This sermon was preached on the 31st of October 2025, keeping All Souls, in the Anglican Parish of Kalamunda-Lesmurdie.
Texts:
I’m going to talk about fear tonight.
Fear is a tricky emotion. It has its place, it has its purpose.
Predicting the future is part of the human experience: it’s part of who we are, as a species. All of us are constantly looking into the future, a few seconds, a few minutes, a few hours, a few days.
When we predict danger, we feel fear. And so fear is a part of how we protect ourselves. When we’ve had a bad experience, when we’ve been harmed, when we’ve suffered, we learn to anticipate that, and to do what is necessary to avoid it. And so we learn to fear.
But there’s another type of fear: fear of the unknown.
Many people are afraid of the dark – it often begins in childhood. And if you think about it, the world really is less predictable at night. We can’t see as far – as far into the darkness, as far into the future – and so we cannot keep ourselves as safe as we would like.
At night, the unknown seems to swell, and that which is known recedes. And so, fear, fear of the unknown, grows in our hearts.
It should not surprise us that in many cultures, death is associated with darkness, with a lack of light. Death is, after all, a journey into the unknown: the ultimate journey into the unknown.
We just heard, from the Book of Job, words addressed by a fragile human man to this God. Words spoken by someone who is broken and bereft, someone who has lost family, someone who has lost his place in life.
The stark and humbling truth is that – should we live long enough – our experience will be, at least somewhat, the experience of Job. Everything begins to fade away; our sense of control fades away.
Musing to himself, and musing to God, Job fixes briefly upon trees as a source of hope. If you cut a tree down, many times buds will form upon the stump, especially when water comes. Death is followed by life.
From the moment that we learn about death – and that’s usually quite early in our lives – most people come to fear it. And fearing death, we wish to avoid it. And too often story of Christianity gets reduced to only that: a fragile wish, perhaps a vain wish, to find a way past death. Christianity becomes simply a remedy for fear. It’s a view of, an understanding of, Christianity that I’ve heard many times from people outside of the faith.
And yet it is a faint shadow of the truth and glory of our faith. And more than that, if our Christianity is anchored only in fear, only in fear of death, then huge problems will follow.
Today we are marking All Souls Day – but in the Calendar of the Church, today is also the feast of Martin Luther, and the other European Reformers of the Church. Amongst other things, they desired to change and reform the Church because of abuses - abuses that were rooted in fear.
Abuses which said to people that they must purchase their way into heaven: through good works, and too often with money. Abuses which said to people who were in grief that they must pay to hasten the path of their beloved ones out of purgatory.
Abuses which replaced the fear of death with the fear of judgement, so that people might be controlled, and wealth extracted from the poor, to line the purses of the wealthy.
That was wrong. Wrong on the deepest possible level. Christianity is not merely a response to fear, it is not merely a response to the unknown, it is not merely a response to death.
Christianity is a proclamation!
We proclaim Christ Jesus! We proclaim the lamb of God! We proclaim Jesus who came into the world to be with us, to show us how a new way to live, who embodies for us the hospitality and generosity and love that is the eternal character of God.
God who created this world, created all that is, and called it good. God who completed the world, making humankind in their image, setting in place order and harmony, the rhythm of creation, and called all of that very good. God, Holy and Triune, whose Word entered into creation, born of a woman, and came among us, showing us how to live.
None of us earned our life: it was given to us, freely.
God does ask that we live good lives. God does give us commandments, God does charge us with living in harmony with one another, with being good stewards of creation. And, at the end of all things, we will be judged.
How we will experience that, as people who have risen again, is a mystery. But we should not fear it.
If we wish to pass through the narrow pathway from death into eternal life, we should not shrink ourselves down with fear. Rather we should stand tall and live – live abundantly, live generously, letting go of fear and placing our trust, our faith, our allegiance in Jesus.
We do not fear death, and we do not fear judgement.
God has given us a world of abundance: a world that can feed every person, that can house every person. God has given us the capacity to learn, to create, to imagine: to be co-greators with God, telling stories, discovering new ways to heal, proclaiming who God is with our words and deeds, following in the footsteps of our Lord.
We don’t earn our salvation. We trust in our salvation.
We trust in the grace and hospitality and love of God, and we make the same known to all whom we meet, offering all that God has given to us as a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving. That is our calling.
Tonight we remember the faithful departed, trusting in the mercy of God. We remember their lives and their witness. They remembered their baptisms, and so we remember ours.
Live as a disciple of Christ.
Fight the good fight.
Finish the race.
Keep the faith.
Amen.