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Pentecost 3
18/6/2023

Romans 5:12-21
Psalm 116
Matthew 9:35-10:8

In a sentence:
In a world of death-dealing dominions, the gospel offers the life-giving lordship of Jesus

How Much More
There’s a lot going on in our reading from Romans this morning! I’ve tried to give some indication of the dynamics of Paul’s argument with the colourful version of the text on the pew sheets, to make more evident a few of the directions taken in the text.

Of those various connections and emphases, I’d like us to consider together this morning is the Much and the More and the Surely, which pop up several times throughout the text. If something has gone wrong in us, Paul says, Much More Surely has God brought about something good and remedying in Christ. How Much More the gospel gift is, over the fruit of human brokenness. Christians, in Paul’s view, are How Much More people – are a people of God’s excess.

But what does that mean for the contemporary experience of the church in this society, today? In particular, what does it mean for us as a congregation about to move to a new place. Are we moving into a space and a being which is More, or Less?

More, or Less?
The Less-ness is obvious. This congregation is what remains of a community which built a 900 seater church (UMC), and of another community on the other side of North Melbourne, and of another community which worshipped in Parkville, and of numerous other church communities which have long since closed. The Less in all this is unambiguous. And we move now to another site, Less the history and the grandeur of the ecclesial spaces which have been enjoyed in this place for over 150 years.

At the same time, after 12 or 13 years of being squashed into this hall, there is a sense in which we are moving to a More, given the space, the aesthetics, and the clean and accessible toilet facilities we expect to enjoy the CTM!

Yet we also know the risk. What is More at the CTM might just be the burning brighter of a lamp just before it goes out. This would not be a real More but the particular way in which the Less finally arrives.

If Christians are a How Much More people, in what way is this so under these circumstances and given the admittedly very possible Less outcome? For all our careful planning and attention to refining the memorandum of understanding, the hiring agreement, and property sale proceeds, we cannot turn our face from the possibility of death. And there are no communities around which are obviously How Much More than our own: it is change and decay in all around, we see. The Less of death’s dominion seems to be spreading to swallow up the How Much More people.

Adam and Christ
Yet St Paul is across this. His argument in our passage today looks, at first glance, to be somewhat abstract and highfalutin in its theological twists and turns. But what he is basically doing here is speaking about our existence through two related but contrasting conceptualities, marked by Adam and Christ.

These two ways of speaking about being human are like the “overwhelmings” our study groups have been considering over the last few weeks, as we have read our way through David Ford’s The shape of living. Paul might well have written in terms of “overwhelmings”, but his expression is “dominion”. To be in Adam or in Christ is to be subject to a comprehensive power,  to one kind of lordship or another. But these dominions are not symmetrical; what they offer is not equal and opposite.

Adam stands for death and decay, and we certainly see a lot of Adam around us. Paul saw this too; the motivation for his letters to his little congregations around Asia Minor was precisely the experience of change and decay. But Paul’s gospel is of a God who raises the dead and calls into being what does not yet exist. This is the Much More in what we have heard from him this morning. Yet the Much More is not something added on top of what we already have. It’s not the promise of compensation or reward after an experience of So Much Less than we hoped for. For this reason, the resurrection of Jesus has to be understood not as a mere reversal or undoing of all the Much Less which went before, particularly the crucifixion. Instead, the resurrection shines a light on the quality of the life of Jesus despite appearances in the opposition he met and the apparent judgement of the cross.

The Much More, then, is not a life to come; it takes place in this life. It was the life of Jesus before the crucifixion and even in the crucifixion. Jesus is never the Less but is always the How Much More. His life and the death is a denial of death’s dominion: the denial that life must ultimately be subject to the darkness of death’s shadow.

Living well, dying well
The Much More, then, is not a quantity. It is not something extra added at the end to balance the scales. The Much More is a quality. The question is not how long our lives are and, therefore, whether there is a More to come for anyone one of us or for the congregation in our new location. The question is whether, in whatever time that we have, we are slaves or free. This is the difference between Adam and Christ. It is the art of dying well because I have lived well. In this sense, there is for each of us the possibility of a How Much More.

