Pentecost VIII, Proper 12,Year B
2 Kings 2:1-15
Ephesians 4:1-7,11-16
Mark 6:45-52
“Be courageous; it is I; do not be afraid.”
+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
It is the year 100,000 B.C., and two hunter-gatherers are out hunter-gathering. Let’s call them Ig and Og. Ig comes across a new kind of bush, with bright-red berries. He is hungry, as most hunter-gatherers are most of the time, and the berries look pretty, so he pops a handful in his mouth. Og merely puts some berries in his goatskin bag. A little later, they come to a cave. It looks spooky and Og doesn’t want to go in, but Ig pushes on ahead and has a look around. There’s nothing there except a few bones. On the way home, an unfamiliar rustling in the undergrowth puts Og in a panic, and he freezes, but Ig figures that whatever is rustling probably isn’t any bigger and uglier than he is, so he blunders on, and whatever was doing the rustling scuttles off into the undergrowth. The next morning, Og finally tries the berries, and they do indeed taste O.K. He decides to go back and collect some more.
Now, Ig is clearly a lot more fun than Og. But Og is much more likely to pass on his genes to the next generation of hunter-gatherers. The downside to Ig’s fearlessness is the risk of sudden death. One day, the berries will be poisonous, the bear that lives in the cave will be at home, and the rustling will be a snake or a tiger or some other vertebrate whose bite can turn septic. Ig needs only to make one mistake. From the Darwinian point of view, Og is the man to bet on. He is cautious and prone to anxiety, and these are highly adaptive traits when it comes to survival.
We are the children of Og. For most of the time that anatomically modern humans have existed – a highly contested figure, but let’s call it a million years – it has made good adaptive sense to be fearful, cautious, timid.(1)
That’s from a piece in The New Yorker several months ago. The fraidy cat Og survives better than the fearless Ig. Og is more highly developed. But more fear does not mean more life. The calculation has to be more subtle. Somehow, it has to include a law of diminishing return. We can be so afraid, so fearful, that we really don’t have much of life in us. At some point, being too fearful reduces the quality, the joy, the potential of living. Fear can make life a living death.
As human beings have learned to exercise greater control over nature, we have produced a far safer, healthier world for many of us, but those most fortunate are more pessimistic and fearful than ever. Fr Timothy Radcliffe, the author of What is the Point of Being a Christian – yes, that’s the book I’ve pitched that book before and have promised to quote from liberally – observes, “I have been in countries in Africa where people have endured terrible danger every day with calm and confidence, whereas in the West even the smallest hint of risk often produces panic.”(2)
Fear so pervades our culture that we often don’t recognize progress toward greater safety.(3) In the 1990s, the crime rate plummeted, but two-thirds of Americans thought it was soaring. In the last century, life expectancy has doubled, and we are better able to deal with injury and disease than any civilization in history. But do we have any less dread of illness? Indeed, it’s arguable we have more health fears than ever.
We need discerning hearts and minds to figure out what is a serious danger and what is not. Our world is highly misleading. It encourages us to be fearful of a lot of things which have a remote chance of affecting us. We harbor so many fears and insecurities because we allow our fears and insecurities to be exploited so easily. The vendors of fear reap immense power and money. Those who exploit fears are usually not punished, but are rewarded.(4)
Think just for a moment about what seems to be a relatively innocuous, if controversial, matter: school prayer.(5) Those for school prayer say that without it our children will be bereft of a moral compass, that they will have no consciences. Those against school prayer say that it would transform our children into an army of Christian fundamentalists, anti-intellectuals suspicious of education. Hyperbole pays. It galvanizes the side by introducing the specter of danger. When there’s fear mongering, relationships dissolve. It’s harder to find agreement. Society becomes more de-personalized, more atomized. People become suspicious, untrusting, impatient, un-loving.
If we want to have life, and have it abundantly, we, the children of Og, need courage. Today’s gospel is a message of courage to the fearful. One of the points of being a Christian is that following Jesus helps us to live with courage. Courage is often mistaken for tough talking and bravado and Ig-like fearlessness. Timothy Radcliffe identifies three characteristics of Christian courage: 1) vulnerability; 2) communion; and, 3) patience. Today’s gospel highlights each of these qualities.
First, vulnerability. Today’s gospel begins with Jesus making his disciples get into a boat. Jesus wants to be alone to pray. He sends them out onto the waters. When we read of large bodies of water in the Bible we should think of chaos and darkness; the deep sea is the dwelling place of Leviathan, of monstrous evil. Jesus sends his beloved disciples into harms way. He knows that they will encounter danger, that their faith will be tested.
The same thing happens to Christians in every age. We are going to have to face evil and to endure hardship. In the 1970s, Janani Luwum, the Anglican Archbishop of Uganda, warned the Church not to conform to “the powers of darkness.” He was referring to the dictatorship of Idi Amin. Luwum protested the violence and repression of the Amin regime. Archbishop Luwum was taken into custody with some colleagues. He told a fellow bishop, “They are going to kill me. I am not afraid.” Most of his colleagues were released. He was shot.
