“Be afraid. Be very afraid.”
The year is 1986 and the movie is the remake of the classic horror film, “The Fly.”
Jeff Goldbum plays the eccentric scientist, Seth Brundle, who is working on a machine that will teleport people and things by disassembling their molecules at one point and reassembling them at another. Geena Davis plays Veronica Quaife, a reporter who is writing Brundle’s story.
Unfortunately, when Brundle tries to transport himself from one room to another, a housefly is inadvertently trapped in the device and its molecules get co-mingled with those of the scientist. Their DNA’s mix and as the movie progresses, we see Jeff Goldblum turning into a huge fly.
When an unsuspecting woman sees what is happening to Brundle he pleads with her, “Please, don’t be afraid.” Quaife, the reporter, knows better, however. She tells the woman, “No. Be afraid. Be very afraid.”
That line was one of three taglines that were recreated on posters and billboards and in trailers for the film but it was the one that stuck. In fact, after more than twenty years, that one line from a fairly pedestrian pop culture movie has become part of our cultural vocabulary, usually just shortened to, “Be afraid.”
Of course, David Cronenberg, the head writer for the movie knew what he was doing. Versions of that line or lines very like it had been used before by other writers aiming for high drama.
Shelley wrote, in his sonnet, Ozymandias:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Isaiah wrote in chapter 32:
Tremble, ye women that are at ease;
be troubled, ye careless ones...
Even Saint Paul was not above a little sensationalism when he wrote in Romans:
For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain...
See, fear sells. Fear is good for business.
Just watch the teasers that are run by local stations between 8 and 11pm to entice you into watching the nightly local news. Usually they involve a question:
Is your family safe? Is carbon monoxide, the silent killer, seeping into your house?
Will the roads be passable? Is your child’s crib safe?
Is your bank account secure? Are termites eating your home?
Has your identity been stolen? Can it be? Will it be?
Film at eleven...
Tasers, pepper spray, alarm systems, tear gas, On StarTM systems, GPS systems, and let’s not forget guns. Business has never been better. People are afraid. In fact, social scientists, the people who study such things tell us that we are living in a “Culture of Fear,” that is a culture that is fueled, driven, and directed not by confidence and hope but by fear.[1]
This fear culture has been created from several sources:
First, is the electronic news media that has grown exponentially in the past thirty years and has a voracious and insatiable appetite for news stories or things that pass as news stories. Often these “stories” which are run for no other reason than to fill the 24-hour news cycle are justified by fear tactics even if the fears that are suggested are unreasonable.
An example of this would be a local news broadcast in Ohio running a story about a person in Iowa being struck by lightning, followed by a sidebar story on how you can avoid being struck by lightning but omitting the fact that the odds of actually dying from a lightning strike are 1 in 6 million.
The second source for our culture of fear is the internet, especially the social media thereupon, and the rapid communication that it makes available through email, blogs, twitter, Facebook and whatever is being invented as I speak these words. These popular communication networks make it possible for quick communication that is often unguarded, unedited, unchecked, and unverified to be passed off as fact.
Examples of this would include the famous Ben Stein rant about Christmas and pop culture, only about one third of which was actually written by Ben Stein, the claim that the current bed bug infestation in the US is actually an attack by China, the accusation that congress is going to pass a one percent tax on all debit card transactions, which they aren’t, and the manufactured outrage that Moslems will be exempt from the requirement to purchase health insurance, which they won’t. (In fact, the only religious group asking for religious exemptions have been Christians.)
The third source of our constant state of fear is unscrupulous business leaders, advertisers, pundits, and politicians who have discovered that they can increase their power and influence if they manage to keep people afraid. The snake oil sellers of the Old West convinced their audiences to be afraid and then offered to sell them the solution that would keep them safe and well.
The snake oil salesmen of this age wear expensive suits and drive big cars, are given big bonuses, and are elected to political office but their tactics haven’t changed.
The point of all of this is there are some fears that are appropriate, even wholesome. If fear causes you to wear your seatbelt, good. If your fear of cancer makes you quit smoking or, even better, not start, excellent. If fear makes you name a designated driver, then good for you. Healthy, appropriate fear informs our decisions and helps to shape our choices.
The difference between appropriate and inappropriate fear is what this morning’s scripture lesson is all about. As Christians we are called to reject fears that are inappropriate and paralyzing and to live our lives out of a sense of hope that is informed by appropriate fears but ruled by faith and love.
In the gospel lesson Matthew tells the story of John the Baptist. John, he says, appears in the wilderness, preaching that the people should repent because the kingdom of God is breaking in to human history. You may recall that, in Mark’s gospel, it is Jesus who preaches this good news, but here it is John the Baptist.
John, Matthew tells us, was drawing a pretty good crowd. Just about everyone in the area was coming out to hear him and getting baptized. But when the Pharisees and the Sadducees showed up John leveled both barrels at them. These, you remember, were the lay leaders of the Jewish religious community. They were the Board of Trustees and the Church Council. They were people of standing in the church and John called them a “brood of vipers.”
