by Pastor Michael Salemink
So here we are at a crossroads. You’ve only just walked in this morning, and already you’re at a crossroads. You won’t leave the way you came. You can’t. From here the road leads in two different directions, two opposite directions. We begin our sermon with a choice to make. There’s a decision to be made before we’re finished. To the right, you have “Don’t be frightened.” Don’t be frightened. Three times in the conversation with Jesus which St. Matthew brings us into: “Don’t be frightened.” To the left, though, you have “Be afraid.” Be very afraid. “Be afraid of the One”—capital “O”—“who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”
“Freedom of choice,” it’s called, like it’s a good thing. You get to choose. You get more choices—more “freedoms”—in our country than anywhere else. Coffee or tea? Decaf or regular? Cream, sugar, both, or neither? Rare, medium rare, medium, medium well, or well done? Potatoes or salad? Fried, mashed, or baked potatoes? Ranch, French, Italian, bleu cheese, or Thousand Island dressing? Cookies, cake, pie, or ice cream? It takes all the “rest” out of “restaurant!” Choice isn’t freedom; choice is the opposite of freedom. Choice is limitation! Just ask my son. “Christian, you’re going to be a big brother! Which do you want: a little sister or a little brother?” He says, “Both of them!” No; sorry, Christian. You have to choose. Poor kid doesn’t understand yet that life is choices, living means choosing. You don’t get to choose; you have to choose.
Choice is the devil’s lie. God didn’t think up choice; it was the devil. God said, “Don’t eat from the tree in the middle of the Garden.” That settles that, case closed. Along comes the devil, and all of a sudden we’ve got a choice to make: know only good but have no choice, or know good and evil and choose between them. “Don’t be frightened” or “Be very afraid”? Fifteen minutes later, I’ll bet man and woman wished they’d never heard of “freedom of choice.” Choice isn’t freedom; choice is the weight of a fallen world. Choice is an upshot of sin. Pull the plug and watch him die, or let it be and watch him suffer. What freedom! What freedom? You have to choose; you don’t get to choose. There was a book called Sophie’s Choice, and a movie, too. Sophie’s a Polish Jew, mother of a boy and a girl, during the Nazi holocaust. Sophie and the kids do time in one of the concentration camps. After a while the Nazis are kind enough to grant Sophie her freedom. They’re even so generous as to give her “freedom of choice”: “Which one of your kids—the girl or the boy—would you like to take with you?”
Well, which is it going to be: “Don’t be frightened” or “Be very afraid”? What are we going to do with this Word of God? Now, this is an important matter! It’s page numero uno of the Small Catechism! What is the First Commandment? You shall have no other gods. What does this mean? We should fear, love, and trust in God above all things. See, there it is again: “We should fear”—that’s the “Be very afraid” —“love and trust” —that’s the “Don’t be frightened.” “We should fear, love, and trust in God above all things.” One sentence. Seems simple, doesn’t it? It was easy enough to commit it to memory, once upon a time. It’s much more difficult to learn by heart—well-nigh impossible. It goes in opposite directions. Pick one, or the both of them will pull you apart. But you can’t pick just one. You can’t get to the love and trust without going through the fear. And you can’t have the “Be very afraid” without the “Don’t be frightened.”
Looks like it’s already too late. It appears that you and I are already making up our minds. We are already deciding. And the consensus choice of all humankind, it seems, is “Don’t be frightened.” We—me, you—are choosing not to be afraid of the One who can destroy both body and soul in hell. We are choosing not to fear God. I saw a lady the other day—one of our congregation members, actually—shaking hands with a fellow named Hedonism. Then she went and ran this other lady into the ground. She just dragged her name through the mud. Right in front of God, no less! But she felt much better afterward. The next day someone named Materialism came up and offered me the peace pipe. I didn’t even have to think twice. I took a big puff. I blew a hundred bucks on stuff I could have done without. I’m pretty sure God saw the whole thing, but I didn’t care. As a matter of fact, I ran into God not too long ago; another congregation member and I both did. He had on a jolly red coat and a pink bunny-ears hat. We just laughed and said, “Get out of the way, Grandpa!” No need to fear; it’s God.
I heard one prophet of the times, a singer—Billy or Joel or something. He said, “I’d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints. The sinners are much more fun.” Then there’s the contemporary evangelist Marge Simpson, TV mom. She says, “God, if you want to me make a pie for your bake sale on Sunday, you’d better stop killing my daughter’s cats.” Daughter Lisa says, “Mom, I don’t think God responds to threats.” Marge replies, “It’s the only way to deal with bullies.” Don’t be frightened; it’s God.
