From the Pulpit: Refusing to Give in to Fear

As the church celebrates its birthday during Pentecost, and the gift of the Holy Spirit, Dean Randy Hollerith says we can take lessons from the early disciples hiding in fear.

As Dean Hollerith reminds us, the disciples were still afraid and in hiding when the Holy Spirit came among them. They were cowering in fear of the mighty Roman empire.

Feel familiar?

But, he noted, the same values that drove the early church — and ran counter to imperial power — can still motivate us today:

Friends, we may no longer have to worry about the Roman Empire, but many of the same ways of using and abusing power are alive and well in our world today. People are afraid. I see it all the time within our Cathedral family. People are afraid they’ll lose their jobs or have lost their jobs and fear they won’t find a new one. People are afraid they’ll be arrested and deported. People are afraid they will be further marginalized or threatened and discriminated against because of their religion or their sexual identity, or the color of their skin.

Friends, we need to fight the fear just as those early Christians lived courageously and defiance of the empire that surrounded them, just as they trusted the power of the Spirit. We need to find our own Pentecost courage, the courage to speak the truth in love, to stand with the marginalized, to refuse to worship power.

You see, courage isn’t the absence of fear. Courage is acting in spite of fear, and we need that Holy Spirit courage today more than ever. Courage to be different, courage to stand by the values of our faith.

It isn’t crazy to love an enemy; it isn’t weakness to forgive someone who has wronged you; it’s not foolishness to care for the poor; it isn’t pointless to stand with the marginalized. These are the ways of Jesus. These are the ways of the Spirit. These are the ways of love that are ultimately more powerful than the ways of empire.