Roll Down Justice: Inseparable Love
Romans 8:31-39
Emmanuel Baptist Church
March 1, 2020; Rev. Kathy Donley
My first panic attack happened as a side effect of an anti-malaria medicine. It triggered all the fight-or- flight mechanisms. My heart pounded, my blood pressure shot up, adrenaline coursed through my body. Everything in me shouted “Danger, danger, get out of here!” But I was on a plane 30,000 feet up, somewhere over the Atlantic, on my way to Africa. There was no way to escape, nowhere to run. For the next week, over and over again, my body continued to tell me it was afraid as the drug worked its way deeper into my system.
What I learned on that trip was how irrational fear can be. My body was completely afraid. But my eyes and ears told my brain that there was no threat. So, the conscious part of my brain was constantly trying to convince the other parts to stand down on the adrenaline and heart pumping stuff. On one level, I knew I was completely safe. On another level, it felt like I was being chased by a grizzly and running for my life.
Before that trip, I loved to fly. I loved to travel. By the time I reached home, I had panicked on planes and in cars and in hotel rooms and I wasn’t sure I could ever travel again. In fact, the fear lasted for the next decade. It become strongly associated with those triggers. One time, I had to get off a plane which was already ready for take-off, and then I just quit flying altogether. And my poor family had to talk me into staying in our hotel room on several vacations.
I’m saying all this because I want you to believe me when I say that I respect the power of fear. I am not the only one in this room who suffers with panic attacks or other major anxiety issues. That struggle is real and often requires an invisible kind of courage to get through the day. If it is your struggle, please recognize your own bravery.
Our focus in this Lenten season is justice, the justice that God desires for the world. We often think of justice as retribution. Someone hurts us, so we hurt them back and call it even. That’s retributive justice. But the kind of justice most often described in the Bible is distributive justice. It seems that God is concerned that resources are fairly distributed, so that everyone has enough of what they need.
I suggest that fear is one of the major reasons that we have so much injustice. We often refuse to share land or water or money or space at the decision-making table because we are afraid that there isn’t enough and if we voluntarily share some of the pie, then we will be the ones who won’t get what we need. When those with resources refuse to share, those in need tend to retaliate, sometimes taking what they need by force. That leads to war. War is destructive and makes people even more afraid and the cycle of injustice driven by fear becomes even more entrenched.
Fear is powerful, and as I said earlier, fear is often irrational. Let’s say I live in a world where marbles are everything. I have 1,000 marbles. I only actually need 100 marbles. Experts have done all the research in the world that I live in and 100 marbles is more than any one person needs. There’s even a safety margin built in. If I lose a few of my marbles, I will still have enough. There are other people who only have 5 marbles. They will die without some of mine. I feel sorry for them, but as long as I’m controlled by my fear, no one will be able to convince me that I’ll be safe if I give away some of my marbles. I am perpetuating injustice, not because I want to be mean or selfish, but because I am afraid. And my fear is so powerful that it blocks what the rest of my brain wants me to know, that I am perfectly safe with 100 marbles.
We live in a world that often works like that. Into that reality, we hear these words from Paul to the Romans “If God is for us, who is against us? . . . For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
The great theologian Paul Tillich thought these were among the most powerful words ever written. He says, “Their sound is able to grasp human souls in desperate situations. In my own experience they have proved to be stronger than the sound of exploding shells, of weeping at open graves, of the sighs of the sick, of the moaning of the dying. They are stronger than the self-accusation of those who are in despair about themselves and they prevail over the permanent whisper of anxiety in the depth our being. [1]
“The permanent whisper of anxiety in the depth of our being” – that phrase sums up so much.
I have a friend who often says “you can’t fix stupid.” It seems to me that you can’t fix fear. At least you can’t fix it with the facts. But what Paul is saying is that love casts out fear. If fear is irrational, the best remedy will not depend on logic. So, it is a very good thing that the love of God is above and beyond all human categories. It transcends rational and irrational. It does not depend on the facts at hand or our worthiness or whether or not we have all our marbles. It is a force all its own.
I picture God’s love like a boundless ocean. Every experience with God enables me to trust that love a little bit more. As I relax and let myself float on that love, I release a little bit of fear and take on a little bit more courage. And then it happens again, and I find myself held and supported by this power, and I release more fear and become more courageous. I think that some people get to the place where they are no longer afraid of pain, of persecution or public ridicule or even of death, because they come to sense the strength and power of God’s love and they know it is enough. It is all they will ever need.
For most of us, fear is still powerful though, isn’t it? And that’s not altogether bad. Fear is what warns us when we’re too close to the fire and about to be burned. Fear has us stepping back from the edge when we’re mountain climbing. Fear may save us from our own stupidity and for some of us, that requires a super power. So, for good reason, most of us don’t relinquish our fears all at once.
I so appreciated D’s willingness to share his story with us today. He first shared it with me a couple of weeks ago. D was in pain before the surgery. Pain makes us afraid, for sure. And surgery is a big deal. But then he had conversation with his surgeon. She spent enough time with D that he understood what was going on in his body and why having the surgery was a good decision. He gained confidence in her and in his decision and that left him at peace before the surgery. By the time of our conversation a few days afterwards, he said that he realized that he been in God’s hands the whole time. What I heard was D articulating a deeper understanding of what it is to be held in God’s loving care. Nothing can separate him from that love.
And here’s the other part. I have known D long enough to know that public speaking is not his thing. Stepping up to the microphone this morning was a brave thing to do. Love casts out fear. The more deeply we know the love of God, the more courageous we dare to be.
And because not everything is logical, sometimes the more courageous we can be, the more we will experience the love of God. Karim Sulayman is a Lebanese-American who was feeling particularly afraid a couple of years ago. But instead of giving in to that fear, he courageously went out and asked strangers to be brave with him. This is how it happened:
Karim Sulayman “I Trust You” https://vimeo.com/193125533
What if we could go through life exhibiting that kind of trust? I don’t mean wearing a sign and a blindfold, but just allowing God’s love to empower our courage as live our lives.
Imagine that we could step out every day in the radical trust that nothing, nothing, nothing can separate us from God’s love. Without fear, we will share open-heartedly, and our courageous love will cast out fear for others. Love and courage will build on each other. The more we love, the less fearful we are, and the more open-handed we will be with everything. Trusting that we are all held safely, securely in God’s hands, we share whatever is needed -- compassion and care and water and food and money and space at the table. And within that love and trust, God delights as justice comes rolling down like water and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. Amen.
[1] Paul Tillich, The New Being, chapter 7, cited here https://antilogicalism.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/the-new-being.pdf