Fearful Faith Matthew 10:27-31 NUCC Traditional 21 June 2020

*PRAY

Black Bart was a professional thief whose very name struck fear as he terrorized the Wells Fargo stage line. From San Francisco to New York, his name became synonymous with the danger of the frontier. Between 1875 and 1883 he robbed 29 different stagecoach crews. Amazingly, Bart did it all without firing a shot. Because a hood hid his face, no victim ever saw his face. He never took a hostage and was never trailed by a sheriff. Instead, Black Bart used fear to paralyze his victims. His sinister presence was enough to overwhelm the toughest stagecoach guard.

Black Bart’s intimidating impact on others reminds me of a story about two little boys whose mother asked them to chase a chicken snake out of the henhouse. They looked everywhere for that snake but couldn’t find it. The more they looked, the more afraid they got. Until finally, they did find it. When that happened, they fell all over themselves running out of the chicken house.

“Don’t you know a chicken snake won’t hurt you?” their mother asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” one of the boys answered, “but there are some things that will scare you so bad you’ll hurt yourself.”

Fear is a terrible thing. Isn’t it? It reminds me of what the award-winning film The

Shawshank Redemption says about fear: “Fear can hold you prisoner; Hope can set you free.”

In the most recent Chapman University Survey of American Fears, researchers asked a random sample of 1,190 adults from across the country to rate their level of

[1] fear on 94 separate items, from "public speaking" to "nuclear meltdown". Here are the top 10:

1. Corrupt government officials – 73.6 percent

2. Pollution of oceans, rivers, and lakes – 61.6 percent

3. Pollution of drinking water – 60.7 percent

4. Not having enough money for the future – 57 percent

5. People I love becoming seriously ill – 56.5 percent

6. People I love dying – 56.4 percent

7. Air pollution – 55.1 percent

8. Extinction of plant and animal species – 54.1 percent

9. Global warming and climate change – 53.2 percent

10. High medical bills – 52.9 percent

Frankly, after reviewing the list of all 94 items, I found new things to be afraid of.

Fear can hold you prisoner; Hope can set you free.

This morning, let’s first acknowledge that fear can play a positive role in our lives.

There are things in life that are legitimately fearful. We need that built-in voice that tells us, “Don’t go there. Danger is lurking.” We want our children and grandchildren to fear running into the road without looking both ways. Fear often keeps us from doing dumb and destructive things.

Some years ago, a research psychologist, Dr. Irving Jarvis was looking at surgery in hospitals and asking questions about peoples’ recovery from surgery, and the place that fear had in their recovery. And what he discovered may seem to us in the end to be quite simple or obvious, but it is really very important. What he discovered was

[2] this: Those who had crippling fears did not do well when it came to recovery. They did not do well at all.

But interestingly, he also discovered that those who had no fear of surgery didn’t recover well either. Dr. Jarvis learned that for those patients when trouble hit, they were thrown for a loop. The unexpected pain, for example, completely floored them. They had not thought about it. They were not prepared.

But those who had enough fear to ask the right questions, to say, “Now, what’s going to happen? How long will the pain last?” They were the ones who recovered best.

Fear can play a positive role in our lives. If nothing else, fear sometimes teaches us to depend on God. Most of us have short memories. We go along living our lives as if we are in control of our universe, and then something traumatic happens, something we cannot handle on our own. At times like that we reach out for God.

Fear can play a healthy role in our lives, but it is the gripping, paralyzing fear that

I often worry about. The kind of fear that keeps us frozen in-place or from saying “I love you” for fear of being rejected or the kind of fear that can cause us to withdraw from someone who is different.

There was a Navy man who dreamed of writing stories for the movies. He wrote a screenplay about the naval hero John Paul Jones. He sent that screenplay to Julia

West, who at that time was the story editor for Paramount Pictures. She rejected it.

Later, the writer told Julia West how disappointed he felt from the rejection. He came to see, though, that fear could be a paralyzer. He also learned that the best way to overcome the fear of failure is to go on with the determination to succeed.

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In March 1933, that writer spoke to our nation. He was newly elected President

Franklin Delano Roosevelt who inspired our nation by saying:

"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself--nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."

But I don’t have to tell you about fear in these times, do I? I don’t have to tell you about paralyzing fear. The kind of fear that can make you cry out to God and ask, “Why have you forsaken me?” Be it the fear of becoming ill, or perhaps worse, someone you love becoming ill. Or perhaps it is the fear of financial hardship in the midst of recession.

Or maybe it is the fear of uncertainty of where you stand in a world where people are literally marching in the streets.

Or maybe it’s the new diagnosis or the aching loneliness or the grief over the loss or the uncertainty, and the list goes on and on. To deny fear as a part of our lives is to deny the truth of our living. But as people of faith, we must not let fear have the last word. We do not have to be paralyzed by fear. Instead, we can have faithful fear. We can acknowledge the reality of our fear, just as we can acknowledge the reality of God at work in our lives.

In our scripture reading, Jesus uses the analogy of tiny sparrows. In the eyes of the ancient world, a sparrow was inexpensive and monetarily worthless. The writer of

Matthew has two sparrows being sold for one penny. And Jesus concludes by saying:

“So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.”

Early in the spring of 1905, Civilla Martin and her husband were spending time in

Elmira, New York. They developed a close friendship with a couple by the name of Mr. and Mrs. Doolittle. Mrs. Doolittle had been bedridden for nearly twenty years. Her husband was confined to a wheelchair. Despite their afflictions, they lived happy and

[4] content lives, reported Civilla Martin, bringing inspiration and comfort to all who knew them.

One day while the Martins were visiting with the Doolittles, Civilla’s husband commented on their bright hopefulness and asked them for the secret of it. Mrs.

Doolittle’s reply was simple: “His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.”

The beauty of this simple expression of faith gripped Civilla Martin and she wrote a poem which she mailed the next day to Charles Gabriel, who put music to it.

Singer Ethel Waters made the resulting song famous, so famous that she used its name as the title for her autobiography. And we heard Pam’s beautiful rendition earlier in our worship service:

Why should I feel discouraged, why should the shadows come, Why should my heart be lonely, and long for heaven and home, When Jesus is my portion? My constant friend is He: His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me; I sing because I’m happy, I sing because I’m free, For His eye is on the sparrow, And I know He watches me.

My friends, we do not have to be paralyzed by fear. Instead, we are people who are loved by a God who loves us so deeply that God weeps when we weep, laughs when we laugh and knows the number of hairs on our head.

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