Being Unafraid

A friend of mine once needed to consider moving from Austin to continue his work in ordained ministry. But he was loathe to leave his adopted home city. He told me that if it was true that he’d gotten himself into a rut here in Austin, nevertheless, it was for him, “a velvet rut.” Routine predictability, safety, and comfort are commendable goals. But before an individual, family, community, parish, diocese, or entire Church seeks single-mindedly the comforts of predictability, the safety of routine, and the peace and quiet of peace and quiet, they do well to pay close attention to the consequences that accompany this pursuit. For if the velvet rut is a furrow into which one may comfortably descend, there is also a hand that pushes one in and holds one there. Comfortable as the rut itself, it is a velvet glove fitted over the nasty claw of Fear.


Of the several difficult and painful lessons that our delegation learned from the last Diocesan Council one is clear: the velvet glove of Fear can tighten its grip upon the minds and hearts of good Christian people. People of good will, faith, and devotion to God can speak all too well with the language of suspicion, anger, and hatred. And people of good will and high calling can surrender to fatigue, and grow ever more comfortable with the velvet glove of Fear closing over their eyes, covering their ears, and shutting up their mouths. Good and faithful people can succumb to Fear’s mindless respite from the burden of responsibility of being stewards of the grace of God. So, let there be no question among us here. We here at ECR shall pursue no selfish comfort, no veneer of false peace, no idle security. We will not silence or tone down our proclamation of the Good News of Jesus Christ and his sacrifice for the whole world. We shall not abbreviate or compromise our efforts to reach out to those around us in the Name of the Love of God for all. We will not capitulate to fatigue; we will not succumb to Fear.

In Jesus’ day, as in our own, there are groups of people who are the most vulnerable to the wearying effects of Fear upon God’s people. If the adversities of others can somehow be regarded as divine punishment, then even followers of Jesus can be seduced by Fear into interpreting their comparatively better circumstances as signs of their own moral and spiritual superiority. And, thus, they can turn away with consciences soothed, shutting down the ‘others’ and keeping them out in order to protect their own order of things, their own space, and their own time with their own Jesus. In the seductive grip of Fear, good Christian people are rendered spiritually blind deaf and numb to the presence of God within themselves and those around them. They forget that the peace they seek costs the lives and humanity of the forgotten and officially un-forgiven. They forget that the high cost of a hollow peace is paid for them by others.

In the past Fear has guided good Christian people to see not fellow human beings, but just those damned-by-God Gentile dogs. Fear has told good and faithful people that those others voices crying out were not from worthy people. “Those are just women,” Fear whispered, or “just wet-backs;” or “just niggers;” or “just rednecks.” Fear speaks still today, trying hard to tell us that, if people are hurting, “it’s only because God wants them to suffer; after all, they’re fags; they’re filthy street people; they’re lying foreigners.” And if comfort and peace mean shutting out even kindred in Christ, then Fear tries to tell us that “it doesn’t matter; because,” says Fear, “they’re just stupid conservatives, anyway” or “they’re just air-headed liberals.”

Fear has caused many at diocesan councils to commend on the first day a beautiful opening sermon that speaks of the strength of our unity as a Church and then the next day to demand that the diocese be free to walk apart if the wider Church should dare to disagree with the majority position here. Fear has driven some to betray the very values that they have long championed. Fear has held many good and faithful Christians fast in their seats and kept their voices silent, while it has raised up in others a vocal hostility and a visceral hatred. The nurturing of Fear among good Christians and the absence of a more holy inspiration and a more visionary guidance to counter it that are causing these things to happen. And in this is seen the insidious truth that Fear harms not only the vocal minority speaking out against it, but also the frightened majority that is trying to silence us.

And if Fear is hard at work, there is a reason. Whenever you and I and our fellow Episcopalians climb up out of the claustrophobic comfort of our respective ruts and refuse to descend into them again, and twist ourselves free from the velvet-gloved grip of Fear; it is then that all of us here at ECR, all of us in our diocese, and all of us in our Church are able to breathe more deeply the Holy Spirit of God. And it is this that causes the Evil behind Fear to be, itself, deeply afraid. For it is when we are freed from Fear that you and I, this diocese, and this Church rediscover that we can, we have, and we will again not only accept one another in this crazy mix of a society that is the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion, but even joyfully offer to the world around us this Holy Communion of our differences as our witness of God’s divine alternative to that Fear that has robbed humanity of peace in this and every age.

In our Church, I pray, we shall not fear; we shall not be silent; we shall not sit idly by. To the contrary, we shall speak up, we shall speak out, we shall pray harder, work harder, love more generously, and care more broadly. We shall not fear. Together we shall find and share that genuine comfort, security, and joy that are born only of the Light and Love of God for all His people.

Jim +