2020 is become a year that is testing individuals and society
in ways we have not experienced before.
I live in San Antonio. Early in
the Covid pandemic we watched as areas of the country where hit hard like New
York City and we gave thanks that it appeared we were being spared. Infections were few and not spreading in a
concerning way. But after Memorial Day
and now July the 4th we cannot say the same in San Antonio. Last night there were 2,202 new cases
reported, the most in a single day pushing us over 30,000 cases 10x the number of just six weeks ago. Some
models from well respect health researchers are indicating the possibility of
almost 150,000 infections by the end of August.
When I go out I have noticed that more and more people are wearing masks
and being careful and keeping their distance from folks. Truth is truth and reality is reality. There is a new disease among us and for some
it isn’t much and for others it is a real problem. And it is a concern for many, a concern I
sympathize with as an older person who is not 100% healthy whose doctor has
told me that while he can’t know for certain how it would impact me it would be
best to not find out.
Fear… what is the Christian’s response to fear or its
cousins: confused, concerned,
nervous, anxious, worried, frantic, terrified, hysterical or its give up cousin despair.
Take Joshua 1:9 for
instance. “Have I not commanded
you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be
afraid; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever
you go.” Fear is emotional information
charged with energy that comes from our brain advising how we should respond to
a stimulus that is perceived as a threat.
Now only an irrational person would say Covid isn’t a threat. So a fear response in the face of Covid is to
be honest understandable. It is not a sign
of a weak faith. So if we are afraid
does that mean we don’t believe? We’ll
come back to that. But listening to
Joshua here, he is recognizing a message that fear might say to us: Run.
Fear originates in what I call the deeper areas of our brain
that are less conscious to us. There is
a lot of ruminating that goes on down there that most times we are only vaguely
aware of but sometimes when that part of our mind says, ok there is something
to pay attention to it will kick a message up in the form of an emotion. Fear is one of the strongest. It is like the old TV show Lost in Space with
robot suddenly yelling “danger Will Robinson, danger” but you don’t know
exactly what. But deep in your mind when
you encounter a stimulus your subconscious is comparing it to what you know,
what you have experienced before and asking is this like something we’ve seen
before and is it good for us or bad for us.
If it is good for us you may get information flowing up in the form of
warm and fuzzy emotions. If it is
dangerous to us, you may very well feel fear.
But the subconscious will send even more emotional information. It has already in a matter of a split second
faster than your consciousness can think evaluated the stimulus now identified
as threat and decided what you should do. Flee! Fight! Appease!
You see the fear center of our brain is hardwired. Its part of the design. It’s a really good thing to have when you are
in the woods and you walk around a bend and there is a bear. That part of your brain will immediately
reaction: danger. It will assess and recommend– run or fight. If you can get away run. If you can kill it fight. If you can’t do either – play dead. You might even pass out. We call that appeasement.
Here Joshua is dealing with the run instinct. Be strong.
Be courageous. Don’t run. Engage.
The Lord is with you. Don’t pretend
the problem doesn’t exist. Don’t just
run away from it. Be strong. Be courageous.
Let us hear the words of Jesus Himself. “…do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow
will worry about itself. Each day has
enough trouble of its own.” This is from
the famous Lilly of the Fields passage and where Jesus reveals that God does so much to
take care of us that we don’t even know the half of it. And the message is the all encompassing
overwhelming love of God.
Now worry is a particular kind of fear. That lingering sense of unease. It wells up from the warning center in the
brain saying there is a problem here (real or perceived –sometimes this part of
our brain isn’t as smart as it thinks it is.) and down here in the basement the
little problem solving elves don’t really know what to do with it. We think more bad stuff is coming based on
what we know of the past and present but we really don’t know how to fix
it. We don’t know how to run, you
probably can’t run. We don’t know how to
fight it. We are a little concerned you
can’t fight it. We think we are missing
something. All this wells up to our consciousness
as a general sense of unease that just won’t go away. Its like the elves are constantly texting us saying hey, we need your help figuring this out and they won't shut up.