The message he had been preaching was one of repentance, remember? So, presumably, these church leaders were there to show their repentance and get baptized. But John did not trust their repentance. He wanted to see some evidence.
“Bear fruit worthy of repentance,” he told them. Let me see some proof that your repentance is sincere. And, he told them to be quick about it because time was running out. The messiah was coming and he was going to usher in the kingdom of God. Anyone who did not get on board was going to be left behind, thrown out just like chaff, the unusable part of the grain, is left behind and thrown out when the harvest comes.
What does this evidence that John demanded look like? Luke, when he told this story, got specific about this answer. If you have two coats, give one of your coats to someone who has none. And do the same with food. Matthew is more subtle. He lets you search for the answer yourself and to find that answer you have to go back 750 years to Isaiah. What does it look like to live lives worthy of the kingdom of God? Isaiah gave the answer in one of the most beautiful poems in the Hebrew scriptures.
Isaiah 11:1-10, which is often read on the second Sunday of Advent, speaks of a time in the future. Isaiah was writing in Jerusalem in about 750 BCE, chastising the Hebrew people for their callous disregard for the poor, their selfishness, their haughty attitudes, and their inappropriate nationalism and pride. He warned them about what he feared would be the imminent destruction of Judah that would result from their behavior.
In this passage, however, he promised that the destruction would not be complete. Just as a shoot often grows out of a tree stump and reestablishes the tree, so a remnant of Jews would survive the coming destruction and they would have learned to be obedient and faithful. God would be the ruler of their hearts and their lives.
Written in verse, his poem refers to this newly reborn nation of Israel as a man, a man who is so close to God that he would be both knowledgeable and wise. His decisions would be fair, his choices just, and his greatest delight would be in his relationship with God.
In verse 6 he moved into an extended metaphor using animal figures that later were made famous by Quaker artist Edward Hicks in his “Peaceable Kingdom” series. Where Hicks took a literal approach to Isaiah’s poem, most biblical scholars tell us that what Isaiah was talking about here, is people. From the millennia before Christ right up to modern times, animals in literature, art, and poetry have represented different types of human beings. In Isaiah’s time the lion was quick-tempered and willful, the wolf was full of melancholy and reserve, the bear was sluggish and greedy, the leopard buoyant, the serpent tricky and sly, the fox quick witted, and the owl wise. Other animals represented rage, greed, egotism, and other human characteristics, both good and bad.
The kingdom of God, Isaiah tells us, does not undo the natural order nor does it make animals behave in unnatural ways. The kingdom of God is about people.
When God reigns in the hearts of people anything is possible. Lion people get along with goat people. Wolf people get along with lamb people. Cow people and bear people sit down and eat together. And, dare I say it? Even elephant people and donkey people love and respect each other. Whoa!
In short, we live in peace because we have found the inspiration and ability to put our own needs, our own desires, our own egos aside and that inspiration comes from what Isaiah called “the fear of the Lord.” But the fear he speaks of is not fear as we know it, as it is sold to us nightly on the 11 o’clock news. It is awe. It is wonder. It is profound respect. It is the silence which enfolds us when we stand before what the ancient mothers and fathers of the church called the mysterium tremendum, the overwhelming mystery that is God.
There are, in short, two kinds of fear.
One kind is the selfish, inappropriate, exaggerated fear that is the result of unscrupulous people hoping to gain power over us. It is the fruit of an electronic news media in constant need of sensational stories. It is the fodder of the internet, the informational junk food of bloggers and twitterers.
The result of a steady diet of this fear is despair. We become frozen, paralyzed, unable to move. We fold in on ourselves, seek only our own well-being and refuse to hear any pleas beyond our own. We abandon hope, eschew courage and succumb to that terrible melancholy that Søren Kierkegaard called, “the sickness unto death.”
Or there is the appropriate fear, the fear of the Lord that is the delight of the faithful and the joy of the true disciple. This “fear of the Lord,” is that awe and wonder that Isaiah experienced on the day he was called to be a prophet:
I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple. Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. And one called to another and said:
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;
the whole earth is full of his glory.”
The foundations of the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with smoke. And I said: “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” (6:1-5)
This is the fear, the awe, the wonder, the reverence that leads not to despair, but to hope, not to paralysis but to action, not to death, but to life. It is the fear that brings forth fruit in the lives of those who experience it, fruit of the spirit, as Paul called it, and the results of fruitful living.
It is the fear which confronted the shepherds on that special night, the fear which results when angels sing and say to us, “Be not afraid...”
Amen.
1. See the Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things, Barry Glassner; or Politics of Fear: Beyond Left and Right, Frank Furedi; State of Fear, Michael Crichton; The Culture of Fear, Noam Chomsky, for more on the “Culture of Fear” phenomenon.