'Do not be afraid.' Our first reading opens with God saying to Abraham: 'Do not be afraid.'
In the Bible, God speaks these words repeatedly. It is said that they occur 365 times in the Bible, once for every day of the year. That sounds about right and it certainly makes an important point: every day of the year, fear confronts us, gets at us, undermines us; fear haunts our lives. But every day God says 'Do not be afraid', addressing our fear, leading us to a place of confidence and peace.
As we think today of how God speaks peace to us amid all our fears, we are aware of the terrifying violence of the last two weeks in Ukraine, and of course not just there but in many parts of the world where people are living in a state of dreadful fear. So the suffering and fears of the wider world are on our minds and hearts. It is not just to us, but to the whole world that God says: 'Do not be afraid.'
Our two OT readings today move constantly between fear and confidence, security and insecurity. Whatever my fears may focus on – how I'm doing at work, the stability of my marriage, the wellbeing of my children, my health, the future of the Church, the threats of environmental disaster and nuclear war – whatever our fears might be, there is much here to address them. I'll return to Abraham soon, but first, let's look at this morning's Psalm.
Psalm 27 contains beautiful words of serene, trusting devotion to God: 'The Lord is my light and my salvation ... The Lord is the strength of my life ... One thing have I asked of the Lord; one thing I seek; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life; to behold the fair beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple...'
The psalmist is dedicated to God above all things, so focused on God that little else matters. And the result is enviable: peace, security, a calm world, untroubled by any fear.
But is that the whole story? I think not. This psalm may speak of peace, but it is an embattled peace, peace in the midst of conflict, peace rising above multiple fears. For the Psalmist also says that evildoers are coming upon him to devour his flesh; an army is encamping against him; war is rising up against him. He faces threats not only of violent enemies but of isolation, slander and hostile talk: his father and mother forsaking him, false witnesses rising up against him. It is in this intimidating, isolating world that he has to face his fears and find peace in God.
Interweaving peace and fear, this psalm speaks of finding security in God in the midst of an insecure life, a threatening world. Generally in the Bible, the peace that we can attain never entirely removes us from the risks, dangers, and heartbreaks of this world, however much we may long for that. Rather, it is a peace that we must learn to embrace amidst our fears, a peace that God gives to us, but which we also need to grasp very intentionally. Echoing this Psalm's concluding words, we must learn to address our anxious and fragile hearts and turn them towards the peace and strength that God gives: 'Wait for the LORD; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the LORD!'
So we come to Abraham. Here's a man with good reason to feel insecure. God has promised to bless him with multiple descendants; his family will become a great nation and possess the land to which God has led them. That sounds wonderful . . . But Abraham and his wife are old and they have no children, so how can God make of him a great nation? He is living with great promises, but also with daily doubts and fears, because to hold on to such hopes makes him very vulnerable. Maybe his hopes are just foolish dreams.
And it is to this man that God speaks, saying: 'Do not be afraid, Abraham: I am your shield; your reward will be very great.'
Something I love about many of the stories of the OT is that they show people like Abraham – also Moses and others – struggling with what God says to them, arguing back, being brutally honest with how hard they find it to embrace what God is calling them to. So when God tells him not to be afraid, Abraham in effect replies: 'That's all very well, Lord, but I'm an old man with no children, and I have no idea how this is all going to work out.' Abraham does not respond with robotic submission but rather pours out to God the pain of a heart longing for the fulfilment of the promise he has heard, but also fearful that it simply will not happen. And this is the kind of person with whom God can do business, because Abraham is fully present to God with all his hopes and fears. So when God speaks again his word of promise, pointing to the stars of heaven as a sign of the countless descendants Abraham will have, it sinks deeper into Abraham's open heart, and he believes with a new depth of faith.
Good, well that's settled then, isn't it? Abraham has a breakthrough moment of intense faith. Surely he will now live in untroubled peace and his old fears won't return? But no, faith doesn't work quite like that. Faith's battle with doubts and fears is not won once and for all but must be fought repeatedly. So when God speaks to Abraham again, to confirm the promise of the land that his family will possess, Abraham once more pushes back: 'O Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it?' This isn't easy, God. I love the sound of what you've promised. But living between the promise and its fulfilment . . . it's a long, hard way, and I sometimes fear it's all just in my imagination.