Such a life is lived with death already behind it, rather than death before it. This is a strange way to put it because we are yet to die biological death, but the language here must be odd because the thought the gospel invites us to think cannot quite be grasped.

Of course, we will still die, and we will grieve our dead. But scandalously – and it is scandalous, in view of the pain death brings – it is almost as if for Paul death were a state of mind, and that the gospel calls for a change of mind – the meaning of the word ‘repent’. This repentance is not the denial of death but the refusal to live under death’s shadow. This a question of dominion: who is Dominus, who is Lord? Not death. Christ.

In the biblical story, there stands between Adam and Christ, between slavery and freedom, Abraham, about whom we had a bit to say last week. We are Abraham invited to turn from Adam’s death to Christ’s life. Go to the land that I will show you, says God – even Christ himself.

This is easier than it seems. We saw last week that all Abraham and Sarah had to do was live in a strange land, have a child, and tell him a story. And the effect of their doing that is that we’re here today thinking about Adam, Abraham, and Christ, about life between slavery and freedom.

And now we are going to a strange land, and there goes with us a God of How Much More. All we need to do is have a child and tell her the story.

If this How Much More God is faithful, which is the true heart of our question about God, our work will have been done if we do go,

and bear,

and tell.

From there, the How Much More of God will take care of itself.

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Pentecost 2
11/6/2023

Genesis 12:1-9
Psalm 33
Romans 4:1-12
Matthew 9:9-13

In a sentence:
God is free so that we might be; God’s call to us is a call to be free to be ourselves and that others might also be freed

Of spiders, fear and freedom
On Tuesday night, I hopped into the car in preparation to pick up our boy and some his friends from volleyball training, when there ran across the outside of the windscreen a medium-sized ‘huntsman’ spider, silhouetted against the twilight sky. Most of us can be reasonably sensible about spiders; this is less true with the huntsman. Essentially harmless to humans, their size makes them fearsome-looking and fast. It isn’t going to hurt you, but it could end up anywhere in no time – in particular, up the leg of your trousers or sleeve of your shirt – and no one wants that!

I was inside the car, and the doors and windows were all closed, so I wasn’t worried. I wasn’t worried, yet. But I know from previous experience that these critters can hold on pretty tight, so after picking up the kids from training, I didn’t, as usual, open the windows or sunroof – which is usually necessary when you have several teenagers in a car after 90 minutes of vigorous exercise. The last thing I needed at 100km/hr on the freeway coming home was arachnophobia erupting in the back seat, or the front!

God’s terrifying freedom
You probably didn’t notice the spider in our readings this morning, but there was a big, fast, hairy one there, which we usually call “God”. ‘Go’, God says, ‘…[and] So Abram went’. Perhaps we are so familiar with the story that we miss its terror. But consider: Abram and Sarai are just getting on with their lives and minding their own business when, out of the blue, God commands: Go.

The problem here is surely God’s capriciousness. The command is unexpected, unfathomable, unreasonable and untameable. The last thing any of us needs in our relatively stable and comfortable lives is a big, hairy spider-like God dropping into our lap and running up the front of our T-shirt.

The only possible justification for an approach like this from God is that it matches – accords with – true human being. That is, it only makes sense for God to act this way, and for us to be interested in such an approach from God, if this is the kind of expectation from life necessary for our fullest, most authentic human existence.

Our reading of God has to do with our reading of ourselves. Do we have to be like Abram (and Sarai) – free in the way that God is free – in order to be happy? The invitation in the story of the call to Abram and Sarai is to ask ourselves: Are we better when we are as free as God? In the story, God’s freedom to command ‘Go’ is met by Abram’s freedom to respond in the way that he did: ‘So Abram went…’ Is this what we need to be?

Faith as openness to freedom
Notice how our understanding of faith would have to change if this were so. Faith would not be ‘believing in God’ but the suspicion that the freedom of God seeks our freedom. God is free, and we can be too. God is big and hairy and fast, and we should be too.

