Here’s the best sermon you’ll ever hear in twenty-six words.  “The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?  The LORD is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?”  Don’t get used to it.  The length, I mean.  I never promised that kind of brevity.  But, I do envy the ability to pack that kind of power into so few words.  And, truth is, that’s not really a sermon anyway.  It’s a confession.  The Psalmist is telling us about his personal relationship with God.  He is saying, “Because the Lord is the gravitational center of my life, the one in whom I live and move and have all my being, who or what could possibly intimidate me?”  That’s his confession.  Wouldn’t you agree it makes a great sermon? 

It makes a great sermon in part because it leaves an unanswered question on the table.  Good sermons do that.  They don’t answer all of our questions for us.  They leave us some room to stretch and grow and grapple for the truth ourselves.  Good sermons ask questions.  If you leave here not having to think for yourself about what the truth you have heard means for your life then I haven’t done my job very well.  Good sermons leave room for faith to grow. 

Today, I’ve got a little easier job than usual because the Psalmist has handed me one of life’s most significant questions on a platter.  This is one question that every single one of us will have to answer, whether we’re aware of it or not.  Whom shall I fear?  Well?  The Psalmist has made his confession in answer to that question.  What is your confession?  Who are you afraid of?  What or whom do you fear most?

At least for the sake of our discussion this morning, there are two operative words in this passage, light and fear.  Our answer to this life-shaping question will gravitate around those two words.  In my opinion, all of us are walking either in light or in fear.  I don’t want to oversimplify things or paint with too broad a brush, but each of us is walking in either light or fear and we get to choose which of those two it will be. 

Last week and this, we are thinking about verbs of faith.  Last week, we thought about unloading.  I asked us to think about how the burden bearing is going in our lives, about whether we have taken Jesus at his word and unloaded our sins and our fears and all of our anxieties on him.  This week, how’s the walking going?  Are we walking in fear or in light?  Which is it?  By the way we live, not necessarily just by what we say but by how we conduct the daily affairs of our lives, we have already made our confession and others have heard it. 

Some would have to say that, though they have publicly professed faith in Christ through their baptism, by the way they are living they are doing more fear-walking than light-walking.  It is not necessarily our verbal confession that is our true confession.  This morning, the Psalmist somewhat backs us into a corner by leaving his question unanswered, lying on the table.  Whom shall we fear?  By whom or by what will we choose to be intimidated?  We are encouraged by these words of scripture.  “The night is far gone, the day is near.  Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light” (Romans 13:12). 

The most interesting thing about these words of admonition from the apostle’s pen as he echoes Jesus’ teaching is that they were written to people who had already made the verbal confession, “Jesus is the Lord of my life.”  Yet, the evidence of their life was of a confession of people walking not in faith but in fear. 

So, the question stands unanswered.  Regardless of the verbal confession we have made in our lives, are we walking in the light or are we walking in fear.  It is possible, as we read this scripture, to almost use the words “fear” and “darkness” interchangeably.  When we walk in darkness we walk in fear.  When we walk in fear, we walk in darkness.  Is it truly possible to confess one thing with our mouth and yet live by another?

I was in the bank the other day getting some business done.  There was a display of financial planning books.  One book caught my eye.  It was entitled, Get Your Share.  If there were ever a mantra for our culture, that’s it.  There is something we believe that is owed us, something to which we feel entitled.  It’s only fair that we get our share.  Jealousy, envy . . . what drives us?  Are we afraid that if we don’t live a certain way we won’t end up with our fair share?  What are we so afraid of anyway?

A good example.  Tithing is not a rule by which we must live in order to go to heaven.  However, Jesus did bless tithing as a principle of giving and if I can’t give at least ten percent of my increase back to God as a sign of faith and trust and gratitude then there is something amiss in my value system.  Nonetheless, if you don’t tithe, if you don’t at least give faithfully, what are you so afraid of?  I think that what keeps people from tithing is fear.  Fear that someone else will get what should be their fair share.  Fear that they will be able to give so much that God won’t be able to take care of them on the other side.  Fear of something.  When people stop giving, it is because they are afraid. 

For another thing, if you won’t let go of that relationship that is about to kill you, if you won’t let go of that relationship that keeps dragging you down to a moral level beneath what you desire to value, what are you afraid of?
Why won’t you let go?  What is the fear that drives your life even if you still confess Jesus as your Lord?

When we live in fear, even when we confess Christ as Lord, people know it.  A couple of great examples from this past week.  Just about the time that I believe the Scopes Trial of the 1920’s is behind us, the conflict between evolution and creationism is put back on the front burner, as it was just recently in the classrooms of Georgia.  Christians are up in arms in fear of what their children will be taught in public classrooms about the creation of this world.  What do you think about evolution?  I’ll tell you what I think.

