I read a most interesting article the other day-The Greatest False Idol of Modern Christianity.  The article does not identify the idol up front but gives description of it.  ***share authors descriptions.  Then he says it….”Fear has become their false God.”

He goes on and describes the symptoms of Fear Idolatry.

***share examples.

The author’s last lines…I know how big my God is.  Do you?

I will go ahead and confess-you got me.  I try to rise about the fear.  Yet, in part I know I just try not to express it.  Fear is all around us.  Certainly in our political climate-this isn’t how anyone thought it would be.  But even in general-fear can get very large, with just a small feeding.  It doesn’t take long to hear fear in much of today’s conversation.

So I hate having idols!  God doesn’t want us to hold things tightly that do not lead us to God.  So what to do, what to do?

I think I have a Psalm for you.  Psalm 30.  According to Walter Bruggerman, it is a Psalm of New-Orientation.  You may recall his classification of Orientation, Disorientation, and New Orientation.

Psalm 30 describes, refers to much of the experience of disorientation but then moves us to new orientation.  I believe that we have to name the disorientation that we experience before we can move to a new orientation.

There is power in naming something.  We begin to understand it, or understand our experience of it.  I was brought up short to hear an author name the “new idol” fear.  There could be twenty other articles, essays, opinions that name the current political environment.  You could identify selfish, childish, faithless, or a host of unspoken terms even.  It is not in the exact name-it is in speaking of it, the claiming the experience, giving words to the emotional/thought experience.  By giving those words we are able to make the situation real.

This is what the psalmist has done.

His foes were rejoicing over him

He was sick.

He was crying.

His soul was in Sheol, in the Pit.

That sums up a stinking situation!  I wonder if when he re-read the words if he said-wow I had lost my way, I was disoriented (just as Bruggereman would classify it) You see that you can not depend on your own devices. Words are powerful and they identify the power of the suffering, loss, and fear.

Yet that is not what the psalm is about.  It is not a psalm of disorientation but of new-orientation.  Here the psalm- what God has done.  Responding to the despair the verses say-between the lines-we can not pretend that all will always be well or as it should be!

Yet ,they have experienced new life and grace — so they know that despair is not all powerful and evil does not have the last word.  the word sof the psalm beautifully describe our experiences in life.  The words remind us-suffering is not the absence of God, but encourages us to take refuge in God.

Nor-does suffering negate the good news that life is a gift from God.

I want to shift us at this point to our day.  The overall theme or name of this series on Psalms is “Being Church”.  How do we be church?  I think Bruggerman types it well and it is also fitting for being the church….there are chapters of orientation, disorientation and new orientation.

Today we have before us an example of new orientation-how can that inform or shape us as we be church?  We have suffering in the church and oh my do we ever name it-declining numbers, aging buildings, less money, higher cost of clergy, shortage of clergy, no interest in disciplining, busy, busy, busy.  Theological-we are all looking for bumper sticker theology that we can put on the tip of a sword and fight off every fear.

We are called to a new orientation.  We can not deny the above nor should we.  But how do we be church in a way that we faithful live out the gift of new life in Christ that God gives to us.  Our lives are busy and the world is changing.

If we die trying to Be the church, what will happen?  Will the dust praise God?  I don’t think so.  Let God turn our mourning into dancing.