Again, God can do business with this man who talks back, this feisty questioner. Abraham brings before God the mixture of faith and fear in his heart with an open-hearted passion that is met by a corresponding open-hearted self-disclosure on the part of God. Things go deeper between them. And we now come to something quite extraordinary.
The first time round, God responded to Abraham's fears by speaking his word to him, and pointing to the stars to illustrate the immensity of his promise, but this time he goes further: God makes a covenant with Abraham. To win Abraham's trust, God makes a covenant, enacting a sacred ritual, a compelling, physical representation of his faithful commitment to Abraham.
The gory scene that follows probably makes little sense to us. God tells Abraham to cut various animals in half and lay the pieces out. And then 'a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces'. These symbols of smoke, fire, and flame represent the presence of God. So what's going on here?
This isn't how we make covenants today, but it is one way that covenants were made in the ancient world. The two parties to a covenant would kill animals and walk between them to say to each other, with great solemnity: may it be so with me, may my body be torn apart, if I am not faithful to my covenant promises to you. Usually, both parties to a covenant would walk between the dead animals, to bind themselves to each other. But here, remarkably, it's God who acts unilaterally. Abraham doesn't have to do anything. God binds himself to Abraham, Abraham wavering between faith and fear, and God says: do not be afraid; I pledge myself to you; all will be well. I pledge myself to suffer violence, the worst violence a human might fear, if that is what my covenant faithfulness to you requires. That is my commitment to you. It does not depend on you and the unreliable quality of your response to me. So do not be afraid.
This story of God making covenant with Abraham looks ahead to what God was yet to do for us all in Jesus, the great covenant in which God binds himself for the world's salvation, in which, outside Jerusalem, the body of Jesus, the Son of God, is broken apart to bring us peace.
God's response to our fear is to make covenant with us, costly covenant, and call us to trust that he will always be our God. God takes the risk of creating a world that can and does go wrong, where his beloved creatures turn from him and so fall into great insecurity, fear and pain. But God does not remain aloof from this frightening world; God steps right into its insecurity and violence and in Jesus, crucified and risen, God makes covenant with us, binds himself to us. In the death of Jesus, God says to us: 'Here I am. Look at me. My loving purposes for you and all my creation will be fulfilled whatever the cost, even if I must suffer the most terrible darkness, even if my body must be broken apart.' And in the resurrection of Jesus we see that the covenant love of God is not defeated; he is rejected, he is crucified, but he rises from the dead and the word of the risen Jesus to us is always: 'Do not be afraid. Peace be with you.'
'Peace be with you': words that the risen Jesus speaks to anxious disciples, hiding fearfully behind locked doors. In a few minutes we will greet each other with those same words: 'Peace be with you', or 'The Peace of Christ.' How significant this is, that in our worship we greet each other with the peace of the crucified and risen Christ. We invoke his peace upon each other. We tell each other that, whatever our fears might be, Christ says to us: 'Peace be with you'.
So as we move ahead in the pilgrimage from fear to peace, we need each other; we depend on the Body of Christ. Yes, there are things that we each have to do for ourselves, burdens we must each bear; like Abraham, like the psalmist, we may at times have to struggle alone in honest, open-hearted prayer about our doubts and fears. But in the Body of Christ we are called to bear one another's burdens, walk with each other, share each other's joys and sufferings, hopes and fears. We are to be channels of Christ's peace to one another, and indeed to the wider world around us, asking ourselves how we can be channels of the goodness of God, the peace of Christ, in a world full of injustice and fear. How we might be channels of peace to refugees is a question that especially arises for us, as individuals and as a church.
As always, the eucharist that we celebrate week by week brings everything into focus. Here we are reminded of God's faithful covenant love. In the broken body and poured out blood of Jesus, God binds himself to us and says: 'I am for you. Do not be afraid. Peace be with you.' As God's covenant people, we accept the gift of God's peace and pray that we will be channels of it to one another, and to all those whom God calls us to serve in Christ's name.
David Marshall