The freedom at stake here, however, is not an abstract anything-you-want liberation from all constraints. A promise is attached to God’s call to Abram and Sarai: “Through you, the nations will bless themselves” (or “Through you, the nations will be blessed”). That is, Abram’s freedom will bear forth the world’s freedom.

Abram and Sarai’s story, then, poses a two-pronged question: Is there a God who is spider-free, and does that God’s freedom set us free?

But how do even we answer a question like this? How do we “prove” there is such a God and that we should be such people? We can’t do it “theoretically”. That is, we can’t argue ourselves or others into radical freedom.

We prove, rather, it in the old sense of the word, which is to test it or, to probe it (“probe” and “prove” are closely-related words)

And Abram and Sarai do probe God, and God continues to probe them. And Abram doubts, going so far as effectively to prostitute his wife to save his own skin. And Sarai also doubts, which is enshrined in the changing of her name to Sarah. But God prevails – proves to be up to the probing.

But let’s now skip across to what St Paul says about Abraham in today’s reading from Romans. Paul’s argument hinges on the conviction that what is the case for Abraham is also the case for us. The presenting problem is circumcision, but this is a passing surface question. For Paul, it is crucial that Abraham’s response to God is a heart-thing and not a law-thing. That is, Abraham doesn’t earn God’s favour by jumping through some moral hoop. Instead, Abraham ‘believes’. For Paul, this means Abraham trusts. And God counts that trust as enough.

For Abraham to have done the right thing and earned God’s favour would be for Abraham to have bound God: Here’s my ticket, you owe me now, let me in. But instead, Abraham sees, accepts and acts as if there is a future in God’s command to “Go”, and this is the basis of his relationship to God. Paul’s concern is the kind of relationship we have with God – whether it is a bound relationship or a free one. Are we good with God because we are bound by what God commands, or are we good with God because God simply loves us, and we act within that love? Put differently, are we slaves to God and the gods, bound to do what is required, or are we as children who act not out of requirement but from the love of God?

Our freedom in God’s freedom
Our being free or bound is something each of us needs to prove – to probe – at a personal level. When and where do we feel ourselves bound, and by what, and what are the possibilities of freedom? Where are we acting for the wrong reason when acting for the right reason would set us free?

I’d like us to think together for a moment, however, about our shared life as a congregation and where we find ourselves now. There is a strong sense in which the move we’re about to make to the CTM is not free. Were it not for our building woes, we almost certainly would not be considering moving, although that might still have been a good idea. Nonetheless, we are moving because we must; we are bound to move. This is not freedom, and it’s less than God’s intention for us.

What, then, does freedom mean for our move? One thing it means, as I’ve said before, is that freedom is a stance towards what is unavoidable. In our case, that stance will look like a “leaning in” to our future at the CTM rather than a leaning back. This is not to say that we can’t regret or be sad about the need to move; this also matters. But it is to say something about how we must face the future, as individuals and as a congregation.

For this reason, our Church Council has decided that we will move in six weeks’ time, perhaps before we actually have to, simply in order to demonstrate to ourselves that we are moving to a place where we expect to live, and not a place to die. There is, then, no reason to lean back in fear of what’s in front of us. You lean back from death but forward into life. Everything dies, but it only dies properly after it has lived, and we still have plenty of life in us.

Precisely what our new life together will look like is difficult to see and, so far, we’ve really only guessed and speculated and fantasised. As with the story of Abram and Sarai, there are many things – for better and for worse – yet to unfold.

But let’s consider the promise to Abram and why it matters that we choose to live freely: In you [God says], all the families of the earth will be blessed. That is, Your freedom will lead set others free. Paul’s point is that this promise is also made to us: be free, that others might also be free.

We don’t know how this can or will be so. Abraham and Sarah died in the “promised land” without the promise yet being fulfilled. But we are here today because God’s freedom elicited from them enough imperfect freedom that we still tell and reflect and act upon their story 3500 years later.

We might, then, dare to pray that, 3500 years from now, people might be found who are reflecting on our story. The gospel is that this is as likely for us now as it was for Abram and Sarai back then.

