Matthew 10 21-33 eserm
Black Bart was a professional thief whose very name struck fear as he terrorized the Wells Fargo stage line. From San Francisco to New York, his name became synonymous with the danger of the frontier. Between 1875 and 1883 he robbed 29 different stagecoach crews. Amazingly, Bart did it all without firing a shot. Because a hood hid his face, no victim ever saw his face. He never took a hostage and was never trailed by a sheriff. Instead, Black Bart used fear to paralyze his victims. His sinister presence was enough to overwhelm the toughest stagecoach guard. (1)
Black Bart’s intimidating impact on others reminds me of a story about two little boys whose mother asked them to chase a chicken snake out of the henhouse. They looked everywhere for that snake, but couldn’t find it. The more they looked, the more afraid they got. Until finally, they did find it. When that happened, they fell all over themselves running out of the chicken house.
“Don’t you know a chicken snake won’t hurt you?” their mother asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” one of the boys answered, “but there are some things that will scare you so bad you’ll hurt yourself.”
Most of us have been there at some time in our lives.
Fear is a terrible thing. Isn’t it? All of us are afraid of something. Some of us disguise our fear better than others, but fear can make our lives miserable.
The award winning movie from a few years back The Shawshank Redemption is about fear. In fact, posters promoting the film carried these words: “Fear can hold you prisoner, Hope can set you free.”
Take the character Brooks Hatlen, played by actor James Whitmore. Here is how one character described Hatlen in the film: “The man’s been in here fifty years, Heywood, fifty years. This is all he knows. In here, he’s an important man, he’s an educated man. Outside he’s nothin’--just a used‑up con with arthritis in both hands. Probably couldn’t get a library card if he tried . . . these walls are funny. First you hate ’em, then you get used to ’em. Enough time passes, it gets so you depend on ’em. That’s ‘institutionalized’ . . . They send you here for life and that’s exactly what they take, the part that counts anyway.”
The truth of this comes home when Hatlen is finally released. He discovers that he can’t enjoy it at all. He’s grown accustomed to life within the constraints of a prison where he didn’t have to make his own decisions. Someone else did the thinking for him, and now, on the outside, he faces a prospect more daunting and terrifying than incarceration: freedom. This newfound freedom scares Brooks so much that he contemplates various ways of breaking his parole in order to return to the security of his prison cell. “Maybe I should rob the FoodWay,” he says on one occasion, “so they’ll send me home. I could shoot the manager while I’m at it, kind of like a bonus.” He sums up his dilemma in one line: “It is a terrible thing to live in fear.” (2) And it is.
Dr. James R. Driscoll tells about a middle‑aged woman some years back, living in a small southern town who became desperately frightened. She was morbidly afraid that burglars would break into her home. Maybe she saw too much violence on TV, or too many local news reports. Maybe there were rumors of break‑ins around town, or maybe a home on her street had been burglarized.
In any case, her fear mushroomed . . . to the point of paranoia. She pleaded with her husband until he gave in and, hoping to ease her mind, agreed to putting heavy bars on all of the windows and doors.
She was still frightened, so she talked her husband into adding additional strands of steel across the window bars . . . thus making it almost impossible for anyone to gain entry into the house. Only now, when she was virtually sealed off from the outside world, did she feel safer and more secure.
But, one afternoon, tragedy struck. As she was taking a nap, her house caught fire. When she awoke, she discovered that she was trapped. Her husband, the fire department, the police, the neighbors, the rescue squad . . . everyone worked frantically to get into the house to get her out . . . but to no avail. They could not remove the heavy bars in time. And, tragically, the woman lost her life. A terrible, terrible tragedy.
Her fears were so great that they led to her death. Fear can do that. Fear can lead to death. Fear can lead to inaction. Fear can paralyze. (3)
How can we get a grip on this terrible force in our lives? Jesus gives us some cluesin our lesson for today, “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.”
First of all, we need to see that fear can play a positive role in our lives. There are things in life that are legitimately fearful. We need that built-in voice that tells us, “Don’t go there. Danger is lurking.” We want our children to fear running into the road without looking both ways. We want our teenagers to fear driving at high speeds. Fear keeps us from doing dumb and destructive things.
“Some years ago, a research psychologist, Dr. Irving Jarvis was looking at surgery in hospitals and asking questions about peoples’ recovery from surgery, and the place that fear had in their recovery. And what he discovered may seem to us in the end to be quite simple or obvious, but it’s really very important. What he discovered was this: Those who had crippling fears didn’t do well when it came to recovery. They didn’t do well at all.
“He also discovered that those who had no fear of surgery didn’t recover well either, because when trouble hit, they were thrown for a loop. The unexpected pain, for example, completely floored them. They hadn’t thought about it. They weren’t prepared.
