Sermons

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The Fear of Being Alone
Sunday, October 7, 2001
First in a series on “Facing Our Fears”
Pastor Dan Baumgartner

Mark 4:35-41

Over 350 times in the Bible, we are reminded: “Don’t be afraid.” 350 times! Why so often? I have to conclude it is a common thing for us to be afraid. Oh, we don’t always talk about it…but we are right now. Since September 11, many of us have felt much more fearful. Fear is one of the key issues that the Bible speaks to. And for the next few weeks, want to look at some of the things we fear…and what God might say to us.

You know, it’s amazing what you can find on the Internet…just incredible! I knew the topic we were dealing with today had to do with “fear,” with “being afraid…”

And I found as I studied this week that the Greek word used for “fear” in this passage was phobos. As you can imagine, we get the word “phobia” from the same word. A phobia is an exaggerated fear related to a specific thing or event. I was intrigued, so being the technological wizard that I am, I just typed in the word “phobia” on the Internet.

Lo and behold, someone has built an entire website and list of phobias…just for a hobby. Over 530 phobias listed out! Some amazing ones. I didn’t have time to look at the whole list. Some of them are very logical: bibliophobia, a fear of books. Cometphobia, a fear of ??? Comets. Some were almost impossible to figure out: alektorophobia. I thought that might be the fear of the electoral college!…but it’s not…it’s the fear of chickens! Or bogyphobia…fear of the bogeyman! And then at the end, there were some just plain silly ones…like the word they gave for “fear of underwear”: “fruitoftheloomophobia!” But I did find the one I was looking for as well.

Autophobia…the fear of being alone.

In this well-known story, Jesus and the disciples hop into a boat. After a long day of speaking with large crowds…crowds so large, in fact, that Jesus actually got into a boat to serve as a floating platform so he could speak …we find Jesus and the disciples setting sail for their first trip across the Sea of Galilee. They are tired, probably, and they set sail in the evening for a nice pleasure cruise across the Lake. They are perhaps surprised by the swiftness with which a sudden, violent storm sweeps down across the lake…as they still do today. Imagine how quickly their conversation progresses:

“What a nice night.”
“It’s a bit windy, I think I’ll put my sweater on.”
“Gee, maybe we should be safe and buckle the life jackets on.”
“Everybody, quick, start bailing water!”
“Hold on!”
“I wonder if I’ll ever see my family again.”

From pleasure to petrified in such a short time. And the progression of thought was probably equally rapid: “I can handle this.” … “WE can handle this.” … “God, where ARE you?!!?”

“God, where are you?!” Times get tough. Someone is sick. A job is lost. Someone dies. Airplanes slam into skyscrapers. “God, where are you?!”

Sometimes we start to think that it’s not okay to ask that question. Sometimes we think we need to stifle that inclination to shout out our frustration at God. But I think that’s a good and fair question…and I think God can handle our shouting. We have very good precedent, after all. We listen to:

The Psalmist, 89:4 -- “How long, O Lord? Will you hide yourself forever?”
The Psalmist. 74:1 -- “O God, why do you cast us off forever?”
Job 30:20 -- “I cry out to you, O God, but you do not answer me.”
Even Jesus himself: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Where are you, God, when bombs go off in Palestine? Where are you when people in Afghanistan starve? Where are you when planes are blown out of the sky in Russia? I think it’s very fair to ask questions. It is perhaps the most important question of all: “God, where are you? I’m all alone down here. I’m bailing water as fast as I can, and we’re still sinking and if it’s not too much to ask I’d appreciate knowing where you are!”

Because it’s no fun to be alone, is it? Where’s God? I’m sure the disciples were wondering. I’m sure they were asking the question. They were so busy bailing and asking, perhaps, that they forgot one thing. They forgot to look. And they forgot to look in one particular place: They didn’t look right there in the boat with them.

Finally they remembered -- “Jesus! Wake up! I’m dying! Don’t you care?!” As they woke Jesus up, there were still lots of things to deal with…the wind was still blowing, the sea was still storming…but they had remembered one thing. They weren’t actually alone at all.

Sometimes we get so caught up, so weighted down with the crises that come in our lives, we ask the question “God, where are you?” without bothering to look. It just may be that He’s right beside us. That’s not true just because we feel it or don’t feel it at a given moment. God’s presence is not just a function of my emotional state at a particular time. Partly it's true because God SAYS it’s true. Almost all of those 350 “Don’t be afraids” in the Bible have the same reason attached to them about why we shouldn’t be afraid. It’s not “Don’t be afraid because everything will be okay.” And it’s not “Don’t be afraid because everything will turn out just fine in the end.”