And we should not merely pray this way, but we must act as if it will be so: choosing tomorrow freely, without fear, sons and daughters of Abraham and Sarah, testifying to the freedom of God, for the blessing of the freedom of all the world.

God. Can. Do. This.

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Trinity Sunday
4/6/2023

Genesis 1:26-2.4a
Psalm 8
Matthew 28:16-20

In a sentence:
Trinitarian faith is the conviction that God is indelibly marked by, and so can heal, human experience

What catches our attention
When I checked the list of the ten “Most Viewed” news items on The Guardian’s website on Thursday, their themes were as follows:

• War crimes allegations
• Queensland vs NSW State of Origin
• The Ben Roberts-Smith defamation case
• Australia’s housing crisis
• Ben Roberts-Smith (again)
• Drone attacks in Moscow
• The rental crisis
• People pursued by debt collectors
• Different drone attacks in Russia
• State of Origin (again)

There is, of course, more than this in the daily papers, but this is the kind of thing that attracts our attention. On any given day, it’s pretty much the same: a predominance of bad things unfolding around us (drone attacks or straining economies), relieved by a few diversions or titillations (State of Origin or some celebrity’s latest peccadillo).

Most of it, of course, is a “long way” from us – someone else’s crisis. Yet, unless we simply stop engaging with the news, we feel around us the low, distant thrum of things falling down, the threat of things which might become our problem as well. It doesn’t go too far to say that we are ‘baptised’ – immersed, soaked – in this shared experience. Of course, there is love-light which shines through and is even to be found in the newspapers; it’s just that the love stories don’t feature in the “Most Viewed” item lists.

David Ford (the author of our current study group book) might characterise this troubled experience as one of the ‘overwhelmings’ which constitute the human being – one of our many immersions and baptisms. Christian faith denies none of these realities; it ‘simply’ locates these experiences within a broader horizon than tomorrow’s coming repetition of today’s news. And this brings us to the church’s trinitarian dogma. Perhaps this is unexpected, for what could such high falutin theology have to do with the deep anthropology of felt experience in the world, to which the daily news testifies?

The human heart of God
An answer can be found in the classic credal summation of this teaching, as we recite about every other week. Here we see the human being right in the heart of God. Indeed, we can see how human experience is the crisis which precipitated the Creed in the form we have it.

The Creed appears in three bits (‘articles’). All we have to notice about this today is given on the front page of the pew sheet this morning – the size of each of these bits. By far, the largest is the middle bit, and the second largest is the last. The middle bit is the largest because it’s the bad news about human existence. This is what appears in the ‘Most Viewed’ list, the thing which catches our attention, the thing which most threatens us. This is Jesus dead on the cross. It is Russia in Ukraine, the US in the Pacific and Israel in Palestine. It is war crimes and train crashes and murder-suicides. The third article of the Creed is more like the Most Viewed diversionary stories; it is the good news, the relief. Yet, it is not mere titillating distraction but a vision of the peaceful resolution of tangled and strangled life.

And notice how small the ‘main’ God bit is at the top – the creator-God article we might think makes the broadest religious sense. By contrast, and challenging a general notion or interest in ‘God’, the Creed places human experience and human longing at the very heart of God and gives these the most space. And this was seriously controversial. At the time of the laying out of the Creeds, the ‘Most Viewed’ items in ancient newsfeeds would have been ‘Church contaminates God with crucified prophet’ or ‘God died, proclaims Christian bishop’ and then, among the diversionary and titillating most-viewed items, ‘Bishop thrown to the lions’.

But the church persisted with its odd theology. The middle article of the Creed is the longest because it places our Most Viewed items at the heart of God, as if these mattered to God, even to the extent that they are part of God. And out of that dull background thrum, slowly, are heard strains of music: resurrection, community, unity, holiness and fullness of life. Discord resolves into harmony, the pavement-pounding of marching armies gives way to the delight of dancing feet, steel melts to flesh and hands which held at a distance now meet in reconciling embrace behind an enemy’s back.

