THOUGHTS OF A MONK

Sign of the Theotokos. Fear Not! 

October 30, 2005

Tomorrow is Halloween: a holiday when scary things are expected, anticipated and even encouraged. It’s a holiday that pre-dates Christianity and was part of pagan rites that were especially popular in the Anglo-Saxon world. The Church in the West attempted to co-opt this festival by giving it a Christian expression in All Saints Day.  In the East this wasn’t an issue and so All Saints Day for us falls on the Sunday after Pentecost.

Today our community celebrates the patronal feast of the Nuns of New Skete, the Icon of the Theotokos of the Sign. We take this feast on the last Sunday of October, and so sometimes it falls, as this year, close to Halloween.  What’s the connection? Never fear, we’ll get to that! Indeed, that’s it: Fear!

Halloween is all about fear. I remember when I was a child and my family lived in Encino, California, one of our neighbors would turn their house into a haunted house at Halloween and it was a very popular place to visit, even though the whole point of the house was to scare us. And it did. There is something about horror; it can attract us like light or deadly fire attracts moths. Its dangerous but still we go there. In this house we would find cauldrons with dry ice sending up vapors, bowls with slimy contents that we put our hands into thinking there were eyes and entrails and who knows what in there, spooks popping out from behind screens and gauzy curtains that you passed through only to be doused with water on the other side, being forced to pass through narrow and small passages on our knees, up and down stairs and all the time we were surrounded by all kinds of scary sounds and screams. It was great fun. But we also knew that we would run out at the end into our parent’s protective care.

When we think of fear and fearful things a lot of other words and images come to mind. Of course horror is one of the words, but what about terror – the terror of being awakened in the middle of the night by unexpected pounding at your door, or the terror of facing death because of old age, illness, accident or war; or being afraid of heights and being terrified of having to fly somewhere, or being caught in the middle of a stampede or a fire or being on a boat and fearful of drowning; or facing a serious surgical operation; or growing old and watching all your friends die, leaving you alone. We can imagine all kinds of fearful situations we must face. At Halloween we might engage in silly activities at parties or do something scary for the thrill of it, but we know that it is all play or make believe. When life confronts us with something fearful, it is no longer thrilling: it’s just plain scary.

How do we approach fear?  How do we respond to it?  Being afraid is not something that is bad. It is in fact a natural response in us that is intended to alert us to danger and lead us to take action in the interest of self-preservation.  It is good that we experience fear. It is very human. The challenge is in how we interpret and what we do about that which has caused fear in us. And this is where this morning’s Gospel lesson gives us an approach to understanding and dealing with fear. What does Joseph hear in his dream?  “Do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife … what has happened is of the Holy Spirit … and God is with us.”

Do not be afraid to act.  This is the first message of the Gospel. Do not sit back and do nothing, you have been alerted by fear of something dangerous. Now apply your experience and intuition to the situation. We do not sit back and do nothing expecting God, or someone else, to do it all. Instead, we act in faith that God is helping us by working through us and through all creation. Do not flee in fear because there is no place to hide.

What has happened is of the Holy Spirit.  In other words, do not imagine that you are in control of your life, God is.  And the power of God is manifested through all of our senses, through the natural laws of the world and all creation.  All of these natural realities are part of God’s creation. We can get mad, protest, object, take exception to any and all of them, but in the end, we are not in control.  Ours is to act within the reality that is presented to us by God. 

But know that God is with us when we act. God is with us both because through Jesus Christ God has experienced fear just as we experience it and because God loves us. God’s love is not broken off by anything that might happen to us, even death and beyond.

We pray to the Theotokos because we know that she intercedes for us with her son Jesus Christ. The image of her that we see entering the church, a beautiful icon from Lebanon, and above us reminds us that Jesus Christ, our true hope, is in the center of her being. And that is the example we are given to follow in our own lives. The Good News the evangelist Matthew gives us this morning is the event that is being forecast: the incarnation. God enters into our lived reality and demonstrates his great love for us. By becoming one of us, through Jesus Christ, he experiences every aspect of our life and then assures us of his continued presence in our lives through the Holy Spirit.  How do we live in the belief that God is indeed with us at all times?  We can live in fear of all those scary things that are out there waiting to pounce on us or we can prepare for life in all its aspects, and when we are alerted by fear that danger is near, we approach it understanding that we are not alone, that Jesus Christ is at our side. We can live with Jesus Christ at the center of our lives and we will be living the image we are celebrating today. 

So tomorrow, if you pass through the valley of the shadow of death, as the Psalmist says, or even just through a haunted house, know that God is with us, because the one whose name that is, Jesus Christ, is in our midst.