Notice Jesus in the Lilly of the Fields passage doesn’t say there is not a problem. Notice he also doesn’t say just pretend it
will go away. He does say God loves
us. We have to be honest here. There is
no promises in Scripture that God will necessarily protect us from COVID and
either keep us from catching it or preserve our life. He might.
Behind the scenes He may very well.
But God does allow bad things to happen to Christians. Recently I asked friends and family how many
knew people who have Covid. Most know
someone. Most of these folks identify as
Christian. I know Christian men who have
contracted it. Does that mean that aren’t
really Christian? That their faith was deficient? We know better than that. We know God loves us because He promises
so. But we also know the fallenness of this
world will have its way with us and one day we shall all die. But because of God’s love we shall know grace
and eternal life.
My radar goes up just a bit when I hear preachers proclaim
if you have enough faith you won’t get sick and if you are sick it is because you
are afraid and don’t believe, don’t trust, you are worrying, doubting. (I feel the same about any promises or demands that supposedly come from God but aren't in the Scripture.) Years ago I heard a Pentecostal preacher in a
chapel service tell his people this. "If you have enough faith you won't get sick and if you get sick God will heal you." And
I thought to myself, so on their dying bed are they going to think they didn’t
have enough faith, a right faith, they were not a Christian after all? Friends, such thinking is a lie crafted by our
enemy the devil. It isn’t right.
I knew a young lady once, an Army soldier and she was rock star. Great at her job. She had a stomach ache that turned out to be widespread cancer. I visited with her and she was absolutely convinced God was going to miraculously heal her to show people His power. She got sicker. Her faith never wavered until her final moments. She realized God wasn't going to heal her. Only then was she ready to listen not to all the false messages of comfort she had been given but to the real message of the Gospel as proclaimed in Scripture alone.
Reality is reality.
We live in a fallen sinful world that hurts us regardless of how much
and how right or how wrong our faith is. And the
world isn’t fair. Sometimes good people
get hurt and sometimes not so good people come out smelling like a rose. Scripture doesn’t promise you that if you
pray right, if you don’t worry right, if you aren’t afraid right and have great
great faith you won’t catch Covid. There
is not such promise.
So should we worry?
Should we linger in fear that leads us to run away or shut down, to quit or to pretend its isn't real?
Fear sometimes sends another message: fight.
Do what you can. Now sometimes
fighting is bad like when we think a person is a threat and we act out to harm
them to preserve ourselves. The Bible
has a lot to say about that and we’ll talk about this in a little bit. But when fear runs into a Godly mind you don't hear the message of hurt people or hurt yourself but rather: “be strong and courageous.” Jesus tells us we don’t have to get into that
nagging fear/worry that saps our power as we focus on what is coming, but
notice he doesn’t tell us not to deal with today. “each day has enough trouble of its own”. With God in our corner we can be bold and
courageous. God doesn’t say pretend the
threat doesn’t exist. God doesn’t say sit around and do nothing. God says be bold and courageous.
The interesting thing about the emotions God has given us
(think mad, sad, scared, glad) is we often feel lots of things at once like a
grand symphony with many voices sometimes soothing, sometimes inspiring,
sometimes crashing in discord with rising tempo. It is not unusual to find love/fear in a
dance together. Fear/faith often dance
together.
Because the Bible says a lot from God who loves us to
comfort us in our fear so it doesn’t drown us, many folks assume that faith and
fear are polar opposites. But the
reality is more nuanced than that. Fear
serves a valuable function. Sometimes it
is wrong, but it is often right. There
is a reality out there than is dangerous for us. You need to take some action. When I was hiking the Appalachian trail and
ran into bear by surprise and out of fear began to back away, I doubt anyone would
say that was an unreasonable action or a sign of unbelief. We all know there is not Bible passage that
says go up and bonk it on the nose and an angel of the Lord will smite that
bear for you. Fear is an emotional
response informing us of our brain’s assessment of a situation. Faith is a God given gift (Rom 10:17) not
earned or created by us (Eph 2:8-9) that informs us about the bigger picture
because God is in it. The information
comes from God’s Word, its distinct promises, not the hopes of fantasy people
are sometimes prone to create and call faith, like as above, “if you have
enough faith God will heal you from every disease”. Now God may very well do so. He has sure intervened on my behalf any
number of times. But I still have no
doubt that one day I shall die. And I
have no doubt that if I am not cautious but carelessly expose myself to Covid
that I will contract this contagious disease.
