No Fear
Nobody has to teach us human beings how to be afraid, unless we have some rare personality disorder that means that we are cold and indifferent. Fear comes very naturally to us. Anyone who has ever had the misfortune to be awakened by a telephone call in the middle of the night knows that fear can hurtle through our minds at a speed faster than any internet connection. Before we answer the phone, we have the capacity to imagine all kinds of terrible tragedies. And then it just turns out that someone has the wrong number, or (as often happens to me) somebody calls and they’ve forgotten that we’re in a different time zone. To the synagogue ruler he offers gentle but profound advice: don’t be afraid. And then Jesus shows that He wouldn’t bow down to fear, either a fear of becoming ritually unclean (because being touched by a women with an issue of blood and touching a dead body would render him unclean), and He wasn’t afraid of any criticisms that might come His way from the religious barons if he did so. Fear was a possibility for Jesus in both these situations, but He refuses it. Jairus must have been frustrated and then grief stricken, because Jesus was delayed, and then he gets news that his daughter has passed. It’s then that Jesus instructs Jairus to not be afraid. If Jesus commands us not to be afraid, then it must be possible to obey that command, to trust him in the face of fear, to pray instead of worry. Afraid today? Don’t be.