What Do Qanon, UFOs, and Dismissal of the Wuhan lab leak theory have in common? It's likely not what you think.

How can 45 million Americans believe that?    But recent research shows that about 45 million Americans do.   What do they believe?  They believe a group of Satan worshipping child predators, part of a global child kidnapping ring, have taken control of the U.S. government.   Now because they believe that; they also believe this. They believe that we may have to violently overthrow the government to save the country.  And if course, if you believe in the Satan worshipping child predators, that kind of makes sense.   If folks like that have taken control of everything, that’s pretty urgent.  

But of course, they haven’t taken control of anything.   Thy don’t even exist.   In no way, shape or form does that belief have anything to do with reality.  Yet millions of Americans believe it.

Now, on the other hand, we can also not believe things that turn out to have more truth to them than we realize.   For example, it turns out that the government is about to release a report, that UFOs or as they now call them UAPs for Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, do exist.   Now that doesn’t mean we know what they are.  It means we just know that many military pilots have seen things in the air they can’t explain.    Or take the recent news that many scoffed at a year ago.  It turns out that this whole terrible pandemic could have come from a leak from a lab in China.   But here’s the larger point.

Do you know that the same powerful thing drives each and every one of these false beliefs?    And this thing, if you let it gain control of your life will drive you to believe all sorts of things that aren’t true.   It will drive you to a life so much less than what God wants your life to be.   What is this thing that can drive your life off the rails before you know it?   In these words, God shows you the way.   Let’s listen and hear what God has to say.      

I Peter 3:13-21

So, what is this powerful thing that will derail your life?  And how could that same thing drive each of the false beliefs that I mentioned?   It’s the same thing that is threatening to overwhelm the folks to which Peter is writing this letter.  But in these words, Peter shows you the way out, the way to move past this thing that if you let it, will sabotage your life.   So, what is that way?  It’s the way of holiness.

Now, how could holiness free you from this thing that will sabotage your life?   To get that, you gotta understand what that word, holy even means.   It doesn’t mean you obey certain rules or pass some sort of purity test.  Being holy simply means knowing this.  It means knowing you have been set apart.   You have been set apart in love.   And the more you know this, the more you know that God has set you apart in love, the less power this thing has over you.   So, what is this thing that I keep alluding to?   It’s fear. 

And how does fear fit into those false beliefs that I mentioned a few minutes ago?  Well, you might see it more easily with the first one.   Folks who believe that conspiracy known as Q-Anon have been captured by a fear of the government, a fear so powerful it’s has led them to believe some pretty crazy things.   But what about the other two? 

Well, it turns out that military personnel had been seeing strange things they couldn’t explain in the air and on radar scopes for years.  They just didn’t talk about it to anyone.  Why?  They feared what folks might think, especially their commanders.  They didn’t want to be seen as crazy.  Only when Congress commissioned a study were they willing to talk about it at all.    

And as for that lab leak theory.  Most scientists always believed that a lab leak was a possibility.  After all, Wuhan, where the virus began, has the only lab in China that studies such serious viruses.  That’s a pretty big coincidence. But on social media, that belief got connected to a certain politician that some folks didn’t like (and I’m not talking about our former President).  So, folks began to fear getting identified with that politician, even if what he was saying could very well be true.   

You see.  Fear drives you in all sorts of ridiculous ways.   Fear drives you to believe outrageous things.  Fear drives you to be more afraid of what people think then what you see right before your eyes.     And more then we like to admit, fear can drive each of us in powerful and destructive ways.   It seems like every week, I get caught up in a fear about something, a fear that never turns out to be true, a fear I have to fight against.  Here’s the problem.   We don’t ever see things as they are.    We see things as we are.   And often, we see things through fear.

And that’s happening here to these folks to whom Peter writes.   They face a government that fears them, and in that fear, that government is now arresting, even killing them.  And that is scary. So, Peter reminds them.  You don’t set your hope on this government.   You set your hope on Jesus, on God’s love for you.  Don’t you get it?  Peter is saying.   You are holy.  God has set you apart in love.  God set you apart with God’s very life.    And when you know that, you don’t need to fear anything.

Over the last month or so, I have been meeting with kids at our church get them ready for their first communion day.   And along the way, I told them the story of one of the windows here.  Now the window, which is Jesus calming a storm, only shows you the end of that story.  So, let me tell you the rest.  Jesus and his disciples head off one day, across this huge lake, so big, everyone called it a sea, the Sea of Galilee.    As they went across, a huge storm began, a storm so big, it looked like it was going to sink the boat.   And Jesus’ disciples were frantically doing all they could to save themselves.   Now where was Jesus?   He was sleeping in the back of the boat.   So finally, they wake Jesus up, yelling at him that they’re about to die!   What does Jesus do?   He looks at the storm, and basically yells out.  Be quiet!   And the storm stops, like that.   That’s the part that the window in our church shows, when Jesus yells at the storm.  Now when this happens, the disciples are in awe, the sort of awe that Peter means here when he says reverent fear.   But then Jesus, puzzled, asks his disciples.  “Why were you afraid?”   After all, Jesus thinks, I was there the whole time.

Do you see the mistake that the disciples made?   They thought that the scary storm was the truth of their situation.   But the truth of their situation, a truth far more real than that storm was the one sleeping in the back of the boat.    And Peter, who had been with Jesus in that very storm, knows that.  He knows that the truth of these folks’ situation to whom he writes isn’t the persecution they face.  The truth of their situation is Jesus, the God who is with them, the God who has set them apart with his very life.

That’s what he means, when he tells them at the beginning of this passage to be sober (though many translate as discipline yourselves, it is literally "being sober").   He knows, like alcohol, fear will distort what you see in powerful ways.  It’s why the brilliant neuroscientist, Gergory Berns said this about fear.  He said:  Think of fear like alcohol.  It impairs judgment. You shouldn’t make any decisions while under its influence.”  So, Peter tells them.  Don’t let fear do that.  Don’t let fear make you drunk, blind you to what is real.  Set all your hope on Jesus, on God’s love for you.   Remember, God has set you apart, has made you holy. 

And when you know that, when you know God has set you apart like that, it insulates you.  Too often, people think holiness isolates you.  You have to go off somewhere to be holy.  But it doesn’t isolate you.  It insulates you.   It insulates you from the fear.  

This past week, I fixed myself a nice piece of salmon for dinner.   It was delicious.  But do you know what I had to do before I even cooked it?   I had to add salt.   Think about that.  Salmon live in water full of salt almost their entire lives, so why did I need to salt it? It’s because that fish can live in the salt water, even get nourishment from it, but still be insulated from that salt getting inside.   And when you know God has set you apart in love, it insulates you like that.   You can live in this world, this world so captured by fear, but that fear doesn’t have to get inside. 

As Ralph Waldo Emerson wisely said.  “The wise person in the storm prays to God, not for safety from danger, but deliverance from fear.  It is the storm within that endangers, not the storm without.”    And that storm is what Jesus has delivered us from.  

Over this last year, we have been through quite a storm, right?   But we have a God who is Lord of the storm, of every storm, even the storm of death itself.   And when you know that, when you know that deep down this God has, out of love, set you apart, set you apart by his very life, it insulates you.  It insulates you from the fear.  

 After all, God didn’t give up for you silver or gold which, after all, fades away.  No.  In Jesus, God gave his very life for you.   And that gift, that love will never fade away.   And in that love as you trust in it, as you open yourselves to receive it, it will free you from the fear that can so easily capture you and me.   It will set you apart.  It will make you holy, wholly loved, wholly forgiven, wholly free.  So, open yourselves to trust in this love, this love that has set you apart, now and forever. Amen.