Love and Fear and the Sacred Adventure

"There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear."

I am growing more and more convinced that there is no greater enemy to the sacred adventure than fear.   For some months now I've been doing an experiment in which I've been trying to be more aware of the influence of fear in my life.  Each time I notice that my shoulders are soar or my neck is stiff, I try to look 'beneath the surface' to identify why I'm tense.  With astonishing frequency, the culprit is fear. The stiffness in my neck points to my fear that I've disappointed someone; the tight shoulders speak to the fear that I'm not accomplishing all that I think I should; the headache exposes the fear that a well-laid plan is not working out; the ache in the stomach speaks of a coming challenge of which I'm afraid.   "The issue is in the tissue," someone has said; the various aches and pains are symptoms of fear's pervasive influence.

One of the many challenges related to fear, of course, is that when we're frightened we tend not to think as clearly.  Someone I know suffered from test anxiety.  Every time she sat down to take a test she became frightened of failure.  Because she was afraid, she couldn't think clearly enough to perform well on the test.  An ironic loop if ever there was one.  When we feel threatened (whether we really are threatened or not), fear narrows our thinking, limits creativity and clouds our decision-making processes.

When religion becomes sick, it becomes another vehicle for fear. I am sometimes astonished at how deeply rooted this is.   Legalism is but one powerful expression of religious fear, where the letter of the law dominates all that we do and say.  Even powerful practices like prayer, reading scripture and corporate worship can be driven by the powerful fear that we are disappointing God or a significant other if we don't do them.  Dogmatism is another expression of fear-based religion.  "I'm right and you're wrong and that is the end of the conversation."   Here, community is destroyed in the name of being 'right.'

I believe that fear-based religion is to Christian faith what pyrite is to real gold.  "Perfect love casts out all fear," St. John wrote to the church of the first century. The ground and foundation of the Christian community is not fear, but love.  I wonder what would happen if we regarded all of the powerful practices of the Christian journey-- practices such as prayer, receiving communion, fasting, worship, and service--as a grounding of our lives in love, if each day, we would make an effort to close out distractions for at least a few minutes  and do nothing but be fully present to the love of God.  It would be difficult, to be sure.  There are so many things, often fear-based, that demand our attention.  I suspect, however, that if we could regularly  make space to be fully present to the love of God, we would find that there is no room in love for fear and that the freedom, creativity and courage that are requisite to the sacred adventure are to be found there.

 I'm mulling over this little tidbit today:

I hear that Rabbi Akiva is said to have uttered something like the following.

"In the time to come, God will not ask me, Why were you not more like Moses or Elijah or Jeremiah?'  In the time to come, God will ask me, 'Why were you not more Akiva?'"

One of the most liberating questions anyone ever put to me was the following:  "Why don't you stop trying to be a pastor whose name happens to be Steve?  Why don't you put your energies into being Steve, who happens to be a pastor?"  (Thank you, Brant)

It's Ironic

It is supremely ironic that many of us become anxious about the faith of our loved ones.  I've detected this in myself many times, and I've observed it in others.  Moms and dads worry about whether or not their children will entrust their lives to Christ, wives become anxious for their husbands (and husbands for their wives), and pastors worry about the faith of their congregation's members.   When this is so, we tend to speak in loud tones, to lecture, plead, and even, on occasion, manipulate our loved ones to become believers, or to become better believers.   But here is the irony.  Faith is, as the New Testament reminds us repeatedly, a non-anxious way of being.  To have faith in God is to trust God to meet our daily needs (see Mt 6) and to entrust our worries to God through prayer, so that the "peace that passes understanding" will guard our hearts and minds.   Faith and trust are inseparable; faith and anxiety are oil and water.  To become anxious about the faith (or lack thereof) of another person is a faithless act.  It takes the responsibility for a loved one's faith upon one's self, as though God is not!   The alternative to being anxious about the faith of those I love is simple, but challenging.  Each of us is called to bear witness to our faith to others, including our loved ones, and then to trust God with the outcomes.  To bear witness is to speak of that which I have seen, heard, experienced to be true.  It is a far different thing to bear witness to my faith than it is to anxiously seek to impress it upon another.  In the former case, I am planting seeds and trusting God.  In the latter case, I'm lecturing and manipulating and acting as though I am God.

Productivity and Fecundity

Aided by some very nice reading (thank you Henri Nouwen), I'm thinking today about the difference between productivity and fecundity.  If you're not familiar with the word (I was not), fecundity has to do with being fruitful, bountiful, prolific.  While productivity, in the way that it is commonly used, could be thought of as a quantitative and technical category (one's productivity is equal to how much one has produced, and how efficiently one has produced it), fecundity is a qualitative and organic category.   A human who is productive accomplishes much; a person who is fecund is open and receptive to life in ways that allow her to be life-giving.

It seems to me that the distinction between productivity and fecundity is an important one for people on a sacred adventure.  I don't mean in any way to belittle the importance of productivity.  When the curtains of the day are drawing to a close and I reflect on the day just lived, it's rewarding to look back and note what I've accomplished. Businesses need to be productive, as do governments and churches.  I'd rather work with a person who is productive than one who is not.   It seems to me, however, that the importance of productivity is often blow terribly out of proportion.  In the worst sort of 'works righteousness,' where productivity is the most important thing, we judge people on the basis of how much they accomplish.  An unfettered quest for productivity can, as we have so often seen, easily overlook the human dimension of ours and others' lives.  How many people are forgotten, overlooked or used in the inexorable push to be more productive?  

