Do Not Be Afraid
Mark 6:45-55
Rev. Dr. Deborah L. Clark
June 6, 2021
“Do not be afraid.” Moses spoke these words to the Hebrew people, as they stood beside the Red Sea with Pharaoh’s army at their heels. “Do not be afraid.” Elijah instructed the hungry, despairing widow. Isaiah comforted the exiles. A voice from heaven spoke to the child Jeremiah. An angel assured Mary. Jesus taught the crowds.
“Do not be afraid” is the most frequent commandment given in the Bible. It’s uttered more often than “Love your neighbor as yourself.” It is at the heart of our faith.
“Do not be afraid.” These are powerful words. For me they are also troubling. How can you say “Do not be afraid” when the world is such a dangerous place? How can God, who created us as human beings, expect us to deny a very real human emotion? And Jesus, who knows first-hand how hard our lives are—does he really expect us never to be afraid? It feels like a set-up for spiritual failure.
Over the years, I have begun to translate this command into something that feels more possible. When Jesus says, “Do not be afraid,” I choose to hear it as “Do not be controlled by your fear.” My personal re-translation means I no longer hear these words as a command to deny my fear but instead as a call to find courage in the face of fear. In my reframing, fear is still defined as an obstacle to faith or perhaps as an obstacle that faith helps me overcome.
This past year, though, has challenged me to think about the relationship between fear and faith in new ways. When we first learned of this new virus, Fran and I were on vacation with friends who are doctors. They painted a grim picture of what was to come. I listened politely, but thought they were overreacting. I’m not afraid, I told myself. And when Rick Seaholm approached me with an 8-page summary of our options in case of a shut-down, I listened politely and thought, this will never happen. I am not afraid.
My lack of fear, I realize now, had nothing to do with courage or faithfulness; it was simply denial. Fortunately, I was surrounded by enough wise people who were not in denial that I avoided making foolish choices as I slowly recognized there really was something to fear.
I have gained a new respect this year for the value of fear as a warning signal. Fear can lead us to unhelpful fight or flight or freeze responses; it can also lead us to courageous sacrifices to preserve what we value.
For me, fear took a variety of forms in the past year. Sometimes it was fear for my own well-being, or the well-being of the people I love. Sometimes it was worry that I would become one of those asymptomatic carriers blithely creating hot spots all over town. Sometimes it was anxiety that I would be perceived as irresponsible, standing too close to a neighbor or forgetting my mask. Most of the time, this year, fear led me to make cautious choices that were expressions of my caring. Fear was not an obstacle to faith; it enabled me to live out my faith responsibly.
The role of fear has shifted in the last month. I was stunned by the sudden change in guidance from the CDC and the state. I resisted the dizzying pace of re-opening. Some of my resistance came from fear: what if they were wrong about the efficacy of the vaccines? I didn’t know how to figure out how much risk was acceptable. As the science became clearer, my fear subsided, but my resistance remained. Over the last year, fear of a deadly virus led me to develop new habits; once my fear diminished, my habits remained. It takes a lot of energy to change a year’s worth of new habits.
I’m also aware of new fears slipping in. We are at an inflection point for our church and our nation and our world, an opportunity to transform who we are. That’s a lot of pressure; I am easily caught in a spiral of anxiety about the urgency of getting this right.
What a year it has been! What a complex time we are in right now! What a unique opportunity to reflect on fear in our lives—not to judge ourselves but to open ourselves to the wisdom of our faith. I invite you to take a moment to think about the role fear has played in your life in these last 16 months. Are there ways it has been a gift from God? Were there times fear took over your life? What has shifted in the last month? Are new anxieties surfacing? Let yourself be curious instead of judgmental.
“Do not be afraid.” If we take these words on their own, we can find ourselves using them to judge our own fearfulness. If we hear them as part of our gospel story, they offer insights into how faith can guide us through our fear.
