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"Rattle Fatigue"
Today I'd like to share with you one small verse from the Gospel of John. This verse comes in Jesus' farewell address to his friends. Here he is trying to help them see that no matter what comes next, he has already overcome, and therefore, they have as well.

Listen for God's word, John 16:33: “I have said this to you, so that in me you may have peace (a settled calm). In the world you face persecution (crushing distress). But take courage (put on a happy face, literally), I have conquered the world.”

We have all said it so many times in the last years that the words seem almost trite and meaningless: we live in troubled times. Unfortunately, sisters and brothers in Christ, those trite words are anything but meaningless.

When the only thing that seems to remove the headlines of war and violence from the six o'clock news is the pain and angst of one celebrity meltdown after another. Sisters and brothers, we live in troubled times.

Sure, we may go about business as usual. We go to work or work at home. We cook our meals and pay our bills, and we may watch a little TV, read a good book. We may shop and plan for retirements, or college. Still, just beneath the surface, as we clear the toothpaste and hair gel out of our carry on luggage, somewhere just beneath the surface we know that we live in troubled times. And sometimes we are afraid.

Several years ago, shortly before 9/11 actually, a periodical came across my desk that contained an article about a new medical emotional syndrome discovered in Middle Eastern children. It's called “rattle fatigue.” Rattle fatigue sets in when danger becomes commonplace and one is never sure that one is safe. This feeling can result from external threats like terrorism, or from feeling unsafe in relationships. Or it can come from internal threats, even from that kind of endless barrage of harsh self-criticism.

In rattle fatigue a person dulls out, numbs out, not only to his or her own personal fear, but to the reality of pain and fear for others as well. It all just stops feeling real so nothing feels real. Compassion and a sense of humanity all but disappear. Rattle fatigue takes a toll.

What guidance do we get from Scripture in this regard? Well, there are three hundred seventy five “fear nots” in the Bible, enough for one a day for a year. But does being told not to fear really help when we don't feel safe anywhere we turn? When I feel vulnerable down to my core, telling me to “fear not” is about as useful as telling me that I shouldn't eat the quart of Haagen Daz that is the only thing that stands between me and a meltdown.

So is there any other help in the Bible? That question set me on a search for what the Bible says about safety. The concept of safety differs radically from the Old Testament to the New Testament. In the Old Testament safety usually means either the absence of war or victory in war without undue hardship or casualties. Safety in the Old Testament always refers to safety in this world. And it is always something that God alone gives. God does not do this in a whimsical or capricious manner. Safety is given when human beings make choices for righteousness and integrity.

Now, in the New Testament safety is rarely mentioned, only five times. And in those instances it refers to a kind of spiritual safety. While in the Old Testament righteousness brings safety, in the New Testament it is faithfulness and righteousness that lead to danger.

Safety, sisters and brothers, is not a New Testament value. What is valuable, what is urged instead, is faithfulness. In the New Testament the promise that God will not allow bad things to happen to a believer does not exist. It is, in a fundamental way, irrelevant because safety, ultimate safety, has already been accomplished and is ensured: Jesus says, “I have overcome the world! “

The longing of the human heart for a God who will bring us through danger has already been fulfilled in Christ. Casual safety is never promised to us in the New Testament but ultimate safety is already ours and can never be shaken. Period.

So then, if that is true what do we do with our fear? That is what Jesus is trying to address for his friends who did not feel safe and, in truth, were not safe. Jesus tells them and us that we are to

take, that is, grab hold of a continuous action that never stops. We are to take courage, not just a steely facing of what ever may come, but a cheerful embracing of what life brings so that we may live in love in the midst of it.

Well, how can Jesus possibly expect his friends to do that in this dangerous time? By this time he can surely smell what is coming for them. How could they and how can we take courage, put on a happy face? Perhaps there are two reasons. Maybe a story will help you see the first.

A few months after 9/11, my mother and I took the train from my then home in Birmingham, Alabama to New York City for a theater trip. We were both a little anxious, to say the least. On the long ride we decided that neither of us wanted to go down to ground zero. We were settled on that. But when the train rounded the bend after Newark and I got a first glimpse of that snaggle-toothed skyline, I knew that I would have to go there.

A few days later I made my way downtown. The site was massive, still smoldering, so much bigger than I expected. Fences and sawhorses covered with sheets lined the area. On the sheets people from all over the world had painted messages, and attached photographs and flowers. There were throngs of people everywhere, but I remember no sound at all except the softened steps of hundreds of pairs of shoes.

I did not feel the way I thought that I would. I expected to feel horror or some kind of soul blistering rage. But I didn't. What I felt was presence, the most profound, nearly palpable presence of Christ that I can recall feeling.

When I peeped through the sheets to that vast canyon behind, filled with recovery workers like ants in a hill, what I saw was Jesus walking and working in the ashes, sweating and weeping and staying with the living and the dead. What came to my mind like the most blinding of truths, was that come what may, Jesus is not among the missing. He is always present. Whether we feel Jesus' presence or not, Jesus is never among the missing. That is the truth with which we face our fears. No mater what else may seem true, Jesus is not among those missing.

Which leads me to one last thought. Because Jesus is not among the missing we may be assured that love wins. In the final analysis love wins. How? I don't know. I just know, and I knew as I stood there breathing in the dust of a thousand agonies, that God's redeeming love is more powerful than our pain, more powerful than any crushing fear, than any affliction or distress. I just know it. Such is my faith.

So I will close with Jesus' words to you: “In the world you face crushing anguish. But grab hold of your joyful courage, I have completely conquered the world.”

