"Do Not Fear" - My First Sermon

Do Not Fear
Matthew 10:24-33

A sermon delivered by Courtney Ellis at the First Presbyterian Church of Burbank
June 22, 2008

The year was 1945. World War II was rapidly drawing to a close, but still thousands upon thousands of Jews and dissenters against the Third Reich languished in concentration camps. In one of the smaller camps, Flossenbürg, a young German pastor and theologian awaited the end of the war. He had been thrown in prison both for his participation in
the plot to kill Hitler and for his Christian teachings. He refused to give allegiance to the Nazi regime, and proclaimed only allegiance to Christ. But the war seemed to be at an end. The pastor felt a small glimmer of hope. It was possible that he would be released.

However, that glimmer of hope would go tragically unrealized. On April 9, 1945, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, beloved Lutheran pastor and theologian was hanged. On April 23, 1945, Flossenbürg Concentration Camp was liberated, and the remaining prisoners were set free. Bonhoeffer had missed freedom—and life—by a mere two weeks.

The world’s loss of such a brilliant and sensitive theologian, a man who loved life so much, is tragic indeed. He was a profound writer, and there is no telling what he could have accomplished, not to mention how unthinkable it was for his family, friends, and fiancée to lose him at such a young age.

At the same time, Bonhoeffer was willing to die for Christ. One of his biographers, Renate Wind, published a poem that Bonhoeffer wrote to his mother and his fiancée, weeks before he died. One of its central stanzas goes like this:

Should it be ours to drain the cup of grieving
even to the dregs of pain, at thy command
we will not falter, thankfully receiving
all that is given by thy loving hand.

Do not fear. These are the words of Jesus to his disciples in Matthew 10. These are the words of Jesus to us today. These were the words of Jesus to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, murdered by the Nazis. Do not fear. It was a phrase that Bonhoeffer knew well. He often thought about his own death—during Nazi Germany death was ever present, and standing up for Christ and the Jews meant that death was not only possible but likely.

Yet Bonhoeffer stood firm. He would not sacrifice his commitment to Christ in order to appease an evil empire. Bonhoeffer was unafraid, writing that the death of a believer in Christ “is really only the gateway to the perfect love of God.” Do not fear.

This command of Jesus was given to his disciples in these verses three times between verse 26 and verse 31. In Jesus’ time, when someone emphasized the same idea over and over again, it was like underlining it and giving it an exclamation point. Do not fear. Do not fear. Do not fear.

We need to hear this, don’t we? We are a very fearful people. But what exactly is Christ telling us not to fear? This passage is specific. Though the word used is “them,” and if we read above we realize that we are not to fear those who persecute Christians. We are not to fear the powers that actively work against God’s kingdom. Bible commentator William Barclay puts it this way: “There must be a certain courageous fearlessness in the King’s messenger which marks him [or her] out from other people.”

Christ calls us to follow him in fearlessness. This fearlessness is not of our own making, it is ours because Christ has already triumphed over the world. If we are in Christ, the Bible tells us, we are “a new creation. The old has gone and the new has come.” The old creation still lives in sin, it is fearful indeed. The new creation is not fearful of the world, for the world cannot harm it. As both the Psalmist and the author of Hebrews says in Scripture, “The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can human beings do to me?” (Psalm 118:6, Hebrews 13:6) People can do nothing! God reigns over all and in all.

But wait—you may be asking—what about Bonhoeffer? Where was God then? It certainly seems as if the Nazis had their way with him, doesn’t it? Let’s begin to answer this question by looking back at verse 26: “So have no fear of them, for nothing is covered that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known.”

We live in a world that can be scheming, underhanded, and deceitful. But here the Lord tells us that the truth will always triumph. Fearlessness is always coupled with hope and faith in the coming victory of God. In this verse God cautions us against fearing for our reputations. The fear of what people will think is one reason people hesitate to speak up for Christ.

