(Lenten series V, Friday 1 April 2022)
We
are thinking about life and faith in a time of crisis, and so we do have to
talk about being afraid. Jesus, in
several instances, asks his disciples why were they afraid… as though they
needn’t have been. Have no fear… he
says. And in the Sermon on the Mount we find the piece that causes nervous shuffling
in the pews… where Jesus says:
Therefore I tell you, do not worry about
your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what
you will wear. Is not life more than
food, and the body more than clothing?
Look at the birds of the air… Can you by worrying add a single hour to
your span of life… It is the gentiles who strive for all these things… So do not worry about tomorrow. For tomorrow
will bring worries of its own. Today’s
trouble is enough for today.[1]
But
we can’t help it. Basil Fawlty is told,
don’t panic, and he yells, What else is there to do…! More seriously, to watch Ukrainians fleeing their
homes, towards any western border, wherever the train they scramble on is
going, women and children, parting from their menfolk who have to stay and
fight… fear has occupied and dominates their lives.
Sarah
Bachelard makes a pretty obvious distinction between fear and anxiety… although
the distinction can get a little blurred.
Fear tends to render us helpless and confused, even paralysed for action…
like the disciples in the storm on the lake.
I freaked out, you have to tell the media… I was like, O my
God! When fear takes over, reason
tends to go out the window. Anxiety on
the other hand is more when we find ourselves lying awake still more or less in
our right minds… but our right minds are the problem, we’re seeing worst-case
scenarios, dire possibilities, at 2 in the morning.
The
Apostle John, as we know, says that love casts out fear… there is no fear in
love, he writes.[2] Well… tell
that to countless mothers in history who have watched their sons go off to war. But if we look at the text we can see what he
means. Fear, he says, has to do with
punishment. The fear cast out by love is
the fear of an arbitrary God. Ultimately
it is a fear of life and death itself. There
is no fear in love, writes John, but perfect love casts out fear; for
fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in
love. We love because he first loved us… To be perfected in love, as John puts it, is
to know the God Jesus called Father, of whom we have no need to be afraid, who
punishes no one, who sends his rain, says Jesus, on good and bad alike.[3] It is to live, to abide, in the love Jesus
knew, in which he lived and died.
In
contemplative life and prayer we do find ourselves, as time goes by, less frightened
of life and all its risks. We find
ourselves more ready to accept life as fragile and precarious, unfair in many
respects. We are more in love each day
with goodness and truth, with beauty and wonder, with mercy and justice. It is not that pain and sorrow suddenly
become somehow acceptable… or that adversity doesn’t matter any more… It is
more that, as St Paul puts it, love never fails… love abides.[4]
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