Father Tim Lemlin
As silence enveloped the young lady she became afraid and called softly, "Mommy, are you there?"
"Yes dear," came the response.
A little later, in a louder voice, the child called, "Daddy, are you there, too?"
"Yes dear," was the reply.
After this had been repeated several times one of the passengers sharing the sleeper car finally lost his patience and shouted aloud, "Yes, we're all here, your father, your mother, your brother, and all your aunts and cousins; now settle down and go to sleep!"
There was a moment of silence and then, in hushed tones a little voice asked, "Mommy, was that God?"
Anthropology shows us that the one constant throughout human history is that we are afraid of God. God has very few friends. Fewer actually feel free to disagree or argue with God. Fear is the dominant feeling that is expressed whenever one of us encounters God. It is so prevalent that each time God is revealed to a person or a group of people in our scriptures the first thing said is: "Do not be afraid."
We as a people have tried to alleviate our fear of God by developing a way to either appease God (human and animal sacrifice) or earn God's love (living perfectly as defined by a set of laws that we believe have come from God). (We don't use the word perfect today. Instead, we use the word whole. It means the same thing.)
Jesus, in today's gospel, speaks of peace. It is a peace that comes from love. Love and fear cannot co-exist. (I find it interesting that the little girl of our opening story quickly associates the impatient and shouting voice of another traveler with God. It is usually the same thing we do.) Yet, if Jesus is correct and the prophets are correct and the scriptures are correct, God simply doesn't grow impatient with us nor does God shout at us angrily. God comes to us in a whisper and a gentle breeze. God spreads an extravagant banquet for us. God sends us an advocate, one who takes our side.
Fear does terrible things. It is used to train men and women to kill other human beings in war. It causes humans to develop a mindset that divides the world into friends and foes depending upon their race, creed, color and economic standing. It is used by governments and religions to keep people docile, orderly, and thinking the party line.
Fear can't be turned-off once it has been turned-on. We have seen the results of fear turned into hatred and callousness. We saw it with the horrific events of September 11th, and we saw it again these past two weeks with the horrendously cruel acts perpetrated by both the few military police toward the prisoners and the few militants toward the captured young man.
Where love is absent fear resides. "Peace I leave with you," Jesus says today, "my peace I give you. Not as the world gives do I give it to you. Do not let you hearts be troubled or afraid."
The power of God to transform the world begins right here with you and me, with us. The message, "Do not be afraid," must first be heard by each of us and all of us right here. Injustice and fear will never be completely eradicated from the world. We will never be perfect or whole, and that's okay. God doesn't demand perfection or wholeness. God doesn't even expect perfection or wholeness. That demand and expectation comes from our fear of God. We come to God not by doing it right but by doing it wrong, not by being right but by being wrong. When we know that we are wrong and can admit that we are wrong without placing the responsibility on anyone else, we are free of fear and know that we are loved by God. God simply wants us to become aware that we are made in God's image, and God loves the image of God - no matter how tarnished - within each of us.
