More Valuable than Sparrows
In this week's edition I look at the Fear of the Lord and we celebrate St Rule and the founding of St Andrews.
There comes points in our lives where things get tough and it would be far easier to not be Catholic then. When faced with moral choices that garner opposition and pressure to follow the ‘worlds’ lead, it would be great not the be Catholic then. Or facing the more incidious inner pressure that comes from our own selfishness or pride. Even saying with confidence and freedom - I am Catholic, can be difficult at times. But Jesus did not come that we might be in slavery to this fear, He broke those chains. He knew His Apostles would face this fear acutely and sought to comfort them.
Mathew 10
Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him 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 unperceived by your Father. And even the hairs of your head are all counted. So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.
The passage above comes from the commissioning of Jesus’ Apostles. He had outlined the parameters of their mission to spread the gospel of the kingdom - where they were to go and what to do when facing opposition, some of which violent. His encouragement is to tell them not to fear people but God alone. On first reading it seems a back-handed comfort - ‘If you think people are bad - wait to you see what God will do to you!’ But of course this is not what Jesus was saying at all. He was in fact correctly identifying two fears - one that is in the end destructive and one that leads to life.
The Two Fears
The Fear of man is related to the ultimate fear which is of death. This is the fear Jesus is really dealing with. Of course there is healthy fear, we know not to walk out in front of buses for instance, but this vital fear becomes much more. It is in the ‘live for the weekend culture’ to the desire to ‘make something of ourselves’. It says YOLO (You Only Live Once) and quotes carpe diem as motivation. We chant without irony the words of the Prophet Isaiah; ‘Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die’. The Fear of death is actually a rejection of God, replacing Him with ourselves. This replacement of God ultimately produces a utilitarian view of life and creation itself preventing any purpose being found in our lives. We try and grab our own purpose, our own set of precepts and hold all of life in our own hands. But we cannot escape the framework of our fears for as Richard Dawkins observed:
In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference…DNA neither cares nor knows. DNA just is. And we dance to its music. [River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life.]
As Catholics who believe in God, you might say this rejection is impossible, but once again our fear of death kicks in. We see it when misfortune hits and life doesn’t go the way we wished or planned; do we have faith or do we fall into anger and despair? Do we err on the side of the pitliless indifference of Dawkins’ universe? But, because God is good and loves us, in lots of situations He digs us out of a hole - which is the story of Israel in the Old Testament. But then, just like our forebears in the faith, once we are fine, we skip on and believe once again in our own powers and abilities. The fear of death effectively removes Jesus from the position He should be in our lives - at our centre and number one.
This is the fear that Jesus is addressing and instead wants to replace it with the fear of God.
The Fear of God
The Bible speaks about this often - below are 3 verses just to highlight that.
Psalm 31:19
O how abundant is your goodness
that you have laid up for those who fear you,
and accomplished for those who take refuge in you,
in the sight of everyone!
Proverbs 19:23
The fear of the Lord leads to life so one may sleep satisfied, untouched by evil.
Luke 1:50
His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation.
So what is it? Fearing God is not a cringing fear. We do not fear a despot who changes his mind with the wind. God desires His glory to be known and indeed for His holy name acts upon His covenant - but this is not a selfish desire to control and to crush. It is however a reverence to the God who made everything and sustains it. The One to whom we owe our entire allegiance. To fear God is to put Him and His precepts above our own, it is the cornerstone of a faith that says unashamedly and in the light; I am not my own, I was bought with a price. Jesus told us that to gain life we have to lose it. By losing our life to Jesus we gain the God who is Love. We gain something that rises beyond our own observable horizon to the throne room of God, the blessed trinity that reaches out to us.
Fearing God then is the opposite of the fear of death because we put God first in our lives, and because we put God first we can truly have confidence ibecause we know we are in the love of God. We know that we are in Christ. As St Paul wrote to the Romans in Chapter 8 -
For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
So how do we seek to live in the fear of God?
1) Make a fresh commitment to God today
Whatever is going on in your life today - give it to God. Take the step to acknowledge you are not the CEO of the Universe and that you cannot control everything. By trusting in God you a relinquishing a burden you cannot bear. St Anthony The Great said: Die daily, that you might live eternally, for one who fears God will live forever’. As St Peter calls on us: For you have spent enough time in the past doing what pagans choose to do—living in debauchery, lust, drunkenness, orgies, carousing and detestable idolatry. But now, we are Catholics - who are we? St Peter tells us again:
But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
2) Trust the Person not the Process
Many things happen to us, few of which we ever fully understand, instead of despairing over it, trust in Jesus. As I said this is the heart of our faith. God is Love, God is Good and the fact that He was willing to become a man and then be put to death by his creation so He could save it should be evidence enough that we can trust Him.
3) Fear God
As I said above we do not believe in a despot or a craven deity bent on bringing humanity misfortune. God is love, but we would do well to remember He is also the Judge. Hebrews 10:29-31 is sobering:
How much more severely do you think someone deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified them, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace? For we know him who said, “It is mine to avenge; I will repay, ”and again, “The Lord will judge his people.” It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
At the end of time, as recorded in Revelations, Books will be opened and our deeds read aloud. Do we want to have squandered the grace God has given us now? Fearing God shows as St John Climacus says: Like the Sun’s rays passing through a crack and lighting up the house, show up even the finest dust, the fear of the Lord on entering the heart of a man show up all his sins.
This awareness brings us mourning, but as Jesus teaches us, our mourning brings comfort - a godly sorrow brings true repentance which allows God’s graces to act in us. The fruits of true repentance leads us to reverence and love for we then know that only God can satisfy, why seek the worlds goods when the true Good is on offer? We know that we sin and fail and that there is nothing in truth we can give to God to make that better, instead though He takes the initiative and asks for our lives, or rather that we live in the life of Christ.
The Effect
The one who fears God does not fear what people or institutions can throw at them. They act justly because God is just. They seek to build others up rather than see them as competition. They do not gossip or lie, they do not try and use whatever temporal powers they may have to control someone. They can walk in faith, trusting that the Lord Jesus can and will provide them all their needs. They know they are not their own, they were bought with a price. Let us embrace this fear and put away the fear of death.
Eric Hanna
This story in particular is quite interesting because it goes to not only the foundation of an important town but the origin story of Scotland itself. At the battle of Athelstaneford in 832AD, the Pictish King, Oengus, being chased by the Northumbrian King made his final stand near the village named after this Northumbrian in East Lothian. It was here that as King Oengus prayed for deliverance a white cross appeared in the sky. From then on King Oengus vowed to make St Andrew his patron and of course they won the battle beating the Northumbrians and the Saltire was born.
The historicity of all the accounts surrounding St Rule, the relics of St Andrew and how he came to be our patron (and not St Columba say) are problematic. What it does show is how politicised Saints were and how Monarchs and peoples used them to identify and differentiate themselves from others. This can diminish for some the doctrine of the Communion of Saints when we look at someone like St Rule. However I would like to wave a friendly hand of faith and say that for many of the Saints I have covered in the Coracle there is good evidence for their existence, and if you do believe in the communion of Saints then we should feel that we can ask for their intercession. We can allow ourselves some doubt when it comes to some of the legendary material around many of them, but it does not mean we have to have throw the baby out with the bath water!