I am sure you have heard it said a bunch of times, that “Fear not” is what God says most often in the Bible, and in fact, that’s probably true. As is often the case with calls from God, like Jeremiah’s, God usually interrupts someone in whatever they were doing, God gives marching orders, the person resists, and then God insists, reassures, and empowers. We know that for the most part, fear is not bad in and of itself. Fear isn’t infidelity or evil. Fear keeps us from being harmed. But, excessive fear is when we allow the avoidance of evil to trump the pursuit of the good. I’ll say that again— excessive fear is when we allow the avoidance of evil to trump the pursuit of the good. Our overwhelming fears need to be overwhelmed by bigger and better things.
This can sound almost trite, almost as trite as the passage from 1 Corinthians, which we know all too well, like we used to know songs on the radio that had been overplayed. We have heard the passage from 1 Corinthians too many times at weddings, the meaning of love as applied to all types of love, (or more importantly to the agape love which is described, but is replaced with eros love, because it IS a wedding….) But I’ll let you play with re-looking at the 1 Corinthians passage on your own.
Today’s passage from Jeremiah always triggers something in me; I preached on this passage while I was in seminary, and the connection for me strikes at the deepest fear I think I ever faced.
The timing of the sermon was soon after my daughter made it out of the hospital in my second (or middler) year of seminary. She was a sophomore in college, and had had headaches for some time, and asked to come home. She thought that a medication she was on needed adjusting. Anyway, once she got home, she quickly deteriorated neurologically. We spent three weeks in Georgetown Hospital (I remember we drove past 5 hospitals, in order to get to a teaching hospital. I didn’t know if she would make it out of the hospital and if she did, in what state she would be. For a long time, neurologically she didn’t know who I was, where she was, she couldn’t walk and she slept 23 out of 24 hours. Her brain function was like a cross between a college student and toddler. When asked to list as many words as she could that began with the letter F in a minute, she listed 3, one was frolic, and pheasant obviously didn’t count. After a brain biopsy and a trip to the ICU, the medical team eventually arrived at a diagnosis and treatment. We spent 3 weeks in the hospital and a week in a rehabilitation hospital. Her brain slowly came back.
At the time that I preached on the Jeremiah passage, that experience was only a few months old, and everything was still so raw. She had miraculously recovered. I cried throughout the sermon.
The Hebrew verb in the Jeremiah passage for being formed is יצר, which comes from the word for potter or creator. This is the same verb that is used in the Genesis passage, when God forms Adam out of clay or earth, in Hebrew adamah (Adam: Adamah, get it?). When I think about the clay from which we are metaphorically made, I am reminded by my artistic daughter that when a potter needs to readjust something they are making, they don’t just tweak it, they often smash the clay and rework it all over again. If we have lived long enough, chances are that you too have spent time like my time besides my daughter’s hospital bed, time feeling smashed. I know some of your stories; and, I know that not all had fortunate turns like mine did. There are times we are just done in. You know what these times are: we are abused, our spouse dies or leaves us, we lose our job, we lose our self-respect, our child dies, we lose the battle to addiction, … we become unmoored.
Also, I don’t ever mean to imply that God does something horrible to make you into a different sort of person. I believe to my core that no part of God is evil. Bad stuff happens, and it feels like a cartoon “Bam, oof, pow!” And life—those experiences of life change us. We are never static. Sometimes things change us for good, sometimes what looks like for ill and then later, something changes again, and we are changed. It’s like the Loudon Wainwright song that Leonard Cohen sings, we get cracked, and that’s how the light gets in.
There is something to being cracked open that helps; I think it makes us more malleable, more open. It helps put at bay the overwhelming fears, the excessive fears. Maybe it’s a little like everyone believes in God in the foxhole. Maybe there is something to when you have nowhere else to go but up, then the relationship with God has the potential to be stronger—then we can pursue the good, instead of just avoiding evil.
We’re all formed in the image of God. Jesus being God gives the truest rendition. When we see his actions, they aren’t always sweet, but they are always true. Jesus is malleable without having to be cracked open. He speaks truth to power and shows us the pursuit of the good. He speaks truth, not just to power, but to everyone—Gentile, Jew, sinner, Pharisee. He has no fear.
When we live as close to Jesus as we can, we can live without excessive fear, we can be opened up, broken open, and full of light so that all can see love and truth, which makes the hurts of life not disappear, but hurt a lot less. So, “fear not”, God always says. Perhaps this really means, “I know your fear, but your fear need not overwhelm you. I am greater than your fear; and I will redeem all things.” -Sarah Colvin
Jeremiah 1:4-10
1 Corinthians 13:1-13
Luke 4:21-30
Psalm 71:1-6