What Are You Scared Of?
If you wrote a list of things you’re scared of what would be on your list? Every person has fears, we all have things we’re scared of – some of those things are personal and relate to our own experience, temperament, and particular circumstances. We may have fears related to finances and the ability to support ourselves; fears about disease, illness, loss of health and mobility; fears about rejection, loneliness, guilt, inadequacy, or loss of independence. Fear of something bad happening to people we love and care about.
Some fears are larger in scope like fears about war, terrorism, violence, poverty and access to clean water and healthy food. Some people fear public speaking and there’s always the unknown and death. Two of the most universal human fears are being scared of the dark and being scared of the unknown other.
September 14, 2014
Psalm 27, What Are You Scared Of?
Doug Scalise, Brewster Baptist Church
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The Dr. Seuss story, What Was I Scared Of (in The Sneetches & Other Stories) addresses our fear of the dark and of the unknown other. The story begins with a little yellow childlike creature narrating, “Well…I was walking in the night and I saw nothing scary. For I have never been afraid of anything. Not very. Then I was deep within the woods When suddenly I spied them. I saw a pair of pale green pants With nobody inside them! I wasn’t scared. But, yet, I stopped. What could those pants be there for? What could a pair of pants at night Be standing in the air for? And then they moved! Those empty pants! They kind of started jumping. And then my heart, I must admit, It kind of started thumping. So I got out. I got out fast As fast as I could go, sir. I wasn’t scared. But pants like that I did not care for. No, sir.” The story goes on and the little yellow creature keeps being confronted by the pale green pants with nobody inside them – one dark night while shopping, the next night while fishing, until he’s so scared he hides himself in a bush for a couple days. Sometimes, we can feel that way, our fears can become so great we just want to crawl into what we think is a safe place and not come out.
Like the little yellow creature, our fears can have a negative impact on our life. There may be places we wish to go or things we’d like to do, but our fear prevents us from moving forward or fulfilling our potential. Fear can hold us back from trying something new, traveling to a place we’ve never been, or getting to know someone we’d like to get to know. Fear can hold us back from pursuing God’s calling on our life.
David, the King of Israel, knew about fear. As a teenager, he defended himself against lions and bears and giant enemies. As a young married man he fled for his life to escape the murderous intentions of his father-in-law Saul. Later in life he had to escape from his son Absalom who sought to seize the leadership of the country and who eventually was killed for his treason. David experienced the personal failure of betraying Uriah, a loyal officer, by having an affair with his wife, and then ordering Uriah’s death to cover his own sin. The baby born to David and Bathsheba died. David was familiar with fears and troubles, but he also knew where to turn in tough times. Ken Burns newest documentary begins tonight on PBS and it’s about “The Roosevelts” arguably the most influential political family in America in the 20th century. It was President Frankline Delano Roosevelt who said in a difficult period for our nation, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” The antidote to fear involves faith, courage, and trust. Psalm 27 is about all four of those things: fear, faith, courage, and trust. Listen to Psalm 27:
“The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?
When evildoers assail me to devour my flesh—
my adversaries and foes— they shall stumble and fall.
Though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear;
though war rise up against me, yet I will be confident.
One thing I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: to live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple. For he will hide me in his shelter in the day of trouble; he will conceal me under the cover of his tent; he will set me high on a rock.
Now my head is lifted up above my enemies all around me, and I will offer in his tent sacrifices with shouts of joy; I will sing and make melody to the Lord.
Hear, O Lord, when I cry aloud, be gracious to me and answer me!
“Come,” my heart says, “seek his face!” Your face, Lord, do I seek.
Do not hide your face from me.
Do not turn your servant away in anger, you who have been my help.
Do not cast me off, do not forsake me, O God of my salvation!
If my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will take me up.
Teach me your way, O Lord, and lead me on a level path because of my enemies.
Do not give me up to the will of my adversaries,
for false witnesses have risen against me, and they are breathing out violence.
I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.
Wait for the Lord; be strong, & let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!”
Psalm 27 teaches there always have been and always be issues that can cause us to be scared. Psalm 27 mentions evil doers, adversaries, enemies, armies, war, false witnesses, and violent threats. On Wednesday, the President of the United States spoke about responding to the terrorists in Iraq and Syria who have committed so many terrible atrocities the most recent being the barbaric murder of British aid worker David Haines. Thursday we observed the 13th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. The world can be a scary place; that was true when David wrote this Psalm over 2,500 years ago and it’s still true today. This past week the issue of domestic violence has filled the news. On Monday, video was released of Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice violently punching his then fiancée in an elevator and knocking her unconscious. South African runner Oscar Pistorius was convicted of “culpable homicide” in the shooting of his girlfriend. Then at the end of the week, Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson was indicted for giving his four year old son what he called a “whooping” for pushing another child. To teach his son not to use violence he beat him repeatedly so harshly with a branch he took off a tree that his son suffered cuts and bruises from his back all the way down to his ankles. It’s especially sad that what so many people are scared of is being hurt by people they know very well like a family member or significant other. Domestic violence and particularly violence against women and children is a huge issue that needs to be addressed in our country and around the world.
All of us face situations and circumstances in life that might cause us to be fearful or afraid. You know what they are for you right now. Psalm 27 describes how God blesses those who put their hope and trust in the Lord when we’re scared or fearful. Psalm 27 tells us and wants us to believe that God is our light, salvation, and stronghold, the source of our confidence, the one who lifts us up and protects us and never leaves us. For David trusting God and remaining confident in the face of enemies, adversaries, and foes was truly a matter of life and death. One thing that stands out to me about Psalm 27 is that it pleads with God FIVE times DO NOT. Because David’s relationship with God is so important to him all of the things David does not want to happen are related to changing his relationship with the Lord for the worse. I suspect most of us agree with him. Here they are very quickly:
DO NOT hide your face from me. To “hide the face” is to turn it away with displeasure, as if we wouldn’t look at a person who has offended us. Even today when folks are mad at someone, sometimes we might look away or turn our back and “hide our face.” This is a contrast to someone smiling at us in a friendly way. The favor or blessing of God is described in the Bible perhaps most famously in the blessing of Aaron, “May the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you, and may the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.”
