The fear of the Lord

Did you know that God experiences fear?

That sounds wrong, right? And yet, Christians believe that Jesus is both fully God and fully human, and that if we want to know what God is like we must look at Jesus. And Jesus experienced fear. In an olive grove at the foot of the Mount of Olives, he was so afraid of what might take place that his sweat fell in beads like blood.

Of what was Jesus afraid? Or, to put it another way, what does God fear? Jesus prays that the cup be taken from him. To answer this question, what does God fear, we must ask, what does this cup symbolise?

Over the course of the Passover meal, the remembrance of the exodus from Egypt, four cups of wine were drunk. They relate to the four-fold declaration of God:

“I am the Lord, and I will bring you out [first cup] from under the yoke of the Egyptians.

I will free you from [second cup] being slaves to them, and

I will redeem you with [third cup] an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgement [this is the cup which Jesus reimagined as his blood of the new covenant].

I will take you as [fourth cup] my own people, and I will be your God.”

Exodus 6:6,7

The cup Jesus fears having to drink is the fourth cup, the cup that is a sign that God is taking this people as his own people, and that he will be there God.

Jesus experiences fear at the anticipation of this. Fear that this people will respond with deicide. Fear that God drawing near to them, exposed, will kill them, too.

What is significant is how Jesus—and, hence, God—deals with fear. It is possible to be paralysed by fear. But those who do not know fear act recklessly, endangering themselves and others. The wisdom literature of the Old Testament speaks of the fear of the Lord being the beginning of wisdom. Traditionally, that has been taken to mean, wisdom springs from human reverence for God; but this does not make sense. It does not make sense grammatically, because in every other case, the x of the Lord is taken to refer to God’s initiative and agency—the mountain of the Lord, the arm of the Lord, the eyes of the Lord, the angel of the Lord. And it does not make sense theologically to proclaim human beings as the originators of wisdom. The fear of the Lord is the Lord’s active engagement with the experience of fear, to reveal god-self to us, for the purpose of blessing.

Jesus does not deny fear. He sits in the dark with it, he prays, he looks to the support of his friends, he prays for them. He responds consistent with his character, with the nature of God, as God has always been and always will be, emptying god-self for love of a cranky, quirky, unpromising people. He makes peace with fear, as he will make peace with those of and for whom he has good reason to be afraid. And then, at that moment and not before, the time is right. The fear of the Lord reveals the Lord to those who come to arrest him, and, according to John’s Gospel, they fall on their faces.

Of what are you afraid? At this present time, it may be that every person you come into contact with, in order to offer help, might ultimately kill you or be killed by you. We can be paralysed, or reckless. Or we can look to Jesus. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.