The first insight emerges from the broader context of this story. Biblical scholar Ched Myers argues that, in Mark’s gospel, Jesus and his disciples move back and forth across the lake, alternately going to predominantly Jewish towns and then to villages that are mostly Gentile. The trip across the lake is a trip to a place inhabited by people whose lives are different, even foreign. Fierce winds on the Sea of Galilee are real; in this story Mark may be using them as a metaphor for the fear the disciples feel leaving the familiar to go to places where they were strangers.
As the story opens, the disciples are straining against a fierce wind. What if the wind they are fighting is their own resistance to going to a strange place? They are struggling, trying not to give in to their fear, but they make little headway. Jesus sees that and walks out to them. When he enters the boat, the wind of fear subsides. They go across and do their work: healing people who are suffering, proclaiming through their actions that God’s kin-dom is breaking in.
The disciples are afraid—afraid of the unknown across the lake. They keep rowing in the face of their own resistance, because there is something more important to them than their fear. They choose to keep going because they know there are people who need them.
“Do not be afraid.” Jesus is not telling the disciples to deny their fear. He is challenging them to put that fear in the larger context of their calling. It is frightening to go into unknown territory; they do it anyway because they long to part of this kin-dom of God that is breaking in—this new way of being where broken lives are made whole and division is healed.
I think about Enmanuel Familia, the Worcester police officer who died trying to rescue a 14-year-old boy from drowning. I imagine he was afraid. I also imagine that he put his fear in the context of something more important to him: his commitment to help a child in need.
When I am faced with fear that threatens to paralyze me, like a fierce wind on the water, it helps me to remember why I am crossing the lake in the first place. Our faith teaches us that there is something more important than fear. When we remember that, we find the courage to keep rowing. With Jesus’ help, we choose not to be controlled by our fear, but instead to be inspired by our calling.
By “calling,” I don’t mean something big and official; calling might be as ordinary as the work you do to create beauty or care for family or offer hospitality or advocate for more just laws. What is the calling that inspires you to keep moving forward even when you are faced by a fierce wind of fear?
A second insight emerges from what the disciples see–a ghost. Perhaps because they hear the voice of Jesus at the same time, they find the courage not to look away. They keep their eyes on that strange figure until the ghostliness fades away and they see their beloved teacher. Their fear is transformed into astonishment.
Often, what we fear is a ghost—an ill-defined apparition on which we project all sorts of wild things. Sometimes the ghost frightens us so much that we turn away, rowing as fast as we can in the opposite direction. But we cannot escape our fear, for we carry the image of the ghost with us. Freed from any reality base, it grows into a ghastly monster.
What happens if we resist the instinct to turn away and choose to keep watching? Maybe the lines grow more distinct and we see a very real danger; then we can choose to seek safety. Or maybe we come to recognize the ghost as a collection of memories from our past, which no longer have the power to hurt us. Maybe we discover the ghost is a figment of our imaginations, one of those worst-case-scenarios we concoct that have very little to do with reality. Maybe the ghost is a real person, around whom we have spun a fuzzy set of assumptions. If we stop long enough to look and listen, perhaps we can see our assumptions for what they are and the person for who they are.
The second insight I take from this passage is an invitation to face the object of our fears. Not to face it down, but to sit with it, to allow it to come into focus until the ghostliness dissolves and we can discern what the real danger is.
The final insight is the most important one. The disciples are terrified, until Jesus says, “It is I.” “I am here. You are not alone.” We do not have to face our fears alone. Jesus is with us, to calm the wind we can’t counter with our own frantic rowing. Jesus is with us, to give us courage to face our ghosts until we can see what they are really made of.
We have made it through 16 months of pandemic fear. We are in the midst of a new time of uncertainty, when fear may take on new shapes. In this time, I invite you to hold on to these insights from the gospel:
- Put your very real fears into the larger context of your calling.
- Dare to face your fear, to sit with it long enough to see what it is made of.
- Trust that you do not have to do it alone. Jesus is with you, on the sea, in the boat.
Amen.