DO NOT turn your servant away in anger, you who have been my help. Can you imagine being in the midst of something difficult and going to God about it and feeling like God angrily turned you away rather than helping you? That hurts. It would be like going to the church on Sunday morning for worship and finding the building locked and a “closed” sign on the door. Again, people can act this way, someone may want to talk to us or us to them and the overture is rejected out of anger which only makes the damage to the relationship worse. In days that are past God has been his help. This is the reason why David and we pray and trust that God will come to our aid once again.
DO NOT cast me off. On the TV series Survivor which began back in the year 2000 participants get voted “off” the island where they are competing. When someone is voted off his or her torch is extinguished and turned in and they have to leave immediately. There is a painful break and the person walks away into the darkness, cast off, alone. We don’t want to feel cast off by God when we’re trying to deal with something we’re scared of; we want to feel God is with us.
DO NOT forsake me. Forsake means, “to withdraw companionship, protection, or support from somebody.” While some of these Do Not phrases are different ways of saying similar things, what makes being forsaken so painful when we’re dealing with a fearful situation is that there was companionship, protection, or support in the past and now we feel it has been taken away when we we need it the most. Finally David says,
DO NOT give me up to the will of my adversaries. The one thing David was most afraid of was being abandoned by God rather than being in the center of God’s will. As long as he felt God’s presence and protection, it gave him courage to overcome his fear of other people and their threats. He wanted God’s will to be done in his life and not the will of his adversaries.
Norman Vincent Peale wrote, “What words they are: hope, courage, fear! Two of them make life wonderful. One of them blights human existence. How many people have we seen across many years who have suffered from unresolved fear. But, then, also how many have found release and relief through hope and courage. All three of these are mental attitudes that result from the thoughts we think. The mental climate a person creates determines whether he shall have hope even when things seem hopeless, have courage even when apprehensive factors appear, or live in fear because of hopelessness and apprehension. Fear is only the second most powerful force in the personality. One is stronger, very much stronger. And that more powerful force is faith.”
Psalm 27 ends on a very hopeful note regardless of all the reasons we have to fear. It encourages us to say with David no matter what is going on: “I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!”
In What Was I Scared Of? Dr. Seuss helps us to understand that like in Psalm 27 the secret to overcoming our fears is not to run faster or farther in the opposite direction. That only adds strength to whatever we’re afraid of and while it may help us avoid our fears in the short term, we haven’t overcome our fear. The only way to overcome fear in whatever form is to face it. Since I mentioned domestic violence earlier, let me be clear that people who are in situations in which they feel unsafe, should get out of those situations or away from the individuals who are threatening them as soon as possible and they should seek support and safety from appropriate people and organizations. However, there are also many cases when we do need to face our fear directly. For example, if you were bitten by a dog when you were a child and have carried a fear of dogs with you ever since, the way to overcome that fear is not by avoiding dogs, but by literally reaching out to them and discovering that not all dogs are like the one that bit you. In fact, they can be wonderful companions.
What might happen in our lives is we faced our fears rather than running away from them? What might we be freed to try or do if we weren’t afraid of failing or embarrassing ourselves or being worried about what someone might think or say? People are often afraid of things they’ve never even tried. Some people are scared of flying yet they’ve never been on a plane. Some people are afraid of big cities, yet they’ve never stayed in one and walked around. Some people are scared of people of different ethnicities or nationalities or religions, but they don’t personally know a single person from that group of people. Fear limits our ability to reach our potential, our fears hold us back from acting. So if you can try to identify your fears and face them, talk about them with a family member, friend or someone else you trust. Seek advice. Try to find folks who have had similar fears and over come them. We want to grow in our relationship with God so that our faith and courage become stronger and more real than our fears.
At the end of the Dr. Seuss story the little creature and the pale green pants suddenly find themselves facing each other. The little yellow creature says, “I yelled for help. I screamed. I shrieked. I howled. I yowled. I cried, ‘Oh, save me from those pale green pants with nobody inside!’” Then the pants began to cry too because they were just as scared. Then he says, “I began to see that I was just as strange to them as they were strange to me.!” And the story ends with the two frightened strangers becoming friends. 2 Timothy 1:7 says, “For God did not give us a spirit of fear, but a spirit of power, and of love and of self discipline.”
Silent Prayer at end of the sermon – what are your fears? What are you scared of? Try to think about, identify or picture them. Now imagine that Jesus is with you. You feel his strong loving presence beside you, hear his calm, comforting voice, see him transforming the situation, feel the fear leaving your body and instead feel the power of the Holy Spirit filling you with faith, hope and courage.
I pray that God will help us all each and every day to trust and turn to the Lord in the midst of all our fears, troubles, tests, trials, and temptations.
A great preacher of the 19th century, Phillips Brooks put it this way,
“Do not pray for easy lives; pray to be stronger people!
Do not pray for tasks equal to your power; pray for power equal to your tasks.
Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle, but you shall be a miracle. Every day you shall wonder at yourself, at the richness of life which has come to you by the grace of God.”
Blessing: “Comforted and inspired beyond all fear,
Not faltering at God’s command, Learning and increasing from our sorrow
God’s light illuminating our darkness
Let us boldly face the future, come what may.”
Adapted from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison