March 2, 2003
Victims of Fear
The Rev. Linda A. Knieriemen

I was in the first grade at the Harding Township Public School in northern New Jersey during the early sixties and I knew how to “duck and cover”.  I remember the drills where we filed quickly into the hallways away from the potential devastation of breaking windows-not from the winds of a tornado, but from the blast of a bomb.  I knew that the siren which was tested every first Monday of the month at noon was not just for fire, but for air raid.  For a long time I thought every plane which flew over our hamlet just 30 miles west of New York City carried “bad men”.  If the good people spotted them, they would set off that siren, sending us into the shelter, or under our seats with our hands over our heads.  The Cold War and especially those days around what we now call the Cuban Missile Crisis were a fearful times. Those of us over 45 remember living in THAT culture of fear forty years ago.

          According to Time Magazine, America is anxious and on the edge today. While the yellow/orange/red color-coded warning system is new, the smell of fear is the same. And the fear is just as real, the evil just as pernicious.  Whether you fear the actions of Saddam Hussein or President Bush, the consequences of going to war or not going to war, the possibility of a biological attack on you or on your friends or on your relatives the armed forces, my assumption is fear is touching all of us.

Fear serves a purpose, without it we would fail to prepare for danger of a tornado, or at the sign of a lump, not go to the doctor, or to play with matches. Fear of evil can spurn us on to action to name it, isolate it and contain or destroy it.  But fear can also paralyze us. Roosevelt recognized that in 1930’s when he told the country “there is nothing to fear but fear itself”. Fear can distract us. Barry Glassner, the author of The Culture of Fear tells us that we are afraid of the wrong things. Fear can become all consuming as writer Thomas Friedman warned his readers, asking why on CNN they have to add the terror alert status at the bottom of the screen, as if to say,  Nasdaq down, terror up”.   NYT Feb 23, 2003

Abraham, knew fear. Real fear. He did what we must not do in these fearful days—he chose to let fear rather than faith, guide his actions.

Let’s look at the story and see how this man, celebrated by three world religions for his faith, dealt with his fear. Remember that Genesis locates Abraham’s roots in Ur on the banks of the Euphrates River, which is in present day Iraq and that with Sarah, he travels to Bethel, which is in present day Israel.  At the beginning of today’s scripture passage, Abraham, and Sarah are further south in a dry region known as the Negev, which lies between the Dead Sea and the Mediterranean Sea. They have been called by God to go where God leads them. They have been promised a land, a people to inhabit it, and blessings to sustain it.  But as of yet, they have no land of their own, they have no children, and the blessings are few and far between, especially in terms of food security. The unpredictability of rains, inadequacy of long term food storage systems made crop failure very real, so there comes a year when, as his descendant, Joseph, will do later in a more familiar story, Abraham must travel to Egypt to find food. The predictability of the seasonal flooding of the Nile and the resultant assurance of crops produced a certain and plentiful food supply.  But at some point along the way, Abraham realizes he has a problem…Pharaoh.  Sarah we are told is very beautiful and Abraham knows something about how men react to the beauty of a woman (even a 65 year old woman!), specifically about how this foreign ruler will act towards Sarah.  At his wish and command, Sarah could become his property. To keep things clean, Abraham posits, Pharaoh would finish him off.  Collateral damage of sorts.

Put yourself in his position:  God has promised him a people, a land, and a blessing but as of yet, he has no resources to even begin to see those promises coming to fruition.  He reasons that he will need to help God a little bit. At the least he must assure his own survival. At best, maybe he can maneuver himself into a safe, beneficial position: the brother of a beautiful woman who Pharaoh favors. Abraham abandons his wife, is guilty of untruth, and accepts benefits of his unworthy behavior.  He is a man led by fear, not by faith.

Sound familiar? How do we know when our actions are part of God’s plan or when our actions stem from fear-based, ill conceived plans of our own making?