Our story, in God
This is what the church’s trinitarian faith means. If we are baptised into a world of dark Most Viewed stories, Jesus’ command to his disciples that they go and baptise is a command to confer a new story: find yourself here, in the Creed. It is a dark place where we afflict each other, and also suffer with one another. But there is also a promise there. Be baptised into the promise, and start to read more of this story. And not only read the story but become it.

Christian faith is about finding ourselves unexpectedly hidden in the life of God, as the geometry of the Creed shows. To borrow again from David Ford, we might say that we are ‘secreted’ within God – hidden and enveloped within different story – Christ’s story as our own. Our lives are God’s secret, God’s, hidden precious thing.

The trinitarian confession of the church is a story of God-and-the-world. God’s own Most Viewed items are the lives of each one of us. Our lives are not given to be the next tragedy or diversion in the news. To confess God as three-and-one is to know the story of our lives read by God, whose reading of us is always towards wholeness, peace, and joy.

To confess God is in this way is to tell our stories to their glorious end: the life of the world to come, in God.

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Pentecost
28/5/2023

Numbers 11:24-30
Acts 2:1-21
John 7:37-39

Sermon preached by Rev. Rob Gotch

If we were to consider what we cannot live without, I imagine we’d identify a variety of relational and experiential possibilities:  people to love, nurture and care for us, accepting us without question, and sharing with us our mortal journey;  careers, hobbies, passions and lifestyles that offer purpose and meaning;  communities, places and practices in which we are safe, and in which we find encouragement and belonging;  something or someone in which to invest trust, giving us hope in the midst of the pain of illness or injury, disappointment or grief;  experiences that delight our senses or emotions – that first coffee in the morning or that bit of chocolate after dinner, the physical exercise that releases endorphins to provide a natural high, a piece of music that makes us smile or weep for reasons we can’t explain, the grandeur of outback wilderness, mountaintop panorama, or ocean vista.  And there are more fundamental human needs – food, water and the air we breathe.  Apparently, these needs can be quantified using a fairly simple formula – we can live for about 3 weeks without food, 3 days without water, and 3 minutes without air.

The primary narrative of the Hebrew Scriptures places these basic human needs within the context of faith in the God who calls people into the life of covenant relationship.  Led by Moses out of slavery into freedom, the Israelites begin to regret leaving Egypt, lamenting that they’ve journeyed into the wilderness only to die of starvation.  In response to this, the Lord provides quail for dinner and manna for breakfast.  Then they complain that they’re dying of thirst.  In response to this, Moses is instructed by the Lord to strike the rock at Horeb, and water flows for them to drink.  Moses names that place Massah and Meribah, because of the quarrelling and testing of his people when they ask – ‘Is the Lord among us, or not?’

Centuries later, the apostle Paul recalls these events in a remarkable way.  Writing to the church at Corinth, he interprets the Exodus narrative through the gospel of Jesus, when he says: ‘I do not want you to be unaware that our ancestors were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink.  For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and that rock was Christ.’  Paul recognises that the Corinthians and the Israelites share the same struggle.  This is the struggle to recognise that the Lord is indeed among them as the giver of life, not merely in the provision of food and water, but in every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord, calling people into the life of devotion, justice and peace, as creatures of God.

The writer of Psalm 104 reflects on what it means to be creatures of God: ‘All things look to you Lord to give them their food in due season; when you give to them, they gather it up; when you open your hand, they are filled with good things.  When you hide your face, they are dismayed; when you take away their breath, they die and return to their dust.  When you send forth your spirit, they are created; and you renew the face of the ground.’  In this psalm, as in the creation story in Genesis chapter 1, the Hebrew word for spirit is ruach – the life-giving breath or wind of God.

In the Pentecost story in Acts chapter 2, the Greek word for spirit is pneumatos – the breath or wind of God that manifests as tongues of fire resting on each of the disciples.  This is the hope of Moses and the promise of Jesus fulfilled – the Spirit of God breathed into God’s people that they may dwell in praise.  When the mighty acts of God are proclaimed in every language in Jerusalem, those listening are amazed, thinking that the disciples must be drunk.  But the apostle Peter declares that the gospel of Jesus Christ is the fulfilment of an ancient prophecy – that God’s Spirit will one day be poured out on all flesh.

