No Fear

No Fear. Not too long ago almost every young person had a tee-shirt from this company in their closet. The brand was developed as a line of clothing appealing to athletes involved in action sports, such as surfing, snowboarding, and motor-cross. "No fear" was the motto for anyone addicted to the adrenaline rush of big waves, steep slopes and fast engines. The implication is that fear is for wimps. While not everyone is called to jeopardize their bodily well- being by hanging off cliffs, jumping from buildings or paddling into the seas, there is another place in life where this motto is for everyone.
A Christian's motto should always be, No Fear. No Fear was the motto of the Virgin Mary when she told the angel Gabriel, in response to his stupendous announcement about her Divine pregnancy, "Be it done unto me according to your word." No Fear was the motto of the apostles when they emerged from the cenacle, filled with the Holy Spirit and ready to spread the Good News to an unwelcoming world. No Fear was the motto of the missionaries who took the message of Christ to every corner of the earth and into all manner of danger, including persecution and death. No Fear was the motto of people like Francis of Assisi who stripped his garments before his father and walked away from his life of luxury to rebuild Christ's church in medieval Italy. No Fear was the motto of Fr. Damien who in the late 1800s volunteered to be the chaplain for a leper colony on Molokai Island, accepting his ultimate fate as a fair trade for doing the mercy work of Christ. No Fear is the motto of every teen who elects to stand out from the crowd, upholding unfashionable attitudes about faith and morality. No Fear is the motto of the retired person who uses his or her last bit of life energy, serving others in spite of physical failing. All these people have something in common; they know that there is nothing to fear when they are doing the will of God.
There is a more popular motto these days. That is, “Fear This and That and the Other Thing.” There has been a lot of talk in our local news about possible tsunamis and earthquakes. Even scarier perhaps is the economic storm clouds that some people see on the horizon. It seems that every decade or so we can't stand our boring existence and begin to look into the future, perceiving signs of impending societal or seismic doom. Fear directs our thoughts and we crawl into little caves of worry, marking tallies on the wall for each day we escape disaster. People are prone to this kind of anxiety. We completely forget that we are people of Anno Domini, the Year of the Lord. (Folks, this is what AD means, a dating system that has recently and unfortunately been changed, in the public world to CE, for Common Era, but that is a whole other subject.)
This kind of fear is a lack of trust which is really a lack of Faith in Jesus who promised to be with us always, “even to the end of the Age.” (Mt. 28:20) Christians, let us mark our days with tallies for the blessings we have received and the blessings we have given in the name of Christ, and let’s not keep peering into the darkness because the Light is ever present before us.