Of course, it’s not the God of the Bible. In the Bible, the prophet Isaiah sees the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filling the temple. “Woe is me!” Isaiah says. “I am undone, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty!” In the Bible, St. Peter watches Jesus fill the fishing nets so full of fish that they start to break, so full that the boats begin to sink. And he falls at Jesus’ knees and says, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!” In the Bible, the Apostle Paul is on his way to Damascus, under the name of Saul, when suddenly a light from heaven blinds him. He falls to the ground when he hears the voice of Christ saying, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”
Now, it’s Father’s Day today, so I guess I can go ahead and say this. I used to wish my dad was scarier. When I was still about knee-high to a grasshopper, I wanted Dad to be scarier. He didn’t like guns or trucks or war movies. The boys at school were always teasing each other. “I’ll get my dad to come and beat you up.” “Well, my dad would just come and run you over with his four-wheeler.” “Well, my dad would go get his twelve-gauge.” You know how little boys do. So I’d run home to Dad. “Dad, what can I tell them? What do I say?” And do you know what his answer was? “Just ignore them.” Can you believe that? “Just ignore them.” There just isn’t any “Don’t be frightened” without some “Be very afraid.”
Christian loves it. Our little Christian loves to be frightened. It’s a game to him. He runs out into the kitchen—putch, putch, putch, putch—while Daddy crouches down in front of the sofa. Then he stops, turns around, and runs—putch, putch, putch, putch—back into the living room. Just when he gets to the sofa, Daddy pounces and yells, “Boo!” Christian jumps and screeches and giggles. “You scared me!” Then he collapses into Daddy’s arms for a great big bear hug. “Fear, love, and trust.” I cannot think of three better gifts for a father to give his children.
Even Dad tackled that challenge and made it his privilege. The rest of the story goes like this: Dad opened the doors of our house to a lady who was running from a husband who beat her. She was black and blue and had nowhere else to go. We knew who the guy was, and he knew where his wife was. So here comes his truck roaring up to the house. Out steps this big, hulking ogre of a man, and he shouts, “Where is she?” And Dad says through the screen door, at the same time he’s locking it, “You’re not getting in this house.” Not even faltering in his voice, he says, “You’re not getting in this house.” The ogre-man starts toward the door bellowing, “She’s my wife, and I’m takin’ her!” But Dad, all five-nine and a-hundred-fifty-pounds of him, stands his ground and states with cold composure, “The police are coming. I suggest you leave.” Still the guy keeps coming. That’s when Dad reaches into the front closet and grabs a shotgun, the one he had to borrow from Uncle Jimmy. And although he probably couldn’t work the thing even if the safety were off and there were a shell in the chamber, he holds that shotgun up and says, “You’re not getting in this house, so I suggest you leave.” Meanwhile, there I am, peeking out from behind him, two arms around his legs, thinking, “Yeah! You get on outta here or my dad’s gonna get you!”
“The Lord is with me as a mighty terrible one,” wrote the prophet Jeremiah, “like a dread champion.” This is the God who is on your side, the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell. This is the God who is on your side, the One who is fearsome enough to trust in. This is the God who is on your side, the God who would send His Son into the crossfire of our fallen, sinful world when He was nothing more than a baby. This is the God who is on your side, the God who would fasten His Son Jesus to a cross naked and use Him as a human shield to withstand all the flaming arrows of fury that were rightfully meant for you. This is the God who is on your side, the God who would simmer for three days and then get up and shake off that fatal blow, the God who would march fighting mad into hell and let those devils know who’s boss, the God who would plant one foot on earth and one foot in heaven and stand there, all resurrected and invincible, like the Colossus of Rhodes. And to anyone or anything that even thinks of threatening His people, He says like David to Goliath, “You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, whom you have defied. This day he will hand you over to me, and the whole world will know that there is God in this place.”
“The Lord is with me as a mighty terrible one.” Be afraid. Be very afraid. He doesn’t hesitate to hold your head under water until that traitorous sinful self of yours coughs up all its sins and evil desires and dies. God doesn’t hesitate to make you eat His body and blood until you are endowed with its courage and strength, the strength of the Lion of Judah. He doesn’t hesitate to sound forth His strong Word though there be none who listen, though there be none who believe, though there be heaven and earth standing between you and Him.
But I see our time is just about up. You have visitors waiting outside for you. A fellow by the name of Cancer is knocking down the door, and Loneliness and Frailty are there too, along with a couple of bruisers called Persecution and Death. They’re all licking their chops and rubbing their hands and itching to have a go at you the way they did Jesus. What shall I tell them? May I tell them you’re ready to see them? “Don’t be frightened of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid—be very afraid—of the One” —capital “O” —“who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”