The Fear of the Lord

The Fear of the Lord                                                                      The Dover Church

Scripture: Isaiah 11:1-9, Matthew 3: 1-12                       

December 8, 2013 – 2^nd Advent

I have been fascinated by this phrase “the fear of the Lord” for a long time. I read the Bible and the fear of the Lord is all over the place. Fearfulness is clearly a significant attribute of the God revealed in scripture. Isaiah tells us that The Messiah (a Hebrew word which means “the anointed one” – we Christians use Savior more), The Messiah shall delight in the fear of the Lord. The Spirit of the fear of the Lord will be upon him. Under the Messiah’s reign, the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the fear of the Lord. In the Psalms, we read that the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord and that the Lord delights in those who fear him.

And yet, in all of the New England Congregational churches I have served, everyone insist that this fear of the Lord is part of the old, mean, vengeful, arbitrary Father God of the Puritans who is dead and buried and good riddance; that a fearful God must mean a fear based faith, a keep your heads down and do as you’re told for fear of the consequences faith. We never talk about this aspect of God which is central in the Bible.

Some years ago, I began to research into this fear of the Lord, this y’irat Adonai, and learned that it is fear both a numinous awe kind of fear, like being afraid of heights or the dark, and an obedience to moral demands kind of fear, like fear of a coach, teacher, parent or police officer.

Following this further, the “delight” the Messiah will experience in regard to this fear is a word that also means “to be enlarged, breathe freely, have ample room, be refreshed, revived” and it comes from the same root as the word ruach, which means spirit and breath. So this fear is neither constricting nor compelling, but rather expansive and liberating. The rabbis to had much more to say about this y’irat Adonai, this fear of the Lord, the rabbis being better Hebrew scholars than me. Fear – awe – being overwhelmed by a reality greater than oneself and greater than that encountered in everyday life. This fear is different than the anxiety of everyday life, which compels you, makes you cringe or make poor decisions. This fear is living life with a trembling awareness of the divine Presence within yourself and around you, all the time. Words like wonder, amazement, radical wonderment and admiration, majesty, all are in this concept world.

Which is exactly why I find the fear of the Lord so fascinating, because that’s exactly what I want my God to do to me and my life, expand and liberate it and me.  I always suspected we were wrong to distance ourselves from the fear of God and were missing out on something important. To get right to it, I don’t think you can strip God of God’s awesomeness, the aspect of God which makes God God, strip God of the power of that presence which makes your spirit, mind and heart quake and tremble as they expand and are liberated. If you try, what are you left with? Honestly, I think you have Winnie the Pooh in the clouds with a big white beard. Even Christopher Robin had to put Pooh away when he grew up.

I want a God for grown ups who’s going to grow me up, so I set about finding out what this fear of the Lord would mean for me should live it, what it would be like to be a fearful of the Lord person. I have directed a lot of my spiritual attention the last couple of decades to being just that, to getting fearful. In the next few minutes, I am going to paint a few pictures of what, in my experience, the fear of the Lord looks, sounds, feels, taste and smells like, in the hopes that your own “and then God showed up” moments will come to mind and you might better appreciate them for what they were and are.

It’s been a long night of helping out and we’re both exhausted and exhilarated as I lean down and kiss my beloved good bye for the day because I have to go to work. She is beautiful, tired and absolutely fulfilled with the new baby. As I come out of the hospital and see the sun rising over the trees and feel it and the breeze on my face and I hear the birds singing, and I think…I have just been part of a beginning of the rest of my life, a new life of infinite possibilities and all the church songs suddenly make sense.

It’s been another long night of sitting vigil and I am exhausted and filled with the enormity of what has just happened. The ruach, the breath and spirit, has just sighed out of my friend for the last time and he is no longer there in her body. I kiss him and lay his hand which I’ve been holding for hours on the blanket as I say goodbye. As I come out of the hospital the rain beats down on my head and the cold breeze and slippery sidewalk make me keep my head down, and I think…I am going to miss him because I love him and he loved me and we had a great life together and while his body’s dead I feel him ruach alive and all the church songs suddenly make sense.

I’m out for an evening walk to the swimming pool in Reykjavik when the skies open up across the entire arch from right to left and straight up with swirling fluorescent chartreuses and purples with reds, yellows and blues. And I can’t take this for granted even though I’ve seen it before. I have to stand and watch. And I do. And I’m alone so I don’t have to say anything, but I know that even if I did the best I could would be the monosyllablic, “wow!” Or maybe the two syllables of “Oh my!” to which I could add other “mys” and even “God” if I was so inclined, which I happen to be.

Not to overdo the whole nature thing and slide into paganism, but I’m sailing down east from to Bar Harbor out of Marblehead at night and it’s my turn to take watch. Everyone else has tucked in. With a following wind and the autopilot on, there’s really not that much to do and the night envelopes me. The enormity of the cosmos is right there and I can see it all. Stars that are so far away that they have been born and died in the time their light took to get to my eyes. And each one is as complex and unique as this world in which we live, and they’re countless. And I feel pretty insignificant and alone, until first I hear them and then I smell them. There are whales around the boat. And I can hear them breathing and I know they’re not some fish but a mammal just like me. And I am not alone. Not everyone’s tucked in.

I’m standing on the dirt rutted street of Fond des Blanc in Haiti, or in the middle of the dining room at the Pine Street Inn in Boston, or in the reception at a Place to Turn in Natick. All around me is humanity, humanity in rags, humanity with no money, humanity with no employment, humanity with no housing, humanity with bad health, humanity with no prospects, humanity with no deodorant, and there is certainly a fair amount of sadness and darkness and even madness, but there is also a lot of laughter and smiles, warm greetings and handshakes, more than some church fellowships and family gatherings I’ve been too. And it sweeps over me that these people are my brothers and sisters, that it is in serving my neighbors that I find life, that life is a gift that I am meant to give away, that I am not actually an island but part of an organism called all God’s children, and all the other clichés that are only clichés until you live them and then they are truth whose only fault is that people just have to say it because they’re so true.

And speaking of truth, this weekend as we remember Nelson Mandela, I remember watching him emerge from prison, something I never thought would happen. I remember watching him work with F.W. deKlerk to pave the way to a rainbow nation. I remember watching this 27 year prisoner become President and not take retribution or vengeance for his years lost, but set up Truth and Reconciliation Commissions with Desmond Tutu. I remember watching him dance and smile here in Boston as thousands of us greeted him. And every time I think about Nelson Mandela I believe, I believe that all this Jesus stuff is not a pipe dream, but a way of life, the way of life I want to live. That’s what the wolf lying down with the lamb and the lion with kid looks like. Non-violent resistance, speaking the truth to power, forgiveness and reconciliation, caring for the powerless and marginalized, it really can change the world. It really has changed the world.

I’ve had to leave out most of what I have experienced of the Fear of Lord, because the more I look for it, the more I find it, the more it is right there, all around me and within me, just like the rabbis said: having pancakes with my family, stopping on my walk to work to watch a red crested woodpecker on a tree, walking into our house and smelling home and everything that means, just sitting and breathing and being alive. Which is all John the Baptist was really trying to get across in his most basic sermon “Repent, for the Kingdom of God is near.” Stop taking yourselves so seriously and the things you think are serious so seriously, and notice the holiness, the divine presence in everything, everywhere, right now. People think John was over the top with his fire and axe and brood of vipers verbiage, but I think he was trying to get people’s attention because they were missing the important part, the understated part, that the Kingdom of God is near. That truly is the Good News, that the earth is truly will be filled with the wisdom, delight and knowledge of the fear of the Lord.