Dear Members and Friends,
Fear is not something we often talk about in church. Like sin, trembling fear of the Lord has pretty much become passé in a generation more influenced by comforting sentiments of peace and love than studies in catechism and doctrine.
Yet, whether we deem it positive or not, fear is a word often used in the scripture. This is done not only to describe palatable notions of awe and wonder, but also experiences of divinely inspired terror and tremendous apprehension. When God breaks into our world, whether in profound judgment or with a magnificent miracle, we humans experience enormous emotional overload, and tremulous fear is often the result.
Some of the most successful sports teams in history have been managed to championships where fear of the head coach loomed much larger than anxiety for any opponents. Yet, even this accessible and apparently acceptable sensibility is merely a paltry attempt to sanitize an emotion that cannot be properly polished, nor thoughtfully denied.
Imagine standing fifty feet away from a rapidly approaching 300 foot tidal wave, or gazing upon a nearby roaring category five tornado, and saying, "Hmmm, I am not afraid, but I must admit to a real sense of awe!" Then imagine standing before the One Who beckoned these earthly emanations into being and in Whose hand the Universe must seem like a pocket-watch.
Perhaps this is why the Bible tells us that no one has ever seen God. It may also be why the Gospel unfolds the Story of an unfathomable God Who sees us and draws near to us as a helpless, tiny baby. The infinite infant. The same One looking so fragile in a Manger, later appearing so broken upon a Cross.
Taking full account of who we are, and who God is, the culmination of our faith is not the idea that we have somehow attained entrance to the Presence of God, but that God has made himself present with us. It is not that we have reached a pinnacle of belief in the Almighty, but that in Jesus Christ, the Almighty has enfleshed a complete and full belief in us.
Reading the Nativity accounts we see that even as it evoked a spirit of real and enduring joy, the first Christmas engendered a consistent level of fear within almost everyone directly involved. I would contend this fear of God, once called "the beginning of Wisdom," is also the foundation of fully comprehending the awesome gift of Grace.
In these days when many openly spew out threats of violence designed to compromise our lives by making us afraid, we must hearken to Someone much more powerful. In doing so, may we then be filled with the awareness that to fear the Almighty and Everlasting God, present in Jesus Christ, is to know that we need not fear anyone or anything else present in this world. It is to receive the true peace and love that passes our understanding, yet is powerful in our hearts.
From Reverend William J. Keane,
Senior Minister of First Baptist Church of Branford
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