My favourite quotation from the Bible has always been “Fear not, little flock, for I have overcome the world.” (Luke 12 32). To me, these words express an infinity of comfort and caring. They reassure me that my fears are understood, and my cowardice is accepted. I am not rejected because I lack courage. Help and support are always there.
Two of the readings that we have heard today describe common forms of fear that we must face. Joseph had to go away to another country, leaving behind him everything and everybody that had been familiar. Because of his brothers’ jealousy, he had to go alone into the unknown and make a completely fresh start. All his belongings were gone. He went as a slave, without even his father’s protection, or the special coat that showed his status.
Fortunately, his Heavenly Father’s gift was still with him, through that strange ability to interpret dreams and to foretell the future from them. This talent would win him influence, especially in Egypt, where astrologers were so much respected.
Peter’s abilities, on the other hand, put him more on a level with the rest of us. He was driven by impulsive enthusiasm, and would dive into a project without too much thought. Too late, he would discover that, though the spirit might be willing, the flesh was too weak to go along with it. He would have to back down, and withdraw from the challenge. He discovered that he did not have the courage to walk on water after all; and Jesus reproved him gently for his lack of faith. He was no more reproachful when, soon afterwards, following Jesus; arrest, Peter was so frightened by the events that he denied three times that he even knew the Master. It was not much longer after this, and Peter’s bitter remorse, that Jesus said to him “You are Petros, the Rock, and on this rock I will build my church”. The fears did not conceal the facts about Pewter from Jesus.
By the time I was five, I knew what a coward I was- and children were not encouraged to have self-esteem in my day. I was afraid of the dark and of ghosts. We lived close to the church, which as usual in Britain, was surrounded by a centuries-old graveyard, with carved tombs and gravestones, and an owl that lived in a tower and hooted mournfully. My brother made up a lot of ghost-stories to tell me, and I always avoided going out of doors after dark.
Even more than ghosts, though, I feared frogs, creepy-crawlies of all kinds; and I was petrified even at the idea of a snake. One week, my brother bought a model one with his pocket money. When he held it up by the tip of its tail, it made a side-winding motion with its body and opened and closed its mouth, while its tongue flickered in and out. I was not just afraid of it. I was hysterical, and there was no reasoning with me. Finally, he took out his pen-knife, and cut the snake into four pieces to show me that it was harmless- just bits of wire and leather and plywood. Immediately, I felt ashamed that he had sacrificed it to my stupid fears. A few weeks later, it was Missionary Sunday, and I boasted that I would go to Africa as a missionary.
Man proposes, God disposes. That snake incident was deeply printed on my memory- to be joined by a similar picture almost exactly 20 years later (when I was 25). It was a January afternoon, and I was sitting in the courtyard to one side of our home in central Africa, where I was now teaching English literature at a church-supported college. I trying to get a set of essays marked before the sun set at six o’clock. After that, I should have to work by the light of oil-lamps, because our house had no power. Even the refrigerator ran on kerosene. Just as I was about to turn a page, there was a most horrendous bang. The whole world seemed to shake; and there was a choking smell of cordite. The bloody body of a large snake was on the ground beside me; and my husband, with a rifle, and our cook Attugah looking as pale as a Hausa man can look. They were framed in the kitchen window. Attugah had seen the snake ready to rear up from the red earth beside me, and had got my husband without delay.
I had talked a lot to God about helping me to keep my panic secret if any such incident as this should occur, and He slipped the words right out of my mouth “I do believe it’s a king cobra”, I said chattily. “Look at the hood, stretched out behind its head- and it must be at least six foot long. Thank you for doing the right thing, Attugah.”
I was so pleased to have come creditably through the ordeal, but there was still some feeling of sadness that something had been destroyed.
Anyway, I behaved more easily when, a few days later, a group of three students came to me after recess, one of them with something like a rope wrapped all around his arm from wrist to shoulder. He held one end of it in his hand; and I soon saw that it was a snake, and that he was gripping it firmly from behind the jaws, between his thumb and forefinger. “Mme”, he said seriously, “I wanted to show you that snakes do have teeth.”- just as Shakespeare says (In my know-it-all way, I had said that Shakespeare was wrong when he said that “Ingratitude is sharper than a serpent’s tooth”. Now, here was a pit-viper, with its poisonous, backward curving teeth. I expressed my appreciation of having been given the chance to learn this, but advised the student not to take the snake back where he had found it, but rather to consult Mr. Mensah, who was in charge of the college compound, about what to do with it.
From that night on, I was more determined than ever not to switch on my flashlight when I walked over to the college buildings after dark to give an extra class or to rehearse our Shakespeare play. I knew that snakes, scorpions and other creatures fled for their safety into the bush when they felt the vibrations of some human approach, but I knew that I would be happier not even seeing them do that- and my knee-high leather boots would keep me from actual harm.
