There is a legend from the Orient about a traveler making his way to a large city. One night he meets two other travelers along the road: Fear and Plague. Plague explains to the traveler that, once they arrived, they are expected to kill 10,000 people in the city. The traveler asks Plague if Plague would do all the killing. “Oh, no. I shall kill only a few hundred. My friend Fear will kill the others.”
After 9/11, the world changed. After that, politicians and pundits told us, we were in a new era. And for once they were telling the truth. Our treasured security disappeared. Many Americans were afraid to fly for months, even years after that. Some moved out of large cities, others bought gas masks and laid in emergency stocks of everything from antibiotics to bottled water. After a few years, though, when no serious attacks occurred, things got back to normal. Sort of. We were in the “War on Terror” but for most people it was far away.
Then we got hit by Covid. The government told us to stay home and wear masks and get vaccinated and boosted. Schools closed. Offices emptied out as employees started working from home. Highways emptied out as fewer people came to work. Nursing homes restricted family visits. Automobile sales plummeted. Restaurants closed. Churches Zoomed instead of meeting in person. Two years later we are still suffering the echoes of those policies, and many people are still afraid of crowds, still wear masks, still work from home. Are we safe or should we be afraid?
The answer to both questions is “No.” No, we are not safe, and no, we should not be afraid. I am not about to quote FDR at you, saying there’s “nothing to fear but fear itself.” There’s plenty of bad stuff out there that we could be afraid of. But living in fear is neither useful nor appropriate. A lot of people asked me, before I went on my cruise to Greece, if I was afraid. I wasn’t. Not because I assumed I was safe, but because I was no less safe than I had been at home. The fact is, life is not safe. But once we got over 9/11 we went right back to assuming that it was. And our society still doesn’t know how to handle it. And so the people who make their living off of travel and tourism have seen their incomes take a nosedive, and empty office spaces are expected to cause a real estate crash any day now.
Fear shows up and is acted out in a lot of different ways. After 9/11 some people took their fear out on Arab Americans - or people who looked like Arab Americans like Sikhs and Hindus. Some people blamed America - the left wing blamed what they called our Fascist foreign policy, the right wing called it God’s judgment on a godless nation. We had been able to look at places like Ethiopia or Columbia and say to ourselves, “not us.” I don’t know if any of us ever said out loud, “It’s because we’re better than they are,” but I suspect that we patted ourselves on the back for our democracy, our freedom, our economic prosperity, and all the other things which we took for granted. We’re Americans! We’re entitled! McDonald’s and rock and roll have taken over the world, and free-market democracy follows in its wake. Everybody wants to be like us... don’t they? But our world got turned upside down. There are people out there who actually hate us. The world is not safe.
When Covid hit, we couldn’t direct our fear to a visible enemy; it was all around us, in the air we breathed. There was no one to blame. We didn’t even hear preachers thundering that it was God’s judgment on a sinful nation. So we couldn’t repent and change; we were helpless because it was meaningless. And so we clothed ourselves in fear as if it were armor, as if we could become safe by walling ourselves off from one another. The people who refused to be afraid became enemies as well. People who didn’t wear masks were berated and in some places arrested; if you didn’t get vaccinated you might lose your job. There were places you weren’t allowed to go and things you weren’t allowed to do. The churches that closed forgot that Christians are commanded to gather together, for worship and support and living out our identity as the body of Christ. That said to the world that we, too, are governed by our fear, rather than by our faith. And it’s all because we are unwilling to accept that life itself is dangerous, and that to live fully requires accepting those dangers. The world is not safe.
And yet as Paul told Timothy in a somewhat different context, “God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.” [2 Tim 1:7]
New York isn’t Jerusalem. Thanks be to God. The lament over the destruction of Zion is not our lament. Our city rose again, our people have not gone into exile. America is not Israel. The covenant that promised prosperity to the obedient and destruction to the disobedient belongs to the new Israel, the church, not to the nation. We live under the New Testament, not the Old. 9/11 should have been understood in the terms Jesus explained a lesser calamity to his disciples: “...Those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them - do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.” [Luke 13:4-5] But we as a nation or as individuals did not understand that lesson; we have not, either as a nation or as individuals, repented and changed. Perhaps Covid is a last-ditch effort of our creator to bring us back to our senses. Because as long as we forget that we are all under a death sentence, we will resent and reject any reminder that we are not entitled to live forever.
The question is, how do we manage the new world view which has been forced upon our reluctant eyes? How do we take the power and love and self-discipline that God has given us and turn it against the fear that so many are feeling? How do we bring the gospel of hope to bear in the current climate?
