Sermon

No More Fear and Trembling

by the Rt. Rev. Martin S. Field, Bishop of West Missouri

Almost every week, while I’m watching TV, I’m accosted by a commercial for some new scary movie that’s “opening soon at a theater near” me.  Sometime back, my family and I were watching TV, and just such a commercial came on.  While I don’t remember the name of the movie being promoted, I do remember that a conversation ensued about the relative merits—or lack thereof—of movies designed to cause goose bumps and bring fright.

Maybe it’s a generational thing.  Movies of this genre seem to do well at the box office, and, when I was a kid, I loved watching tales of the supernatural.  While I never got into the slasher movies that seem to dominate the scary movie genre these days, I did enjoy shows such as “The Outer Limits” or “The Twilight Zone.”  I used to beg my mother to be allowed to stay up to watch them, though I seldom won.  And I was crazy for the movie, “The Blob.”  You have to be my age or older to remember that one from back in the 60’s and starring Steve McQueen?  It’s a cult classic, now.

I imagine we’d get a full spectrum of responses if I took a poll among today’s worshippers.  Some would say they enjoy spine-tinglers, and others would say they don’t.

As a child I would have found today’s Old Testament and Gospel lessons riveting.  The fact that, as an adult, I’ve heard them so many times, studied them in such depth, and become perhaps overly acquainted with them makes me realize I need to hear them afresh.  I need to hear them as I did as a child with my penchant for the supernatural.

Maybe you’re like me.  Maybe you need to hear them as a child would hear them, need to hear them fresh and new, for they are spellbinding.  So, today, let’s find a way to let the lessons from Exodus and Matthew come alive.  Let’s use the skills of imagination that are honed in childhood and too often abandoned in adulthood in order to enter into the stories.

We need to be there, beside Joshua, as he watches Moses ascend the side of Sinai into the cloud filled with fire.  We need to be there with Peter, James, and John, to see light radiating from Jesus’ face as he's flanked by Moses and Elijah; we need to be there to be overshadowed by the cloud.  When the voice speaks out from the glowing, radiant mist, we need the flesh to stand up on our arms, our skin to turn clammy with fright, and our knees to give way.  With Joshua and Moses in the Old Testament story, and with the three disciples in the Gospel story, we need to collapse on the ground in fear and trembling.

Fear and trembling. That’s what it must have been like to be with Moses when he disappeared into the fiery cloud on Sinai or to be blanketed with cloud on the Mount of Transfiguration.  Fear and trembling all around.

But, why is everyone afraid?

They are afraid because they see something they cannot explain.  A cloud blazes with fire as Moses walks into it and disappears from sight.  Jesus shimmers in light from an unseen, inner source and talks with the long-dead, iconic figures Moses and Elijah.  The apostles are shielded from heaven’s radiant light by the thick fog of cloud, only to hear, in fear and trembling, the voice of God.  No one had ever seen such sights.

So . . . fear and trembling.  Throughout Holy Scripture those words describe what happens to humans when they meet their God.  "The Lord is King," the psalmist sings, "let the people tremble . . . let the earth shake."

That’s the quintessential image of meeting the Lord because the God of fear and trembling is all-powerful.  The God of fear and trembling is distant.  The God of fear and trembling is high and exalted.  He is a stern judge and a king whose deeds surpass human understanding.

And in a strange way people are comfortable with this God.  They are comfortable because they know how to act in his presence.  They know to bow down in craven fear, knees shaking, eyes covered, and bodies pimpled with little mounds of gooseflesh.  And like a horror movie junkie, they adore the thrill of the fear.  They adore it, because the fear keeps God distant.  You can never approach this God of fear and trembling.  You can’t even think about getting near.  Instead, he is kept conveniently at bay.

And that's the trouble with the "fear and trembling" perception of God.  We have found a way of dealing with it, and because we have, we never have to see God face to face.  We never really meet the God of fear and trembling.  We never develop intimacy by hiding our face.

And left to ourselves that never would have changed.  God would have remained distant, and we would be bowed down, immobilized by fear, groveling like Peter and James and John, little hump-backed, quivering, lumps of fright, separated from God and from one another.

But you see, God did not create us to be distant from him.  God did not create us to be separate from each other.  And, I think, God got tired of being put off and held at arm’s length!

God decided to do something about it.  Over and over, throughout the story of God's people, we see God moving toward us to show us who he is.  Prophets reveal God's will to us.  Through Noah and Abraham and Moses, God calls us into covenants with him.  God tries to find ways to get close to us, and we wind up settling for the fear that keeps him away.

But that wasn’t good enough for God.  Every time God got too close, human beings fell down trembling or turned from God in dread, so God decided to do something about it in a new way.  The new way is Jesus.

Jesus looks like us.  He walks and talks like us.  He laughs and cries like us.  He bleeds and dies like us.  God came among us as one of us, and Jesus reaches across the gulf of fear and trembling and touches us and says, "Get up.  Don’t be afraid."  God comes among us in our own image, in order that we can finally see that we are God's image.

It’s not that God has a body like you and me, but at the core of who we are, each of us is God's likeness in this world.  God’s presence in Jesus shines brightly and visibly atop the Mount of Transfiguration, and it’s God’s presence in this man that makes the Mount of Transfiguration such a compelling story.  And that’s what Epiphany is all about, after all: things being revealed.  And this revelation shows us God in Jesus.   But it also shows us that if God can come close, maybe we don’t have to fear.  Maybe God isn’t out to zap us, but wants personal closeness with us.  And maybe God being in Jesus also shows us that God can be so close that he’s in each of us as well.

But exactly what was it that was shining through?  This section of scripture speaks of it only as light, but I suspect the answer may come from the first letter of John where it says: “God is love.”

Love came shining through.  For many of us, that's one of the first verses of Scripture that we learned, and it’s one of the first ones we teach our children and grandchildren.  We say it with ease, but do we know what it looks like?

We do know that love does shine.  We've all seen it.  We've all seen someone in love; perhaps it was your own face in the mirror.  And there is an unmistakable glow to it.  Just look at the faces of brides and grooms at their wedding.  The eyes are bright with a new sparkle, the smile is radiant, the cheeks aglow.  The same is true of a woman with child.  Her love for the new creation growing in her womb shines through her face.

That's how God wants us to see him, as love making all of his creation radiant . . . all of it mind you — especially you and me.  God wants us to shine with the light of that love, just like Jesus and Moses and Elijah.  Because each one of us, as we walk through our lives, is a potential moment of Transfiguration for the people we meet.  It’s through us that God's love shines to fill the world with light.

So now “fear and trembling” is no longer the last word about God.  In the midst of humanity’s fear and trembling, the forgiving, loving hand of Jesus touches us and his voice calls us to turn our faces once again to the face of love himself.  God is love.

"Get up," he says, "and don’t be afraid."  He picks us up as a mother picks up a toddler who has fallen while learning to walk and puts her back on her feet and says, "Get up.  Don't be afraid.  Let's try it again."

No more are “fear and trembling” the final word.  There’s a new word, now, Jesus the Word of God himself.  Listen to that new Word.  Lift up your heads.  Take off the veils of solemn and fearful faces; open up those eyes, which have learned not to see.  Trust him.  Get up and don’t be afraid.  Instead, let the light shine through your face, and through your caring hands and your loving hearts, so the whole world will see and know the love of God in Jesus Christ as its transfiguring power is made incarnate in you.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

© Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral