Do It Scared

Sermon

You might have been puzzled by the connection between the children’s time today and the scripture reading. Maybe you noticed its connection to the jazz group’s anthem. But catchy tune aside, what do Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego have to do with the scripture Gregg and I read–? Here’s what happened. When the quartet proposed the anthem, I discovered a great eavesdropping opportunity when the two stories were put into a conversation with each other. Three plucky young men refuse to bow to the narcissistic autocrat-slash-dictator’s golden statue, and Moses successfully negotiates a détente between God and Israel. What would emerge?

A little context will help with the Moses story, lest you think it portrays God as cuddly teddy bear. Where we are in Exodus is this: the Israelites escape Egyptian slavery and set out for the land promised to their ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Moses heads up to Mount Sinai to collect the ten commandments. Then, while he and God go over details of corporate worship, the Israelites decide they want a real god, so Moses’s brother, Aaron, makes a golden calf. This is when God and Moses stop talking about liturgical smells and bells to spend a whole chapter arguing over “whose” people these are, taking turns threatening to blast them all to hell while the other talks them out of it. Finally, God consents not to decimate them, with the caveat, “You all can go to the Promised Land, but I will not go.” At this news, the people fall into dead silence and retreat to their tents. As Moses confers regularly with God in the tent of meeting, the contrite people bow in silence at their tent doors. This continues until today’s conversation between Moses and God. God has sustained a deep injury from the people’s abandonment of covenant. Today’s story reveals God’s willingness to heal the relationship by promising Presence for the rest of Israel’s journey.

We’re eavesdropping on the conversation between two stories, though—Moses representing the former slaves and the exiles who cling to their back-home faith. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego confess faith in a powerful God who, in absolute freedom, will not be limited by human demands for God is on our side gestures. Even the threat of a fiery death does not shake their faith that God’s power transcends their personal need for safety. In Exodus, even God’s suffering will not lock God into an outcome-based, transactional relationship. God steps back until the people can participate in a more mature relationship recast as Presence.

Every Sunday School child knows “God is everywhere,” but do you ever wonder about that where-ness in terms of a spatial Presence? The book Glimmerings contains the email correspondence between theologian Miroslav Volf and poet Christian Wiman. They muse about this very question. Volf senses God’s Presence behind and underneath him, as if he is being held by God. God is not above and in front of him, as if he were to reach for God. Wiman emails back that his faith is less spatial and more a form of patience. For both, faith is the experience of God’s Presence. My spiritual director’s image of the practice of presence is marinating. You know, when the recipe calls for food to be placed in a bath of seasoned oil or vinegar or wine. And then you let it sit to tenderize while absorbing those juices and flavors. Marinating in God juices, being tenderized and flavored for what comes next, like the Israelites waiting in their tents while Moses talks to God. Call it patience, call it faith, call it the practice of Presence (capital P). In terms of acting on that faith, in terms of what our boys Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego do, that’s like coming to know what to do next, knowing there are risks, and then being willing to do it scared. To do our part, trusting God for the outcome.

The story in Daniel doesn’t tell us whether the boys experience fear as they are tossed into the fiery furnace, and I’m not saying that attention to the promise of Presence will keep us from fear. We don’t know if the father who stopped the Silver Rail School shooter felt fear as he followed the teen into the building. We don’t know if the teacher who wrestled the teen was scared. Sometimes there’s no time to notice fear. But there is a place for fear both in life and in faith. Scott and I just saw the Titanic exhibition at OMSI, and I’m here to tell you, if ever there was a cautionary tale about the consequences of refusing to fear, it’s the story of the Titanic. Unsinkable? Not. We can outrun an iceberg. Not today. Fear can be both a mature response and a maturing experience. My daughter was fearful about going to kindergarten. We accommodated her fear by having her wear my necklace under her shirt, so that whenever she was afraid, she could touch that necklace and feel my presence. The necklace was a concrete reminder, if not an actual fact. The experience of addressing that fear was a maturing one for her as she learned how to do it scared.

Facing and accepting and supporting fear can be a spiritual practice when we use it to enact our faith. The operant word is “practice.” The fiery furnace isn’t the first step in a mature faith. Over time and with practice, we develop and hone our ability to do it scared. God, in her infinite wisdom, keeps allowing humans many opportunities to act in good and true and noble ways. Sometimes our practice slips, sometimes fear gets the best of us, and we opt for power and security. What if instead of focusing transportation dollars on an interstate highway system we had capitalized public transportation? Imagine what Portland would be like if the interstate hadn’t bifurcated established neighborhoods. What if the streetcars and buses had been supported instead? Or, imagine if the president, instead of sending in the National Guard, had himself taken Ruby Bridges by the hand and walked her to school. How would educational opportunities across our cities have been different? Perhaps attitudes about race and immigration would have been less inclined to othering people not like us.

There is so much potential risk in our world, and yet we are still offered opportunities to act in good and true and noble ways. We are asked to still believe that the promise of God’s with-ness will give us the courage we need to act in spite of the risk, to do it scared. I wonder if the people who dreamed and worked for the land-back project of the old Laurelhurst property knew the risk. Of hard feelings and controversy, of complicated neighborhood politics and legal and financial arrangements. Of endless meetings. And yet, on Indigenous People’s Day this year, Barbie’s Village celebrated a growing vision of community with a powwow and food and games. This was not the work of individuals. It is the result of many people counting on God’s promise of with-ness, risking together, envisioning and strategizing and discerning as a people. It might be easier to remember Presence when there are others around to remind you of it. Do you remember the first No Kings rally you attended or heard about? We went to Beaverton, to be in solidarity with my husband’s church. I went a little bit scared, but I remember how moved I was to see the number of people who showed up.

The world has always been full of scary, risky things—people, events, situations, solutions, hopes. What are you afraid of when you face them? Personal harm. Social embarrassment. Success (and that you’ll be asked to do more!). Failure (and you’ll never be asked again!). Maybe your fear reflects a realization of the sheer magnitude of what needs to be done. No matter what you do, it will never be enough. Maybe the way forward is clouded. Fear in and of itself isn’t bad. It might be a caution or an invitation to re-evaluate implications of actions or allies. Fear requires attention, but it’s not necessarily a call to paralysis. Maybe it’s just a call to marinate, to be in discernment with your Creator, to absorb some God juice. What’s next? How do you act in faith, when all you’ve got is “I will be with you”? St. Teresa of Calcutta reminds us that we’re not called to be successful, we are called to be faithful. Courage is not the absence of fear, friends. Courage is when you do it anyhow, even if you are scared. Because, as Fannie Lou Hamer said, “You can pray until you faint, but unless you get up and try to do something, God is not going to put it in your lap.”