LANGUAGE SCHOOL Rev. Karen Pidcock-Lester First Presbyterian Church Pottstown Pa August 11, 2013

Luke 12:32-38 Genesis 15:1-6 Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-10

I wonder what were you afraid of this week. It’s hard to go through a week without being afraid of something.

Someone among us was afraid this week of some diabolical act of terror, as we saw security in the Middle East put on high alert; someone this week watched a spouse decline in health, saw it in the way she moves, heard it in the way he thinks, and they were afraid; someone this week learned the name of their teacher for the coming year and felt the familiar dread descend again: learning is difficult for her and school will soon begin; someone found herself alone this week, relationships have shifted, people have moved, and fear crept in to take their place; someone huddled in a corner this week listening to the fighting in the next room and braced for the shot; someone heard a diagnosis this week that drained the color from him face… what were you afraid of this week?

In the kingdoms of this word there is much to be afraid of.

“Do not be afraid,” Jesus says. He is not giving us a suggestion, as in “you don’t have to be afraid.” He is giving a command, “Do not.”

The command had been issued before. “Do not be afraid Abram when it looks like I’m not keeping my promises,” the Lord had said in the text in Genesis…

God has issued this command many times to mortals: Do not be afraid, Moses, of the enormous task set before you; do not be afraid, Israel, of the might of your enemies; do not be afraid, Jacob, of the move to a new home; do not be afraid, Ruth, of the man who has power over you; do not be afraid, exiles, of the long and hard road into the unknown; do not be afraid, Mary, of the shame; do not be afraid, leper, of the illness; do not be afraid, disciples, of the storm; do not be afraid, people of the Way, of the suffering or the poverty or death; do not be afraid, o mortal, of God.

If there is anything God wants to put a stop to it is our fear.

Fear is toxic, dangerous; fear is contagious; fear paralyzes; fear corrodes and kills the body and the spirit…

“Fear defeats more people than any other thing in the world,” said Ralph Waldo Emerson. “Fear is at the root of hate…” said George Washington Carver.

And we know that is true. We see and feel the impact of fear-based news programming and politics. “If it bleeds, it leads” policies foster fear in American citizenry, and it takes its toll.

Fear is the opponent of love, said John in his first epistle. It robs us of the life God wants for us.

So Jesus says “Little flock, do not be afraid.”

He speaks tenderly, kindly, because he knows there is a lot to be afraid of.

But Jesus also speaks firmly. “Do not” Do not give into fear, do not let it control you. “You can trust God to care for you,” Jesus had just said, “like the lilies of the field.” “You can be assured of the things you hope for, be confident even if you cannot see. That is what faith is,” says the writer to the Hebrews. Jesus does not want disciples’ to corrode their faith.

Resist the power of it, Jesus says. Turn it off, shut it down, get rid of it. And then he tells disciples how to live in this fearful world.

“Sell your possessions, give alms…” he begins. Most people when they are afraid would instinctively clutch and hold on tight. But Jesus tells us the opposite: Hold lightly this world and the things of it, he says. Be ready to give them up, and give them away. As the Baptist preacher says, “Before we can pray ‘Thy kingdom come, we have to pray ‘My kingdom go.’” (Alan Redpath, quoted in Living Pulpit, “The Reign of God,” Jan-March 2006, p. 47)

The next thing he tells us: “be dressed for action”. Live lightly, up on the balls of your feet. When you are afraid, don’t hunker down and dig in your heels. Rather, tuck up your robe up in your belts so you can move. It’s the same instruction that was given to the Hebrew people as they prepared to move out of Egypt into freedom. Get up on the balls of your feet and be ready to do what God tells you, says Jesus, to act and move and follow.

