FAITH BEYOND FEAR
Author: Fr. Michael Byron
June 19, 2021
In the animal kingdom, the
normal response of creatures who are afraid is to try to make themselves look
tough or scary. Snakes hiss and
rattle. Skunks emit a putrid smell. Lions and tigers roar. Birds extend their feathers to make them
appear larger than they really are. Wolves
bare their teeth. It can look like acts
of aggression, but in many cases it is an automatic response to fear. I’m afraid of you so I need you to be more
afraid of me. Human beings do the very
same thing. I will bully you in school because I’m afraid I’m not good enough
myself. I will shoot you with a gun because I’m afraid of what you might do to
me if I don’t. I will insult you or put
up hate speech online and on social media because I’m afraid your ideas or the
world around me and I need someone to blame in public. The goal of all of this terrible behavior is
to try to make you fear me more than I fear you. If I’m afraid of who you are because I don’t
understand you, then I will enact laws and inflict punishments that will make
me feel more secure about me. It’s often
not about you at all - - I may not even know who you are. But I am afraid. And I’m
too afraid to admit it. And the very worst thing that you can do to me in
response is to refuse to play the game – to refuse to be afraid of me and my
behavior and my threats. It is then that
I will seek to destroy you, because for me there is nothing more threatening
than the person who won’t be threatened. That’s what the animals do. And
it’s sometimes what the humans do too.
It’s a cycle of poison – all
this fear, and our response to it. So it’s
no coincidence that one the most insistent teachings of Jesus in the gospels is
that we disciples break the endless and meaningless and useless culture of
fear. “Do Not Be Afraid!” he says. “Why
are you so afraid? He asks. Over and over. It’s right there again in today’s
gospel. Out there on the Sea of Galilee
in the boat, in the storm, Jesus puts up the question: “why are you terrified?” It apparently had not occurred to the
disciples that their teacher, Jesus asleep on a pillow, was in exactly the same
predicament, the same boat, that they all were. If it really were true that they were “in danger of perishing, “then Jesus
would have been in the very same danger. Yet they that they are blaming it all on him? So the only difference between them was that
Jesus knew that God was not going to let them die there and then. Or even if that were to happen, it was not
something about which to be afraid. We Christians
profess, every time that we gather for public worship, that death is by no
means the most serious threat that believers face in this world. In fact, we say that we believe the
opposite. As St. Paul’s letter to the
Corinthians reminds us today, we have already died with Jesus Christ and have
every expectation of being raised with him.
Death is not a threat for
us. It is an invitation in to something
even better that the good life that we now know. It is not something to be
feared, merely because we don’t entirely understand it. And it’s a rotten
disposition with which to go through life. So, “why are you terrified?” he
asks?
Jesus’ sleeping in the boat
on that occasion was not an act of disinterest for his friends or of dismissing
the genuine dangers of earthly life. It
was instead an expression of utter confidence that nothing is capable of
separating us from God’s presence, God’s protection, and God’s abiding life. Do we believe what we pray? If so, there is no need for fear. If not, why not? We are in that boat with Jesus. More importantly, Jesus is in the boat with
us, subjecting himself to the very same perils that we face. His in not afraid of the storm, so why are
we?
We only destroy ourselves and
each other when we let fear become more of a motivating life for than
faith. We gather in this season in which
there certainly seems to be plenty enough of which to be afraid. And we very much need to be intelligent about
responding to those forces that could threaten to harm us: pandemic, social
upheaval, racism, gun violence, political corruption, disunity in the church,
despair. But we have been given the gift of faith, which is stronger than all
of those things because God is stronger than them all, Jesus is too.
On this weekend when we
celebrate 40 years of the presence of Pax Christi Catholic Community, we would
do well to remember that this is exactly why we are here, and why our mission
matters so much. We offer an alternative
to fear as a way of living among our neighbors. And it’s really not we do that; it is Christ who lives and through and
among us. And the darker the
circumstances around us become, the more necessary our witness is. There’s no need to be afraid. There’s no need to be afraid.
|