Conversation with Eugenia Gamble

Daniel Pawlus: If you'd like a free printed or audio copy of the message you just heard from Eugenia Gamble, we'll tell you how to place an order at the end of the program. Or you can visit our website at 30goodminutes.org to watch the video or download the text anytime. Now, let's talk with Eugenia Gamble. Eugenia, thank you for sharing that message with us today.

Eugenia Gamble: Thank you for inviting me to come.

Daniel Pawlus: I know both Lydia and I were struck by your sharing of your experience of visiting the 9/11 site that close to the actual event itself. I wonder if you could share with us what you felt in seeing Jesus working in the midst of all that chaos. Was it a special moment of the Spirit visiting you? Or on reflecting back on it, was it the faith perspective that you brought to it to be able to see it in a different way?

Eugenia Gamble: Well, I have thought about it a lot, but the experience was very immediate. When I was there I was so struck by the quiet. New York is never quiet! And there was just this still. I thought about God's still, small voice. There was a moment when I peeked between some of the sheets, the sawhorses that were covered with sheets. I peeked in there and, of course, I saw all of the workers, but I felt as if in that inner little place I could see Jesus there. It almost was like that image in Scripture of Jesus walking on the waters. There was a sense of him just kind of walking on those. Talk about deep water! I mean we were in deep water at that time and there was this sense of him just walking over the deep waters of human anguish. I could feel it. I'm not saying I saw something with my eyes but with that inner eye there was just that palpable sense of presence. Sometimes I've longed for that sense but not felt it.

Daniel Pawlus: Have you felt anything like that since?

Eugenia Gamble: No, not just like that. No, never.

Lydia Talbot: And that kind of presence that we are called to convey to others who suffer. I must ask you, Eugenia, you were born and bred a Southern belle from Alabama as we know. I love hearing you talk and your message that really has teeth in it. I'd like to ask you about your dad, your distinguished father, and how you are applying the principles you've described to his journey that you share of his illness.

Eugenia Gamble: Well, I think it's interesting that you would ask me that when I was thinking about the kind of fear that we have for personal safety. My father, as I've told you, was a judge. For many years sat on the bench, I think for twenty-three years, that his father sat on for forty-three years, and was a district attorney during the time of the civil rights movement. He prosecuted the Viola Liuzzo murder and the Jonathan Daniels murder. So my life was marked by times of crisis. Someone actually attempted to assassinate my dad, blew him up in a car bomb in our side yard when I was in college. So there have been these moments that have brought me up short in life. My father is now quite ill and very close to the end of his life, so I think. When I was last in Greenville, Alabama, where he still lives in the home he was born in, when I was last there I remembered just having this moment. My mother is doing all the care for him and she needed some respite. I had this moment with him and he was disoriented and he was saying he wanted to go home and he was in his home. I remember just kind of crawling around him and embracing him and, again, feeling that sense that Jesus was there in the anguish. Somehow I think I was able to bear it to the extent that I was because I felt that my arms were Jesus' arms.

Lydia Talbot: Tell us his name.

Eugenia Gamble: Arthur. Arthur Gamble.

Daniel Pawlus: I wonder if you'd share with us, too, your passion for working with homeless women and children. I'm sure you've seen fear, in a way, out of that experience. What has that been for you in terms of your ministry and the personal experience of being with those women and children in that situation?

Eugenia Gamble: I think my initial response to some of the things that the women who I was able to serve with on the streets of Birmingham—some of the things they went through, the horrible, degrading things that they went through—I just felt a fierceness about it. I just found myself feeling like a mother bear or something. There was a fierce desire for what was so wrong to somehow be made right. I think in the presence of these incredible injustices, or even in the presence of the tiny indignities of human life that just kind of shred our insides, there is just this fierce longing to speak a word of an alternative reality, of another truth, a greater truth that remains regardless of all of the things that are happening, and to be able to do that with homeless women is probably easier than with the affluent congregations that I've served, because they are raw and they know their need. Some of us who have much are not as in touch with what we need, sometimes because we're used to meeting all of our own needs. But the homeless women in Birmingham, they knew their need for a Savior. They knew that if they didn't have an experience of Christ with them as they were spending the thirty hours a week just to access survival services, they knew they needed a Savior. So it was raw and it was out there and we just said it the way it was and claimed something else.

Daniel Pawlus: That's wonderful.

Lydia Talbot: You talk about—and I love those words—cheerfully embracing what life brings and the joyful courage.

Eugenia Gamble: Joyful courage.

Lydia Talbot: When you've just discovered—our viewers, anyone—or are one who has just heard those terrible words of a diagnosis with terminal illness, or you name it, how is gratitude an important element there?

Eugenia Gamble: I think gratitude helps with the healing. I'm not sure we can all access our gratitude at the moment of the shock of whatever loss or whatever threat is coming to us. I think it's so interesting in the text that I read that Jesus uses a very interesting word that really almost means put on a happy face, kind of grab your joy. And that joy that he's talking about is the same word that was used of the martyrs in the arena at the time that the lion was at their neck. It's a joy that we grab hold of more than we feel. It's rooted not in our circumstances, it's independent of circumstances. It's rooted in our great circumstance, which is the acknowledgment that for us no end is ever a final end, for us the world has been overcome, as Jesus said. This pain that we are experiencing is shared. It's shared by Jesus. But it's shared by the body of Christ, too, I think, the church itself. The church is wild and wooly and full of fleas and sometimes we can't even figure out who we are!

Lydia Talbot: But the hope is still there.

Eugenia Gamble: That's right. And we become the chalice that holds people's lives.

Daniel Pawlus: Thank you so much for being with us today, Eugenia. We appreciate it.

Eugenia Gamble: Thank you.
     

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