Mt 10:26-33
Dear Friends, In today’s gospel selection, Jesus is sending the disciples out on their first missionary venture. Jesus counsels them to cast off any fear. He is telling them of the Father’s constant providence.
In the time of Jesus, the sparrows were sold two for a penny and five for two cents. Yet, God knows their every movement. The hairs on the average person’s head are more than one hundred thousand. If God can keep track of these two obscure, and almost frivolous items, infinitely more forceful will be God’s loving care of us. This loving providence of the Father is the central truth of today’s teaching. All other elements need to be understood in this testimony.
Jesus’ message on fear offers the apostles a teaching deeply rooted in both the Hebrew and Christian scriptures. The condition of fear is mentioned almost seven hundred times in the Bible. In each instance, the foremost recommendation, like the words of Jesus today, is faith. This is a faith in a loving and compassionate and protecting God. This is a God who knows how to use eagle’s wings and many other loving expressions of security and protection. Jesus’ message is in harmony with the rest of scripture. The God of the scriptures is one who will deliver us and save us with an ultimate kind of wellbeing.
There are two kinds of fear. The first is actually helpful and reasonable. Jesus is talking about the second fear that is rooted in ignorance and illusion. This fear is a crippling force that grips the frightened person. This fear distorts reality to the detriment of one’s responsibilities and relationships. This is a fear that stunts growth and deceives reason. This pathological fear destroys hope and freedom. Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke with a generational eloquence of this fear in his famous first Inaugural address: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself – nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”
We all find ourselves these days with more than enough to generate this crippling fear. Mass shootings and other expressions of gun violence are off the charts. Putin and Kim are rattling the sabers of nuclear war almost daily. We all have enough of our own personal experiences to make real fear a very immediate concern for all of us.
As we face many fears in our lives, we need to turn to the message of Jesus for guidance. The wrong kind of fear often is damaging to our effort to live the gospel. We are drawn to an ordinary and mediocre effort devoid of the gospel’s challenge and new horizons.
We all have to ask ourselves what kind of fear is motivating us? Is it calling us forward into the new world of the teaching of Jesus or is it crippling us in the captivity of our comfortable but often rigid world that blinds us to our own mortality and concern for our neighbor? Is it building fences or bridges? Is it drawing us deeper into the inclusion of all others as the gospel teaches or into the isolation of our prejudices?
The vision of Jesus in today’s gospel is clear and forthright. What we truly need to fear is the final separation from the source of all life, our gracious and loving God. All else, even the destruction of the body in death, rests in the hands of our loving Father who is always calling us to life.
