Fear the Lord?

Author: Brian Flanagan
November 01, 2018
Thirty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time

Choice of words is important.  I’m sure all of us have been in the position before where a remark has left our lips, only to be instantly regretted.  “Wow, I should have phrased that differently.”  You can ask my wife; that’s a daily occurrence for me.

Often there are different ways to phrase the same idea.  Your coach might say “All players are asked to attend every practice.”  Sounds pretty neutral right?  How about “Every player MUST attend every single practice.  Practices are MANDATORY for anyone wishing to play on game days.”  Wow, things escalated quickly there, didn’t they?  Both sentences are communicating the same thing; the coach wants the whole team to be there for all of the practices.  But the 1st way sounds almost like a friendly reminder, while the 2nd way sounds like the coach means business.
There’s a phrase in the First Reading this week that at first hearing is a little unexpected.  Moses says “Fear the LORD, your God.”  Fear?  Moses is telling the Israelites (and us) to “fear” God?  But isn’t God a loving Father?  Aren’t we taught to call Jesus our friend?  Doesn’t the Holy Spirit come so close to us that he dwells within us through our Baptism?  How can we have a close relationship with God and at the same time fear him?  Seems like a strange choice of words, Moses.

Well, not really.  I think we’ve gotten away from using the lingo of “fearing the Lord” so much, that we don’t even understand what the phrase means anymore.  Does it mean that God is like Zeus up on a cloud with a bucket of lightning bolts waiting to hurl one down at us when we mess up?  Of course not.  So what does it mean?  Let’s look at a quote from C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe:
“Aslan is a lion – the Lion, the great Lion.” “Ooh” said Susan. “I’d thought he was a man. Is he-quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion”…”Safe?” said Mr. Beaver …”Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”

This image gives us something of an idea.  On one level we can come to understand and know God; on another level, God is infinitely beyond our understanding and knowledge.  On one hand God is our friend; on the other hand, God is the creator of the Universe, who sustains our very existence, so not exactly the kind of friend we’d go see Avengers 4 with and split a bucket of popcorn…or is he?

Like Aslan the Lion (who allegorically represents Jesus if you’re not familiar with the Chronicles of Narnia books), God is powerful, yet chooses to come close to us.  Our Creator became one of us.  So in Jesus are contained the extremes of utter majesty and utter humility.

Which brings us to a more “modern” way to phrase “fear of the LORD”; having “wonder and awe” in his presence.  We should be awestruck at who God is; and even more so than the Israelites, we should be awestruck that this same God has become one of us.  So should we be afraid of God?  Not in such a way that keeps us away from him.  He comes near to us, and calls us to come near to him.  We can have this holy “fear of the LORD” as we draw near to him, and be awestruck and marvel at the mystery of it.  So let’s recapture a sense of “fear of the LORD”, while at the same time deepening our friendship with him.  And it’s okay to blow some spiritual fuses thinking about that!  I certainly just did writing this.
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