Leaving Behind the Fear

...but what if the fear is warranted? Help us, God, to know the difference.

Man: I can’t do it. I’ve been trying for years and the people around me won’t help. I can’t do it.

Jesus: Yes, you can. Stand up - I will help you. Do it now.

Religious Leaders: You shouldn’t do that. God’s rules say so.

Man: The man who helped me said I can. So I will.

Jesus: I knew you could do it. Now leave behind that fearful, sinful world.

John 5:7-15

The sick man answered him, “Sir, I don’t have anyone who can put me in the water when it is stirred up. When I’m trying to get to it, someone else has gotten in ahead of me.”

Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” Immediately the man was well, and he picked up his mat and walked. Now that day was the Sabbath.

The Jewish leaders said to the man who had been healed, “It’s the Sabbath; you aren’t allowed to carry your mat.”

He answered, “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’”

They inquired, “Who is this man who said to you, ‘Pick it up and walk’?” The man who had been cured didn’t know who it was, because Jesus had slipped away from the crowd gathered there.

Later Jesus found him in the temple and said, “See! You have been made well. Don’t sin anymore in case something worse happens to you.” The man went and proclaimed to the Jewish leaders that Jesus was the man who had made him well.

Psalm 146:7-9

God: who is faithful forever,
who gives justice to people who are oppressed,
who gives bread to people who are starving!
The Lord frees prisoners.
The Lord makes the blind see.
The Lord straightens up those who are bent low.
The Lord loves the righteous.
The Lord protects immigrants,
sustains orphans and widows,
but thwarts the way of the wicked.

Prayer

God,

There’s a significant tension in the air. It’s nothing new, though today’s is a new chapter and iteration of it. Knowing that people are going to read this prayer with me, Lord, I am going to be completely honest. I imagine some will stop reading as a result. But I’ve never been one for pretension and façades.

I know I personally exist in a significant heap of privilege - that my life is easier simply because of how, where, and to whom I was born. I’m a 6’2” white male with married parents and have never seriously questioned where my next meal or bed will come from. I also married into privilege. Should my financial life fall out for some reason, I will be okay. My children will be okay. Or, at least okay-er than the vast majority of the rest of the world. I say this first in acknowledgement.

…but…

I don’t get all the fear today. Especially among my peers and fellow believers who are proliferating it, I feel like there is more fear than is warranted. It’s frustrating to me, actually.

(Remember, I’m striving for honesty here, God, like the psalmist. I’m not saying I’m right. Just that I’m being honest.)

We have all sorts of leaders and forces and media and partisans telling us the world is falling. And we’re eating it up. What’s going to happen?! What are we going to do?! I imagine for some, this is actually true. (I am indeed concerned for immigrants in this nation.)

I guess what I’m saying is that I don’t feel like the level of difficulty is equal to the amount of fear resulting from its possibility. Am I wrong, in the comfort of my privilege, to say, “Let’s worry about it when it actually happens?”

Yes, I know elections have consequences. I just wish that people would see all the consequences (as if I even know them all).

I’m particularly frustrated with peers who assume that if the other guy won, things would be better for the world. The people so focused on personal immorality - an abhorrence, for sure - at the ignorant expense of brutal destructive violence around the world, all proliferated in roots so deep they soak up their nutrients from corporate buildings that sit mere miles from the house in which I comfortably sit writing this. Is it as simple as one man’s immorality versus 50,000 lives? (I know it’s not that simple.) As if we can bomb our way to peace. As the song says, “Peace by way of war is like purity by way of fornication. It’s like showing them murder is wrong by way of execution.”

I do have compassion for the fear, God. I have compassion for the fear of those for whom the threats are more real than they are for me. I just wish that threats were not the source of the fear. I mean, bullies win when we let their threats affect us, right?

At the same time, God, I am greatly concerned about the silos we have all put ourselves in. They say we are more self-isolating today than we were even during the height of the pandemic. Am I wrong to think that our preference for aloneness is actually at the heart of the problem? We wear this extreme introversion like a badge these days, as if it’s cool or something or we’ve arrived because we can Netflix and chill with our cats under a blanket.

God, help me to want community. Help me to see that it is an antidote for fear, an affront to misunderstanding and disagreement, and a balm for the tension of it all. Help me see my neighbor, expand my territory in such a way that my privilege is not as blinding as this prayer demonstrates.

I’ve got a lot more feelings today, but not the words at the moment to say them.

So help me, God.

By your spirit & in Christ,
Amen.