Luke 5:1-11
When was the last time you were afraid? Was it in a cobwebby basement with hungry monsters in the shadows ready to pounce on you? During a wind storm when the whole house was shaking and the roof was about ready to be torn off? The time you were lost in the Bergen Swamp as the sun was going down, and you heardsnakes slithering in the grass? That important term paper is due today in school, but you haven’t written a sentence yet, and your teacher is going to pounce on you like a hungry monster. Yikes! And you know what fear feels like, don’t you? When you’re afraid, you sweat, shake, your heart pounds, you try to hide.
Being afraid is more than just feeling scared it’s also a feeling of powerlessness, of being unable to change the circumstances that cause you to feel afraid. You may be brave, but not strong enough to battle the monster, you may be healthy, but not fast enough to run away, you may be smart, but lack a single good idea to get out of the dangerous fix you are in. Afraid, powerless, stuck.
Afraid … I remember standing at the top of the high dive at the pool. I was afraid to dive from that high board. People were on the ladder behind me grumbling that I was holding up the line. My friends in the water below were shouting at me to jump. But I couldn’t do it. I was too afraid.
Monsters, a thunder storm, the high dive … it’s easy to imagine being afraid in those cases. But I find it very interesting that there are a lot of stories in the Bible in which people seem to be afraid of God!
The story today is one of them. The fishermen are having a bad day, not catching anything. And that is real bad news, because no fish means no eating, no fish means no money, and no fish means no way to feed their families. So then Jesus walks up and tells them a good place to fish just over there. With nothing to lose they give it a try, and you know the rest, so many fish are caught that their nets almost broke.
But there’s this last line in the story, when after all of the excitement of the miraculous catch, when everyone will eat, when everyone will have money, when everyone will go home that day happy, Jesus tells them “don’t be afraid”.
“Don’t be afraid”? What is he talking about? He would have only said that if the fishermen were demonstrating fear … they must have been sweating, they must have been shaking, their hearts must have been pounding, he looked at their faces and all they wanted to do was crawl under a rock and hide. So what was it that they were afraid of?
I would think that an encounter with Jesus would be filled with laughter, wonder and joy. Where does the fear enter in? If Jesus walked into our church this morning, would you expect to feel afraid? Would you be shaking with fear, trying desperately to hide under your coat?
Maybe the implication is that the disciples did have something to fear … having seen a miracle of the fish, and then being told that they were going to leave fishing behind to follow Jesus, maybe the new future he has laid out is now a source of fear. Or just think of it this way … when James and John tell their father Zebedee that they’re quitting the family fishing business to follow Jesus they could easily imagine their father yelling at them for disloyalty and impracticality. Or Simon and Andrew might have been afraid of going home to their wives and children to tell them “instead of working to feed our family and pay the bills, we’re going to follow Jesus”. “You’re going to do WHAT?”
Maybe this will help: the word for fear in the Bible generally has two shades of meaning. One is the kind of fear that you feel when a big hungry monster jumps out of the shadows to have you for lunch. The other kind of fear is more like amazement or awe. As if Jesus is saying, “don’t stand there looking so awestruck and amazed, of course God can do miracles like this and more. Don’t just stand there with your jaw hanging open, let’s get busy doing the work of God”. That wraps it up very neatly, I think. When Jesus says, “Don’t be afraid” he means “Don’t stand there moping on the sidelines, now’s the time to get in the game. God is making a difference and so can you!”
But, wait, there may be more to this. It’s possible that you are afraid of God, maybe even VERY afraid. If Jesus walked into our church this morning, instead of amazement and awe, joy and laughter, you might be paralyzed with fear because you know that Jesus knows exactly every little thing you’ve ever done wrong. And now he’s here to confront you, he’s got your permanent record, your personal file, with everything listed, letters in triplicate describing in sorry detail everything you’ve ever done to hurt someone else. You better be afraid, and you are going to pay … big time.
Many years ago, two boys began to attend Sunday School at the church I served in Rochester. So a week or so later I visited their parents and asked the mother what she hoped her boys would learn in our Sunday School? I won’t repeat the whole conversation, but it came down to this, she wanted her boys to be afraid of God, and she told me that if they acted up in any way I should spank them, just like she did at home. It was very clear in her mind that fear leads to obedience and that’s all that a church needs to teach. I found it hard to imagine a Sunday School centered on fear and told her so, and we talked at some length about this, but it was crystal clear that this mother was set on teaching about God who wants all of us to live in fear. .
But let me ask you something, and I hope you really think about this: does God get you to change your ways through fear? Is God’s method for change to terrify you from head to toe with warnings and threats and worse? Is that how God operates? Do you learn and grow best from fear? I think there are much better motivators, and God knows all about this.
There is a reason that God is often compared to a father or mother – because like each of you parents in the room this morning, God is far more interested in reaching the hearts of children with love instead of fear. As parents we have this figured out, usually. Sure, sometimes we threaten to take a sledgehammer to the TV when it gets in the way of homework, sometimes we threaten our child with being grounded for life for missing the school bus in the morning, but almost everyone of us tries to follow the “Ten to One Rule”, for everything you might say that would cause fear in a child, we try to match that with at least ten things that surround your daughter or son with lots of love and affirmation. This isn’t just a good strategy that smart parents have discovered; it’s also a strategy that reflects the intentions of God. We are like this with our children because that’s how God is with us. The Ten to One Rule ... try it.
“Don’t be afraid,” Jesus says. There are layers of meaning here. “Don’t be afraid”, Jesus says. There may be monsters in your life, but God is stronger. “Don’t be afraid” means that Jesus invites us to get us off the sidelines and fully engage in the life of faith and service. “Don’t be afraid” is finally a big reminder that God motivates us with love! Thank you, God!
Subscribe