Next thing: “Keep your lamps lit.” In Jesus’ day this was not just a matter of flipping a switch. Keeping lamps lit required watchful tending, trimming the wick, replenishing the oil. Stay at it. “Be like those who are waiting,” like the servants in Downton Abbey. Adopt a posture of readiness, expectancy, alertness, not to disaster but to the appearance of the master, to the sound of his voice. Christ arrives in our lives at moments we cannot predict or control, so he tells us to keep doing the mundane everyday things he has left us to do in his absence – set the table, prepare the meal, feed the hungry repair the roof, replace the floor, build the ramp tend the sick, visit the prisoner, forgive the wrong clean the water, protect the child, teach the child

This is what the master has set us to do in this fearsome world -- with our eyes open, our ears tuned, our hearts expectant for when he will show up.

When we do this, we will be imitating life in that realm where people live fully under the rule of God. Jesus tells us to begin now to live according to the patterns and ways of the kingdom of God.

As we do, the parable tells us, the master will come to us. He will come at unexpected moments, while we are covered in dirt while we sit in a meeting while we sit with a dying one or walk with a youth while we pray for someone who has hurt us while we cry with our sister or laugh with our brother he will come, and when he does, we will find that we are not afraid. Fear cannot be in the same room, the same heart with Christ. “Perfect love casts out fear,” says the writer of John’s letters, and he is perfect love.

As we serve him, he comes, and we find it is we ourselves who are seated at a feast, and the master is serving us.

Someone among us this week had reason to be afraid. He had been afraid for days and weeks, waiting for decisions from ‘on high’ about the future of his job. On Tuesday of this week, he had reached his limit with dread-full waiting. He took action. He stood up from his desk, left his office, and went a floor below to the offices of his coworkers, not to get a cup of coffee, not to commiserate, but to ask others what they needed, “did they have any questions they needed help with? any problems they could use some help solving?”

He did not hole up in fear, but turned outward to serve, just as Jesus tells us disciples to do. In the process, his own fear was cast out for a time, and new energy flowed in him, body and soul. As he served others, the master came and served him. When you are stalked by fear, practice what Jesus preaches here in Luke 12. The master will show up, you can be assured of that, because “It is the Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”

God is not standing off, holding back the blessings of the kingdom until we ‘get it,’ or ‘get there’ on our own. God cannot wait for us to taste and share the feast of His love, and know “the peace, the shalom, the all-encompassing blessing” (Newbiggin, Open Secrets) of his presence, here, now…so he comes. It is God’s good pleasure, the desire of God’s heart, to give us the kingdom. It is what God wants.

Leanne Pearce Reed is a pastor of a small church in rural Alabama. She remembers a friend who suggested to her that the church is like a language school for the kingdom of God. Leanne explains: “I used to organize language schools for mission volunteers who were getting ready to serve in another country with another language. In language school, you try to learn the language of the place you’ll be going… You study flash cards and do worksheets, you converse with your classmates, you watch movies and listen to music in that language…The thing is, you never get it down perfectly in language school. You conjugate the verbs wrongly and forget your vocabulary. But it doesn’t have to be perfect because you’re practicing. You’re practicing the language of the land toward which you are traveling. Eventually you get to the point where you stop translating in your head and it comes naturally, instinctively, as though you live in that land.

So it is with the church. We disciples practice the language of the kingdom of God, that new realm towards which we are traveling. It is a strange language that we do not often hear in the world… the language of simplicity the language of humility the language of servanthood , of self-emptying the language of expansive generosity the language of expectancy , the language of trust and assurance and confidence in things the world cannot see.

As we practice more and more this language of the kingdom of God, [eventually we stop translating in our heads and it comes naturally, instinctively for us], and we get moments…when we are no longer stumbling and stuttering. Moments” when we actually are at peace, even in the midst of trouble, when the love of God does cast out fear and we are lit up by the presence of God. In these moments, we get a glimpse of that new land under God’s rule, and “it is almost as if we are there. “ (adapted, quoted in “Learning the Language,” Jon Walton, April 28, 2013, First Presbyterian Church in the City of New York, NYC, NY)

That is what we are doing in this place. Together, we are practicing the language of another realm. We do not have to get it perfect, but the more we practice, over time it will become easier, second-nature to us. We will become fluent in the language of God’s realm, and more and more it will be as if we are already there.

Do not be afraid, little flock. It is the Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom… . Amen.