16 July 2018

"Don't be afraid of those who threaten you."

"Don't be afraid of those who want to kill you."  

God said very similar words to Joshua as the nation of Israel was about to invade the land of Canaan.  In fact, God told Joshua over and over not to fear, and to be strong and courageous.  

I remember when my good friend Henry Smith pointed out how odd it is that we tend to think of Joshua as a strong leader and a courageous warrior in spite of the fact that God thought it necessary to tell him again and again not to be afraid.

I think that need, fear, and pain are the essence of what it means to exist in this world.  If you could create a stethoscope that was able to translate the voice of the human heart, you would hear, "I need, I fear, I hurt... I need, I fear, I hurt..." as you listened through the earbuds.  Admittedly, there are also powerful creative drives in us–good and generous and loving drives.  But a little reflection yields the conclusion that these drives exist in tension–in conflict–with the more basic experience of need, fear, and pain that define our existence.  If we're honest, we'll admit that our 'better angels' are engaged in a struggle to overcome an unsettled darkness within us, an anxiety that, from the moment of our birth, causes us to literally cry out on account of our longing to be comforted–to be rescued from the environment that is interpreted and narrated to us with every heartbeat: I need, I fear, I hurt.

From a Christian perspective, our basic experience in the world functions a little like a crater to the curious scientist.  It begs the question: what object explains these physical features in the earth's surface?  What kind of event could account for this emptied space?  The impact zone indicates that an asteroid's path through space converged with the earth's orbit around the sun.  The asteroid is long gone, but its effect remains.  In the same way, our innermost discomfort in this world indicates that there was a cataclysmic event, the details of which are us inaccessible to us as the meteor that geologists think created the Gulf of Mexico, yet of which the results are no less apparent.  There is an empty space in us.  And the emptying of that space removed soil and bedrock and crust, leaving a massive hole in our humanity, and allowing the untamable waters of the Caribbean to flow in and submerse the scar, hiding it from view.  (Incidentally, in Biblical thought the Sea represents chaos and all of the forces that threaten to tear apart God's good creation. You could argue that it was one of our earliest conceptions of the idea referred to now as 'hell.')

The Bible tells us that in the original creation, God dwelled with humans in such a way that we need, fear, and pain were experiences that would have simply been unknown to us.  But our ancestors decided that, rather than remaining within the boundaries that God had set for them–rather than relying on God to determine what was good and not good, right and not right–they wanted to see for themselves.  The amount of information and experience we amassed in the instant of that decision was infinitely greater and more destructive to human life than any inter-galactic impact.  We immediately learned what it was like to experience the world without God's intimate presence, the consequences of choosing our own paths rather than God's, the blindness that is living by sight rather than trust.  With all that had once been provided for us in the protective embrace of God's presence now removed, in the deafening silence that ensued we first began to hear our own heartbeats: I need, I fear, I hurt... I need, I fear, I hurt...

In our Bible readings today, we find David telling Solomon, "Be strong and courageous; do not be afraid or lose heart!"  A few sentences later, David provides the 'why' that makes his encouragement sensible: "The LORD God is with you... He has given you peace."  Peace is exactly what we would have known before the culture shock we experienced when the experiential presence of God was removed from our lives.  If you pause to think about it for just a moment, we wouldn't even have had a word for it–it would have been the only experience we knew.  Peace is a word that you have to invent with only after you have lived through the loss of it.  Only after have having endured trauma–only after having had to come up with language to describe your new reality: a life of need, fear, and pain.  But if God withdrawing His presence was the event that left the crater, then the restoring of His presence is the event that promises a return to peace.

Which brings us to Jesus.  The Bible tells us He is the presence of God come to earth.  He is called the Prince of Peace.  He says to us, "I have come to give you peace... a peace that is not at all like what you refer to as peace."  

Since at least as long ago as Joshua, we have been overcoming our fear by overcoming by force those who stand in our way or threaten our existence.  By the time Jesus arrives on the scene, even a man as committed to and radical for God as John the Baptist cannot imagine that Jesus is Israel's Savior, because His agenda seems to be focused on bringing hope to the oppressed, offering inclusion to the outcast and healing to the broken rather than rising up in the invincible power of the Almighty God, wiping out the oppressor, and taking dominion over the world by means of divine power.  Worse yet, Jesus seems to indicate that He will leave the oppressor's power unchallenged.  Because after saying, "Do not be afraid by those who threaten you... Do not be afraid of those who want to kill you...", He says, "If you cling to your life you will lose it; but if you give it up for me you will find it."  To John the Baptist, He adds the additional warning, "God blesses those who are not offended by me."

I think too many followers of Yeshua of Nazareth have come to the mistaken conclusion that they can obtain the peace He promises by the same means that Yeshua son of Nun, Joshua who led the Israelite conquest into Canaan.  Jesus said that the servant will share the master's fate.  Put the other way around, your fate will reveal who you chose to follow as your master.  Despite our best efforts to spiritualize Jesus' ultimatum, our creative strategies to make His clear directive into a mysterious metaphor, His word to us remains: "If you refuse to take up your cross and follow me, you are to worthy of being mine."

Taking up the cross was how Yeshua of Nazareth would bring peace.  By walking the path of self-sacrificial love (sacrifice without love is nothing) Jesus showed us the way, the walking of which brings the end of need, fear, and pain, as enter into the presence of Him who gives, who protects, who heals.  But our fear of those who oppose us, who threaten to take what we need and hurt those we love–the people that our conflicts with lead us down the path of labeling them enemies–this fear triggers our habit of taking up the methods of Yeshua son of Nun.  But it is the cross and not the sword that the Master calls His followers to.  It is the cross by which Jesus establishes the Kingdom without end with its eternal peace.  Yeshua of Nazareth reminds us that there is only one person who we should rightly fear: God the Father, who has the power to bring eternal judgment on those who continue to insist on 'seeing for themselves' rather than trusting, on those who continue to choose their own paths rather than the ones He marks out for us.  Fearing God is the cure to all other fears because His path is the way in which our lives are returned to the experience of peace that He created us for.

The cross was not only the means by which Jesus paid the price for our sin, won our forgiveness, made a way for our relationship with God to be restored.  It was also a demonstration of the way that God overcomes need, fear, and pain in the world.  It is the way that He restores peace.  Counterintuitively, it is the way that He overcame those who threatened Him, who wanted to kill Him, who actually did kill Him.  In conquering death, Jesus conquered the only enemy that really matters: the one who kills, steals, and destroys, the one who causes need, fear, and hurt.

The cross was also God's declaration to us that we only overcome as we walk the same path to victory that He walked.  It is a way of faith not sight, of hope rather than possession, of love rather than dominance.  "And the greatest of these is love..."  Will you choose the sword of Yeshua son of Nun, or the cross of Yeshua Son of God?  Will you choose to defend yourself, or to risk loving the one who threatens you?  Will you try to grab hold of life according to your own strategy, or will you obtain the true life that can only be had by laying yours down?  Choose today whom you will serve.