I hear the grocery store in town has been cleaned out, but you can still get anchovies. In Lake Jackson, they’re fighting over canned asparagus. Tito’s vodka had to release a statement, several days ago, that, while their vodka was indeed strong, it wasn’t strong enough to serve as a substitute for hand sanitizer. It takes a strong man to say his vodka isn’t strong enough. It seems like everything is canceled, except for our service today. Maybe we should cancel life—oh, but we already are. No rodeo, no NHL— nobody here misses that, anyway—N, H, what? No NCAA. Devon predicted that maternity wards will be busy, by Christmas.  Princess cruise lines has taken its entire fleet out of service; so, too, Carnival and Norwegian. How their employees, and these companies' lenders, will be paid remains unclear. It’s a bad time to be in the stock market, unless you’re looking to buy. On the other hand, airfares are crazy cheap—get that trip to Europe booked now—but not to Italy. I don’t remember just what movie it was, years ago, so many unmemorable movies, but I remember the plug from the poster: “Be afraid. Be very afraid.” Considering the behavior being reported, we are.

Love is a powerful emotion. Fear is a powerful emotion. I like to think love is more powerful than fear; it’s times like these that make me wonder. Oh, in the long run, love wins: that’s our faith. Faith, not fear. Easier said, than done, as we can see. If only this society would be as overrun with love—and with faith!—as it is with fear.

As of March 13th—two days ago—the CDC reported a total of 1,621 confirmed coronavirus cases in the United States, and 41 deaths. Friday, Texas had thirty-nine cases, which may be under-reported, as we might expect, given the circumstances. Of those from Fort Bend County who contracted the virus, one was discharged from the hospital in good condition, another had a fever for a day, which resolved, and another had mild symptoms, which also resolved. In 2018, the population of Houston was over 2.3 million people. Total cases of COVID-19—what’s with the nineteen?—total cases in Texas—not Houston, now, but the entire state of Texas, all 268,820 square miles of it—total cases in Texas are thirty-nine. Well, let’s make a dramatic flourish and suddenly kick that up to one hundred (it’s not that high—I haven’t seen any number like that, but let’s say).

But try buying toilet paper, or canned asparagus. I hear sales of war clubs and battle axes have skyrocketed, and those MRE companies are rapidly selling out of filet mignon meals.

Two million people in Houston. Thirty-nine cases in Texas. Two million. Thirty-nine. I must be invincibly ignorant, but I’m just not afraid. I’m not dismissive. Hey, I’ve been trying to wash my hands for twenty seconds, or whatever—it is twenty, isn’t it? Good Lord, what if it’s twenty-five?! Twenty seconds is long enough.

Why so much fear, so much overwhelming, unbound fear? Are we so fearful, at heart? Has this world of ours, these times, this life, made us so afraid? Or have people always been afraid, at heart, so ready to plunge into the abyss of their fears, to flail, fail, and drown in them? Failure is always easy: you just have to stop trying. And fear is so large, and we are so small, so fragile, and the universe is out to get us, apparently, or at least the microbiological universe. There’s still cancer, that will claim its 600,000. There’s still the flu, that will claim its 80,000. It’s a wonder there’s ever toilet paper in the stores and vodka on the shelves.

In a press conference at WHO HQ, the organization’s director told an aghast crowd of twittering journalists: “Globally, about 3.4% of reported COVID-19 cases have died.” Why were they even crowding together? Statistics is not my forte, yet it seems to me that a 3.4% mortality rate, while sad (truly), does not amount to a cause for panic or runs on toilet paper. COVID-19 is on the same order, fatality rate-wise, as whooping cough, measles, and smallpox.

I’m not just sure what I’m seeing out there, beloved. I don’t quite know how to account for it, but I know it’s tied up with, bound by fear. Be afraid. Be very afraid. I understand that the news networks are finally seeing a significant increase in viewership. All those viewers they’d been actively losing seem to be coming back. I don’t know that there’s any connection between the higher ratings and network coverage of coronavirus. Be afraid, and be sure to tune in for all the latest closures and talk as we try to fill the airtime until our next commercial break, after which we’ll repeat everything we just said. Like a mantra, repeated, over and over, until it gets in you, in your head, in your heart?

One of the first effects of sin in the hearts of Adam and Eve was fear. They didn’t know that’s what they were choosing. They never would have chosen that, so temptation made it look like they were choosing something much better, smarter, wiser, but it was fear. Adam tells God he hid because he was afraid (Gen 3:10). He said nothing about Eve—when you’re afraid and live in and by fear, others become remarkably unimportant: save yourself!

