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Sunday, March 17, 2019

“Cultivating Courage. Letting Go of Fear.”

Luke 13: 31-35
March 17, 2019
Sermon by Rev. Caela Simmons Wood
First Congregational UCC of Manhattan, KS

A boy who appears to be about 12 stands up on a high dive. He’s never jumped off of one before and it didn’t look that tall before he climbed the ladder. But now that he’s up there looking down, down, down at the deep blue below him, things look different.

He knew, as soon as he climbed up, that he had made a mistake. Bravery isn’t his strong suit. In fact, those closest to him know that he’s a chronically anxious child. When he was three or four, his parents found him down in the basement one day with all of his stuffed animals hunkered down in the laundry room with his bike helmet on. When they asked him what he was doing down there he said he had seen some gray clouds outside and wanted to be ready if a tornado came.

No one would describe him as brave. Not in the least. In fact, you might describe him as cranky, exhausted, sad and angry. But when you’re a child that can effortlessly run 14 different kinds of worst-case-scenarios simultaneously, it turns out you have to be brave just to get through each day. So he is brave….just not in ways most of us would notice.

...back to the diving board. Because right now the boy is about to learn something new about bravery. His usual method of dealing with anxiety is to avoid all danger at all costs. But now, standing high on this board, avoidance isn’t really an option. There is no “chicken exit”.....there’s just down...one of two ways. Leaping off the board into the water. Or slowly backing back down the ladder, which is already full of other kids waiting for him to jump.

He quickly runs through all the worst-case-scenarios he can think of. Realizing there are no perfect options available, he jumps off of the board, feet first into the deep blue below.

When he lands in the water, his first thought isn’t “I did it!” Or “Wow! I am SO BRAVE! I can’t wait to do that again!” Nope. His first thought is, “Okay. That’s over. And I’m never doing that again!”

But somewhere in the back of his mind is a dawning awareness of something he wouldn’t hear put to words until a therapist says it to him several decades later: “Having courage isn’t about being fearless. It’s about doing the brave thing even when you’re scared.”

Courage isn’t bearing fearless. It’s about doing something brave….even if we’re terrified the whole time.

I think most people would look at the life of Jesus and say he lived a courageous life, don’t you? And although there aren’t a lot of places in the Gospels that tell us about the inner-workings of his mind, there are some hints that he may have struggled a bit with the work that was his to do. Jesus often seemed to be utterly exhausted and frustrated and sad and angry. Of course he was. He was pushing so hard against established norms. He had people criticizing him every step of the way. And he was constantly on the move from place to place.

Biblical scholars tell us that a key turning point in the Gospel of Luke comes in chapter 9, verse 51 as Jesus “set his face to go to Jerusalem.” That is to say, as Jesus turned toward the violence that awaited him there. Luke’s Jesus knows that his ministry will eventually end on the cross. He knows that he will be killed by the Romans.

And yet he is able to find the courage to set his face to go to Jerusalem, steadily walking towards violence and agony and pain.

What I want to know, when I’m studying Jesus’s life, is this: HOW did he do that?

Today’s brief passage from Luke is a bit of a puzzle. Scholars believe there may be two fragments smushed together here, making for an odd text. But there are two parts of this text that I want to pull out and turn over a bit this morning, because I think they help answer the question of just how Jesus was able to cultivate courage and let go of fear.

First, when the Pharisees warn Jesus that Herod wants to kill him, Jesus retorts, “Go and tell that fox for me, ‘Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will finish my work.’” In other words, Jesus knew was his work was….and he knew it was about something bigger than him. In the face of threats, he was clear that he was called to keep doing the word of healing….and his allusion to “the third day” seems to hint at an understanding that Herod couldn’t really touch his essence. Herod might kill the person of Jesus, but Jesus understood on a deep, cellular level that through the power of Resurrection-Love his Spirit was unbreakable, untouchable.

He took strength in those two things. First, a sense of clarity about his work. And second, the deep knowledge that his existence could not be muted...even by Herod. Even by death.

