Friday of the Twenty-eighth Week in Ordinary Time
The other day, a student asked me what Christians think about fear. Interesting question - and not one I've thought about much, on purpose, until that question. Fear is something that we try to keep at arms' length. While we tell our children not to be afraid of the dark, how often do we have meaningful conversations about the things we really fear: death, violence, losing independence, and so on?
In today's gospel reading (Luke 12:1-7), Jesus names exactly these kinds of fears, especially the fear of being killed and the fear of death. A person typically has this kind of fear in relation to being afraid of some person or event or situation that is not God, but which has the potential to be powerful enough to supplant God or at least to make a person forget or doubt that God exists.
But Jesus asks his disciples to do what might at first seem strange or impossible, or both: to recognize that death and violence are not the true things to fear. Jesus reminds us that instead it is God that we should fear, because God has the power to "cast us into Gehenna" and to cut us off. One of the points Jesus seems to make here is that if we fear anything other than God, we are at risk of making that thing more powerful than God. We are at risk of becoming idolaters.
The idea that we should fear God is not a popular view these days. We much more focus on God as a friend who can be turned to in times of trouble; by definition, a friend is not someone to fear. Fear also suggests some kind of power struggle, because many of the things we fear (tyranny, false imprisonment) are also about peoples' power over others. We fear that kind of power because in our culture we don't like thinking others have power over our freedom or choices.
But God's power is not like this. Jesus says that God's power means that "even the hairs on your head have been counted." A mere buddy doesn't do that. To name God as a buddy or a friend strips God of his power. But a God worthy of fear is also a God who legitimately, truly loves us, to the point of knowing absolutely everything about us. To fear God is to fear all that is good and holy. This kind of fear is not about being afraid but about recognizing that God is more awesome and powerful than anything we can possibly conceive.
To fear God is to receive the gift of knowing God's immense love for us. In the first reading (Romans 4:1-8), Paul talks about the difference between working and being owed wages, and not working but yet receiving a gift. Paul reminds us that we cannot earn God's love, we cannot work for the wages of love. God loves us anyway, just as we are. It is a gift. So to fear in a real, Christian way, is to put God before everything else and then to receive that gift of love.
- Jana M. Bennett