Tuesday, July 2, 2013

From Armageddon to WW Z

Welcome to the summer of our virtual annihilation. The movies have become even more apocalyptic than the Book of Revelation. This spring and summer alone, we have been asked to contemplate in fiction or hyped-up newscasts the terroristic take-over of the White House, the "oblivion" of earth, the bloody onslaughts of various aliens, planet-crushing asteroids, natural disasters, zombies and miscellaneous other evils. From Armageddon to World War Z, to comedic treatments of the end, we are all gazing upon annihilation, and calling it entertainment.

It all reminds me how deeply fear runs in our lives and hearts, as natural human beings.

Years ago, John Buchanan, a Presbyterian pastor and editor of the Christian Century, wrapped one of his columns with this remark, "It has been said that the most common command in the Bible is 'Fear not.'" There is a reason for this, of course. The Hebrew and Greek Testaments are shot through with many, many frightened and fearful people, people who clamber out of Egypt afraid, wander the wilderness afraid, cross into the promised land afraid, elect kings afraid, and silence prophets out of fear. The are even disciples who must be reassured in every moment, so that one of the most frequent commands from Jesus is also, "Be not afraid."

We are the inheritors, not only of the endless DNA of fight-or-flight creaturliness, but also of the nearly four millenia of frightened God-seekers.

And the only resolution that brings this to an end is a God-given word: "Fear not."

Whatever worries you, or causes anxieties even during these pleasant summer days, deserves to be set in the perspective of this graced and powerful Gospel imperative. Walter Brueggeman, an Old Testament scholar and theologian, has said, "in the midst of chaos, Christians and Jews should be the least anxious people. When everything was taken away from them, they still had God. And they still have the ability to re-invent themselves because they still have God."

May God alone, not Hollywood's studios or Stephen King's novels, set the foundations and the frame of what we fear and what we hope! "Remember, I am with you always..." (Matthew 28:20).