The other image that stands out to me is the mother hen. Jesus, mourning the mess of Jerusalem (“the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are send to it!”). Jesus says he wishes he could offer it some protection. He wishes he could gather the children of that city under his wings as a mother hen would do, keeping them safe and secure.

Preaching professor David Schnasa Jacobsen says that image that Jesus invokes, the image of a mother hen gathering her chicks under her wings, is both fierce and vulnerable. [1] If you’ve ever reached under a broody hen as she protects eggs, trying to take one from her, you know the ferocity of a mother hen. She will throw her whole body at you, pecking your arm fiercely as she defends those eggs.

But a mother hen is also incredibly vulnerable. That beak can peck hard, but it’s little match for a fox or a hawk. If a predator comes near, the only real defense a mother hen can offer her chicks is her own fragile body. And so she courageously places herself between danger and her babies, putting her own body on the line to protect them. Puffed up and alert, she is the very image of fierce vulnerability.

Fierce vulnerability.

“Having courage isn’t about being fearless. It’s about doing the brave thing even when you’re scared.”

If we wish to cultivate courage and let go of fear, we need role models who can show us what it looks like to live the courageous life. People who exemplify Christ’s fierce vulnerability.

Our friend Stephanie Mott was one of those people. Each time Stephanie came to preach here she would lean over to me near the beginning of worship and whisper, “You know, every time I come here, I feel the Spirit moving. This place feels like home.”

When Stephanie passed away unexpectedly on March 4th we lost a strong and gentle warrior-leader. A woman who exemplified Christ’s fierce vulnerability.

A few years ago, Stephanie was the subject of a mini-documentary called “Authentic Woman.” [2] In fewer than ten minutes, she drops so much wisdom about life and love and what it looks like to courageously live as our authentic selves.

Stephanie talks about the first 42 years of her life, when the world only knew her as a man who was an alcoholic and a college drop out and homeless. Eventually, she ended up at the Topeka Rescue Mission and discovered a faith community that welcomed her and created space for the Spirit to help her imagine a new life.

In the documentary, she sits right about there in that pew, wearing a butterfly lapel pin. She speaks of going to church and meeting another transgender woman there. Stephanie said that through being in this other woman’s presence...seeing her, reaching out and feeling her presence...she began to understand there was a different future available to her.

When Stephanie first visiting that church in Topeka, the preacher preached on a text from 2 Corinthians 5, “If anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation...see, everything has become new.” Like the butterfly who gives up its former form and is transformed into a new creation, Stephanie began to walk in her authenticity. She recalls receiving communion at church and the pastor putting her hands gently on her shoulders and saying, “God bless your daughter for the faith she has shown in you.”

Stephanie says that’s the moment when Stephanie was born.

All that came after….the bachelor’s and master’s degrees in social work, the books, the speaking tours, the countless miles crisscrossing Kansas, the newspaper interviews, the tweets, the creation of the Kansas Statewide Transgender Education Project, the service to so many city, state, and federal agencies….all of that was Stephanie’s fierce and vulnerable gift to the world.

Stephanie said she couldn’t have lived authentically if she hadn’t gotten sober...and she couldn’t have gotten sober without living authentically. And that neither of those things would have been possible without her faith.

There is something about being sheltered under the wing of a mother hen that can make us bold. There is something about knowing that we, like Christ, are a part of something much bigger than our own fragile lives that can give us courage and strength to do magnificent and mighty things. When we know our work and we are willing to commit our lives to that work boldly, as Stephanie and Jesus did, we become aware that God goes with us, giving us wells of courage deeper than we could imagine.

It’s not that we become fearless. The fears may still be with us. But as we walk in the strength of the Spirit...as we cultivate courage, the static and noise from our fears starts to recede.

We stand high on that diving board, looking at the deep blue stretching out below us and we take the leap, even as the butterflies rage in our bellies.

And we begin to trust that all things are made new through Christ. Even us.

Thanks be to God. Amen.


[1] http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=3990






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