We humans are a fearful bunch.

There’s hardly a thing we’re not afraid of, including all sorts of things that should ideally not be sources of fear in our lives. That may include love, peace, and justice. Each of these things can make big demands on us. How about honesty or intimacy? Or forgiveness, second chances, trust, or even abundance. It sounds weird, but folks tend to get more nervous about money when they get some. Sometimes we are even afraid to learn, afraid of our epiphanies, or afraid of growing. When those things happen, we might have to do something about it. And that can be scary.

So, if you’re keeping track, we’re afraid of basically anything good that God might be up to. Justice, love, grace, growth, new life, etc.

Last week, one of the folks in our adult forum asked about what it means to be afraid of God. We hear that in Scripture, right? The fear of God is a good thing in Scripture, but it sounds not so good to be required to be afraid of God. Folks in the group talked about awe as a way of describing a healthy fear of God. We can feel awe in the face of God’s presence and the unsettling wonder of experiencing God’s reality in our lives.

Today I’m also wondering about the fear of God in a new way. I think we are or can be afraid of God’s action in our lives, even as we are given good and beautiful things.

It is scary when we hand our lives over to God. If it weren’t scary, we wouldn’t struggle so to do it. We wouldn’t struggle so to love our brothers and sisters, which (btw) includes all the people who we wish weren’t our brothers and sisters. All the folks who don’t believe like us, act like us, look like us, or vote like us. We wouldn’t struggle to allow people to be who they are, as they are. We wouldn’t have the knee jerk reaction of using our limited and often harmful human capacities to exert control over others if they are doing something we don’t like.

If we were living in the flow of God’s love, we could listen well, be compassionate and curious, and be willing to changed for the sake of loving one another.

The gospel message (on the purple paper) says that we are to live in Jesus, just as he lives in us. I love this image of living in Jesus. I also love that Jesus says he lives in me. And I love that it’s not an either/or situation. It’s not that Christ is out there, around me, but not in me. And it’s also not that I have Christ close to me and my heart, but the rest of the world is suspect except for a few trustworthy souls.

Christ is in me, Christ is in you, and Christ is everywhere. We live in Christ.

Us humans, in our fear-prone ways, tend to draw boundaries between ourselves and the world, ourselves and each other for the sake of self-protection. It seems to me that Jesus is saying something very different.

“Live in me,” he says.

To live in Jesus, to have our whole lives in Jesus means that Jesus is expansive enough to live in … to state the obvious. But if we take this seriously, we may to have expand our imaginations about what this means.

The Christ that is in me is also in you. We generally get that, yes? But what about the space in between us? What about in the air we breathe, the oceans, and all of Creation? Could it be that Christ is woven into the fabric of our world, all the way through, regardless of the boundaries that we take so seriously.

Jesus says, “Live in me.” What if we already do and that’s just the nature of the world? The difference that Jesus is inviting us into is a relationship where we know we live woven into the heart of God and we live accordingly. Might that change your experience of the world, if we contemplate that our very being, our very world that surrounds us is full of Christ, full of God’s love for us. Not just here and there, but everywhere.

Richard Rohr, the Franciscan friar who I mention occasionally, talks about how we live in a “Christ-soaked world.” That everywhere we see, everything we touch, every moment of every day is full of Christ, full of our Holy One being present for us, with us, in us and in all things. Christian mystics have said similar things across the centuries. We are surrounded, enfolded, imbued with God’s own presence. Our bodies, our church here, our fellow congregants, but also our city, our rivers, our sky, our world is alive and living in Christ. And Christ is alive in us.

What impact might that have on our fear? For me, if I sit with this thought, pray on it, and let it open up in my mind, I find I can breathe a little deeper and my shoulders relax a tough. I won’t say that it melts all my fear because I am human and to be human, apparently, is to be afraid. But it softens to think there’s not a person, not a place, not a moment that is not completely held and completely imbued with the presence of Christ. That is Good News to me.

Of course, we may not always know and experience the Christ-soaked nature of our world. If we did, our world would be a different place, right? But, when those moments of revelation come, when we see the world through the eyes of love, when we see Christ in the world, in each other, or in nature, doesn’t it feel like what we see in those moments is truer than our every day, humdrum experience of seeing?

When have you felt this? When gazing into the face of your new child or grandchild? Or being stopped in your tracks by a glorious sunset that feels like God’s showing off just for you? Or on a perfect trail? Staring at the ocean? With friends around a table and shared meal?

The 1 John text tells us “there is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.” All of our fears, all of the ways we protect ourselves from change can and do soften in the experience of love. We can change. We can let ourselves be transformed and molded as if we are indeed the clay that is molded by our Heavenly Potter.  When we trust the people around us and trust the environments where we are, we can let our rigid ways of self-protection soften. Our fears can mellow out and even take a back seat. Fear does not need to have access to the steering wheel … or the break pedal. Your loving, Christ-soaked self gets to have the driver’s seat. Your Christ-imbued heart can lead the way.

The world yells all the time about all the reasons we should be terrified; all the reasons why we should protect ourselves, arm ourselves, lock the doors, and control every single thing we can. All the reasons why we should hustle to the point of breaking. All the reasons why we can’t risk listening to each other. All the reasons why we must close our hearts to suffering.

To that, Jesus says live in me, as I live in you. As Trappist monk Thomas Merton wrote, “there is a hidden wholeness” in our world. That hidden wholeness is Christ in our midst, in our world, everywhere we look. We cannot be separated from Christ, even as we might try to in the depths of our fears.

In those moments of softened hearts, softened boundaries, we may hear a question from someone like the Ethiopian eunuch, someone who should not be included given social and cultural realities, asking, “What is to prevent me from being baptized?” What is to prevent me from being loved? Included? Cared about? Wanted? The Ethiopian got it right away as Philip was teaching. He got that Jesus loved him. And if Jesus loved him, then what is there in this human world to prevent him from beginning his life in faith right then?

In Christ, there is nothing to prevent these things. When we live in Christ, live in love, our fears melt away…or are at least relegated to the backseat. When this happens, we can include, love, and care. And let it be known and seen in how we live and care for others. However, in our fear, we can find many, many reasons to withhold our kindness, love, and care. In our fear, we will always have quick and easy justification for why we hate who we hate and why we judge who we judge. Our logic may even be sound. But we also know this road of self-protection. It ultimately constricts us and hurts others.

Jesus’ path and invitation is to live in the expansiveness of his love for us and all that is. His world is bigger than our human scale worlds.

I encourage you to consider where your fear in life is the most intense? What constricts you? What makes your body tense? Can you bring this into prayer? During the prayers of the people, we will have a moment of silent or spoken prayer. Maybe use this opportunity to name a fear, name the place in your that suffers from constriction. Jesus’ invitation is for all of us to live in him, to know it, and to live our lives accordingly. Living in him means living in a world where Christ, God incarnate, is imbued into the fabric of our every moment, our every experience. Let him have your fear and he will give you back your heart reborn. And for that we give thanks!

AMEN