fear of "him"

This Sunday morning I am going to preach about fear.

Moses said to the people, "Do not be afraid; for God has come only to test you and to put the fear of him upon you so that you do not sin." Exodus 20:20

[The chief priests and the pharisees] wanted to arrest [Jesus], but they feared the crowds, because they regarded him as a prophet. Matthew 22:45

Two sentences about fear. The people fear God. The leaders fear the crowd.

My first postmodern impulse tells me that the leaders shouldn't have feared the crowd, they should have feared God instead! If we let God be God, and not some logical, containable, neat and tidy, domestic, sanitary, concept we can understand and explain, then perhaps there is something to fear in God. Maybe it is time to fear God raging on the mountain again!

Or maybe not.

Despite the excitement of letting God speak in the voice that God would choose (rather than the one that I approve), maybe there is enough fear in the world already. And maybe the church has been manipulatively complicit in letting fear have the last word for long enough.
I myself have certainly not offered comfort or strength to all of the people who fear "him."

And so when I preach about fear this Sunday, I have no interest in neutering God's pronoun in Exodus 20:20. I think that is was very much "him" whom the people feared: "him". Not God, but the masculine other who was trying to intimidate and control them. And it makes me think of all the women who fear "him"... whoever he is.
A boyfriend.
A boss.
A husband.
An intimate.
A pastor.
The church has taught women to fear "him" whenever we refuse to acknowledge domestic violence, sexual assault and the other crimes (and obsessions!) of our sexist society. And I have been a part of isolating in fear women who might yet be able to let their faith form a crowd.

(I mistyped the Exodus passage a moment ago and saw that I put on my screen "God has come only to TEXT you and put the fear of him upon..." No. It is not only a text. Whether he are talking about abusers texting victims or preachers exegeting a scripture text, it is not "only a text". Lives are at stake. This sort of fear is not acceptable.)

So maybe I should admire the way that the crowds were feared by their leaders. They did not need to tremble by themselves at the foot of the mountain. They did not hide behind a mediator to protect them. They knew they had access to God, in a direct personal relationship.
Faith is a force in itself and through it perhaps we can yet claim power beyond our individual lives, but still in union with the life we know.

The crowds' regard for Christ is powerful. It is a voice that God would choose.

Our faith in the prophetic office can free us from the fear of "him".