I ran across a wonderful story about a shoe company which sent one of its salespeople to a faraway country to start a business. After a few months he sent back the message: “Coming home, nobody wears shoes here.” A while later another salesperson was sent to the same country. After a few months she wrote the home office this note: “Send more order forms - nobody wears shoes here.” The second salesperson saw the opportunity in her situation, not the difficulty; and more: she believed in her product. So she succeeded where the first salesperson failed.
Well, there are an awful lot of people in this country who don’t wear shoes. That is, there are a lot of people in this country who are in need of the product we are selling, but don’t know it. I was tempted to try to build an extended metaphor on the armor of faith that Paul talks about in his letter to the Ephesians: “As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace.” [Eph 6:15] But that would take us in a direction that I don’t really want to go right now. Because the issue is not the product, but the attitude. How many of us say, in the face of the Great Commission, “It’s too hard”?
Or, as the disciples said when faced with another of Jesus’ impossible commands, to forgive the same person as many as seven times in a single a day, “Lord, Increase our faith!” [Lk 17:4-5]
How did Jesus respond, do you suppose, when the disciples asked for enough faith to do what he commanded? He replied, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, “Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.” [Lk 17:6]
A mustard seed is pretty small, isn’t it? In Matthew’s gospel Jesus told his listeners that He put before them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree.” [Mat 13:31-32]
What is the point Jesus is trying to make here? Don’t the disciples already have that much faith? I mean, after all, they had already left their homes and jobs to follow him, they had gone out in his name to bring the good news of the kingdom and heal the sick and cast out demons. What is he trying to tell them - and us?
We have all met people, haven’t we - or at least read about them - who have lived through very difficult times, and no doubt many of us have thought that they must have had great faith to cope as well as they have. We may even have said to them - with humility and admiration: “I don’t think I could have handled what you’ve been through. Your faith must be very great.” The answer I usually hear is something like this, “My faith is no greater than anyone else’s. I just didn’t know what I had until I needed it. God helped me; if it wasn’t for him I wouldn’t have made it.”
Have you ever said this sort of thing yourselves, while admiring some great hero of the faith, or a survivor or persecution or disaster? You know, “I wish I had a faith like that?”
Well, the fact is, you already have that much faith - if not, you wouldn’t be here. Just like the disciples, we ask for more faith than we realize we have. We let it lie dormant in us - asleep in us - and we keep on waiting for something else, while all the while God is there, and our faith in God is there, doing very little.
In the next few verses, Jesus goes on with something that seems a bit like a non sequitur. “Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, ‘Come here at once and take your place at the table’? Would you not rather say to him, ‘Prepare supper for me, put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink; later you may eat and drink’?” [Lk 17:7-8]
Jesus answers his disciples’ request to increase their faith by explaining that they were asking for something he would not - in fact, could not - give them yet. A small measure of real faith was all they needed to be sure that God would give them the strength to do what he asked, but they wanted more. They were asking for a faith which would let them soar above all uncertainty and doubt. They were looking for a gold medal before they had even started the training, for an advanced degree before they’d cracked the first book. In other words, the increased faith the apostles prayed for could only come after they had done their work. The little parable was to teach them that they were not to expect their work to be done for them, but to be confident that if they carried out their assigned tasks patiently and bravely, then afterwards they too should eat and drink. It was another way of saying, “The servant is not greater than the master,” [Jn 13:16] That is, just as Jesus did not get his reward until his work was done, so his servants would not either.
And the work may take longer, require more patience and effort than we thought. We’re salaried, not hourly. Jesus’ servants don’t punch a time clock, and then show up with our hands out for the paycheck plus overtime and bonuses. We’re called to finish the job, whatever it takes. “Do you thank the slave for doing what was command-ed? So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, ‘We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!’” [Lk 17:9-10]
No, we’re not “entitled” to more than just our keep. But the fact is that Jesus has promised that the day will come when his people will sit down at the heavenly table and be served by the master himself - a reward that has nothing to do with our deserving. And that promise should give us hope for today as well, because it shows us that we don’t have to earn the faith that we need to have before we go on - and out - with the good news.
America is not the Promised Land, even though it has flowed with milk and honey for generations. And God never promised us - his church - a rose garden. We started feeling smug, though, and complacent, and lost our edge, our sense of urgency.... First a bomb visited our shores, and then a plague. And they killed thousands, not hundreds. But Fear damaged many more, and we cannot count the ones it killed; no one kept track. Bombs and Plagues are deadly, but Fear has only the power that we ourselves give it, and not one of us has any business listening to its voice. Jesus has promised us that the faith he has already given each one of us is enough to move even trees and mountains. Is your faith, your love bigger than fear? If not, do you want it to be? Then take a step, speak up and expect to see God’s hand at work right there with you.