Scared people hide. God reveals. God reveals His promise to Abram, and, knowing the tendency of the fallen heart to fear, God says, “Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield” (Gen 15:1). God hears people cry out in fear (often!), and God consistently says, “Do not be afraid.” When the Israelites, fleeing death at the hands of the Egyptians, see that they can’t run any farther, unless they wanted to drown, flail, fail, Moses says to them, “Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today” (Ex 14:13). Later, Moses gives instructions for how God’s people are to do battle with their foes. They are to be readied this way: “Hear, Israel: Today you are going into battle against your enemies. Do not be fainthearted or afraid; do not panic or be terrified” (Dt 20:3). Now, who are our foes? Other people? No. Unless you want toilet paper. But no—they’re staggering around, afraid, hostile and hurting, just like we were before the Spirit snatched us up. We’re too sophisticated, well-educated, and thoroughly modern to talk seriously about dark spiritual powers, yet we talk about fear. And how we feel it! Maybe we’re all basically cowards. God isn’t, though. Jesus isn’t.

Moses speaks parting words of courage and of hope to God’s people, words from God for life and for blessing: “The Lord himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged” (Dt 31:8). Indeed, the Lord has gone before us, and Jesus Christ awaits us, and is at the right hand of the Father for us, so that we now do have every assurance that we are heard, and that Christ is advocating for us, and that comfort is held out to us from the throne of heaven. Comfort from God. And shall we be afraid? Shall we be discouraged? “The Lord is my light and my salvation—whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life—of whom shall I be afraid?” (Ps 27:1). Shall I fear to touch? Shall I fear to eat? Shall I fear to breathe? Shall I fear to live? Shall I fear to die? Can you prevent your death? Can you control when and how? And people are stealing surgical masks from hospitals: masks that will not protect anyone from contracting coronavirus, but that might have been used by surgeons to perform life-saving surgeries. Fear. Failure.

We hear this in the psalms: “When I am afraid, I put my trust in you” (Ps 56:3): simple, beautiful, holy. I want to pray that, with you, right now: “When I am afraid, I put my trust in you.” Let’s say that, together. . .

The wind tore at them, as though howling threats of destruction. The waves rose over them like the menace of death. The darkness was all around them, yet in all that darkness the darkest place of all was that dark hole in the depths of their fearful hearts, that gape left there by that old old sin: the turning away from God, the forgetting about God. The hollowness of what was lost, a world of churning raging darkness, and all they could hear, in that dark void, were their wind-stifled cries of terror and the panting of their wide-eyed panic. Yet God had not forgotten them. And still, again, they had forgotten—how habitually we forget!—that God was with them in that boat, in that storm. And Jesus speaks—first to them, “You of little faith, why are you so afraid?” and then to the winds and waters beyond their control, “he got up and rebuked the winds and the waves, and it was completely calm” (Mt 8:26).

Again, on the waters, again in the storm (because there will be storms, and we will be tossed and tumbled), Jesus comes to his faithful ones, and they do not recognize him, because fear is all they can see, but he speaks to them—his Word gets through, beloved; his Word grips us, and changes everything—he says: “Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid” (Mt 14:27).

But the time came when Jesus wasn’t there: those days, in the tomb. They all knew he was dead, and the sorrow and the fear, the darkness and the finality, deadened them. Fear may preserve life. I won’t say it doesn’t. But fear is no way to live, no way to Life. This may be part of the reason why, when those women arrive in the darkness that was just beginning to become light, arrive there at the tomb, that an angel from light and in light, says to them, “Do not be afraid” (Mt. 28:5). God has done His work, and is even now doing His Work. His work is no work of fear, sorrow, darkness, or death. God’s work is work for courage, joy, light, and Life.

That same day, our savior and our Life, Jesus Christ, risen, gives his followers a solemn, sacred charge: “Do not be afraid” (Mt 28:10). And why should we not be? Because Jesus knows, and shows, that love is stronger, stronger than death, stronger, even, than fear. Because Jesus holds us, securely—oh, the ride will be bumpy—we knew that already! Don’t be afraid. Faith, not fear. We are held, surely, securely.

And may God bless you in your search for toilet paper.

Now to the One who by the power at work within us is able to do far more abundantly than all we can ask or imagine, to God be glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever.