Transcription
Peace be with you. Those who have been following me for a long time know that, um, I put a great stress on who Jesus is and that we tended to reduce Jesus to one ethical teacher among many, right? So, I've complained about that for years. The reduction of Jesus simply to the level of a great teacher. Now, I don't mean thereby to imply for a minute that his teaching isn't important or his teaching isn't astonishing, because it is. And I want to focus now, this week and next. We're reading from the 10th chapter of Matthew. Matthew, you know, 5, 6, 7 is the Sermon on the Mount. Chapter 10 is Jesus speaking to his disciples as he's kind of commissioning them to go on mission. And so, we get this wonderful instruction in the spiritual life. And what we hear, as I say, is astonishing. It'll change your life if this teaching of Jesus really sinks in. So, listen now. Here's the line that, that our gospel really commences with. Jesus says to them, "Fear no one. Fear no one."
Now, I submit to you, this is one of the most challenging and strange and disquieting of Jesus' commands. It's up there with, uh, love your enemies and bless those who curse you. Fear no one? I mean, what world do you live in? Um, Paul Tillich, the great Protestant theologian, had this line I've always loved. He said, "Finitude in awareness is anxiety." See, what he means is to be finite and to know it is to be afraid. It produces anxiety. It's just part of what it means to be a finite creature. The word that Tillich would have used in his German is Angst. Angst, fear. Our word anxiety comes from that. They're both rooted in the Latin word angustiae, which means the narrows or the straits. Like if a ship is sailed into the narrows, it's in the angustiae. How often, everybody, in life do we find ourselves between the rock and the hard place? We've got a, a Sophie's choice, some awful decision. It's this or that, and it's terrible, and that one's terrible, too. We're finite, we're limited, and therefore we live in fear.
Now, shift from that general sense of angst, of angustiae, to other people. Do other people make us feel afraid a lot? Yeah, and here's why. Because we all know this deep truth about the human condition. We all know there are a lot of things that frighten us. Therefore, if you want to control somebody, you want to hurt somebody, you want to manipulate somebody, frighten them. Find out what they're afraid of and use that to manipulate and, um, maneuver them. Yeah, I'm kind of a student of, of, uh, history and biography, love reading about the presidents and great historical figures, and I, I'll just say it bluntly, uh, one thing practically all leaders have in common is this principle. They know, okay, if I want to bring people somewhere, from point A to point B, I want to, I want to lead them, one method is to find out what are they afraid of? And then threaten them with that. If you've got enough power and you know what people are afraid of, you can get them to do whatever you want. And that's why a lot of us go through life afraid of a lot of people, threatened by a lot of people.
All right. So, Jesus says fear no one. Well, again, how is that possible? If finitude and awareness is anxiety, and it is, and then, and then ruthless people know how to use our fears to manipulate us, well, I mean, how do I avoid being afraid? How do I find a place in this life where I'm not afraid? He commands us, fear no one. Think of the opening sermon of Saint Pope John Paul II. What's his great line? Be not afraid. And John Paul II, heck, he lived through the Nazis, he lived through the worst of the communist dictatorship in his native country. I mean, he knew all about, listen, the ways that ruthless and tyrannical people frighten others into acquiescence. He grew up with it. He lived in the midst of that culture. And yet, it was precisely John Paul who could say at the beginning of his papacy, don't be afraid. Echoing this command of Jesus, fear nobody.
Okay, so how's that possible? It's possible, everybody, if and only if you go through something like a metanoia. Remember I told you before that word in Greek, we translate it usually as conversion. Meta means beyond, nous means mind. Metanoia means go beyond the mind you have. Change your way of thinking and seeing. Can I suggest, change the fundamental attitude of your life? Now, what do I mean? Well, in terms of this gospel, it means transitioning from a preoccupation with the body to a preoccupation with the soul. Look at all these things I've been talking about, the things that frighten us. I'm afraid of losing, um, comfort. I'm afraid of losing peace. I'm afraid of losing my health. I'm afraid of pain. I'm afraid of, look, all these things that affect me at the level of the body. And that's exactly what ruthless and tyrannical people use to manipulate us, our fears of these bodily pains. But what if you made a transition, what if you underwent a metanoia, and now the center of your life is not your body and its preoccupations, but the soul?