I was standing over my father’s death bed this past week, thinking of all the good things he’s done for me.  One of the things that keeps coming to mind for which I’m grateful is the time we would read the Bible and pray together after we threw my paper route every morning.  He would help me think about scripture and how to think about things from the inside out.  My father was a petroleum engineer, a scientist in a sense, by training.  And, what he taught me was that how God created this world is not that important.  What is important is that God created it, no matter how he created it.  That’s what I believe to this day. 

There is nothing that science or reason can ever conclude that will undo my relationship with God because my relationship with God is not based on human reason but on faith, the faith that is God’s gift to me and forms the very foundation of my relationship with him.  My relationship with God on my trust in him as the source of all that I have, my life, this day, my mind, my body, my family, all that I am. 

Even my ability to stand over my father’s bed and know that his death is not the end of his life did not come to me by science or reason, it came to me by faith in the living God.  All of that is the sacred gift of a loving God.  No one could ever conclude anything scientifically that could undo that gift.  Yet, when we get all up in arms about what science and reason may conclude about how this world was created and we try to prove to the world that it is wrong, they see our fear, the fear that they might actually teach us something that would undo our faith.  They see, even smell, our fear and they mock us. 

What would happen if we could stop and dialogue with this world about what we could discover together, through reason and faith?  What would happen if we did that?  Why can’t we come alongside this world and celebrate that science and faith are both the gifts of God?

Another example of walking in fear.  Just this past week two leading Christian family advocacy groups have announced that they have discovered in some obscure subplot of a cartoon character named SpongeBob Squarepants an attempt to teach children about homosexuality.  Really?  How long and hard do you have to look to find that?  What does walking in fear look like?  It looks like, though we come to church and live at home teaching our children that Jesus is Lord, we believe that someone in one moment could come along and teach them something that could undo that gift of faith.  Walking in fear looks like trying to find the smallest microbe of evil in cartoon characters instead of worrying about things that really matter.

Where was our collective Christian conscience in 1994 when one million Rwandans were murdered in one hundred days in a modern day act of genocide?  Most Christian family advocacy groups said nothing!  When are we going to focus on that family issue? 

When are we going to focus on the family issue in our own church in our Child Development Center?  We have identified five families for sure that, if those parents lose their child care in our program they will lose their jobs as well because they will have no place to take their children. 

In this county, the only public hospital has to fight the county commissioners for funding every month.  Yet, if the people who come to that hospital lose that privilege they will have nowhere to turn for medical care and the people who will suffer the most will be – children.  When are we going to focus on that family issue?  When are we going to focus on the family issue in this nation that more children under the age of eighteen live below the poverty level than in any other industrialized nation for which statistical data exists? 

When we are more worried about SpongeBob Squarepants teaching our children about homosexuality than we are about one in five children living in poverty and whole African families being butchered in acts of genocide we are walking in fear instead of light and the world knows it and they mock us and they should.  When people walk in the light, they are less concerned about ferreting out the slightest microbe of virtually indescribable evil in cartoon characters than they are about the things that are in fact destroying families and innocent children.  Yet, that kind of indescribable moral blindness has always been a problem.  Jesus once admonished the religious leaders of his time, “‘Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!  For you tithe mint, dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy.  You blind guides!  You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel!’” (Matthew 23:23-24).  You strain out a SpongeBob Squarepants but swallow central African genocide!  When we do that, we betray our true fears and the fact that, despite our confession of Christ, we are fear-walkers, not faith-walkers.   

You can talk boldly about death all you want to, even as a preacher.  But, it’s different when you are standing over your father’s deathbed holding his hand and he can’t squeeze it back.  The other day when I was holding my father’s hand the strangest peace overcame me.  I had to admit that I don’t know what my father is about to experience when he steps across that line out into the mystery on the other side of this life.  I’ve never been there and no one I know has been there and come back to report to me what is over there.  But, with all my heart, I believe that when my father closes his eyes in death on this side, the Lord of light will turn on the lights on the other side.  And, if it is this light on this side, well, I think my father’s future on the other side is so bright he’ll have to wear shades.  I believe that we worship and serve the Lord of light and if we walk in fear it is because we have chosen not to see the light he has already given us.  Jesus promised us, “‘You are the light of the world . . . let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven’” (Matthew 5:14, 16).  Walk in the light you have been given.  That’s all that is required of us. 

Someone sent me a get well card this week.  On the cover, there is a drawing of a turtle with a bird perched on his nose.  The turtle is obviously walking so slowly that it doesn’t even startle the bird. 

Inside, the sentiment reads, “It’s not the speed that counts, it’s the getting there.”  That’s what I believe about walking with Jesus.  It doesn’t matter where we are in any given moment as long as we are walking in the light he has given us, or at least taking a step toward whatever light we can see.  If we will, with each step we take toward the light the things we fear the most will grow dimmer with each passing moment.  The question stands.  Of whom shall we be afraid. 

How is the walking going for you today?