Conceal Me

So pull me up from down below / 'Cause I'm underneath the undertow
Come dry me off and hold me close / I need you now, I need you most

Songwriters: Avril Ramona Lavigne, Stephan Moccio, Travis Clark
“Head Above Water” lyrics © Sing Little Penguin, Travis Clark Music, Songs Of Universal Inc., Avril Lavigne Publishing LLC.

The psalmist knows trouble. If this is David as some traditions have it, then he indeed knows trouble. David was threatened by enemies and loved ones alike, loved and despised in turn, filled up with God’s presence and then seemingly abandoned by God because of his hubris, because of his arrogance and self-conceit. He knew what it was to fear. He knew what it was to want to hide. But David’s glory was that whenever he found himself in trouble, he turned to repentance and humility. Then he sought redemption from the only source who could calm his fears.

It wasn’t his own strength, flexing his own muscles that brought him comfort. “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?” Who indeed? You want a list? Because I can find a list. There are plenty out there who will itemize the fears we need to embrace. It is the way of the world, it appears.

Exactly. The way of the world. And while we live in and embrace the world, we don’t live by the ways of the world. We are called to live differently. We are called to live confidently. Have you ever noticed that scripturally, the opposite of faith is not doubt? Doubt seems to be prevalent in the Bible. Doubt seems to coexist with faith rather well. Remember the prayer of the desperate father? “Lord, I believe, help my unbelief.” Go look it up: Mark, chapter nine. Jesus doesn’t chastise this poor man. Belief and unbelief often sit side by side. There are indications that belief without unbelief, without a measure of doubt, turns into a crusader’s arrogance, into those who believe themselves incapable of error. A certain amount of doubt gives us the right amount of humility to be an effective instrument of God’s grace in the world. Job, who had spent about thirty-seven chapters convinced he was right and that someone - namely God - had messed up and needed to fix all this mess really quick, falls to his face when God does show up. He says, “I didn’t know what I was talking about! I spoke above myself; of things I didn’t really understand.” And God blessed him in that doubt and uncertainty.

No, the opposite of faith isn’t doubt. It is fear. Throughout the Bible, the call is to not fear. Angels said it every time they showed up. God proclaimed it. Jesus lived it. Paul theologized about it. John put it on a bumper sticker for us to cling to when things got shaky. Perfect love casts out fear. Perfect love—the love that comes from Christ—casts out fear. There is no room for fear when we are filled with love.

You can’t get rid of fear with wisdom. You can’t argue people out of fear. You don’t show up at your child’s door in the middle of the night and say, “Now Billy, you know there are no such things as monsters under your bed. This being afraid in the middle of the night is simply illogical. Think about it, Billy.” No, that won’t work, and it sounds odd for a parent to do. Instead, we step in, rush in, and gather little Billy up in our arms and hold him close and remind him that he is loved—powerfully, completely, unconditionally loved. That’s how you handle fear.

The psalmist says the same thing in a different way. “Seek shelter in the tent of the Lord,” he says. Hide in God and be lifted up, above our fears, stable on that rock. Then, we’re told, worship with joy—shouts of joy. Not sitting in the pew while the worship show goes on, but shouting with joy while we make sacrifices. Sacrifices? Animals? No, not anymore. The blood has been spilt already. Instead, let’s sacrifice our pride; let’s sacrifice our propriety, our stiffness, our standoffishness. Let’s sacrifice our “me first” attitude and offer a hand to someone else, someone not like us. Let’s act like we really have nothing to fear but fear itself.

So, you’re thinking, “Ok, I like the sound of that. That living without fear kind of thing.” But how? I mean, I hear the speeches. Our political life seems based on fear. There are lots of things to fear, we’re told. Our world is falling apart. Making fear choices seems to be the smarter way to go these days. Acting out of fear seems the logical response. So, how do we get to where we can live without fear?

The psalmist is right there with you. He needs a little pep talk to get where his theology tells him he needs to be, even if his guts won’t let him. Luckily, he slipped his little inner dialog right into the psalm. “‘Come,’ my heart says, ‘seek his face.’” You want to overcome fear? Seek God’s face. Seriously. This isn’t just a cliche to make you feel better. It is a program for ridding yourself and the world of fear. Seek God’s face. Set yourself the task of looking for God at work in the world. We claim to believe God is at work among us; we claim to believe God is at work within us. So, look. Look for God’s face in the face of the stranger serving you your lunch, working on your car, asking for a handout. Look for God’s face in the gestures of kindness in this terrible world, in the opportunities to laugh and sing, in the moments of grace with loved ones, in the passion of body and soul. Seek God’s face in the beauty of music, in the wonder of the world around you. You’re on a mission. If you fill up your life with the search for God, you won’t have time to fear.

Let me see your face, O God, my light and my salvation! Conceal me so that what shows is not me and my fears, but the presence and the confidence and the hope of God.

Just as Jesus did. “If you have seen me, you have seen the father,” he said (John 14:9 NRSV). He was hidden in the Father, concealed in God. Or God concealed in him. In our Gospel text for this week, Jesus seems to reflect on this hiding. Sort of. Maybe.

There is considerable agreement that Luke is messing things around again. In Matthew’s Gospel, this lament over Jerusalem comes on the threshold of the Passion. Jesus is about to enter Jerusalem for the last time; he is about to lay down his life. And it is out of that event that Jesus begins with these words, with this desire - to gather the children of Jerusalem (which probably means all the children of God). It certainly makes sense that on the brink of the events that would lead to his death, Jesus would lament missed opportunities. So, it does seem likely that Luke took an event out of order so that he could make a point.

But then what might that point be? What does the juxtaposition of the warning from the Pharisees about Herod’s homicidal rages and Jesus’ lament over the city of Jerusalem say to us?

Does anyone else find it odd that it is the Pharisees who come purporting to save Jesus’ skin? These are the guys who would like nothing more than for Jesus to find a speedy and messy end. These are the guys who stumble all over themselves to find tests he can’t pass and questions he can’t answer. And now we are supposed to believe that they have Jesus’ best interests at heart? Yeah, right. Even Jesus seems to suspect something, because his response is an acknowledgment of a relationship. “Go and tell,” he says to them. Run on back to the puppet master pulling your strings, Jesus says. He declares that he is in charge of his own destiny; he is in charge of his worth and his value; he isn’t planning to run and hide from anyone. He knows to whom he belongs. He is not far from home.

It might make perfect sense that having declared his own sense of belonging to his mission and to the one who sends him on this journey, that he then pauses to reflect on the object of that mission and the subject of the love that comes from the one who sends him. It seems right that his heart would break for those who have said no at the moment he is reminded of the cost he will have to pay.

Besides, he has met the fox, so now he heads to the henhouse. Go and tell that fox, he says, that scavenger, that trickster, that unscrupulous schemer, that his power, the power of destruction has its limits. Having chased away the fox, he then wants to gather the chicks. It is as if Luke is giving us an option here. Do we find our safety and security in the powers that function out of fear and self-interest at least in part? Do we find our connection, our sense of meaning and purpose in those who seek to define us by amassing a count of our failures and disappointments? Or do we run to the one who shelters us in the shadow of his wings, who is broken and poured out through an unimaginable love for us?

We need to know love like Christ offers. We need to cling to that love, to that hope when we walk through those valleys, and we feel like motherless children. We also need to be in the business of loving like that. All around us, at any given time, there are those who feel disconnected, those who feel as though no one cares, no one is there for them. There are those who feel that their mistakes define them in your eyes, who need you to spread your wings and gather them in.