes to our fears?

It actually makes me feel a little better telling everyone about it because it sounds kind of silly when I say it out loud.

But it's also not silly at all because we have these fears and they're real, and they just creep up on us and rear their heads at unexpected times.

This one's an easy fear to share because it's not like the big ones, it's not life or death.

It doesn't really cost that much money.

It's kind of like getting a band-aid instead of having surgery.

It doesn't matter the size, because fear is real and it's part of our lives.

In today's scripture, Jesus is preparing his disciples for a difficult road ahead.

It's significant because Jesus knows this journey of life intimately.

Jesus is human and he understands the depths of our feelings and struggles, and he knows what it is to have fear.

Following God is a journey fraught with all kinds of challenges, with rejection, misunderstanding, and fear.

As Jesus speaks to his disciples, he shares a simple and tender image.

Are not two sparrows sold for a penny?

Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from 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.

According to one scholar, the sparrow was small, common, and inexpensive.

It was not powerful or impressive.

It was the kind of creature people could easily overlook.

Yet Jesus says that not one sparrow falls outside the care of God.

And that is important.

Jesus does not say sparrows never fall.

He does not say suffering will not happen.

The promise is that suffering does not make us invisible to God.

Every single creature, every person, all the way down to the lowly sparrows, are seen and heard by God, never out of God's purview.

And this matters because God surrounds us and is with us, even in the midst of sending us out into a world that's filled with rejection and misunderstanding and fear.

I don't know why, but the world seems like it enjoys piling and piling and piling and all kinds of insecurities and fear and angst get piled onto our shoulders.

And these days it seems to get heavier and bulkier and harder.

Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of Eat Pray, Love, also wrote a book called Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear.

And Gilbert noticed if you try to kill fear off, it inadvertently kills the creativity process.

So instead of fighting fear, she welcomes it.

Anytime she starts a new project or big adventure, this is her welcoming speech to fear.

Dearest fear, creativity and I are about to go on a road trip together, and I understand you'll be joining us because you always do.

I acknowledge that you believe you have an important job to do in my life and that you take your job seriously.

Apparently, your job is to induce complete panic whenever I'm about to do anything interesting.

And may I say, you, fear, are superb at your job.

So by all means, keep doing your job if you feel you must.

But I I will also be doing my job on this road trip, which is to work hard and stay focused.

And creativity will be doing its job, which is to remain stimulating and inspiring.

There's plenty of room in this vehicle for all of us.

So make yourself at home.

But understand this creativity and I are the only ones who will be making any decisions along the way.

I recognize and respect that you are part of this family, and so I will never exclude you from our activities, but still, your suggestions will never be followed.

Your sphere, you're allowed to have a seat and you're allowed to have a voice, but you are not allowed to have a vote.

You're not allowed to touch the roadmaps, you're not allowed to suggest detours, you're not allowed to fiddle with the temperature, dude, you're not even allowed to touch the radio.

But above all else, my dear old familiar friend, you are absolutely forbidden to drive.

And it has a way of not letting us go.

We can either fight it or we can welcome it.

I don't know about you, but this is the way I want to handle fear from now on.

A world where we're bossed around by algorithms and counted as mere dollar signs from advertisers.

Jesus reminder that we are valuable.

Feels extremely poignant right now.

So do not be afraid.

Essentially, Jesus is telling his disciples and us that fear is not in charge.

Matthew 10 answers fragile moments with the image of a sparrow.

It's small and common and easily overlooked, yet not one falls outside of God's care.

And just like Gilbert's welcome letter, fear is not allowed to have a vote, touch the roadmaps or radio.

And we don't have to let it into the driver's seat.

Just like God is watching the sparrows and knows how many hairs are on our heads.

If God is paying attention to things as small as that, God is definitely paying attention to the big things as well.

God is always there.

God is always beside us.

And shameless, Nadia Boltz-Weber expands on this idea saying, the self God loves, the self God is in relationship with, is your actual self.

God isn't waiting for you to become thinner or heterosexual or married or celibate or more ladylike or less crazy or more spiritual or less of an alcoholic in order to love you.

Also, I would argue that since your ideal self doesn't actually exist, it would follow that the you everyone in your life loves is your actual self too.

She continues, echoing the words of Acts 15.

What God claims to love, do not deem unworthy of that love.

What God has called good, do not call anything other than good.

What God has animated with God's own breath and endowed with a soul and God's own image, when that accusing voice is on repeat in your head.

Know that it is not the voice of God.

God's voice is found in the warm sing-song of a mother to her newborn, the one who says, You are beloved.

God's voice declares us clean and justified, forgiven, and new.

It imparts to us a worthiness that has nothing to do with our efforts or our accomplishments or our becoming some imagined ideal.

I really connect with these words.

That God loves us now as our actual selves.

God's not waiting to love us when we become some better version of ourselves.

Maybe that's something we're really afraid of.

Not those small fears like the dentists or spiders.

It's a big, huge fear.

And maybe we've pushed it so deep down.

What if I'm not good enough?

What if other people don't love me?

I'm stupid.

I'm ugly.

I'm unlovable.

I'm worthless.

What if God doesn't love the real me?

And yet the promise of Jesus is very clear.

God does love you.

God loves you the way you were yesterday, the way you are today, the way you will be tomorrow.

You don't have to be perfect.

You don't have to change a thing.

God loves you just the way you are.

We don't earn God's love.

God gives it to us with no strings attached.

Bagardi was singing this song about blessing.

She kept repeating, for you, for you, for you.

I thought, that's too many for you's.

She kept singing it for you, for you, for you.

And I was thinking, it needs to be told to us so many times that God is for you.

Push away all that other stuff.

Well, we're not the best at it.

It's God's disciples.

We're supposed to love each other the same way that God loves us.

Or if God notices the sparrows, then we must notice the overlooked.

The church should be a place where people are not reduced to labels.

The church should be a place where we say, you are seen.

You are seen.

Your life has dignity before God.

So the question is not only does God see the sparrow?

The question is, do we?

Do we see the struggling mother in the delivering room?

Do we see the neighbor whose faith is different from our own?

Do we see the child whose life is fragile?

Do we see the people society places under the other category?

Not one sparrow forgotten, not one person outside the care of God.

So as we leave this place, our task is twofold.

First, it's to go forward without letting fear take the driver's seat.

Knowing that if God is watching the sparrow, God is watching us too.

For God loves you just the way you are, your actual self.

And second, it's to go out loving others as God loves us.

The question is not only does God see the sparrow, the question is, do we?

If God notices the small, the oppressed, the fearful, we too should notice them as well and give our love to the least, to the needy, to the lonely, the struggling, the overlooked, the scared.

That's everybody.

For God loves us all just the way we are.

For you, for you, God is for you.

For you.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Let us affirm our faith by standing and saying a creed of the church together.

God's sovereign love is a mystery beyond the reach of the human mind.

Human thought ascribes to God superlatives of power, wisdom, and goodness.

But God reveals divine love in Jesus Christ by showing power in the form of a servant, wisdom in the folly of the cross, and goodness in receiving sinful men and women.

The power of God's love in Christ to transform the world discloses that the Redeemer is the Lord and creator who made all things to serve the purpose of God's love.

Amen.