We have gathered at this convention to
learn
the art of
encouragement.
“Encourage” means to instill courage,
to cast out fear.
The dictionary definition of “discourage”
is
“to deprive of courage, to dishearten.”
Discouragement and fear are connected.
Last week, when a student killed nine
people
on the campus in
Roseburg, Oregon,
it was our 45th school shooting in 2015.
In the first 274 days of this year,
there
were 294 shootings involving 4 or more victims.
Our response to such news is fear
-- fear that we or
those we love will be threatened
-- fear that the
government will take away our guns
-- or just unfocussed
in-the-gut fear.
Violence isn’t our only fear.
The threat of shame or failure makes me
shake in my boots.
You are afraid of this, I am afraid of
that,
our
friends are afraid of something else.
But it’s all fear.
The level of fear in today’s world
makes
the 1950s age of anxiety look like a pic nic.
And the Church too is infected.
These days some of our congregations
are
livelier, healthier, and stronger than ever.
Others are turning things around after
years of decline.
But others are still discouraged and
afraid
-- afraid that the congregation will
die.
Their main mission is just to stave off
death.
Believe me I get that.
Nevada’s culture isn’t hospitable to
religion.
American has been hostile to religion
since 9/11.
Mean-spirited Christians have given us
a bad name.
We have been torn apart by internal
fighting.
Numbers are down.
That’s scary. It’s discouraging. I get
it.
Isaiah was talking to people
who
had good reason to be discouraged too.
Assyria had annihilated 10 of the 12
tribes of Israel.
Babylon had conquered the remaining
two,
razed
Jerusalem, and carried their leaders into exile.
Now they were struggling to rebuild
Judah, as a vassal state
of the Persian Empire
– all in all, pretty grim.
“Do
not fear for I am with you. . . .
I
will strengthen you, help you, uphold you . . .
When
you pass through the waters, I will be with you; . . .
because
you are precious in my sight and I love you . . ..
Do
not fear or be afraid.”
God said, “You are precious in my sight
and I love you.”
And, as St. John says,
“There
is no room for fear in love
for perfect love casts out fear.”
Can you hear God speaking to you in
this text
– to you as an
individual,
and
also to your congregation, saying,
“Because
you are precious in my sight and I love you,
do not be afraid or discouraged.”
Hearing that word of God would take
an act of rebellion
against the system.
Besides fear-mongering journalists and
politicians,
every time I walk through McCarran
airport
a
PA system announcement begins,
“Due
to heightened security . . . “
Heightened from what?
TSA is constantly, over and over,
proclaiming the
system’s message:
“Be afraid. Be very
afraid.”
But God says, “Do not be afraid.”
According to Walter Brueggemann:
“This
God speaks against fear,
the very fear by which the gods of the empire
have
kept all parties on orange alert.”
The Bible says “Do not be afraid” 365
times
-- once for each day
of the year.
God invites us to what Brueggemann
calls
“a
counter-loyalty,” a different way of living,
a security achieved
not by gunning up,
shutting down , or breaking off
but
by trusting in his grace.
What if we stepped out in faith – out
of fear and discouragement
into God’s sustaining
love?
What if we remembered that we have been
“marked as Christ’s own forever”?
This branding iron we use as the
verger’s mace
has
a cross in the middle of it.
You know what else has a cross in the
middle of it?
Your forehead.
You got it at your baptism
when
you were marked as Christ’s own forever.
If we remember that,
then we just might
remember that some bishop somewhere
put hands on our
heads saying,
“Strengthen O Lord your servant with
your Holy Spirit.
Empower her for your service and sustain her
all the days of her life.”
Don’t just get her by in her secular
life project,
but “empower her for
your service.”
The next thing God said after teaching
Israel
not to be afraid was
this:
“It is too light a thing that you should raise
up
the
children of Israel . . . .
I
will give you as a light to the nations
that
my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”
God called Israel to live by faith
instead of fear
so
they could teach the nations to live
by faith instead of fear.
“The nations” then would have been the
Persian
and
Egyptian empires.
God called Israel to convert the
empires
and change the world.
“I will give you as a light.” It was an
echo.
In the beginning, when darkness was all
around,
God’s first words
were, “Let there be light.”
In 539 BC, God looked at a world
darkened by fear,
and
said, “Let there by light.
Isaiah,
listen up, that would be you.
You
are the light.”
500 years later, on a mountain in
Galilee,
Jesus told his
disciples,
“You
are the light of the world.”
You are the ones to take faith into the
world,
setting
all the captives free from the fear
that
binds them.
on a Galilean
mountain, maybe the same one.
Jesus said, “Go. Make disciples of all
nations . . . .
teaching
them to obey all the commandments
I
have given you.”
Do you know what commandment
he gave more than any
other?
“Do not be afraid.”
“Go to all nations.”
In those days that would have been the
Roman Empire.
Go. Convert the Roman Empire.
It took 300 years, but they did it.
of today’s
fear-crippled world?
Do you know who God has commissioned
to
bear that light into the world?
As Nathan said to David, “that would be
you.”
But who are the nations today?
Who out there is living by fear instead
of faith?
We won’t have to look far.
They are all around us.
Our friends and neighbors are huddled
in darkness.
A few years back, the mystery novelist
Nevada
Barr was out walking in the snow and darkness
one
night in a small town on the Western Slope in Colorado.
Her husband had dumped her. She was out
of work,
and
was drinking too much.
Nevada Barr was afraid her life was
irredeemably wrecked.
It was a bad night.
But she saw the light on in a little
Episcopal Church.
She was an atheist but she tried the
door anyway.
To her surprise it opened.
A few older ladies were inside singing
along
with a recording of
Taize chants.
She tried to get away but they nabbed
her.
She’s a good Episcopalian today.
But more importantly, she’s alive,
creative,
and
in the game.
The church ladies were there
encouraging each other.
Then they encouraged her too.
So brothers and sisters, encourage one
another.
Turn on the light at your Church on a
weeknight.
Be there and when someone drops in,
offer
them a place at the hearth.