The Nazis began by attacking Bonhoeffer’s reputation. He was not a nationalist (an accusation that meant certain persecution in Nazi Germany), he did not support Hitler. Bonhoeffer stood firm. He loved Christ more than he loved his reputation. Like Christ, when they hurled insults at him, Bonhoeffer did not return violence with violence. Today Bonhoeffer is an incredibly respected figure, among Christians and non-Christians alike, because he proclaimed the truth—that the Nazi regime was evil. Though his reputation was attacked, the truth won out in the end, even after his death.

Now, none of us have to stand up against Nazi Germany. And few of us will be faced with the incredibly blatant evil that Bonhoeffer was faced with. Yet, we still face fear of more minor persecution in our daily lives. When I attended graduate school for English, there were many occasions where my fellow students openly ridiculed the name of Christ. To my great detriment, I stayed silent. I was quite vocal about my belief in Christ at church and with my friends, but I was terrified of what might happen to my reputation if the people at my school found out I believed in Jesus. My fellow students were not the Nazis, of course—far from it. Most of them were just ignorant about who Jesus is. Several of them had never even met a Christian before, and assumed that all Christians were the uneducated, judgmental stereotypes we see in the media. Yet, I was still afraid.

As the program went on, I began to feel guiltier for these silences. If I couldn’t be obedient to Christ in such a central thing, how would I be able to serve him in other ways? God was faithful in my rocky road to obedience—opportunities to speak up for Christ continued to come my way.

One day a fellow student asked me flat out—right before class, when many other people were around—if I was a Christian. I was at a crossroads. Many of you have or will see yourselves at a crossroads like this. Sometimes choices seem a bit grey—you could do any number of things and still please God. But sometimes we’re faced with a crossroads—deny Christ, or acknowledge him. Obey him, or reject him. As we read in verses 32-33, “Everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven, but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven.” This denial is not always a verbal one, like Peter’s in Matthew 26. We need not say, “I do not know Jesus” to deny him. We can also deny him by our silence, as I had been doing. I had a clear decision to make.

I took a deep breath, and, with God’s help, I said a soft, shaky, “Yes.” The student looked at me for a second, skeptically.

“Huh,” she said. “Interesting. I always thought that Christians were like circus freaks. But you're actually kind of smart..."

It was a small step, but even the smallest step, made in obedience, is progress. God tells us not to fear for our reputations, because the truth will always win out. God is truth. If that one simple acknowledgment of my belief in Christ had ruined my graduate school reputation forever, it shouldn’t have mattered to me. One day the truth—God’s truth—would be made known. The judgments of eternity will correct the judgments of time.

We must note here that speaking the truth is about much more than just being right. Christians have gotten themselves into a great deal of trouble over the centuries when they decide to proclaim rightness. We are called, as Christians, to speak the truth in love—not because we want people to know they are wrong, but because we love them enough to tell them truth. My graduate school friends may never have met another Christian their entire lives. If I had stayed silent, I would not have been loving them. If we really believe that the news of Jesus Christ is the best news, we cannot stay silent.

Secondly, this passage tells us that we need not fear for our safety. In verses 28-29, Jesus says, “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father.”

God doesn’t just notice when a sparrow dies—he holds all things, all creation, all of our daily lives—in his hands. Down to the tiniest molecule, nothing in creation happens that God isn’t aware of. It is also possible that the word translated “fall” here is a translation of the Aramaic word for “light upon.” In other words, God doesn’t just notice every time a sparrow falls, he notices every time a sparrow lights upon a tree branch or hops upon the ground. Nothing goes unnoticed—down to the tiniest sparrow. And if God is watching over the sparrows, how much more will he watch over his children!

Bonhoeffer knew this—even through the very end of his life, faced with torture and execution, he knew that his life was in the hands of the living God. Every moment he could cry out to his creator, for God was with him. Any time he felt anxious or fearful, any time he was tempted to despair, the Lord was beside him in his sufferings.