Abraham becomes anxious.  He tries to secure his own future, because he does not trust exclusively in God’s intention to fulfill God’s promise.  It is out of Abraham’s fear that he devises a selfish survival plan. He becomes a victim to his fear not only that the promises of land and progeny will fizzle, but he falls victim to the ultimate fear, the fear of death. It would be a better thing, he tells Sarah (we can’t assume she was given a choice) that Sarah says she is but his sister, not his wife, since a brother responsible for a beautiful woman would surely be treated better than a husband who would surely be killed. Moreover, in his anxious state, Abraham creates a victim. Sarah, the one who is to become the Mother of a great nation, is given into court prostitution—to Pharaoh’s harem.

How do we know when we are on God’s path and not on our own?  We will not leave a trail of broken people littering the ground over which we walk. We will not leave the shavings of our little white lies.

Abraham’s fear motivated plan proceeds just as he imagined it would.  Once the Pharaoh’s court notices Sarah’s beauty, and Sarah obediently reports that she is not married, but just a sister, she is taken away, but Abraham is set up pretty well!  He not only gets his fill of food, the Pharaoh pays him off in sheep, oxen, donkeys, camels, and…human property.  Sounds like he received a blessing! He’s working his way into the promise! It might have even seemed like it was part of God’s plan to have happened this way!  Fear based living might grant short-term security, but at least for Abraham it falls short of the long-term promise.

Like Abraham, we face a real fear which threatens our security—an evil, unpredictable dictator who probably holds deadly weapons and probably isn’t afraid to use them.  The fear is real whatever face it takes, we are reminded of it daily in the newspaper and television and in conversations at the office and at the grocery store and at school. It’s devastating because it has been prolonged, more than a year now, it is chronic in its nature.  Identified fear calls for action and we’ve been given wise as well as ridiculous suggestions on what sort of actions we might take.  We’ll all respond in different ways depending on our life situation. People have been asking if we are still taking the mission trip to South Africa—should fear cause us to cancel it?  Should fear keep you from visiting New York City or keep your children from attending large sporting events? In the struggle, we can like Abraham, lose sight of God’s grace and sovereignty and allow the fear to entangle us in its talons.  As victims to our fear, we may create a few more… victims along the way: super anxious children who don’t want to go outside, worriers who cannot sleep.  Fear is the cheapest room in the house, says a poem by Hafiz….I’d like to see you in better living conditions.

The Mother to be of a great nation is in Pharaohs harem and Abraham the Promised Father of a Great Nation is a kept man. God’s promise to Abraham has been threatened and that in untenable to God. Exactly at the point where Abraham thought things were in good shape, God’s faithfulness requires God to intervene, and the urgency justifies the questionable tactics of sending a plague on an innocent man. In some way we are not privy to, Pharaoh discovers that Sarah has been lying and that she is not Abraham’s sister, but wife.   Unexpectedly, Pharaoh does not punish Abraham or Sarah, but liberates them, sending them on their journey, struggling afresh with the possibility of trusting God. This little story about Abraham and Sarah illuminates the pitfalls of falling victim to fear, or to letting our fear victimize others.  It reminds us that the great father of three world religions struggled just like we do, struggled and failed in matters of fear and faith.  What would it look like for us to be living in “better living conditions” to use the poet’s words. What might a faith-centered, rather than fear-driven life look like?  How can we “find better living conditions” than a fear-filled airtight room in these days of war-talk? 

I wake up during the night thinking about war.  Now I don’t really believe that I personally will be injured or killed.  Grand Rapids, isn’t going to be high on the list of terrorist targets, but nevertheless, the fear sneaks into my dreaming, into my worries. And I am grateful for the resources I was probably first taught by my parents back when my fears were of bad people with bombs over New Jersey.  Touchstones of faith it is never too late to learn: 

Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.

Jesus loves me, this I know.

The Lord is my shepherd, I have everything I need.

God is my refuge and my strength.

God is faithful.  What God has promised, God will provide, beyond any temporary protection in a sealed taped room.  Ultimately, that is the keeping of our lives.  God controls our blessings, not us, not Abraham, not Pharaoh, not Saddam Hussein, not George Bush…. God provides for you and for me. And has promised us “better living conditions” in fact, an eternity of them.

The author of that Time Magazine story ends his piece by saying that we have a choice to make, not about what to do, but about whom to be.  

          Face your fears.  Put them behind you.

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