What do you really fear?  What keeps you up at night or what can’t you get out of your mind?  Are you scared your kids will make the wrong choices?  Scared of dying?  Or maybe you are scared of living too long?  Maybe you are scared that your church will change and it won’t be like the past anymore.  Maybe you are scared you won’t have enough money for retirement.  Or you won’t be able to keep your job much longer.  Maybe you are scared about the economy or who might become president or who is currently the president.  Maybe you are scared of terrorists or maybe you are just scared of heights or snakes or something like that.  We as humans have been scared from basically the beginning of time.  And more specifically we’ve even been scared of God since the beginning of the world.  Remember the story of the fall in Genesis?  God tells Adam and Eve they can eat from any tree in the Garden of Eden except from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil or they will surely die.  Satan appears to Eve as a snake (a good reason perhaps why many people fear snakes) and convinces her that she and Adam will not surely die if they eat from the tree.  They both eat from the tree and then they hear the sound of the Lord God as He is walking in the garden.  I have always wondered what that would sound like.  They hear God and they try to hide from Him.  I have always wondered what they were thinking.  How are you going to hide from the God who created you?  If He can form you out of the mud from the ground how in the heck do you think you can hide from Him?  What are you going to do—climb up in a tree?  Hide under a rock?  God made the tree, God put the rock there.  But you see, fear makes you do silly things sometimes.  God calls out to Adam, “Where are you?”  Like He doesn’t already know, right?”  He knows where Adam and Eve are—He just wants them to know where they are—in a state of fear and sin and shame.  Adam says, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”  Fear…fear has been in the world almost literally since day one.  Ever since then the human race has lived with the constant possibility and even threat of being afraid.

Fear is all over the pages of Scripture.  We see humans fearing other humans, but even more so we read about fear of God and fear of what God can do.  At the burning bush Moses “hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God” (Ex. 3:6).  Job says about God: “I am terrified before Him; when I think of all this, I fear Him.  God has made my heart faint; the Almighty has terrified me” (Job 23:15-16).  God asks Israel through the prophet Jeremiah: “Should you not fear me?  Should you not tremble in my presence?” (Jer. 5:22).  But it’s not just an Old Testament idea either.  Jesus in Luke 12 says, "I tell you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that can do no more.  But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after the killing of the body, has power to throw you into hell.  Yes, I tell you, fear him.”  We are told in the book of Acts that fear falls on those who hear about God’s judgment on Ananias and Sapphira and the writer of Hebrews assures us that “it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Heb. 10:31).  In the Gospels people were afraid of Jesus because of His miracles, as were the disciples at the transfiguration by the presence of Moses and Elijah and upon hearing the voice of God.  At the empty tomb the women are afraid when Jesus’ body is gone.  After the crucifixion the disciples are afraid, scared of the Jewish leaders.  There are more than two hundred occasions when a biblical character is said to “fear” or be “afraid” or told not to fear or be afraid, with the implication that they in fact are afraid.[i] 

But most of the time when fear is used in Scripture referring to our fear of God, it is not a bad fear.  It’s not a horror movie type fear.  We don’t have to be scared that God is out to get us—many people believe that unfortunately.  A right fear of God is fear in the sense of having an awe and reverence--it is the proper response to a great and awesome and holy God.  In scripture there are well over a hundred references to the fear of God in the positive sense of faith and obedience.  To “fear” God is to be a follower of God—to be a servant of God, to obey His commands.  Proverbs tells us that the “fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Prov. 9:10).  A healthy fear of God means you have a sense of awe and respect and trust in God.  A proper fear of God stems from an experience of His transcendence and divine power.    

Fear is an emotion not felt too much in today's church.  Jesus' disciples often felt fear when they were in His holy presence.  It is the fear that was experienced during His Transfiguration, that holy fear that we sense when we are in the presence of God, that fear in which we realize that God is God and we are not, that there is some distance between us and God.  Church is not only the place where we come close to be with God, but also the place where we come to be filled with the holy fear of God.  You heard right.  We are here to encounter Jesus and when people encountered Jesus, the predominant emotion was not joy.  They felt fear.  Interestingly enough, the main people who felt fear when encountered by Jesus were not the anonymous crowds.  The people who are reported as being most afraid of Jesus were His own disciples.  When Jesus assists His disciples after a night of fishing failure, and they bring in a miraculous catch of fish, they feel fear.  When Jesus calms the wind and the waves and saves the disciples in the boat, they feel fear. When the women come out to the tomb on that first Easter morning and find the tomb is empty, they feel fear.  Time and again Jesus has to say to His disciples, as He does this morning in the Transfiguration text, "Don't be afraid."  He wouldn't have to tell them not to be afraid if they were not afraid.

Fear, New Testament fear, is the fear that comes not as part of the human condition, not as an aspect of living in troubled times, but rather fear in the presence of Christ.  Oh, we say we want a vision of God.  We claim that we want God to speak to us.  We say that we want some "proof" of the reality and the presence of a living God.  But there, on the mountaintop, the mystical cloud, the shining face, the voice from heaven. They spell fear.  That is why I would say that the fear that is felt so often among Jesus' followers in the New Testament is not just any old fear.  It is fear of Jesus specifically.  It is not the fear that is felt when we have some numinous, ethereal, mystical experience.  It is the fear that occurs when we come face-to-face with the God whose name is Jesus the Christ.  When we sense His particular demands upon us, when we see clearly His narrow way to which He beckons us.  And then we are afraid.

The book of Hebrews tells us "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God" (Heb 10:31).  False gods offer no fear.  If that which we call "God" is only a projection of our own selfish, deceitful aspirations, then what is there to fear in that?  But our God, the God who comes to us in Jesus Christ is a living God.  And to see in a moment that loving but demanding face, to sense the perilous journey that lies ahead when we follow Him, that is to feel fear. Encounters with the living God cannot only be deeply moving, but also threateningly fearful, as well as life transforming.  On the mountaintop Jesus doesn't simply reveal Himself to His followers, but He demands that they follow Him, that they walk the path that He walks.  No wonder the disciples fall on the ground.  And no wonder Jesus says to them, "Get up and do not be afraid!"

It’s fearful to wonder what God is calling us to do.  Some fear God has called us to actually reach out to our neighborhood—even though it isn’t made up of all Swedish people anymore.  Some fear I will always be the pastor here until the day they die.  Others fear I will leave too soon.  Some fear we might not always have someone to play the organ.  Some fear that we might always just have the organ.  Some fear that if we as a church stay here and just do what we have been doing, we will die.  Others fear that if we moved or did things differently it would ruin everything.  Faith and fear often go together—I would suggest that is certainly the case.  After all, the Bible tells us that “Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see” (Hebrews 11:1).  We fear what we can’t see, what we don’t know.     

Today I would like to suggest—with Jesus' disciples trembling in fear on the mountaintop—that lots of people avoid church, not because they misunderstand what we are about, but because they understand all too well.  Church is about God.  Church is about the possibility of a threatening, though life-changing encounter with the Risen Christ. Church is about seeing God's way and will in our world—a way so very different from our ways—and then having to say "yes" or "no" to walking that way.  Church is also about that.  And knowing that scares a lot of people to death.  Yet you are the ones gathered here who, having encountered Jesus, are scared to true life.  Jesus has appeared to you in all of His radiant glory.  He has reassured you, told you to rise and follow Him, promised to be with you every step of the way, no matter what the journey holds.  And you followed.  Fear God—but at the same time, don’t be afraid.  He is with you always.  Amen.