Do Not Be Afraid

Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. 

The good news on first reading, and after a few more readings, sounds rather grim doesn’t it? Certainly not a gospel lesson I would have chosen for my last one with you. But it is the Gospel we have been given and it is, I believe, GOOD news. I’d like to tell you why. 

Jesus, you will recall, has sent the disciples out to carry on his ministry, and 12 are named especially. Jesus is redoing the mission of Israel, first by sending the 12 to Israel in the hope that Israel may indeed become a blessing for the world. But he warns them of opposition: I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Jesus says. There will be family dissension, there will be public violence. Only those who persevere to the end will be saved.  

If, in fact, Jesus is re-doing the mission of Israel for Israel’s sake, why then is there opposition? That is the question that the Gospel lesson from last week raises but does not answer. Jesus does answer it in the first part of this week’s Gospel lesson: “A disciple is not above the teacher, nor a slave above the master; 25it 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 Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household.” 

With these words, Jesus brings to mind the opposition he has faced thus far. He is resisted by the leadership of the Israel of his day. The leaders not only do not trust him, they are adamantly opposed to him. They will, in just two short chapters, go so far as to say that Jesus is in league with Satan. “It is by the power of Beelzebub that he casts out demons,” they will say. Unable to undermine the miracles of healing and exorcism that follow this itinerant teacher from Gallilee, they will attack him directly: he is possessed by the devil.  

Today, Jesus invites his disciples to consider the opposition arrayed against them. If Jesus is the Messiah, if he is Israel, come to re-do Israel’s mission and so save both Israel and the Gentiles, why is there opposition? Jesus’s answer is indirect. If they call me the devil, why should you expect different treatment? 

Following Jesus indeed can be divisive. Not only will it provoke resistance—violent resistance—from those in power, it will even set members of your own family against you. Do not think I have come to bring peace, Jesus says, I have come to bring a sword.  

We must pause here for a moment to say that this Jesus is most unlike the one many of our imaginations conjure when we are asked to speak or think about who Jesus is. We easily imagine Jesus the ethical teacher: “Love your neighbor; turn the other cheek; do unto others.” We may, though this is more difficult, be able to imagine Jesus the pacifistic radical: “Love your enemies, do good to those who persecute you. If your enemy takes your coat, give him your shirt; if he forces to you carry his pack one mile, go two.” But how many of us imagine Jesus the wild-eyed apocalyptic preacher who cast out demons with a word, who called on people to change their ways lest they be consumed by unquenchable fire, who said, “I have not come to bring peace, but a sword,”? 

All three Jesuses, if I can say that, can be found in the Gospels. Indeed, all three are the one and the same Jesus, the man who is God come to speak God’s Word with human lips, the man who will renew God’s covenant with the sacrifice of his own life.  

And if the first two Jesuses have been domesticated, if they have become a little too comforting and comfortable in our minds, then perhaps we should pay attention to the third Jesus a little more than we have done, lest we lose Jesus altogether, and come to deal not with the God of Israel come to save, but an idol that can do naught but damn. 

So what does this third Jesus say? He says simply and plainly, if we would be disciples, we will face opposition. We will face intense opposition. We will face opposition from the powerful, who will slander us before others. Some of us may even encounter such opposition from within the closest of bonds. From within the family.  

This shocks us. This offends us. I confess to you I have no idea what it’s like to have to choose between my child and the Lord Jesus, my mom or my dad and the Lord Jesus.  

But I immediately must also say that even though such a terrible choice is utterly foreign to my experience, it is not foreign to the experience of many disciples not simply throughout history, but up to and including today. 

I have no idea what it’s like to have the powers that run my life—the powers for which we pray every week: our national, provincial, and municipal leaders—lining up against me because I am a disciple of Jesus. But I must also say that the experience of such enmity simply IS what it means to be a disciple if we are a disciple in Burma, or in Saudi Arabia, or in China, or in parts of India, or in most of North Africa.  

What is my point? Simply this: the third Jesus who speaks about enemies with real power to harm and enemies close enough to bump into on the way to the bathroom is a Jesus who speaks to the lived experience of the majority of his followers. He is not strange or wild-eyed or foreign. He speaks a familiar language. 

And if we are to hear this Jesus, then we need perform no great act of imagination, but simply read the newspaper or read the harrowing stories on the Voice of the Martyrs website. If we can for just a moment get a glimpse into the life of discipleship lived by Christians in the majority world, we will begin to hear this strange Jesus bringing Good News. 

And that good news is this: “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” 

Jesus is realistic about the enemies. He is realistic about their power. He is realistic about their proximity. And then he says this: Do not fear them. 

Do. Not. Be. Afraid. 

Four powerful words that punctuated the first sermon of Pope John Paul II in October, 1978. Do not be afraid, he said. Throw open the doors to Christ. Do not be afraid! 

It’s the kind of pious well, piety, that you would expect a Pope to say isn’t it? 

Except that this pope spoke from the experience of real enmity. He was a slave labourer in a chemical factory during the Nazi occupation of Poland. He was an underground seminarian at a time when the penalty for this “crime” was summary execution. A pacifist, he could not participate in violent resistance against the Nazis. So instead, he acted in plays in houses for small audiences, plays that kept Polish culture alive when the Nazi goal was to destroy it.  

After the defeat of the Nazis, he rose through the ranks of the Catholic church while Polish secret police and their Soviet masters kept an eye on him. As priest successful in teaching young people in an officially atheist state. As a bishop who planted churches at a time when church planting was not violently opposed, but resisted through reams of red tape. As an Archbishop who gave guidance to a city and to a country always as innocent as a dove, always as crafty as a serpent. 

Here was a Pope who knew enemies. And we he said, Do. Not. Be. Afraid. The Catholic dock workers who made up the Solidarity Union in his native Poland listened. Catholic and Protestant clergy in Hungary and East Germany listened. Even the Kremlin listened and under the direction of Constantine Chernenko, the Bulgarians hired a Turkish assassin to kill the Polish Pope.  

And when the attempt failed, what did the Pope do? After he recovered, he visited his assassin in prison and he forgave him. Why? Because he did not fear him. He did not fear the Nazis who would have killed him had they found him. He did not fear the Polish communists who sought repeatedly to discredit him. He did not fear the Soviets who ordered his death, or the man they sent to carry out the deed. 

Why? 

Because he feared God. And if one fears God, then one need not fear anything or anyone else. 

So how does one fear God? 

My friend Ian Peterson once asked a group of children at summer camp  this: What is the one thing you should be afraid of? And then he answered his own question: God. And he then elaborated his on his answer: not fear in the sense of cowering in terror. But fear more like: concern over what God thinks about my life and what I’ve done with it.  

I have yet to hear a better definition. I don’t think it’s too much of a paraphrase of Jesus words to say, “Don’t worry about what your enemies think about your life; worry about what God thinks about it. For if you worry about what God thinks about your life, what your enemies think about it won’t matter.” 

That’s the Gospel for today. That’s the Gospel for disciples who know they must deal with real flesh-and-blood enemies. Enemies who wish them harm.  

Do you wish to be set free from fear? Then fear God and do not be afraid.