With you, O Lord, there is plenteous redemption, therefore, you are to be feared.Psalm 130
In May of 1994 two hundred and thirty-seven girls from a Hasidic school in Brooklyn were on a class trip to Old Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts when their chaperones decided to stop at Bigelow Hollow State Park for two hours so the students could eat lunch and explore the park. A large group of them got back to the bus at the appointed time, but many of the students didn’t; they had gotten lost in the woods. Two girls had wandered so far away from where they needed to be that a motorist picked them up on I-84 and drove them back to the park. One girl, Suri Feldman, aged 14, didn’t return.
Search and rescue teams of police and bloodhounds and volunteers from as far away as Montreal spent two days looking for Suri when—and here I’m quoting a New York Times reporter—“Southbridge Police Officer John Mulcahy… noticed a road not shown on any of his maps and headed down it with his colleagues. Within 500 yards, they spotted Miss Feldman at 10:34 am at the side of a tree. He told reporters that he called for her, but she did not answer because she was praying.” The search and rescue team had been shouting her name ceaselessly as they made their way through the woods, and it was apparent to the police that she had to have heard her name called for a long time, yet she made no response until one of them was standing so close to the drenched and shivering girl she couldn’t ignore him any longer. Later on, when she was interviewed, Suri said she was tremendously relieved at the presence of the rescue party, that she knew they were close at hand, but she was praying and she felt it would be disrespectful to God to interrupt her prayers to respond to the rescuers who were calling her name. The journalists covering this story were baffled by that explanation. It seemed bizarre.
Suri Feldman didn’t feel that way. And there’s something tremendously attractive about a sense of God’s presence so focused that fear is eclipsed by what the scriptures call the fear of the Lord. That is what Suri experienced: awe at the presence of God, respect for Him, for the privilege of having an audience with the Most High. And viewed that way, viewed realistically, what Suri did was perfectly natural. She practiced a piety—we could call it a simple form of social awareness—rare in a world lacking mystery and manners.
The Church of the Good Samaritan is growing. We’ve committed ourselves to the changes necessary to growth. We’ve focused on evangelism and mission, evaluated our assets, staffed for growth by recruiting highly skilled, professional talent to our team, built a multi-faceted communications platform, and have focused our hearts and minds on the foundation of Good Sam to ensure its future success. We’ve reduced barriers to growth. And whatever else this means—the intentional, conscious, strategic, Spirit-guided, big-picture and daily decision-making necessary to growth—it means that we are on an adventure as dark and perilous as ever any ancient hero dared.
It can make you anxious and fearful.
Good. It’s what we ought to be. There may be others who will try to make you feel better by telling you not to be afraid. I won’t do that. Why? Because Good Sam is a church loose around the edges and solid at the core. What does that mean? It means that at our core we’re people who are not easily distracted, who see ourselves in Scripture, who see ourselves as people who’ve been read into that story by the Author and Finisher of our faith.
The Bible wasn’t written to make you feel better. Look at the strange world within it, at the people running around in its pages responding to whoever rescued Israel from bondage in Egypt and raised Jesus from the dead. When the God of Israel calls someone to get involved with him, they become aware of conditions. They know themselves as not perfectly appropriate creatures to do God’s bidding and understand they have no chance at getting that work done apart from him. Jesus said as much. “Apart from me you can do nothing.”
The yearning to live out our witness to Jesus is a fearful responsibility and calling, for me as your Rector and for us as a parish. We should tremble at the thought of venturing courageously where the Spirit calls us. So be afraid, brothers and sisters. And in the power of the Spirit who intercedes for us, let our fears be eclipsed by the fear of the Lord. As we practice this discipline, we’ll do better than be okay. We’ll act gallantly, and the Most High will be glorified in our midst. “With you, O Lord, there is plenteous redemption / therefore, you are to be feared.” My favorite couplet in the Psalter, it contains within itself the whole of the biblical story.
I write this on the 15th of August. I’m looking out over Lake Superior north of Marquette, Michigan. The big lake is its own wilderness. She pounds with freedom, pulses, and puts me again and again in my place, out of control with the Almighty whose service, to use Augustine’s phrase, is perfect freedom. I see you, Good Sam, for the constant source of strength and encouragement that you are. Today is the Feast of St Mary the Virgin. You’ll remember, of course, what the Archangel Gabriel said to Mary at the Annunciation. “Don’t be afraid.” As I give thanks for the Blessed Mother and meditate upon how she responded when the Lord asked her to do something impossible for him, the weight of the world’s salvation resting on her answer to the Archangel, I would also put your ears and mine to the Psalm appointed for reading on her feast day, Psalm 34. “I sought the LORD and he answered me; he delivered me from all my fears. Look to him, and be radiant; so your faces shall never be ashamed. This poor soul cried, and was heard by the LORD, and was saved from every trouble. The angel of the LORD encamps around those who fear him, and he delivers them.”