God has not promised me that I can be reckless and He will protect me. I
know of no such Scripture.
Fear and love dance together in the realm of faith. Luther picked up on this. We find it in his Small Catechism. “Thou Shalt have no other gods. What does this mean? We should fear, love and trust in God above
all things.” Hmmm… fear, love,
trust. How about that? Of course we understand this is a right kind
of fear with a right and reasonable reaction.
It is not the fear that runs away as Adam and Eve did in the Garden
seeking to ignore and hide from the truth. It is not the fear of the Pharisess who fearing Jesus sought to remove Him from the equation to protect themselves and their people.
It is a fear that recognizes reality, the real danger, and the real
consequences of that danger. We live in a fallen world. We have sinned. We brought all this on ourselves. And there are real consequences that can hurt
us. Illness is a real problem. Infectious disease is a real problem. God does judge sin. God does send folks to hell when they tell
Him no to His grace. It is real. But God is more than just judge. And the world is more than just the place that can kill us. It is the place were we can
make friends and find love and know the joy of family and community. It is the place where yes people hurt us,
stab us in the back, even at times destroy us, but it is also a place where
there is love and friendship and real trust and loyalty. And so with God. Yes, like Adam and Eve we have a real reason
to fear. We sin and we are accountable. But we have a real and bigger reason to love
and trust. God loves us. God wants good for us.
So what about Covid?
What are we to do? Are we to just
pray it away? Are we to just assume that
because we are Christian God will protect us?
If we have enough right faith it will all be ok? Are we to conclude that our friends and
family who get sick or who die just weren’t very good Christians?
Lutherans have always understood that the above is
baloney. It is here that the revelation of
God through Scripture of how He operates in this world is of great value to us.
There is one king but several kingdoms.
There is the kingdom of the right hand of Christ what we call the
kingdom of grace where His church resides.
Here God bestows love and mercy forgiving sin through His grace as
proclaimed in the Gospel and provided in His chosen means of Baptism and Holy
Communion. (for my friend who are not sacramental you can still agree with me here – God has grace – God forgives.
It was His choice to forgive. We love because He first loved us.)
Then there is the kingdom of the
left hand of Christ which is His rulership over the world. Romans 13 talks of this, the role of
government to use the force of law and even when necessary punishment to keep
peace. In the left hand kingdom we find
the doctrine of vocation – God empowers people to work together for the common
good through the giving of gifts and abilities unique to each person. Everyone
is good at something and when you find it and live it life can be grand indeed. (Not sinless, but grand nonetheless. Think Carpe
Dieum. ) This is the realm not just
of law and order but of art, and architecture, engineering and construction,
and science and medicine. This is the
realm of social distancing and masks. And God has something to say about this
to us as well.
You see it is not just about
us. God has put us into this world
together and we need each other. We depend on each other. And truth is we are in each other’s
power. We all live in this nested system
of networks that include family and friend and work and even society. The decisions made by a few folks we shall
never personally know on the Supreme Court can have big impacts on our
lives. But closer to home the folks we
network with in our families, in our workplaces, in our communities have big
impact on us. What another person does
can have serious impact on us. What we
do can have serious impact on others. And
God designed it that way. He looked at
Adam and said, it isn’t good for Him to be alone. It is never just about “me”. It is never not also about “me” but it is
always about “us”. Sometimes the other’s
needs outweigh our own. Sometimes
fairness and justice would say my need has predominance in the “us”. But the world isn’t always fair and people
who have power in our lives are not always kind.
