Scripture: Psalm 27:1-14; John 14:1-2 Series: 2022
Opening a new ‘Survival’ series on Father’s Day, Wilson argues the number-one survival rule is ‘Don’t Panic.’ He moves from Douglas Adams’s nihilistic version and Kipling’s virtue-based manliness to the deeper Christian ground in Psalm 27: courage and security rest not in ourselves but in God, who is our light and fortress. Faith does not promise comfort or escape from hunger, persecution, or pain—Jesus faced all of these—but frees us from needing to fear them. Christians are a pilgrim people whose final home is prepared by God (John 14), so no enemy, boss, or hater can take the soul. Fatherhood means caring for and modeling faith to the next generation. The practice of not panicking is loving neighbor, getting outside one’s own head, and hoping in the Lord.
Illustrations: colorado-backpacking-fresh-snow, yoni-romanian-army-camping, hitchhikers-guide-dont-panic, kipling-if-poem, frederick-great-defends-nothing, mattress-company-comfort, highway-620-traffic, fathers-day-screwdrivers, journaling-shrinks-fears
June 19
Father’s Day
Don’t Panic
The Lord is my light and my salvation. Should I fear anyone? The Lord is a fortress protecting my life. Should I be frightened of anything? When evildoers come at me trying to eat me up— it’s they, my foes and my enemies, who stumble and fall! If an army camps against me, my heart won’t be afraid. If war comes up against me, I will continue to trust in this: I have asked one thing from the Lord— it’s all I seek: to live in the Lord’s house all the days of my life, seeing the Lord’s beauty and constantly adoring his temple. Because he will shelter me in his own dwelling during troubling times; he will hide me in a secret place in his own tent; he will set me up high, safe on a rock. Now my head is higher than the enemies surrounding me, and I will offer sacrifices in God’s tent— sacrifices with shouts of joy! I will sing and praise the Lord. Lord, listen to my voice when I cry out— have mercy on me and answer me! Come, my heart says, seek God’s face. Lord, I do seek your face! Please don’t hide it from me! Don’t push your servant aside angrily— you have been my help! God who saves me, don’t neglect me! Don’t leave me all alone! Even if my father and mother left me all alone, the Lord would take me in. Lord, teach me your way; because of my opponents, lead me on a good path. Don’t give me over to the desires of my enemies, because false witnesses and violent accusers have taken their stand against me. But I have sure faith that I will experience the Lord’s goodness in the land of the living! Hope in the Lord! Be strong! Let your heart take courage! Hope in the Lord! - Psalm 27
Not everybody enjoys camping. I have to admit that. I don’t understand it emotionally, but it is reality. I don’t expect everyone to enjoy what I enjoy. However, some people have better reasons than others for not enjoying it. My father-in-law, Yoni, was born and raised in communist Romania. He had to do mandatory service in the Romanian army in his twenties. That was the last time and the only time he really went camping. Camping reminds him of the Romanian army. And I think that’s a really understandable to not like camping. God bless you, Yoni. I’m not going to ask you to sleep in a tent ever again. People who like to camp like it for different reasons. They may enjoy the great outdoors. Some like their recreational vehicles. They like to be outside, but they just need a little more comfort in order to do it. My favorite kind of camping is backpacking. It is getting everything in your pack, putting it on your back, and taking it with you to places you could not access without the pack. I’ve had times backpacking in the mountains of Colorado, where in the mornings I would wake up to fresh snow all around me and the only tracks were birds dancing. The only sounds were the snow cracking, the birds singing, and the mountain stream gurgling past. Mornings with fresh coffee from a mountain stream. Did I sleep great? Not really. I don’t sleep great camping. I don’t do it for the sleep or the comfort.
Camping, though, is different than survival. There are some skills you can gain camping that help you to survive in the wilderness, but they are not the same thing. Survival is about how to live when everything has gone wrong. What should you do trapped on a desert island? What should you do if your plane crashes in the Alaskan wilderness. Friends, we are starting a new series on this father’s day about Survival, about survival in the wilderness and survival in the world. About what it means to survive As a human in the wild, and what it means to survive as a child of God in this broken world. Now there’s a few key aspects to survival. Different experts focus on different ones. The basics are shelter, water, and food. We will get to those, but for me, I think the most important thing, the number one thing to survival is the simple phrase: Don’t Panic.
I first encountered the phrase Don’t Panic reading the old Douglas Adams novel A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, but it gets to the heart of surviving in any circumstance. Don’t panic. Whether you are in the wilderness, in the desert, in the ocean, or struggling through life. Don’t panic. Very few people, looking back on their life, think to themselves. “Gosh, I wish I panicked more.”
An important question should also be: why not? Why shouldn’t we panic? Douglas Adams, the science fiction writer, recommends people not to panic from a sense of nihilism. Nothing matters, so what’s the point of panicking. Panicking has little marginal utility so we shouldn’t do it. This is one way to look at it.
Rudyard Kipling, in the poem, If
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
The poem offers a different reason not to panic. It speaks of Fatherhood and manhood and the estimable qualities in a person. Panic is a sign of a weak leader who doesn’t have virtue. The word virtue literally comes from the Latin word for man, vir. Virtue, in a classical sense, is manliness and one of the principle virtues is courage. Courage is something you need in every aspect of life. Courage doesn’t mean someone who lacks fear. That person is foolhardy. The foolhardy person runs into a battle that they know they’re going to loose. It’s useless. It’s a waste of life. The courageous person knows where the true enemy lies. Because they know what to fear, they know what not to fear.