Both my husband and I felt that the school-day in the boarding college should go longer than noon for European teachers, so I did my evening classes; and at 3.00 every afternoon my husband went out to the playing fields to train our athletes in track and field. He had taken part in the Decathlon of the last Olympic Games before World War II, at which Hitler presided, and the American Negro Jesse Owens was the star. He liked to inspire our students with stories of this hero, and he was delighted when one of them showed promise of becoming a star. He was a strong prospect for a high-jump medal in the Olympic Games to be held shortly in Helsinki (rather like Boateng, the Ghanaian who has recently become a Canadian citizen and joined our team).
Imagine our dismay when Kwesi arrived at morning assembly one day utterly downcast, dragging his feet. His eyes were puffy, and he announced that he could no longer jump at all- and had barely been able to complete his morning run around the track. The whole story came out in short bursts. He had apparently offended the local Tigare priest while passing through the village the previous day, and the witch doctor had put a ju-ju, or curse, on him and said that he would never be able to jump again. Kwesi swore that he could not jump even a foot off the ground now, however hard he tried.
This was no laughing matter, as we had all heard of villagers simply lying down on their sleeping mats, turning their faces to the wall, and dying- from no obvious causes- once a spell had been put on them.
We tried to reason with Kwesi, to convince him that these curses did not work unless the victim really believed that they would, or unless some kind of poison from plants was being used (Called “bringing bush to chop”). We tried to persuade him that he was too well educated and clever to let somebody get into his head and manipulate him into wasting the talent that God had given him.
We were clearly not getting through to him, and I was praying desperately to be shown a way. God responded fast, and with most dramatic effects, which is not His usual way. Now, I have to fill in a lot of background. For some time, we had been running a clinic in the village, near the mission college. Twice a week, I took a group of senior students down there, and we set up our red cross box, with the supplies in it, under a nim tree. It provided a table, in an open space amongst all the mud huts. The purpose was to convince the villager mothers to keep their children’s open sores clean and covered, to keep off the flies that always clustered there. It was also intended to convince our students that when they returned to their own villages in the jungle, they would be responsible for the well-being of the people there. We used only supplies that they could all afford- empty coconut shells for containers, bandages made from strips torn off clean sheets, and a disinfectant made from potassium permanganate.
Our best friends throughout our time in Africa were the African chief doctor and his wife. I had confided to him that if we could get one big cure, people would not be so suspicious of our clinic. He said we could manage that quite easily. Everybody in the village knew Mama Essi, who had been helpless for two years because of a terrible ulcer on her leg. She could neither walk nor work, but just lay on her rush mat in the dust in front of her hut. If I could persuade her to go down to Charle’s hospital (one of only four in the country) in our college truck, he would give her a mega-dose of penicillin and send her off to Accra, the capital, for more treatment. He had offered this plan to her before, but she had refused out of fear of the Tigare priest, who regularly sacrificed a white rooster on her behalf, scattered his blood on her, and smeared white clay on her face. Charles was sure that she was now so frustrated by her helplessness that she would go along with us. He was right; and we had got her off to Accra a week or so earlier.
She arrived back on the very day of Kwesi’s trouble. She climbed out of the mami-wagon in the middle of the village- under her own steam and looking like a real person again. All the villagers laughed and shouted and made such a fuss that the Tigare priest came, took stock of the situation and pronounced- in a loud voice- that the foreign witch would not live beyond the full moon. I was delighted, because this must surely convince Kwesi that he could ignore his curse, just as I was going to ignore mine. However, he was not easy to persuade that he and I were in the same situation. I prayed very hard for some direction.
Two days later, I was at the clinic in the village again, and conscious that we had a lot more patients and bystanders than usual- probably waiting to see some further drama. There was a sudden whispering, then quiet; and I looked up to see what was happening. Mr. Adjei’s very pregnant shoat (a cross between a sheep and a goat) was walking or waddling in a most determined way straight through the centre of the village towards our clinic. She was not going near Mr. Adjei’s compound, where she would surely go to give birth, we assumed. She came right up to our red cross box, and started to produce her young. Somebody ran to get Mr. Adjei, whilst the rest of us just stared. He got there just in time to welcome the new arrivals- twin female lambs- riches for him.
Everybody started to laugh and shout. Kwesi’s face was a picture. He went off to put on his training gear. To cut a long story shorter, he was jumping again- he did go to Helsinki, and he did win a medal. We followed the college truck to the airport to see him off; and the athletes sang their traditional celebratory song- “Guide me, O Thou Great Jehovah”- with so much enthusiasm that you might have thought the truck was actually rocking from side to side as they all got into the swing of things.
Human fears have not changed much over the centuries, nor from place to place on the globe.
We may often wonder why Jesus constantly refers to us as sheep. They are not very inspiring animals. They do not roar like lions- but just bleat. They are not cunning like foxes, but are just as silly as sheep. They often go astray. They are silent before the shearer and go quietly like lambs to the slaughter. In the days when the lion shall lie down with the lamb, it is the lion’s generosity we shall admire, not the sheep’s bravery. Perhaps, though, we could not understand all the values of the Good Shepherd if we could not see all the weaknesses of his flock.