“Our mother Jesus gives birth to a new creation and we are his children. We are going to have to give up fear.”
This last Sunday morning I woke early while it was still dark. I wanted to go out for a run. When I ventured out, it was warm and still and quiet. The clouds were just beginning to show tinges of pink. I startled two workers coming out of the service doors of the Hyatt. I encountered a man I had seen at the convention centre. The I found a lovely green park and ran around it. A man in a reflective vest was waiting by some cones. Around the corner I came to a fellow with some bags who looked like he had been sleeping rough. Then I met a rabbit, one of us eyed the other with more than a little wariness. Around the corner was a woman getting out of a car delivering papers. I nodded at two guys on their way of work. There was some degree of wariness in each of those meetings. The unrealised possibility of a real relationship whether out of caution or fear meant we had long way to go.
Can we meet in a stance that is not tinged with fear. When Jesus says that his kingdom is not of this world, he is saying that his rule is not based on an ability to generate fear in his subjects. His willingness to go to the cross means that fear has no import. King Jesus’s followers do not fight back when the world threatens.
Jesus calls us friends, not agents of fear.
If you and I are going to grow into the full stature of Christ, and be the blessed one’s God calls to be. Our growth will be rooted in the soil of internal peace, souls that are planted in the overwhelming love of God, given with such unwillingness to count the cost that we too are caught up in similar abandonment. This drives out our idolatrous self interest. Fear is a reaction, unconscious response to something that is so essential that it takes the place of God. I cannot go on living without it, my bank account, my theological framework, or my sense of being in control.
That bloody cross brings new life into the world. Colossians calls Jesus the first born of all creation.
Our mother Jesus gives birth to a new creation and we are his children. We are going to have to give up fear. Do not be afraid. God is with you. You are God’s beloved and God is well pleased with you. When we know ourselves as beloved. We can recognise another beloved in a homeless man, a rhetorical opponent. We can reach beyond the defences of others. Our invitation in the last work of this convention is to lay down our fear and love the world. Lay down our shield and sword, lay down our narrow self interest. Lay down our need for power and control, and bow to God’s image in the weakest, poorest and most excluded.
We children of Jesus can continue to squabble over our inheritance. We must share the name beloved with the whole world.
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