It’s “Don’t be afraid…I will be with you.” God says it. God promises it. Yet sometimes we can’t see it. Sometimes we forget to look right beside us in the boat.

If you are like me, you can start to think that there are two main signs of Jesus’ presence in our lives:

a) I Get What I Ask For. We make that formula out of prayer: A+B=C. I pray rightly + I’m sincere=I Get It. It’s just not true. It’s not that simple.

The other false idea about the assurance of Jesus’ presence is:

b) Nothing Bad Happens To Me. That’s obviously not true either. God never promised that a relationship with him would protect us from difficulty. But we easily are convinced that he did. People inside and particularly outside of the church remind us each time something terrible happens, “How can a good God let something like this happen? You must be crazy to believe in a God like that.”

Well, actually I don’t believe in a God like that. That good God created people to have free will, and chose their own actions…for better or for worse. Sometimes it’s for worse. God never promised we would be excused from hard things. He did promise He would be with us. And if that’s true, the fair question is “Where was God when the buildings in New York crumbled?” Part of the answer is: right in those collapsing offices. Right under the rubble with the dead and the wounded. Right on the plane next to terrified people. Right in Afghanistan with those who are hungry. Jesus is always found in places of suffering. Suffering is something that Jesus knows about.

So where is God when the going gets tough? It’s hard to say at any given moment, isn’t it? We see glimpses. Sometimes it is a feeling…if we have spent enough time with God to recognize the feeling of His presence. Sometimes He comes to us in the presence or words of a friend, a home group, a faith community…it helps if we know people, and have allowed ourselves to be known.

Sometimes He may overpower us in worship … when we come with open hands and open heart to receive from Him. He may come in words of scripture, particularly as we have read and studied and listened for that voice. He may come in a variety of ways, but it is His promise and His nature and His Spirit to come be with us.

Gerald Manley Hopkins is the featured poet for next Sunday’s adult class on Poetry & Faith at 10:45. Hopkins says it like this:

“…the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.”

God is with us.

But it is more than only that God is with us…it is also true that God understands.

When we believe in the God revealed in Jesus Christ, we believe in a God who understands loneliness. And pain. And the death of a friend. And the loss of a son. And the betrayal of friends. And rejection. And death itself. In Christ, God has experienced all those things. So it is not a God who says “I empathize,” nor just “I FEEL your pain,” but “I know it.”

This week, I received a picture from Oklahoma City. Many of you in the last weeks have seen pictures in the paper of the permanent memorial built after the Oklahoma City bombing several years ago. The memorial site has sculpted chairs for each of the victims. This picture, though, is taken across the street, in the courtyard of a Catholic Church. It is a large, simple statue of Jesus, with his head in his hands, and underneath simply the words: “Jesus wept.”

God is not only with us, but God understands.

But God not only understands, is not only with us…it’s more than just that he comforts us in places of loneliness and suffering. If that was what he did, he would be a nice God, but rather powerless. But this God, the one revealed in Jesus Christ…leads us to resurrected life. We live life. Because of the cross and resurrection of Christ, we need not fear being alone…even at death. Nor need we fear being alone in life. We are not alone, we will not be alone. “For,” Paul says, “I am convinced that neither death nor life, nor angels (up there), nor rulers (out there), nor things present (here), nor things to come (in the future), nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us (you, and you and you) from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

And so we stay in the boat. And we remember to look for His presence…right close to us. Even when we don’t perceive His care, we stay with him…because when we stay near him, we find ourselves being changed in His presence.

This image of a boat has long been used to represent the church. In fact, during the darkest hours of World War II, when the World Council of Churches was formed, they chose the image of a storm-tossed boat to represent the Church Universal. But it wasn’t JUST a storm-tossed boat…it was a boat on rough seas….with a mast in the shape of a cross. The stilling of the wind and sea reassures us not only of Christ’s power, but presence as well.

And so we stay in the boat. We don’t give up hope for any reason, not storms…not terrorists…not even death. We stay in the boat, we keep our eyes open…we find that Christ is right beside us. Jerry Sittser is a man I have mentioned before, a professor over at Whitworth College who lost his wife, daughter and mother in a single automobile accident. In his book, “A Grace Disguised,” he writes about the perceived absence of God during his darkest of times. After the agonizing struggle to understand and explain, he comes to this: “Finally, we choose God…and in the choosing we learn that he has already chosen us and has already been drawing us to him.” God is with us. We are not alone. Thanks be to God.