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Just before last week’s election, the New York Times and CBS polled the populace. They asked the usual sorts of questions. What do you think of the war? How about the economy? How good a job do you think the president is doing? One of the questions was this: If the person you do not favor wins the election, will you be excited, optimistic, concerned, or scared? It turns out that it didn’t matter who they favored. Of the people who preferred Kerry, 55% said they would be concerned or scared. Of the people who preferred Bush, 55% said they would be concerned or scared. In other words, over half the people thought the other candidate was scary. This was an election decided on the basis of fear. That is not good news.

Fear makes us crazy. Fear guides us a surely as an imaginary voice in our heads would. Fear mak es us do things that we would otherwise never do, from deceit to slaughter. It magnifies our worst habits, from bullying to greediness. It makes us touchy, hypersensitive, and prone to act without thinking. It makes us become angry for no apparent reason. And fear keeps us from doing things that we would otherwise wish to do. Help another person, begin a risky endeavor, abandon a destructive one, speak out or sing out.

Fear comes to us naturally. When we are in mortal danger, we are moved to escape. A car appears suddenly in our vision, a loud noise means trouble ahead, something to avoid. Our body’s adrenaline energizes us to move out of the way. It makes us more able to react to threat. But after the threat is over, after the adrenaline rush, we are exhausted, worn out. If the fear never ends, we are always tired, impeded, like trying to walk through water.

Constant, undifferentiated fear is not helpful; it is just fatiguing. It is not useful. Such fear is good for nothing. And certainly not good for anything good.

Fear makes us hide out, find a hide-away. We become homebound, doors shut, finding increasingly smaller places that seem safe. It keeps us out of trouble. But it keeps us out of everything. No risk. No adventure. No helping. No possibility.

Fear and loss are business partners. We fear to lose something. Big things: health, love, comfort. Those who have the most to lose fear most, though this seems on the face of it backward. If you have a lot, could you not afford to lose a little? It is a mystery but true that people who have little give more to charity measured by dollars and by percent of income that those who have much. I’m not going to talk much today about the beatitudes—the first part of today’s Gospel reading—but it seems to me that one thing Jesus is saying is that the relationship between life and riches is complicated. There is no ground gained in sentimentalizing poverty; but riches and fullness are evidently a mixed blessing, to say the least.

But even the poorest of people have something to lose. Even the saddest, even the hungriest, has life to lose. Janice Joplin sang about freedom being another word for nothing left to lose. But like absolute zero, we cannot get there. All living creatures, each living creature, has precious life. And in the end, all fears, of the rich and the poor, reduce to one fear, the fear of death.

Jesus asks us to do some hard things. Jesus’ sermon on the plain (it is in Matthew that Jesus speaks these words on a mountain)--in this sermon on the plain Jesus gives us the Christian law, the acting out of the summary: love God with all your mind and soul and heart and your neighbor as yourself. Jesus says, Do good to those who despise you; bless those who disrespect you; pray for those who insult you; love your enemies. These are Christian values. And they are not just Christian ethics, statements of principle. These verbs are all in the imperative: do this, do this. They are like Christian commandments.

They command us to see each person, and not to fold people altogether in one common batch, as fear encourages us to do. The things that Jesus talks about are things that one person does to another and what the other person does back. Do onto others as your would have them do to you. These are not statements about populations but about persons, individuals.

Jesus asks us to do what our hearts—our hearts if fearless— wish to do. To act from the good of our hearts. Listen to the words in his commands: love, do good to, bless, pray for, offer, give to. Doesn’t this seem right? Compare their opposites: Hate, harm, curse, pray against, deny, take. When we do these, we are doing nothing good.

Our hearts ache to do what Jesus wishes us to do. But our hearts are not fearless. I am a coward. Perhaps this is what the apostle Paul meant by a slave to sin. I cannot do what Jesus asks, for my good or the good of others or for the good of the world. When push comes to shove, those goods are not good enough to overcome my fears.

I cannot do this without God. I cannot doing this without being supported by faith in Christ. Trusting that Jesus is truthful. That God will keep us and watch over us as Jesus has told us. ( Consider the ravens, Jesus told us, the lilies, the sparrows, not one of which is forgotten by God.). That Jesus is a trustworthy guide. And especially, on this day of All Saints Sunday, that Jesus showed us that death is not the end of life.

Death is not to be feared. Our biggest fear turns out to be groundless. Being freed of the power of death, we are freed from the power of fear. The thing most precious to us cannot be taken from us at all. Our lives are safe forever.