Rev. Dr. M. Taylor Bach

I Thessalonians 3:9-13 Luke 21:25-36

Before the service this morning, I was standing in the back of the Sanctuary in the Narthex with a group of the men of the church. One of them suggested that my next sermon series should be What to Say to Women. Then another one suggested that I'd just stand here looking stupid and be quiet. Then another one said, “And that is the kind of sermon we'd like to hear.” (Laughter) Boy! Talk about producing anxiety. Wow! My sermon this morning is about anxiety. I am told that the government has invented a machine that is not yet in use but may be put into use at airports to measure people's anxiety. The idea behind this is, as a passenger gets ready to board a plane, if he is a terrorist, he will feel great anxiety and it will show up in his galvanic skin reaction (sweating) that occurs when a person is anxious and it will show up in the expression on his face. As I read about this, I thought, “Eh, this is doomed to failure because of all the people who have those reactions just because they are afraid to fly.” How many people have those reactions if they are going home to face a bad situation&a death or a relative that is always criticizing them or something of that nature? So what would end up happening if there would be a whole lot of people in line who registered an anxiety reaction and therefore would have to be examined further? Very few people would be able to just get on the airplane. Inevitably, some terrorist would be trained how to not show anxiety and walk on.

This morning, the scripture readings sound anxiety-producing. Did they sound like that to you? The first two Sundays of Advent are about the second coming of Christ. As Jesus describes his second coming, He talks about the signs of the times that will appear. He talks about really scary things like nations at war and natural disasters, so we could expect hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes - all are signs that the Kingdom of God is near, that the final end of the world is just around the corner. A case could be made that we are experiencing those signs right now. Read further. Should we who are Christians have any anxiety about that? The answer is NO because we are the ones who will just simply get taken to heaven. We are the ones who will be fine. Even though we may experience these natural disasters and the ravages of war and those kinds of things, we can walk through these events with a sense of confidence. There is something better that we are going toward. Because of that, we do not fear these things. The worst thing they can do is destroy the body but they will not destroy you. Your soul will live on. Your soul, the essence of you, will go to heaven. Jesus says pray that you will escape these calamities. But if you don't escape them, that is OK, too, because you are the saved. You are the persons who will get to heaven if you are obeying His commandments and having a close relationship with Him. In His second coming when He comes, you and I will be just fine.

I am reminded of a story that I may have shared with you one previous Advent about seminarians who were in training and had read about the fact that in the final times, the good people will be taken to heaven and the bad people will remain here to get all the punishments that they deserve. It will be a horrible time for the evil ones. The whole seminary got together to fool this one student. What they did was conspired to empty the seminary. They left their cars in the middle of the street with engines running but no one in them. When this fellow got up in the morning as his alarm clock went off, no one would be there but him&in the entire institution! So he would be the one who thought he was left behind. The idea was to create great anxiety and scare him to death. I never heard the end of that story but it sounded like it would be a fun trick but kind of a rotten trick to pull on somebody. At any rate, it's a seminarian's sense of humor and illustrates that we don't have to fear when we are living according to God's will. Oh boy.

There are levels of fear. The first level of fear is anxiety which is a mild gnawing feeling, a present feeling that something is not going to go right. The next level we might just call fear itself - when we are actually scared. The level following that is panic where we are really scared, and then the final level is terror where we are just scared out of our minds. Christians are urged in these passages that were read this morning to not have those kinds of fear. Ruth Graham, Billy Graham's daughter, described her situation. She was a young lady who grew up with much fear. Her fear was that she could not be perfect. She was Billy Graham's daughter - you know, the great evangelist. He traveled all over the world making converts and bringing people to the Lord. She knew her life reflected on him. So Ruth was anxious all the time. Then she said in her grown-up life, her husband cheated on her and she went through a horrible divorce. She thought, “Oh my gosh. I am Billy Graham's daughter. How is this going to reflect on my dad? How is this going to look?” Her anxiety was extremely high. It was holiday time and she had to go home. She said, “I don't know whether I can face my parents. Especially face my dad.” She got in her car and drove on home to Montreat, North Carolina where her parents lived. As she pulled up the long mountain driveway, she saw her dad standing in front. Her anxiety increased to the point where she was almost in a state of panic when she got to the front door. Slowly she opened the car door and stepped out. Her dad embraced her and said, “Welcome home.” She said at that moment, all fear disappeared. At that moment she thought she got a glimpse of heaven - as to how it will be as we enter the embrace of God. Her father had done it again. He had mirrored Christ. That is what we are all called to do. When we obey God's commandments, when we return to Him with repentance, then we get a “welcome home” when it is our time to go home. What could be more of a relief than that? Imagine, being embraced by God&

Jesus was the perfect image of God here on earth. Picture yourself approaching Jesus as a friend, as a disciple. Would you be afraid to meet Him? Maybe you would if you had lived a terrible sinful life. Maybe you wouldn't if you had lived according to His commandments and obeyed Him. Think of the disciples when they went out on the Sea of Galilee. A storm arose and Jesus was sleeping in the bow of their ship exhausted from preaching. The storm was a great storm perhaps with winds at almost hurricane level. They were scared. So they woke Jesus up. “Master, save us because we are perishing.” Jesus simply stood up, walked to the front of the ship, raised His hands and said, “Peace, be still.” All of nature obeyed Him and the storm subsided. Everything was peaceful again. We turn to Jesus Christ and look for Him to come again and calm the storms of our life. We find Him in our daily life. We find Him dwelling in us. The Bible says, quoting the words of Jesus, “If you obey my words, my Father will love you and He and I will come and take our residence inside you.” So when we turn to Jesus that way, all fear ceases. We can be at peace, the peace that Christ said that He sends which humans have a hard time understanding. But that is God's peace. It is the peace that the angels declared at the birth of Christ. A marvelous peace. So we are not the people riddled with fear. Yes, as Ruth Graham says, fear is a normal emotion, but “we are not to camp in it.” We are not to keep it around. How do we not keep it around? We release it by focusing on God, by focusing on God's presence. We look for the second coming of Jesus Christ and waiting excitedly, not anxiously, but excitedly for our encounter with Him when He comes back, whether it is at the time of our death or at the end of the world. We will get to meet Him again. In fact, we can spiritually meet Him right now in this service and experience His peace. As true Christians, when we meet Him face to face, we will have no fear  only a great experience of His love and acceptance.