So why do folks kill others? Think about it. What could motivate someone to actually kill
another person? Fear. Anger.
That person is the ultimate threat.
None of us think we are capable of murder but we think other people are
so capable. I’ve known people who were
killed for the dumbest of reasons. Maybe
you do too. But it is real problem, real enough that God knew He had to make a
commandment about it. Thou shalt not
kill. And Luther came at life with eyes
wide open. What does this mean? We should fear and love God so that we don’t “hurt”
and we don’t “harm” others. But God
loves us like children. He sees us as
His family and looks at us as brothers and sisters. It is not enough to just not hurt and
harm. God want us to “help” and “befriend”.
Fear is not necessarily the
opposite of faith. It can be. If it comes to predominance the kingdom of
the right so that we doubt God’s love for us (I didn’t have enough faith so I caught
Covid, God must not love me.) then yes fear can be very detrimental to faith.
But if we have fear that says,
wow, there is a reality out there that God has given us some ability to do
something about together. We can’t run
away from it (the flee response) but maybe we do have some tools to resist it
(the fight response) and together we can make a difference not just for
ourselves but for everyone.
So are you afraid of Covid? Are you afraid to catch it? Are you afraid of what it will do to your
body if you catch it? Are you afraid for
your spouse, your children, your grandparents, your aunts and uncles and your
dearest friend? That’s ok. It’s a rational and reasonable response to a
real situation. You are seeing reality
for what it is. The question is what
will you do with your fear. Will you
allow your subconscious to drive your action into worry, into hysterics, into
despair and helplessness, will you turn to denial and fantasies, or… be bold
and courageous. Asking yourself what is
in my power to help? Looking at what
God is making possible through knowledge of how the universe works, through the
power of science and medicine in the left hand kingdom, Godly gifts of vocation
for life in this world. And never
forgetting that truth is we shall all die.
No I’m not saying we should all just give up, take our chances, let the
chips fall where they may. We do what
we can to help our neighbors and ourselves, but if in the end we still get sick
and fall it wasn’t because we deserved it because we failed worse than others,
we sinned worse than others, we didn’t have enough faith and others had better
faith. Life isn’t fair, it isn’t
just. God isn’t fair either. He gives us what we don’t deserve. The world and people often hurt us in ways
we don’t deserve. God gives us good
things we don’t deserve. And the
greatest and never ending is the grace of Christ that guarantees us eternal
life. Our eternal destiny isn’t on
us. It has nothing to do with what we
do. Truth is there is nothing we can do
to change how it is going to turn out.
Unbelief says that is true – we all die, we all fade from memory. Life ultimately has no meaning or
value. God says buuuullllll hooockeeeey. Life has meaning because God says it
does. Jesus said the thief comes only to
steal and kill and destroy. Jesus says I
have come that you might have life and that abundantly. Life is ours because God says so. Mercy.
Grace. Love. This is why ultimately we don’t have to be
afraid. I’m not saying we don’t do our
part. I’m not saying pretend there isn’t a real threat to life and limb out there. What I’m saying is in the end it will be ok,
we will be with Jesus in the end.
But its ok to want to stick around
to see you children grow up, to see your grandkids. Its ok to want to keep having grandma and
grandpa at the Thanksgiving table. Its
ok to not want to have to grieve the loss of your spouse. Its ok to care about your neighbor and do
what you can. Why? Because that is showing fear and love as
Luther reminds us. Facing the facts with
love and concern. That is Godly
fear. And that is Godly love.
Jesus was suffering in the garden
of Gethsemane. I read that text and it
sure sounds like he was afraid. He knew
the pain He would suffer. But He knew the
threat. If he did nothing it would all
burn and His beloved children would be lost.
So He was courageous and He was bold.
And it cost Him much suffering and death. But in making the sacrifice for us He changed
everything. We were saved. And He was risen. And He had saved His family and we now have a
Father in heaven.