Now, what's the soul? Let's call it that dimension of you that connects you to God, that eternal dimension of you, that new and deeper center that links you to the power that is here and now creating the universe. Oh, think now, Teresa of Avila, you know, live in the interior castle. It's the same idea. See, move from the kind of dangerous superficial side of your life to this deep place in the center where you live in communion with God. From that central place, you can look at, at the body in all of its successes and failures and preoccupations and fears with a certain detachment. Because you found a place of peace beyond the fears associated with the body. See, we're talking, everybody, about one of the most fundamental moves in the spiritual life. The only one that can say, "I'm not afraid of anybody," is someone who's moved from the surface to the depth.
Now, make this more concrete. Think of someone like St. Thomas More, a hero of mine. More had, I mean, every possible advantage in terms of, of his bodily well-being. You know, he was a very wealthy man. He was an aristocrat. He lived in a fine mansion. He had the respect of his peers. He was well-known all over Europe, a renowned literary political figure. He was a confidant of the king. I mean, More had all that. Was he afraid of losing all of it? Well, yeah, sure. At one level, I'm sure he was. But see, when the decisive moment came and King Henry VIII, you know, said, "Look, I'm taking over the church in England here," and More stood against him, what did Henry VIII do? Well, one by one, he took away all these bodily advantages. Took away his money. Took away his home. Took away his family. Put him in prison. He took away his freedom. At the end of the day, he took away his life. But More, standing on the scaffold, could say, "I die the king's good servant, but God's first." See, where was he standing? I don't mean the scaffold. I mean, standing spiritually to make a statement like that. He had to have made this transition from the body to the soul. He had to have moved to a deeper place where he wasn't afraid. Fear no one. Fear no one.
You know what comes to mind here, too? Um, the great Martin Luther King. And we all know the "I Have a Dream" speech, right? Which is magnificent. But another speech of King's that I think is maybe as impressive is the one he gave literally the night before he was assassinated. He goes to address a group of his followers in Memphis. And he speaks in these prophetic tones as though he left that moment and went to this deeper, higher place. And he says to them, "I, I've seen the promised land. I might not get there with you, but I've seen the promised land. I've been to the mountaintop." And what was he talking about? Well, we're not entirely sure. But it seems to me he was witnessing to a transition to this deeper or higher place. "I've been to the mountaintop." But then here's the line. Look it up on YouTube. Look up that speech. He says, "I'm not fearing any man." Now again, the night before he's shot to death. So he was being threatened in the most dramatic way possible at the level of his body. But he could say, "I'm not fearing any man." He had moved into the space that Jesus talks about here where you can say, "Fear no one. Fear no one."
You know, I'll close with this. Um, I've been confirming kids. As I record these words, I'm just finishing up the confirmation season, right? And we call upon the Holy Spirit who comes bearing his gifts: wisdom, knowledge, understanding, piety, counsel, fortitude. But the last one is called fear of the Lord. It's very interesting. Fear of the Lord doesn't mean, of course, you know, be afraid of God. I explained to the kids, here's what it means. It means that you're more afraid of not doing God's will than anything in the world. I, I do God's will, they'll, they'll, I'll be unpopular. I, I do God's will, I could lose my job. I do God's will, they could throw me in prison. I do God's will, they could kill me. If you have fear of the Lord, you say, "That's not concerning me." "I'm not fearing any man," King says. "More, I die the King's good servant, but God's first." What are they witnessing to? They have the fear of the Lord.
Now, listen again to Jesus as he concludes this little section. "Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul." Right. There's nobody in this world, there's no tyrant, there's no, um, there's no oppressive cruel dictator that can kill the soul. They can kill the body, yes, indeed. They can. In fact, there's a line from Gandhi, uh, I, I've always loved, too. Gandhi said this when he was being, you know, facing all the, all the opposition. "They may torture my body, they may break my bones, they may even kill me. Then they will have my dead body, but not my obedience." That's an extraordinary line, isn't it? Someone could say that only if he's made this transition to the soul. So again, Jesus, don't be afraid of those who can kill the body, but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the one who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna. Ah, okay. That's fear of the Lord. Fear no man. Don't fear no person in this world. That's, that's the bodily preoccupation. Rather, be in fear, if you want, of the one who is commanding you at the level of the soul. You make that transition, everybody, your whole life changes. And God bless you.