Perhaps you have watched enough World Cup to know that the USA has won two games against Australia and Paraguay. What is hard to fully know beyond watching is the feelings of being a player in a World Cup game. As a spectator or fan, one has their own adrenaline, hype, fear, and excitement.
Veteran player Tim Ream serves as a mentor to team members to help them cope with the larger-scale media and fan pressures. Christian Pulisic, known as Captain America, has talked about the pressure and nerves he has felt leading up to the gains and his efforts to keep focusing on playing the game calling pressure a privilege and relying on faith, teammates, his high standards and turning off social media apps. Imagine having all the training, strength and practice and then what can prepare you for the massive crowds, international television media and weight of the World Cup hitting you.
The physical feelings of fear and excitement are identical. Fear and excitement have similar breathing, heart rate, release of sugar into the blood, and the same activities of the sympathetic nervous system that prepare us for “fight or flight” responses in our bodies.
Yet we experience a difference between excitement and fear. And the mental distinctions between excitement and fear change the quality of one’s performance. If nervous, there is less confidence. And if I excite everything, some precision comes more easily.
As human beings, we are wired for certain responses when our lives are in danger. Adrenaline is released in our brains, our heart rate increases, our pupils dilate to let in more light, and we become hyper-aware of what’s happening around us. We don’t exactly choose to react like this. Our sweaty palms and increased heart rate when meeting someone can be signs of excitement or fear, which determines how we approach our reactions.
What are you afraid of? In this Gospel message, Jesus redefines fear. He tells His disciples they will be rejected, slandered, and persecuted with the empathy that Jesus knows well. Jesus tells the disciples three times not to fear. Why? Because most of our fears are misplaced. We fear people, rejection, loss, and not being taken care of, but Jesus makes it clear that we are fearing the wrong thing.
What a perfect Scripture here for Father’s Day: “For I have come to set a man against his father.” Division and anger in a world where those things are always so prevalent. A part of being human is that we see life from different perspectives and understandings, and it helps to do so within communities we can trust. In the gospel reading, Jesus refers to his “Father” in heaven who, he says, is also our God and Father. Some children have experienced healthy, loving care from earthly fathers in their life. Others have not. God is like the best father we can imagine. God loves us as God’s own children. Jesus offers us a new way of looking at these divisions and teaches us ways to approach each other that encourage interaction and respectful dialogue. We must understand that disagreement is not the end of community; in fact, it can be the beginning of a deeper understanding of each other and of our relationship with God.
I have wondered how such division can exist in churches or families until pointed out to me that those people or situations that we care little about, we don’t react or put in time and effort. But those relationships, which give us trust and which we care about, that give us the urgency and the freedom to really express ourselves and care about one another, compel us to express our concerns and emotions. .
Spreading the gospel of Jesus can feel radical in an increasingly divided and angry world. In the book The Courage to Be Disliked, the authors use the work of multiple psychologists to break down how we use inner peace to have confidence and faith to express our truth even when it is difficult. Seeking validation and recognition makes you a prisoner to other people’s expectations. Happiness is not simply found in seeking superiority over others or in material success but as you see how you are useful and contributing to others as we live into our callings and gifts. God does not leave us or forsake us and, in fact, encourages us to continue to love each other and work for justice and peace.
Jesus has commissioned his twelve disciples and is about to send them out on a mission of their own, a mission during which they both exercise great authority and need to demonstrate profound trust. They will have the power to cast out demons and heal the sick; they are to take no money or extra provisions but rather depend upon the grace of God as shown in the hospitality of others.
The movie, A League of Their Own, tells the story of an All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, has the line: “It’s supposed to be hard; if it wasn’t hard, everybody would do it.” Tom Hanks plays a rough-and-tumble coach, and he is talking to one of the star players, who is trying to quit because the game has gotten too hard.
Throughout each Scripture reading for today, a theme of despair comes through, especially considering all that those working for God are facing. The work of a prophet, and following God’s calling disciple in hope and faith can feel impossible. Yet God reminds us such care that tells the truth, holds power accountable, and share lives will transform lives and the world!
Jesus tells the disciples about some of the challenges they will face, including rejection, slander, persecution, and perhaps even death.
We often allow our hopes, plans, and mission to be held hostage by those who threaten conflict when things don’t go their way. In these situations, Jesus invites us to remember that there are worse things than conflict and that, indeed, the call to follow Christ and take up his cross will in fact have costs, including at times conflict. The book Emergent Strategies, which speaks about how systems and people change, states that the thing that is really hard to say in a relationship is what probably needs to be said.
Fear dominates our lives — fear for our loved ones, fear about an uncertain future, fear of continued war abroad and economic downturn at home, fear of where our next meal or rent payment will come from, fear of being accepted in this next stage of life.
Jesus’ words: “Do not fear — you are of great value to God.”
When freaking out, it is often not a neurosis but for some really good reasons. Pastor Nadia Boltz Weber shares that “when Jesus asks, ‘ Where is your faith?” Jesus invites us to reflect on what it means to be alive on the other side of a situation we thought would kill us: a divorce, an illness, the death of a parent or even a child, the loss of a job, depression, middle school. It can feel like it’s going to kill us. But if it doesn’t, then maybe we get to ask sacred questions like: in what did I have faith? Where was God? What did I fear?”
Are the hardships we face things to fear or opportunities to exercise our faith? This promise of faith can help us approach challenges not with fear but rather with anticipation and even excitement.
Maybe things will work out, maybe they won’t – but we can have a sense of God’s love all along the way, or we can be so freaked out that we forget that we are not alone and have God right there with us.
The Triune God, whose love is powerful enough to raise Jesus from the dead, simply will not be separated from you. Proclaim from the housetops the good news that even the very real fears we face do not need to define us. Love is so much more powerful than any fear.