It’s interesting to consider Pentecost in relation to the Creedal affirmation that Jesus was ‘conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary.’  This phrase seems to cause such controversy, with some wondering how virgins can be mothers.  Often overlooked are the theological implications of the phrase, perhaps especially the reference to the Holy Spirit’s role in conception.  We can learn from medieval artists who recognise that Mary conceives by receiving the Word, not just through the angel’s message but through the voice of the Spirit.  And just as Jesus is ‘conceived by the Holy Spirit’, so too is his church.  Note the irony in Moses’ words to his agitated apprentice, Joshua:  ‘Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit on them.’  This is the meaning and purpose of Pentecost – the Lord has put his Spirit on us to make us prophets of Jesus Christ.

Consider the brokenness that afflicts this planet and its peoples:  the loss of purpose, meaning and identity that leads to despair, the struggles for power that promote the manufacture of terrible weapons, the disappearance of fertile land for subsistence farming, the deepening threat of global warming, the insatiable appetite for unsustainable consumption, the false hope in unbridled economic growth, the widening and self-justifying gap between rich and poor, the various self-serving media that sacrifice truth on the altar of greed, the hopelessness of addictions of increasing variety and misery.

Into this brokenness, the Holy Spirit breathes and speaks God’s Word of hope.  This is the Spirit:  who hovers over the waters of creation, bringing forth life out of darkness, who speaks through law and prophets to create a holy people, who settles on Jesus at his baptism to confirm God’s love and call, who empowers the ministry of God’s anointed in acts of healing, justice and peace, who is promised by Jesus to those who love him and obey his commandments, who is crushed by the death of the Son and the grief of the Father, who is sent upon all chaos to breathe once again life into darkness, who rejoices in the re-union of Father and Son, and invites the whole creation into God’s renewing embrace.

This is good news for a hurting world; indeed, good news that God’s creation cannot live without.  This is good news for the congregation of Mark the Evangelist, as it discerns its life and witness, and journeys into a future grounded only in God’s call.

May God breathe the Spirit of Christ crucified into you, that you may be rivers of living water – as creatures of his life, as stewards of his peace, and as prophets of his glory.

Praise to the Father, Christ his Word, and to the Spirit:  God the Lord.  Amen.

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Easter 7
21/5/2023

1 Peter 4:12-14, 5.6-11
Psalm 111
John 17:1-11

In a sentence:
Fear is always finally that God will not be there ‘tomorrow’, but this we do not need to fear

Being human
Most of us have had the experience of not being able to keep watching the news or reading the newspapers, simply because it has become overwhelming: too much controversy, too much complicated debate, too many shot dead, burned in a hotel fire, dragged out of mangled cars or drowned when overloaded boats succumb to the waves.

The news is distressingly un-new; it simply replays over and over with different actors and, not surprisingly, can be overwhelming. We feel threatened by the dangers which leap out of the television screen, knowing that each person caught in the lens might well have been us, or perhaps we are overwhelmed because we feel we should be able to do something about it but can’t, or don’t know what. When we switch off the screen or radio, or close the paper, we prove the somewhat cynical wisdom: ignorance is bliss.

Over the last couple of weeks, our discussion groups have begun a new book in which theologian David Ford proposes that experiences like being overwhelmed are defining for human beings. We are overwhelmed from birth by family, language and culture. We are overwhelmed by love or grief or by the kinds of things which confront us in the news. Positively or negatively, the human being is inherently susceptible to being overwhelmed, or perhaps even needs to be overwhelmed.

In the same way, Ford then goes on to consider desire. Like the various overwhelmings which define us, these desires can also be positive or negative and can be quite comprehensive. Desire, then, can also be used to describe the human being: the human is a being which desires, and perhaps which desires most deeply to be desired.

Ford’s method in the book seems to be to identify certain aspects of human existence which might be said to be universal, and then to ask how such things are means by which God connects to us. That is, his point is not least that good theology requires good anthropology, and good anthropology points to what good theology needs to address.