“But those who had enough fear to ask the right questions, to say, ‘Now, what’s going to happen? How long is this pain going to be?’ to make sure they asked those questions to prepare themselves for what was scary. No denial there for what was scary. They were the ones who overall . . . dealt with surgery and recovered best.” (4)
Fear can play a positive role in our lives. If nothing else, fear sometimes teaches us to depend on God. Most of us have short memories. We go along living our lives as if we are in control of our universe, and then something traumatic happens, something we can’t handle on our own. At times like that we reach out for God. Sometimes we might make promises to God about how we are going to change our behavior when the crisis passes. And it does pass, and we forget just how frightened we were, and we forget our promises.
Fortunately God does not forget God’s promises. And we discover in our time of fear that we have a reliable Friend. Fear can play a positive role in our lives.
However, overcoming excessive or misguided fears can be one of the greatest gifts God can give us.
Dr. Arthur Caliandro is Senior Minister of the historic Marble Collegiate Church in New York City, the church where Dr. Norman Vincent Peale served for so many years. He tells about a member of that church, a woman named Amelia Rossi who died some years back at the age of one hundred and five. Mrs. Rossi started coming to the church when she was in her late eighties. They become acquainted when she was eighty‑nine.
On her ninetieth birthday, and thereafter every year on her birthday or close to it, Dr. Caliandro would take her to lunch. They always had fascinating conversations. Mrs. Rossi was about five feet tall--a bundle of positive energy. He says she was always in the present. She talked very little about the past, but she was in the present and always looking forward to the future. He called her a veritable “faith factory.” Here is what he meant.
What does a factory do? It manufactures things. Mrs. Rossi, says Dr. Caliandro, seemed to manufacture faith and miracles. On her ninety‑ninth birthday he asked the question that is usually asked of people when they are one hundred years old. He didn’t know if she would make it that long and so he decided to ask her then. He asked, “Amelia, tell me what is that has kept you living so long and so vital so long?” Well, you know the usual answers, says Caliandro: I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I’ve lived a clean life. These are rather dull answers, he says. But she had another one.
She thought for a minute and she said, “I’ll tell you what’s given me this long life. I have learned how to not be afraid.” Wow! This little woman had learned how not to be afraid. Caliandro testifies, “I saw her facing adversity and loss, I was with her when she lost two sons. She had broken bones--a broken toe from stumbling, a broken hip at one hundred years of age. She was mugged on several occasions. She had a tough time in the years that I knew her. But I never knew her to be afraid. And she would always say, ‘All things work together for good when you love God.’ But the phrase she used the most was what Paul said to the Philippians: ‘I can do all things through Christ who gives me the strength.’” (5)
That speaks to me. To tell you the truth, I’m jealous. This little lady had learned one of the great secrets of life: “I have learned how not to be afraid.”
How do you do that? Listen again to Jesus’ words: “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.”
The secret to overcoming fear is to realize how much God loves you. Jesus uses the analogy of tiny sparrows. In the eyes of the ancient world, a sparrow was inexpensive and monetarily worthless. Matthew has two sparrows being sold for one penny. “Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.”
Early in the spring of 1905, Civilla Martin and her husband were spending some time in Elmira, New York. They contracted a deep friendship with a couple by the name of Mr. and Mrs. Doolittle. Mrs. Doolittle had been bedridden for nearly twenty years. Her husband was confined to a wheel chair. Despite their afflictions, they lived happy Christian lives, reports Civilla Martin, bringing inspiration and comfort to all who knew them.
One day while the Martins were visiting with the Doolittles, Civilla’s husband commented on their bright hopefulness and asked them for the secret of it. Mrs. Doolittle’s reply was simple: “His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.” The beauty of this simple expression of faith gripped Civilla Martin’s heart and she wrote a poem which she mailed the next day to Charles Gabriel, who put music to it. Singer Ethel Waters made the resulting song famous, so famous that she used its name as the title for her autobiography. Perhaps you have heard it:
Why should I feel discouraged, why should the shadows come,
Why should my heart be lonely, and long for heaven and home,
When Jesus is my portion? My constant friend is He:
His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me;
I sing because I’m happy, I sing because I’m free,
For His eye is on the sparrow,
And I know He watches me.
“Let not your heart be troubled,” His tender word I hear,
And resting on His goodness, I lose my doubts and fears;
Though by the path He leadeth, but one step I may see;
His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.
It’s so simple really. Only one thing keeps us bound by fear--our lack of faith in God. Isn’t it time you let go of your fears and trusted God? Fear is a gift from God. There are some things of which we need to be afraid. But fear without faith is a monster that will deprive us of the joy of our salvation. Learn how not to be afraid. “For His eye is on the sparrow, And I know He watches me.” King Duncan
1. Today in the Word, August 8, 1992.
2. Columbia Pictures, 1994.
3. http://www.annandale‑umc.org/sermons/s051113.htm.
4. David A. Renwick, http://www.2preslex.org/S040912.HTM.