Fecundity, on the other hand, is a profoundly organic category.  Remember, a fecund person is open to life in ways that make him life-giving. A fecund person will accomplish much, but not necessarily in ways the world would describe as productive.  One of my personal favorite examples is that of the late Henri Nouwen.  In the later chapters of his life, Father Nouwen left the university, where he enjoyed an important teaching post, to live and work in a home for mentally handicapped adults.  By the standards of productivity, his career move was foolish.  He left behind honors and prestige to embrace this simple way of living in community with the 'poor in spirit.'  But Father Nouwen wrote deeply and thoughtfully about the impact of that career move on himself and others.  His emerging clarity about life in the Spirit, about which he wrote so beautifully, has inspired thousands of readers.  He set an example and offered an invitation to be more fully human in a highly technological world.  A fecund life.

We heard a beautiful sermon this last Sunday (thank you, Paul!) in which we were reminded of those who are like trees, planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in season (Psalm 1).   Jesus taught his disciples that those who abide in him as a branch abides in the vine will bear much fruit.  Here are two Biblical invitations (among dozens) to a fecund life. 

New Year

I am grateful for the near arrival of the new year and the sense of fresh beginnings that comes with it.  I realize that the new year is a contrived thing.  It is, after all, just the tick of a clock.   Still, I find myself thinking of new goals and new possibilities for the new year.  It is, I believe, a profound spiritual truth that we do not have to continue to be what we have been, to do what we have been doing, or to think as we have been thinking.  There is the possibility of newness and fresh creativity in this present moment!

A Personal Credo at Christmastime

I believe in the one who was wrapped in rags and laid in a manger.  Because of him,  I believe that God is love and there is real hope for this world.  I believe that the manger foretells the sort of life he was to live--pressed out of the places you might expect to find one who reigns ("no room") and welcomed in the places frequented by the poor, the blind, the crippled and the lame.  I believe that his life was an unbroken narrative of protest and praise:  protest against every power, attitude, spirit, and act that diminishes the beauty of human beings; and praise because of the power of God which he himself embodied and that is at work in the world to bring renewal and healing.  I believe that the manger foretells the cross.  These two are bookends around his life, one a symbol of his humble birth, the other a reminder of his lowly death.  I believe that all that is worst about our world is disclosed by that cross: it is nothing less than the revelation of our world's violent resistance to justice, mercy and love.  And I believe that what is best in our world is revealed by that cross: the crucified one transforms hatred into love, judgment into grace, despair into hope.  On one side of the cross we hear the worst: "Crucify him!" and on the other side of the cross we hear the best, "Father, forgive them..."  I believe that today all humans must decide on which side of that cross they will stand.  Because of the manger and the cross, those two bookends of the life, I believe what John wrote, "For God so loved the world..."   I believe that death could not hold him, that the power of God which he made known in humble love is the power that holds the future.  I believe that the power of resurrection is at work in our world today, bringing renewal and hope.  I believe that there is a community of believers, men, women and children, in whom his Spirit dwells and who are the 'firstfruits' of God's renewal work--and that they must let their lights shine, no matter how dark the day!   And I believe that one day, one beautiful day, the last sigh of sorrow will have been uttered,the last war will have been fought, the last tear will have been cried, and the kind of love that his whole life revealed will bind us together.  Shalom.  I believe in the one who was wrapped in rags and laid in a manger.  Because of him,  I believe that God is love and there is real hope for this world. 

Advent and Disappointment

"This year, give them what they want for Christmas."

Each year I marvel, at least once, at the audacity of the advertisers during the Christmas season. The loser this year, in my estimation, is the commercial that compels us to give our loved ones what they want, followed by visual images of (mostly) children laughing and smiling as they open their presents.  The narrator of this particular commercial manages to sprinkle in the word "joy" about a half-dozen times.  Apparently, the only thing that is required of us who would bring joy to our loved ones is to buy them the stuff they want this year.

I admit it, I'm offended.  I'm offended that the profound and powerful word "joy" has been so easily co-opted by an industry that stands to gain much if we believe their story.  I'm offended that the visual images portrayed on the commercials raise expectations to an impossible level.   I'm offended by the very notion that joy and more stuff are somehow intrinsically related.  (What is the message here to those who cannot afford all that stuff?)  I'm offended that many unsuspecting souls who believe the story of the advertisers will spend themselves into oblivion.  In short, I'm offended that a word with rich and powerful resonance in the Christian story--joy-- is used in manipulative ways for self-serving ends.

The story of Advent grants a necessary and honest critique of the idealized American Christmas.  If the dreamy Christmas the advertisers want to give us (and we are so quick to believe) is one of realized joy, the story of Advent speaks of joy that comes.  That's an extraordinarily important difference.  The idealized version of Christmas promises joy here and now, if you simply meet the right requirements.  Advent reminds us that we can expect visitations of joy here and again as hints and promises of the joy that is to come.  The first Advent of Jesus opens our hearts and minds to the visitation of joy, to be sure.  Our encounter with the love of God, poured out in Jesus, cannot help but bring with it occasions of deep and profound delight.  But just as the healing ministry of Jesus was a promise and sign of that healing which will come to our world on that great and beautiful day, so our experiences of joy today point to the "everlasting joy" that will be upon our heads (Isaiah 35:10) at the next Advent of the the Christ.

I go on a bit long in this blog today because I believe that our Americanized version of Christmas sets us up for disappointment, while the Advent story gives us resources for becoming courageous in the midst of disappointment.  The one says"you can have it all now"--and fails to deliver, while the other reminds that here in the time in which we are living between the first and the second Advent we can expect much heartache and pain, but the delightful visits of joy are portents of the everlasting joy that will come when, at last, the will of God is done on earth as it is in heaven.  Advent invites me to live hopefully, to pray unceasingly and to work fearlessly toward that day.