Proper 7

“A bald head is like heaven; there’s no parting there!”

If you have a bald head like me and don’t want to go through any of the currently available methods for reforestation — typically summed up as “drugs, rugs or plugs” — you may be better off simply embracing your baldness. That’s what John Capps has done. Capps, who’s been described as someone “who could pass as a stunt-double for an over-the-hill Mr. Clean,” is the founder of Bald-Headed Men of America, an organization whose 35,000 members have sprouted from 50 states and 39 countries.

The organization holds a convention every September in — where else? — Morehead, North Carolina. The three-day event features clinics on bald-head care and awards for the Sexiest Bald Head, the Most Improved Bald Head, the Most Distinguished Bald Head and so on. A fringe benefit of the competition is the all-female judging panel whose members caress the competing scalps to judge how they feel.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus says that the “hairs of your head are all counted.” Granted, counting the hairs of some heads is a less time-consuming job than counting the hairs on some other heads. But Jesus wasn’t trying to be funny here. He was talking quite seriously about the reality that those who participated in his mission would likely be recipients of the hostility and rejection he experienced. In fact, some of the leaders of the day had already branded Jesus as Beelzebub (Satan), so “how much more will they malign those” who work with him, Jesus said.

But Jesus then told his followers not to fear; in fact, he told them this three times (vv. 26, 28, 31). They should not fear because God’s purposes are revealed (vv. 26-27). They should not fear because God has control of the future (v. 28). And they should not fear because God also has control of the present (vv. 29-31).

In reality, though, isn’t “not fearing” more easily said than done? Franklin Roosevelt famously declared, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” but who among us can turn fear off when it has us in its grip? And it matters not whether what we fear is terrorism, illness, bad things befalling our children or the collapse of our retirement savings.

A lady went to a psychiatrist complaining of a terrible fear. “Every time I lay down on my bed, I get this terrible fear that there is something under the bed.”

The psychiatrist said, “Like all phobias, this can be treated, but it will likely take around 20 sessions.”

“How much is each session?” asked the woman.

“Oh, it’s $80 a session, but trust me it’s well worth it.”

When the lady didn’t come back, the psychiatrist gave the lady a call. “How come I didn’t hear back from you?” he asked.

“Well,” responded the lady, “When I came home and told my husband about the cost, he thought he would save some money. So he just cut the legs off the bed!”

Jesus tells his disciples, “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”

Those words state an entirely different perspective on fear from the one that usually haunts us. Jesus isn’t saying that all we have to fear is fear itself, but rather to “fear that which is truly deadly.” He’s talking about what truly matters, and about the importance of taking the long view. The worst that other people or troublesome circumstances can do to us is still not as bad as suffering spiritual death.

God, and not anyone or anything else, holds our ultimate destiny in his hands. In the final analysis, only two events can befall his followers — life and death — and both are in the hands of God.

Now we may understand Jesus’ point, but we don’t live in the long view.

We live day by day, and, from that vantage, there’s a lot of scary stuff. When confronted by a threat, who among us can sit back and say, “Oh well, whatever harm this situation can cause me, it cannot destroy my soul.” No, we see the threat to our immediate circumstances, our fear is in the present tense and it’s not unreasonable.

There are demonstrations of violence that can frighten us and intense expressions of meanness and hatred that can make us shudder. Physical events that are unexpected such as hurricanes or car wrecks can terrify us. These comprise the grand opera of fear. Much less dramatic are the fears that are always with us. They are the ones that debilitate us and render us helpless: The fear of rejection, the fear for our security, the fear of losing our health.

For most of us, fear of something is unavoidable. It’s an involuntary response to a threat. It can even be a positive thing, for, in the case of an immediate threat, fear often leads us to respond with either fight or flight, one of which may well be the appropriate and even saving reaction. There have even been studies that report that realistic fear appears to be healthy for a person. Moderate levels of fear, for example, have been associated with better adjustment to surgery than low or high fear levels.

But fear can also paralyze us and cause us to panic and react in ways that make things worse. Or we just don’t think straight. Jerry Seinfeld refers to the irrational way we address our phobias. He says, “According to most studies, people’s number one fear is public speaking. Number two is death. Death is number two. Does that sound right? This means to the average person, if you go to a funeral, you’re better off in the casket than doing the eulogy.”

Jesus’ instructions to his disciples invite us to let a little heavenly light shine on our earthbound fears. That will not cause us to put all our circumstantially driven fears behind us, but it can lower the level of terror inherent in the situations that frighten us.

And we should distinguish between being afraid and being fearful. We have little control over feelings; they simply are what they are. But we have choices about our attitudes and how we will live. Feeling afraid is a normal response to a perceived threat. But being fearful is an attitude toward life.

When it comes to fear, there’s always some choice in how we react. In today’s Gospel, Jesus requires his followers to face their fear, even at its possible worst, and proceed in the right direction anyway. That has applications for us even in the face of problems forced on us.

There was an American airman who was a gunner in the nose bubble of a B-17 bomber during World War II. The man was in that part of the plane as the pilot was landing on a narrow strip of jungle. Suddenly, the gunner saw that there was a ditch across the runway. “I knew it was curtains,” he said. “I tried to warn the pilot, but I couldn’t speak fast enough. When I finally switched on the intercom, I knew the pilot had seen it. He was praying ‘God, don’t let me panic, don’t let me panic.’”

Somehow, the pilot managed to bounce the plane on the ground and into the air again, leaping the ditch. The gunner says that he has often thought of that prayer and prayed it himself in the years since. He prayed not for anything tangible, but just not to panic.

We who follow Jesus should remind ourselves that the things we fear are never the final word on our lives. That’s what Jesus was telling the disciples as he sent them out into dangerous situations. We can imagine several of them praying a similar prayer: “God, don’t let me panic,” and it must have been answered, because they all went forward. Jesus assured them that God, whose eye was on even the sparrow, who knew even the number of the hairs on their heads, would not desert them.

The same is true for all of us who walk with Jesus. Nothing can separate us from the love of God, not even fear itself, and not even the frightening things that actually happen to us.

And there’s no combing over that fact.