A brave, courageous man knows the fear which comes from real danger. Oscar Romero, the Roman Archbishop of San Salvador was shot dead while celebrating mass in 1980. He had angered the worldly powers of El Salvador in his commitment to the poor and persecuted, in his fight against violence, intimidation, and murder, in his fierce resolve to uphold human rights. Sitting on a beach one day with a friend, Romero asked his friend if he were afraid to die. His friend said he wasn’t. Romero said, “But I am. I am afraid to die.”(6)
While each of these recent Christian martyrs may have felt differently about meeting a violent death, both of them were courageous. While standing up for truth, goodness, and beauty, while standing up to witness to God’s love, they allowed themselves to become victims of evil. Serving God means being vulnerable to evil. It is the cross.
Second, communion. Jesus leads us to confront danger, to bear our crosses, but he knows our distress, and he doesn’t leave us alone. He supports us. In today’s gospel, while the disciples are trying to row, but being tossed around in the middle of the sea – in the midst of their agony and hardship, the disciples see Jesus. Jesus came to the disciples in the fourth watch, the loneliest hours of the night. God doesn’t leave us alone. Like the disciples, we may not recognize his presence, but he is with us.
S. John says that perfect love casts out fear. Love unites people; fear separates us. Radcliffe points out,
During the Eucharist the priest frequently greets the people with the words, ‘The Lord be with you.’ And the people reply, ‘And also with you.’ These are words that give courage, because they celebrate that we are not ultimately alone. The Lord is with us, because he has risen from the dead.(7)
Radcliffe cites an email he received from a Dominican peace activist who went to Iraq just before the invasion. Now regardless if you think the invasion was good or bad, her experience suggests how communion conquers fear. From Iraq, she writes in her email:
We are ALL surrounded by fear: here, and in North America. I feel it in the air and on the airwaves. We are imprisoned by endless words and endless fears. But here in Iraq, we are also surrounded by friends. My neighbor Abu Zayman insists upon driving us to church, even though the building is only a few blocks away. ‘Please, let me do this for you,’ he says. A shopkeeper tells me, ‘Don’t be afraid. If anyone tries to hurt you, I will protect you.’ Another neighbour says, ‘This is your home. Come here anytime, even in the middle of the night!’ They are people in high places and low, in sumptuous houses and homeless, Sunni, Shi’a, Christian, Sabean, old, young, male, female. They all say the same thing: ‘If there is ANYTHING I can do for you, please, I am ready.’ They surround us with care. What else surrounds us, all of us? We are surrounded by grace. We are surrounded by family.(8)
We, of course, are fortunate not to live in such a state of crisis and violence, of pillaging, kidnaping, and destruction, but we are to be a community to en-courage one another. Our fears may not be of violent death, but our fears of failure, rejection, embarrassment, malice can still sap life from us. We need to be part of a community, one where there’s love, mercy, acceptance, care, warmth. It is what our parish family strives to be. We can not be a Christian alone. We need one another.
Third, patience. Today’s gospel ends on a sad, hard note: “for their heart was hardened.” Again, and again, and again, the disciples don’t understand Jesus any more than everyone else. They constantly tried his love and commitment to them. The disciples, Jesus’ friends, are like the Pharisees, who also have hardened hearts that angered and grieved Jesus. [Mk 3:5](9) They all, we all frustrate him beyond measure, but he is true to us. He comes to us.
Radcliffe tells us that Thomas Aquinas taught that "patience consists in not letting adversity crush one’s joy. He writes that 'the patient person is the one who does not flee from evil, but who does not allow himself to be made inordinately sorrowful [by evil].'"(10) Courage is about quiet, inner toughness and endurance. It is completely other than the immediate gratification and simple solutions expected by the world. It’s steadfastly, persistently plugging away, often at a task which may seem beneath our dignity and importance, plugging away because we have hope in the future.
The world is not what it should be. The Church is not what it should be. Life has many storms, bringing uncertainty, turmoil, and danger. But Jesus comes to us. So we can be tenacious in doing the best with our situations, in being faithful to the calling God gives us. Fear unchecked will suck life out of us. A quiet, Christian courage — being vulnerable, seeking communion, waiting patiently — gives life, and gives it abundantly.
+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
1. John Lancaster, ‘Pursuing Happiness,’ The New Yorker, February 27, 2006, p. 78.
2.Timothy Radcliffe, What is the Point of Being a Christian, Burns & Oates (2005), p. 70.
3. This paragraph comes from Barry Glassner, The Culture of Fear, Basic Book (1999), p. xi - xii.
4. Glassner, p. xxviii.
5. Glassner, p. xxviii.
6. Radcliffe, p. 72.
7. Radcliffe, p. 81.
8. Radcliffe, p. 81-82.
9. Morna Hooker, The Gospel According to Saint Mark, Hendrickson (1991 - A&C Black), p. 170.
10. Radcliffe, p. 79.
© 2006 Lane John Davenport
