"Do Not Be Afraid" | The Rev. Luk De Volder | February 9, 2025
Gospel: Luke 5:1-11
Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people
Good morning and welcome to Trinity Church this morning. Let us start right away with the Gospel that is addressing how we feel today.
Do not be afraid, Jesus says today in the Gospel. Do not be afraid. But he says that of course because there is reason to be afraid. Lot’s of people are afraid today. Yes, it is the price of the eggs. But the world as we know it, is fading away. We feel displaced, deplored, demoted. Frightened, outraged, shocked. This is not a comment on republican or democratic political positions. This is not a partisan stance. With the tremendous change we are going through, it is important to name how we feel and how we can apply Jesus’ advice to not be afraid.
We used to talk about things unprecedented. But that is not the word fitting for what we are witnessing today. Most of what we see happening in our own country has been precedented. That is why most of us are frightened, infuriated, lamenting the pain that is being inflicted to family members, friends, many people we care for. What seems to be a realignment of power inside the US, comes across as an abdication outside our country.
Do not be afraid. Jesus’ advice to take care of our fears is to ensure that we do not let our hearts and minds be locked down. Do not be afraid! Remember: Jesus was operating in the context of a ruthless Roman oppressor and a religious authority willing to persecute leaders who did not align with the Jerusalem version of the Jewish faith. Do not be afraid: Which means, that, of course, there are reasons to be afraid. But Jesus is calling us not not let fear rule over us, blind our judgement. The approach we are forced to suffer is a chosen one.
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement roaming through your streets an statement of the NIH, the National Institutes of Health, no longer allowing certain vocabulary words like equity or community. FDA research on Antimicrobial susceptibility - testing on which antibiotic is effective or not, has been cancelled because it resorted under “health equality research” which aligns with DEI. Not to mention the task force to persecute anti-Christian violence. These are just a few examples and there are many others that illustrate the very painful and confusing situation.
Do not be afraid. Because this was announced over the past few years. With Project 2025. Especially the fast pace of orders was a tactic announced in advance, by, among others, Steve Bannon. Bannon has been calling for “days of thunder” or for “flooding the zone”. By which he means that the media and the public can be thrown off guard by overwhelming their attention, by creating fear through terror, through measures that affect people arbitrarily.
When all this is happening, we justifiable are asking ourselves how did we get here? And what can we do right now? Can’t we protest? Shouldn’t we have leaders who bring insight and vision? Why don’t we have the character and virtues to build on?
For better or worse, for large list of reasons, we are not in a position at this moment to turn the tide, to alter this wave, or to correct history instantly. But if the change of political regime is reverting to dehumanizing practices, it is up to us, more then ever, to stick to what makes us human. More than in regular times we have to lift each other up. More than in regular democratic nations we have to help to protect each others rights. Three specific things we can do:
First, as I started today, first address how we are feeling. And allow each other, ourselves, the divine, to guide us in this feeling.
Connect with the second part of Jesus advice: “I will make your fisher of men”. He is charging us to connect with each other, especially with each one of us who needs to be caught, who is sinking. Sinking in despair, sinking in rage, sinking in terror. I will make you catcher of people. Kyle Pedersen, our deacon, who led our vestry in a very inspiring retreat time yesterday about how to cope with conflict, he also shared this Timothy Snyder quote with me earlier this week.
“Make sure you are talking to people and doing something. The logic of “move fast and break things,” like the logic of all coups, is to gain quick dramatic successes that deter and demoralize and create the impression of inevitability. Nothing is inevitable. Do not be alone and do not be dismayed. Find someone who is doing something you admire and join them.”
Do not be afraid. Engage.
3) Third: we live by the Good News of the resurrection. Meaning, let the power of God’s love and God’s life be even more your priority. And when it comes to politics, we can learn from how the good news slowly but steadily found its way in our Western political life. Meaning the separation of church and state, the separation of powers, or the freedom of religion, just to name of few major milestones of Western politics, they didn’t arise out of a vacuum. They come from hard lessons learnt, enormous casualties, and a desire to bring freedom and common good to everyone.
That is why it hard to understand how the Rev. Paula White is taking charge of this new taskforce to persecute anti-Christian violence? Isn’t this a way to secure the power of the good news? But who will determine who is Christian and who is not? Will our Church be considered Christian? I have my doubts about the underpinning theology for this,
Unfortunately the conclusions of two thousand years of Christianity, about church and state, about freedom of religion, about human rights and human duties, about inquisition and faith, unfortunately these conclusions are no longer clear.
On a Sunday with a snow storm and with a super ball waiting to start I am afraid to burden you you with historical examples such as the Massacre of Thessalonians, whereby the Christian Emperor, Theodosius the first, in April 390, sought to show an example of his power after a local dispute had ended in the lynching the city’s garrison commander. The Christian Emperor gathered 7000 citizens of Thessalonica and slaughtered them. The then bishop of Milan, Saint Ambrose, denounced the emperor wickedness and banned him from communion until he would repent, but gave him a 8 month penance. Lesson learnt: the emperor can be a sinner, the emperor needs to be accountable. The glorious rivalry between church only got started.
Around 1700 Louis the fourteenth was the absolute monarch of France, known as the roi-soleil the sun king. But opposition was brewing, even within the court: the bishop François Fénelon, (full name: François de Salina’s de la Mothe-Fénelon) who had become tutor of the successor to the throne, the Duke of Burgundy, was teaching this 7 year old boy, the Duke of Burgundy and told him the Adventures of Telemachus, the son of Ulysses, in which he countered the concept of royal absolutism. You know, your uncle king, not such a good way to govern. You can imagine that Fénelon got kick out of court one Louis discovered the plot. But Les Aventures de Télémaque went on to be a best seller all over Europe and influenced the leading philosophers of the enlightenment.
Saint Ambrose already illustrate the importance of the balance of powers and the important role of critical stance toward the executive branch. Fénelon has this beautiful quote that became a guide for leadership:
“To abandon the sentiment of humanity is not merely to renounce civilization and to relapse into barbarism, it is to share in the blindness of the most brutish brigands and savages; it is to be a man no longer, but a cannibal.” (Socrate et Alcibiade, Dialogue de Morts, quoted on Wikipedia on François Fénelon.)
The wording is very strong, even for a bishop, but these words only address the tip of the iceberg of what unchecked political power tends to unleash upon its subjects.
Do not be afraid. I will make you fisher of men. These were simple words, with powerful consequences. The divine summons all of us to lift up our humanity, each other, and to strive for a ongoing deepening and improvement of the quality of human state. Pretending that an imposition of Christian worldview will bring much change is o so precedented, and opposite to what our Western culture, through trial and error, has learnt.
As we witness the abandoning of the sentiment of humanity, we can only pray that we find the means to preserve civilization, that these changes are a temporary glimpse, that we keep the courage to defend the dignity of every human being, that we uphold the good news, the vision, the dream of a more dignified humanity.