Whom then Shall We Fear? (So We Dare to Believe)

Sermon preached at the Church of St. Luke & St. Simon Cyrene, Rochester, NY on Annual Meeting Sunday, the 3rd Sunday after the Epiphany, January 27, 2008. Psalm 27, 1 Corinthians 1:10-18, Matthew 4:12-23

This sermon has a refrain, at least for awhile at the beginning and at the end. It is the first verse of Psalm 27:

The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom then shall I fear?

I want to do the perhaps unorthodox thing of beginning my sermon for this Annual Meeting by articulating our fears. Yes, I’m going to tell you of what we should be afraid.

The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom then shall I fear?

Let me say from the outset that the question the first verse of Psalm 27 asks may seem to be a rhetorical one, and perhaps the original writer did mean it that way, but I think it is a very real question, and that the answer to it is almost always both “many things” and “nothing.”

So here goes, what I perceive to be our top five fears, but let us begin:

The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom then shall I fear?

Fear number one: money. There is not enough. You as individuals don’t have enough and we as a parish don’t have enough. As a parish we are calling on households to give more, particularly through our Capital Campaign, and at the precise moment when Chicken Little seems to have taken over the economic pundits. The sky is falling or is about to fall, depending on to whom you listen.

And we as a parish continue to eat into our endowment. Our endowment dipped below—although only slightly below—a million dollars by the end of 2007, and we will use somewhere between 12% and 15% of it this year for operating expenses. That is not a prudent action by anybody’s estimation, and it means, as is obvious to everyone, that it cannot last forever without significant replenishment.

And so we sing, not being sure of the answer

The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom then shall I fear?

Fear two: growth. We are not growing fast enough, in fact, this past year our communicant numbers shrunk a bit, although average attendance was up a bit. Bottom line, we need more people, and most of us are in a quandary about where they come from and how they get here.

And so we sing, not being sure of the answer:

The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom then shall I fear?

Fear number three: we are doing so many things and there are too few of us doing them. Great God in heaven, the rector set out seven agenda items for last year in addition to ongoing programs. How far can we be stretched? How much time do we have to give to church-related stuff in a world that pulls us in so many different directions?

And so we sing, not being sure of the answer:

The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom then shall I fear?

Fear number four: is the rector OK? Am I going to be OK? You lost me for two months and now you’ve only got me half time. When does this end? It’s a question I cannot answer in any way but theoretical.

And so we sing, not being sure of the answer:

The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom then shall I fear?

Fear number five: we’re doing a good bit of work on our building but anyone who’s paying any attention at all knows that it is only a small dent in the needs of these old buildings, needs that will keep catching up with us.

And so we sing, not being sure of the answer:

The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom then shall I fear?

We have plenty to fear, and fear is real. It cannot be wished away, nor overcome by a burst of superficial optimism nor simply dismissed even if Jesus did say over and over again, “Do not be afraid.” Even he was afraid in the garden before the crucifixion.

Now I do believe that God longs for us not to be afraid, and provides us with the power to overcome our fears, but I also believe that we start to tap into that power by acknowledging of what we are afraid. Fears that are named are fears with which we can begin to deal.

And how do we deal with them? What is the power to overcome them? The power is the big three gifts we are given by God: faith, hope, and love. These three are the power to overcome our fears.

Love that enables us to hold together when fear wants to divide us.

Faith not only that God is, but that God desires us to be, and has a purpose for our being.

Hope that resurrection will have its way with us in the end in spite of everything that says it won’t.

So we meet our fears with faith, hope, and love. I’ll us the first word to address our fears,

Money: We need faith that taking the risk with our money may appear foolish, but that risk-taking has always defined the wisdom of God. The cross was, is, and always will be, God’s greatest risk taken with and for us, and, as St. Paul says, it is foolishness in the eyes of the world but wisdom and power in the eyes of God.

And so we sing, daring to believe:

The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom then shall I fear?

Growth: We need faith that we will grow in spite of our not really knowing how to do it. The one thing we need to do (and I take this from one of our bishop candidates who spoke the other night who was quoting the current Bishop of Massachusetts, Tom Shaw) is pray directly for new members. We might also pray for greater financial resources. It means something that we are somewhat shy about praying for these things. But pray we must.

And so we sing, daring to believe:

The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom then shall I fear?

Busy-ness: We need to have faith that we are enough to do what we need to do, and we are living witnesses that our fear can be overcome. I gave you seven things to do this year and we did them. And despite my tendency to over-function, I was not the only one who made them happen, and when I suddenly disappeared from the picture, you made them keep happening. Do you know what a testimony it is that you kicked off a successful Capital Campaign in the absence of a rector? It must have taken at least a year off the life of our consultant.

And so we sing, daring to believe:

The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom then shall I fear?

Me: We need to have faith that the grace of God is and will be present in my life, that healing is not only possible, it is the desire of God, and that you and I can find ways to keep in ministry together while sustaining all our well-beings.

And so we sing, daring to believe:

The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom then shall I fear?

And these buildings, well they’ve been here a long, long time, and we need the faith not to have them define who we are for good or for ill. By hook or by crook we will find a way to maintain them, and, if not, we will still be the church.

And so we sing, daring to believe:

The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom then shall I fear?

The disciples once came to Jesus in a moment of stunning honesty and said, “Increase our faith” (Luke 17:5). This after they seemed to have shown so much faith in following “immediately,” as we heard in this morning’s reading, and kept at it with a teacher who was always on the edge of things. I have no doubt that they were asking out of fear, out of a sense of being stretched too thin and the frustration of not quite getting it. It was a plaintive cry that could just as well be our own as it was theirs. “Increase our faith!”

The important thing is that they asked, and I have no doubt they received even though they were yet to have more moments of doubt and fear and despair. Yet in the end they were the people who “turned the world upside down.”

Let us pray in the face of all our fears, “Increase our faith.” Let this be our theme this year, and let it be my charge to you, church. Not seven things this year, although all of them need continuing, but mostly right now we need one thing and it’s the one thing God is good at, “Increase our faith.”

And so we sing, daring to believe:

The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom then shall I fear?