Fear is a four-letter word. It is a killer, a killer of spirit. It has no place in God’s reality. The question is how much of a place it has in our construct of reality. When we look at the issue of fear, it is very important that we pay attention to what is true.

The truth is that we were not created for fear. God did not create us for fear. God did not create you for fear or me for fear. So, what were we created for? We were created for joy – not happy, happy, but joy, that deep understanding that we are connected and that all is ultimately right. We were created for joy, can we even grasp that? Can we make any sense of that in our mixed-up world? Now for the biggest idea – we get to choose. We get to choose, every day, sometimes every hour, whether we will choose fear, or joy. It is a fundamental choice, one of those rock-bottom, the rest of our life stands on this, kind of choice. It is a choice that divides us, the ones who choose fear often are very angry at the ones who choose joy, but the ones who choose joy will not remain in fear to make a false peace with those who choose fear.

Fear is a large word for worry, and worry is a mild form of atheism. If we follow that out, fear is a stronger form of atheism. It is like when my friend promised me something. If I fear my friend won’t come through with the promise, then what I am saying with my fear is that I don’t believe my friend’s promise. Perhaps I have reason to disbelieve my friend. Perhaps my friend is fond of making promises she cannot keep. In that case, I need to tell my friend, please do not promise me this because I cannot accept it as a promise. That you will try to get it done, yes, that I can accept – but a promise is much stronger than an attempt. If you tell me that you promise to do this, then I will make decisions based on that promise. I must be able to trust your promise. If you are not sure about whether you can fulfill this, then tell me you will do your best, but don’t tell me that you promise it. It is a hard thing to say to a friend, but I can tell you, if the friendship survives this conversation, it will be much stronger for living in the truth.

So what is it that God promises? I think that God promises love. Again, just as joy is not happy-happy, love is not first-date fuzzy glow. Love is what gets you up in the middle of the night to help a child who is throwing up, again. Love is what keeps you calm when that same child, now older, says he hates you, and God. Love is what keeps you going when the one you love is put in the ground but the children still need to be fed.

We love, because God first loved us. You’ve all heard the true stories about babies who are not held simply curl up and die. They are true stories, and some of us feel like we are living those stories personally. That makes it all the more difficult and more important to understand and know God’s promise of love. We are made for love. We are made to love. We are loved, by God. That is the basis for our joy.

My friend Jesse Manibusan sings a simple but great song - God is bigger, bigger than … and one of the most important thing is that God is bigger than our greatest fear. A very important question then is: what is your greatest fear? What would it mean to believe that God was bigger than that?

What it all comes down to is that we get to choose to believe, or not, to live in fear or in joy, from one moment to the next. The Benedictine book is titled “Always we begin again” and I think it is true. The past does not hold weight with God, what we need to pay attention to is the present.

Here we are at Trinity Sunday, the one Sunday in the church calendar that we celebrate a doctrine. A doctrine is something we hold in common as a belief. This particular doctrine is one that has been argued about for a very long time, and it seems to me that in the end what can be said is that what everyone agrees on is that it is important. What I find compelling in the doctrine of the Trinity is that it is all about relationships, close relationships, like parents and children sorts of relationships. I am tempted to go off on a major tangent here and talk about the importance of recognizing that relationships change. Therefore while my mother used to be the parental figure in our family, as I grew older we became more like sisters, and now I am beginning to assume the parental figure, taking care of her. This is a familiar if somewhat uncomfortable picture for us, but what does it say about us and God? Does God want us to grow up? I think so, but then what does that say about how our relationship with God needs to change? Is there a time when we “take care of” God? And what about the relationship between Father, Son and Holy Spirit? Does that ever change? I will leave those questions for you to ponder later.

This Trinity Sunday is also at the beginning of General Convention, which is also ultimately about relationships; someone suggested that they saw GC as the biggest family reunion going, and there is much truth in that.

GC is also where we as the Episcopal Church set policy, in other words, set the direction we will be going for the next several years, and one would think, GC is where we set doctrine. However, if you read the history of the Anglican Church, known in the US as the Episcopal Church, you will see that is very little doctrine as other churches use that word. If you turn to page 304 in the PB, you will see the Baptismal covenant. It consists of the creed and what we call the 5 questions. When you want to join this church, we ask, can you say this with integrity. We don’t tell you what it means, we simply ask if you can say it with integrity. Now turn to page 844 – did you know we had a catechism? But look at what it says here: it is an outline for instruction, a commentary on the creeds, but not a complete statement of belief and practice. It provides a brief summary of the Church’s teaching for a stranger. It does not say, you have to believe all of what we say here in this Catechism as absolute truth. Rather, it intimates, you are going to have to think about what you believe, here are some helps.

This way of going at things makes some people very uncomfortable, and indeed, there is a huge fight going on, which you no doubt have heard of, which is not about gay bishops, as the newspapers would have us believe, but rather is about authority and doctrine in the Episcopal Church. There is much fear-full behavior going on, some hate-full behavior, and a lot of confusion.

Wendy will have a lot to report on how things have gotten settled, or not, in that arena when she returns. However, in the meantime, I am not afraid. Why am I not afraid? Because I believe God is bigger, for one thing. I believe God is bigger than the entire Episcopal Church, bigger than the whole Anglican Communion, bigger than Christianity, simply put, God is bigger, and because of that, I do not need to be afraid. God is bigger. I feel a little like my nerdy little nephew who looked at the bully quietly and said, you might want to check out how big my friends are before you pick a fight with me. The bully looks up, sees several larger kids keeping an eye on the whole situation and decides he’ll move on.

Another reason I am not afraid is that I believe that the light will overcome the darkness. There will be darkness, no question about it. There is darkness in our world. Things will happen that I do not like, not at all. I do not like the fact that my friend +Gene Robinson has to wear a bullet-proof vest when he goes out in public. I do not like what the Archbishop of Nigeria is doing in the name of religion. For that matter, I do not like what a lot of people do in the name of religion. However, as the scientists have told us, there really is no such thing as “darkness.” There is simply absence of light. Light is a thing, darkness is not a thing, it is the absence of light. That’s a nice scientific way of saying God is bigger.

I wonder what you believe? I wonder what happens when you are afraid, when fear comes in the middle of the night? One of the reasons we gather in community is that those nights come to all of us, and we are here to remind each other, God is bigger, we don’t have to fear.

So I ask you to pray, to lift up the delegates and bishops at GC, to ask God’s mercy on us all, and to pray for light streaming down over the convention center and into each person’s heart and mind. I ask you during this time of GC to give of both money and time, to pay attention to those who need your help, especially those who live in fear and pain.

I ask you to ponder what you believe, where you fear, who you trust, those kinds of things. >/P?

Finally, I ask you to remember one thing in particular: God is bigger. Thanks be to God.