Choosing Hope Over Fear

Dear Friends,  

The way preachers talk about a particular Gospel passage often depends on the translation from which it is taken. In today’s Gospel, we hear Jesus say to the people: Do not fear. Only believe. 

Another, older translation of the same verse has Jesus saying to the crowds: Fear is useless. What is needed is trust. 

Jesus was speaking to a distraught crowd gathered outside Jairus’ home. Inside, Jairus’ daughter has died. But Jesus was undaunted. Fear is useless, he said. What is needed is trust. 

Fearmongering is big business in our time. Fear runs through the pulse of America. Doom is impending – the end of democracy. No matter the candidate, the opposition will attempt to sow fear into the electorate. How well we see this in these times. The exhaustive reporting of disasters often lasts beyond the human capacity to absorb these accounts. Even the weather gets reported in ways that play on people’s fears. 

Fear is big business because fear sells in a way that trust doesn’t. Drama needs fear, but Jesus says, ”Fear is useless.” 

If fear is indeed useless, what is useful? The answer to this question is at one and the same time easy and hard. The answer? Hope and trust. If we pay enough attention, we see that we are surrounded by people whose actions symbolize hope not fear. 

COVID has complicated life for the poor. Hope has come through the various acts passed by Congress to help, allowing people to purchase food, housing, medical care, other needs. The recent acceptance of Juneteenth as a significant moment in our history has stirred hope in our Black brothers and sisters and in the rest of us as well. The heroes of COVID in hospitals, ambulances and nursing homes have shown to Americans again and again that fear is useless. What is needed is hope. 

Hope requites that we believe that the future can be different from the present and that we can help make the future new. This hope which urges us on is based on faith in God and faith in one another. The recent rash of violence in our land notwithstanding, there is more love and support available than we seem to see.  

And then there are the refugees streaming to our shores, especially across our southern border. We are not altogether welcoming of uninvited newcomers to our land. We fear they will take away from us what we are and want and need. Can we be bearers of hope for new immigrants? Can we say to them the words of Jesus to the crowd faced with the death of Jairus’ daughter: Fear is useless. What is needed is trust. I hope we can say this and live its truth. I hope we can hear Paul’s words in today’s second reading and take them to heart. Paul says: This is not relief for others and pressure for you. Rather, Paul says, “Let there be a fair balance between your abundance and their need.” 

Hope is the offspring of faith that inspires good. Hope is alive and well where people develop life-giving, life-sustaining relationships and solve life’s problems together. Will our vision be big enough to live and act this way? 

~Sister Joan Sobala