The fear of God
I suspect that our experience of fear might be another of those universal human experiences which can be a basis for thinking about God. ‘Cast all your anxiety on God’, writes St Peter in our reading this morning. Anxiety, or fear, pops up several times in this letter. Peter’s community is under persecution, apparently having been marked out as sufficiently different from the mainstream to present some threat to the wider community. But at this point, Peter doesn’t suggest that fear is inherently bad. He allows for it but tweaks it: ‘Fear God’ (2.17), he writes, ‘Do not fear what they fear’ (3.14).

The idea of fearing God seems strange to us these days. We’re more likely to want to speak about ‘loving’ God, drawing a polemical contrast between love and fear: love (good) versus fear (bad). But the Scriptures know us a little better than this. Not fearing would be like not being overwhelmed or not desiring. That is, we can’t do it. The question is not ‘to fear or not to fear’ but what we fear, on the assumption that we will fear something. Peter’s ‘do not fear what they fear’ invites a discrimination between fears, just as we might discriminate between types of love – that ‘love’ which destroys us or others, versus those that build up.

For Peter, it is only Godly fear which properly makes a claim on us; all other fears diminish us. And in this contrast, we see how fear begins to change meaning when borrowed and applied to our relationship with God. The fears which Peter’s community has, and those which most of us have, are social, economic and political. We fear that there will not be enough – not enough money, not enough time, not enough ‘me’. And so we act, out of fear, to assure ourselves of ‘enough’. We can read wars in this light – not least the current war in Ukraine. Political struggles are about ‘enough’: consider the debate around the proposed Parliamentary Voice in these terms. We fear that nothing will change, so that we will still not have enough, or that too much will change and we will lose what enough we have. We fear that we will still not be, or will no longer be, free. Even as we oppose each other, we fear the same thing – that we will be lost, or remain lost. To tweak Peter’s language here and borrow what he says about the devil, this is the fear which devours, the fear that consumes until nothing is left.

‘Do not fear what they fear’, Peter writes. Do not fear in the way they fear – do not fear that there will not be enough. For the fear of God is not a fear that God is a powerful judge, such that we have to do the right thing in case we won’t be enough – in order not to be punished for not being enough. This would be merely to replace a clear and present danger of everyday fears with one which is less clear and in the future. We do not fear God because God is scarier than the other things we fear.

The one thing fearful
Rather, to speak of fearing God is to let go of fear about all other things, although this is a negative way of putting it. To put it positively, to fear God is to be free of the fears which press in on us. Do not fear those things which might diminish you; ‘fear’ rather the God in whose eyes you cannot be diminished.

The psalmist’s ‘beginning of wisdom’ (Psalm 111.10) is, then, also the beginning of freedom. This wisdom is that the fear of the Lord is not fear at all. It is more like a kind of mindfulness – although not quite in the modern therapeutic sense. It is to be mindful – to be mind-filled – not of the unavoidable difficulties and challenges and oppositions which fill our lives, but to be mindful that God accepts you. In all things, we are God’s precious children. We must respond to the challenges and threats, but God’s acceptance of us is not dependent on that response. And so mindfulness of God’s acceptance of us is liberating. If God already embraces us before we do anything, then our actions from within that embrace cannot break it – we cannot fall out of God’s love because that embrace is never not enough.

In the life we each go home to after worship today, in the life the congregation must negotiate in the months and years to come, in the lives we are given to live with each other, we are have enough to do the next thing which will point away from fear to freedom. We have enough to point away from the possibility that we might be loved to the actuality that we are. We have enough to point away from death to life.

In the normal course of things, the ever-present danger is that fear itself might overwhelm us, so that our fear-filled desire for life might in fact lead us to a living death.

But the ‘fear’ of this God is the gift of freedom from fear because, whatever the future holds, in God we have enough. When a God like this is the one thing fearful, there is none to accuse or fear, only the freedom to do the next good thing which must be done, leaving the rest to God.

Let us, then, not be anxious or fearful about the next thing which comes, because this would be to fear that God will not be there, in that next step. And this we do not fear, for God is faithful, and so not only must we step out into tomorrow, but we can.