Be Not Afraid

Gospel: Luke 12: 1-7

People are afraid of many things: snakes, spiders, clowns - the list is endless.  Regardless of the particular item feared, they all have as their root the fear of death.  Throughout our lives this is our greatest fear - that we will die.  As such it is the one topic we do not discuss, we do not think about at all.  We avoid the topic of death in any and every conversation.  Yet, dying is the one thing we will all do at some point.  No one escapes our sister death.

When illness comes to us, even when that illness is terminal, we seek to fight it with everything in our arsenal.  We become religious, bargaining with God and praying for miracles.  Many people were given miracles by Jesus, a few even raised from the dead.  Yet the commonality in all those who received these miracles is that they all died - every single one of them.  Not a man or woman who was healed by Jesus walks this earth today.  

We might well ask ourselves why we are afraid of death.  Do we fear the judgment of God? Do we fear to miss out on things in this life? Jesus invites us not to fear anything, and this is possible by accepting the mercy of God offered to us and to extend mercy to others.  Freedom from that fear of death enables us to see, to walk again, and to be released from the constraints of our demons so that we might live for the love of God and others.