We live in a world that believes it is powerful. Satan—the one the Bible calls “the prince of this world”—believes that he is powerful. The Nazis believed that they were powerful. But the power of this world, the power of evil, the power of the enemy, this is not real power. Why? Because the worst thing, the very worst thing this world has to throw at us, is death. That’s its greatest weapon; that’s its ultimate threat. Death. And what do we know about death?

Christ has triumphed over death. Romans 8:38 tells us that not even death can separate us from the love of God. In his death and resurrection, Jesus has saved us from death. The Bible tells us that death has no power over us, that it has no sting. As Bonhoeffer wrote, “our death is really only the gateway to the perfect love of God.” The very worst thing the world can throw at us is the very thing that Christ has conquered. We need not fear.

But I’ve glossed over an important section. In this passage Jesus tells us three times not to fear, but he tells us one time that we should fear. “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both body and soul in hell.” We should fear one thing, and one thing only. We should fear God.

William Barclay tells the story of Hugh Latimer, a Christian bishop in England in the 1500s. Latimer was preaching when King Henry VIII was present. He knew that he was about to say something that would anger the king, and in those days, that could easily get a person killed. So in the pulpit he began speaking to himself, saying:

“Latimer! Latimer! Latimer! Be careful what you say. Henry the king is here.” Then he paused for a moment, prayerfully.

“Latimer! Latimer! Latimer!” he continued. “Be careful what you say. The King of Kings is here.” Latimer knew who his most important audience was. God, the creator of the heavens and the earth. He had a holy fear, a holy respect for God.

Fearing God means understanding that God made us and that at every moment, at every turn, our existence is dependent upon him. Thus, at any moment he could allow our existence to cease. But he doesn’t. Instead he sends Jesus to die so that we may live—in this life and in the one to come. But in this act of love God’s power and immensity is not minimized—we are still called to fear him, to receive his love, and to worship him. With God fear, love, and worship always go together.

Fearing God means understanding that we cannot hide from God’s presence. He is where we are. He sees the depths of our hearts and each thought in our minds. In God’s presence we are fully known and fully loved, and called forth to grow into the people he created us to be.

Fearing God is knowing that Jesus is Lord of all. He is Lord of our lives, of the universe, of our neighbors, of this church. He is all powerful. The fear of God is believing that he is God, and we are not. The fear of God shatters our perception of self-sufficiency. When we begin to know who God is, we begin to realize that we are utterly dependent upon him.

We should fear him because, as C.S. Lewis writes of Aslan—his literary symbol for Jesus—he is not safe. When young children are to meet Aslan for the first time, they are terrified of him. He is a lion, after all, and they are only small children. The lion is golden and shaggy and powerful and fearsome indeed. The youngest of the children asks her caretaker if Aslan is safe. “Of course he isn’t safe,” he replies. “But he is good. He’s the king!”

I was only able to speak up for Jesus when my fear of God, the realization that God is real, that the Good News is real, overcame my fear of my fellow students. I may have brought ridicule upon myself, but if I stayed silent, those students would have missed an opportunity to hear the Good News of Jesus. When we fear people so much, it is because we fear God so little.

This fear of God makes the shallow fear of persecution in this world appear as it really is. Even so, when we fear the ridicule of this world, God is with us, reminding us of his victory over the forces that work against him. His presence helps to teach us that we have nothing to fear in this world. Perhaps Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it best in a sermon he wrote in 1935, a decade before he would be asked to give his life for the kingdom of God. The sermon was called “Learning to Die.”

“Fear God—instead of the many things which you fear. Do not fear the coming day, do not fear other people, do not fear power and might, even if they are able to deprive you of property and life; do not fear the great ones of this world; do not even fear yourselves; do not fear sin. All this fear will be the death of you. You are free from all this fear; it isn’t there for you. But fear God and God alone; for God has power over the powers of this world; the whole world must fear God—God has power to give us life or to destroy us; everything else is a game—only God is in earnest, entirely in earnest. Fear God’s earnestness—and give God the glory.”

Amen.


The link to the sermon's audio is below, but it won't be posted for a couple of weeks or so.

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