These notions aren’t quite Christian. They still focus on me and mine. How I live and what I do, but they start us on the journey that may get to the heart of courage revealed in Scripture. Our courage, our hope, our everything is not found within ourselves but with God. It is found powerfully in Psalm 27, one of my favorites,
The Lord is my light and my salvation. Should I fear anyone? The Lord is a fortress protecting my life. Should I be frightened of anything?
The most frightening thing about survival situations is the wide variety of problems that can take place. If you are in a desperate situation where your life and the life of others is on the line, there’s a different moral calculation going on in your head then if you were in a situation where you’re stuck in traffic on 620 because the high school just let out. When we talk about survival, the stakes are very high; as high as they can be. When the stakes get higher, certain kinds of decisions are made. And if you’re afraid of everything, you aren’t fearing the right fear. As Frederick the Great said, he who defends everything, defends nothing. If you’re afraid of everything, then you’re missing half the reality that God Is your light. Whom shall you fear? Though stuff happens, God is there. We can distort our understanding of God in this way, as well. If we get into a survival situation or a challenging situation, and think to ourselves, “Well, I’m a Christian. So God’s gonna take care of me.” When in reality, especially if we’re looking at the Scriptures, God taking care of us doesn’t always turn out the way we would like. God taking care of us may not mean we live long lives on earth. God taking care of us may not mean we don’t suffer pain. Jesus says the rain falls on the just as well as the unjust. Faith is not a way to avoid bad things from happening. Christianity is not about living more comfortably. Comfort is lovely, but that is not the goal of faith. That is the goal of a mattress company. Faith offers something more.
What is offered through the Psalms and the scriptures, and especially through the person of Jesus Christ, is that the things we were taught to fear in this world, we need not fear. We need not fear hunger. We need not fear persecution. We need not fear struggle. We need not fear pain. We need not fear fear. We see, in the life of Jesus, that he did not avoid these things. Jesus boldly faced persecution and hunger and the fears of others. And he shows us that a life fully lived does not avoid these things. The blessedness offered to us by Christ is not a blessedness of mild amusement, but the flourishing and purposeful life of a follower of Jesus called to holiness. Called to a life where sacrifice Is greater than comfort. Called to a life where giving is greater than receiving. Called to a life where justice for all is greater than justice for myself. Not everybody is going to enjoy camping or the outdoors, but we are a pilgrim people in this world. When we are out, walking, hiking, moving, camping, swimming, traveling, boating, flying, we are reminded of this reality. I love the hill country. I love the lake, but this is not our final destination. This is not our ultimate end. There is more to life than avoiding dying. There is more to life property taxes and vacations. We are a pilgrim people in this land. You are loved. You are forgiven. You do not need to be afraid. In John 14, Jesus says, “““Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?” John 14:1-2 ESV
As Psalm 27 says, I have asked one thing from the Lord—it’s all I seek: to live in the Lord’s house all the days of my life, seeing the Lord’s beauty and constantly adoring his temple.
This is what I mean by a pilgrim people. We are on a journey to the place God prepares for us. Not our bucket list. Not our dream home. Our final home. We do not prepare it. Jesus does. We do not have to pay the rent and property tax and insurance on it. Our home is insured by God’s love. Our peace is in God and not ourselves or our circumstances. We can find flickering moments of peace here and we should be joyful for them, but our hearts are restless until they rest in the God who restlessly sought us out from the brambles of this world. You are loved. You are forgiven. God has made a place for you. Don’t panic.
That person who bothers you cannot take your soul. That person who hates you cannot take your soul. Your boss who belittles you cannot take your soul. You are forgiven. Don’t Panic. You may think, “Easy for you to say, Wilson.” And that is fair. It takes practice. It takes practice to see our souls rightly in this world. The practice is doing the things of God. The practice is loving our neighbor. The practice is getting outside of our own heads. My fears are always greater in my head than in reality. When I am afraid or anxious, I try my best to talk to some or to journal and write it down because on a page, my fears are tiny. In order to survive, don’t panic.
I am grateful to be a father. Fatherhood in the church is not just about biological or adopted children. It is just how we care for the people around us and what we share with the next generation. It takes practice and persistence. It takes realizing that you have been called for something more than yourself. Our Fathers’ Day gift this year are these little screwdrivers, Some of you probably have a billion of them. Some of you may know what to use them for, others may have a drawer where you put stuff like this and it functions as a black hole only to be dumped into a box the next time you move. Fathers can be handy or not handy, but you all have a responsibility. Whether you have kids or not, you have a responsibility to the children and youth around you, to the people around you. And you are already doing it. You are already showing people around you what God is doing in your life. People look up to you. If that causes you nervousness, “Don’t Panic.” Psalm 27 guides us in this, as well. It guides us in what to do when we are unsure.
Lord, teach me your way; because of my opponents, lead me on a good path. Don’t give me over to the desires of my enemies, because false witnesses and violent accusers have taken their stand against me. But I have sure faith that I will experience the Lord’s goodness in the land of the living! Hope in the Lord! Be strong! Let your heart take courage! Hope in the Lord!
May we all seek this sureness of faith, may we remember in good times and bad, to hope in the Lord. May we take courage in the Lord. Our survival is not based on ourselves but on the Lord of Heaven and Earth. Don’t Panic. God is with us.
Let us pray, Heavenly father, we thank you for this day, this chance to be called together, to learn how to live fully for you. Help us to remember not to panic. Help us your love revealed in Jesus Christ, and how we are called to show that love with our transformed lives. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.