Sermon: Do not Let Your Hearts Be Troubled

The other morning, I was riding my bike to Caltrain on my way to work. Before leaving the house, I had read the words Jesus speaks to his anxious disciples in this morning's gospel: Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.

I was pedaling along, mulling these words, when I saw the bright yellow police tape in the distance. Then I saw all the police cars, swarms of whirring minicams, and dazed onlookers milling around. There had been another shooting . As the police motioned us by, I could see the car with the shattered windshield, and the victim's bloody clothes in a heap in the middle of the street.

"Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid." Really?

Later, on the train, I opened the British magazine, The Economist:

Survivors said the gunman killed without saying a word. He shot teachers and students at close range, in the face, in the mouth, anywhere. He put about three bullets into each victim, to make sure. Every time he emptied a magazine, he reloaded with skill and speed. He had plenty of ammunition. He kept on killing until police burst into Norris Hall. Then he shot himself. His face was so badly disfigured that police found it hard, at first, to identify him.

This, of course, is a report of the shootings at Virginia Tech.

"Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid."

Say what?

Don't be troubled? Don't be afraid? That's good advice if we're dealing with neurotic fears, monsters-under-the bed kind of fears about things that don't really exist or aren't really threatening. But fear in the face of violent and senseless death? These are hardly neurotic. In such moments, fear is more than legitimate and healthy, it's even necessary. It motivates people to change things, work for gun control perhaps, march against this senseless war before more sons and daughters are brought home in flag-draped coffins. Fear, good and legitimate fear, can be a powerful ally for life.

So what do these words of Jesus about not being afraid mean? They become all the more curious when you remember that Jesus, made of all the human stuff that we are, was himself so familiar with fear. The gospels paint his fear graphically: sweating blood in Gethsemane, crying out in terror from the cross at what seemed like God's having abandoned him.

So...what to make of these words of Jesus? What do you make of them?

And they're not just the words of Jesus by the way...

Today is Mother's Day. Do you remember as a little kid when you fell off your bike, or a dog barked at you in the park, or you heard loud claps of thunder when you were going to bed--how your mom would hold you in her lap and rock you back and forth and say things like "It's OK. It's OK. Everything is OK. Don't be afraid." Remember? Where does this maternal conviction come from, this sense that, despite all evidence to the contrary, everything is OK.

This powerful and curious conviction echoes throughout our lives and our tradition. I understand that St. Julian of Norwich, the 15th Century woman mystic, is one of the patrons of our parish, that Julian Street was named after her. She had a mantra: "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well."

What is this great mystic, and our moms, and Jesus talking about here? Are they in denial about the pain and tragedy of real life? Maybe they are lying. Perhaps they mean well, to calm us, cheer us up. But maybe they're lying nevertheless...

What do you make of their words?

Let me read you a story from Ireland (how I wish I had a lovely Irish brogue to tell it with!)...

It was a long time ago, but I still remember it, said the old man as he closed his eyes to help sharpen his memory.

It was late in the afternoon. A terrible storm was brewing. The sky was low and dark. I was out in the field. It was no place for a nine-year-old boy to be, so I made for an old shed on the farm where we kept tools and such. But I didn't make it before the storm hit.

Fierce winds, pelting rains, lightening, thunder--I could barely see. I finally found the shed. Once inside, I crouched in a corner, sitting on some rolled up rope.

The shed was old, and the wooden slats had separated. When lightening hit, it sent shafts of light streaking through the cracks. The darkness in the shed would light up and then go dark again. It was like someone standing in the room and turning a light switch on and off.

Suddenly the door of the shed swung open. A massive, bearded man in drenched clothes burst inside and shook himself like a dog. Then he saw me, crouched in the corner. He looked back out the open door at the storm and then back at me. He yelled in a loud deep voice, "Ah, boy. He's trying to scare us today."

Well, that did it. I was already wet, cold, frightened. The last thing I needed was this giant of a strange man bellowing at me. I started to cry.

The man came and sat down next to me. Then he took his fist--it was the size of a sledge--and slammed it into my shoulder. I could feel his breath on my face. "Scaring ain't so bad, boy," he said. Then he laughed.

In this story, the boy is so frightened by the largeness and unpredictability of the world that he cowers in a corner. Suddenly, he is confronted by a still more frightening human figure. The older man knows the terror and the source of the terror. "He's trying to scare us today, boy." Yet the man also knows a power beyond terror that allows him power over it: "Scaring ain't so bad, boy." In these words, the man mediates a saving mystery to the boy. There is a reality that, while it does not do away with terror, allows us to confront it and move through it and overcome it.

And it's out of the knowledge of this larger, saving mystery that Jesus utters his words of peace: "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives."

The peace that the world gives comes and goes. You know how it works: It depends on outer circumstances. When everything is going well, we can manage a certain amount of inner calm. But when bad times come, calm gives way to fear.

But the peace that Jesus gives is perhaps best summed up in St. Paul's eloquence:

Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, of famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?...No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angles, nor rulers, not things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

The conviction of Jesus and so many moms and so many saints is that nothing--not topples from bikes or claps of thunder, not even street shootings and campus massacres and a senseless war--can separate us from the love of God. This faithful, non-abandoning presence of God was revealed on the cross of Jesus. In that place of violence and loss, divine love sustained Jesus and revealed God as a protecting nearness that will never leave us.

The peace that Jesus gives comes from remembering how God once entered fully into that one thing we most fear--the complete loss of everything in death. And in that moment on the cross, God transformed separation and irretrievable loss into a new form of closeness to God and others.

Peace begins to rise in us and we gain power over our fears when we "get" what happened on the cross. We are in an unbreakable relationship with the Source of our being.

If this is true, then "Where, O death, where is your sting?"

So, moms, Happy Mother's Day! Congratulations! OK, we'll admit it, you and Jesus got this right after all!

Please, keep reminding us in your own inimitable ways, of his--and your--words to us: Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.