Becoming Fearless: Embracing Life's Challenges with Resilient Faith

Ever found yourself paralyzed by fear, yet deep down, there's a spark of fearlessness that you long to harness? Well, we're about to dive into a soundtrack of resilience inspired by none other than pop icon Taylor Swift's song, "Fearless." Our journey navigates through the highs and lows of life, where we uncover how fear can often commandeer our emotions, actions, and ultimately, our lives. Yet, we also reveal the power of embracing that fearless, innocent part of ourselves.

But what's fearlessness without hope? We delve into the dichotomy of hope - its strength and its susceptibility. By reflecting on moments of unexpected sorrow, like the loss of a loved one, we stress the significance of both vulnerability and support during such times. Our journey of resilient faith is far from a life without fear; it’s about clinging to faith and hope even amidst fear and vulnerability. So, are you ready to dance in the storm with us and embrace life in Christ with innocence and fearlessness? Tune in and let's embark on this transformative odyssey together.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:08

Welcome to Resilient Faith, the podcast. Opportunities to find deeper resilience within ourselves can come when life seems most challenging. This podcast is to help you develop that resilience and connection with God. Being resilient and having power starts with faith.

Speaker 2: 0:40

Welcome, friends, to the Resilient Faith podcast, sponsored by Brentwood Presbyterian Church in West Los Angeles. We are sharing our sermons from our recent series, the Gospel According to Taylor Swift. This was a six-week sermon series in the fall of 2023. It's important in this day and age to talk about current events and pop culture in our worship and be in dialogue with Christian perspectives and scripture. Using Taylor Swift's lyrics and some of her songs as a launching pad, we are discussing some of the important issues and looking through them with a Christian lens. Thanks for listening and we pray that the Holy Spirit reaches you through this series. Do you want to hear one of my jokes? Some of you already know this one, so it's okay if you do. How do angels greet each other? Hello, hello, hello, hello, hello. I've got more. I have like a whole page, but like, don't worry, that's like not our sermon today. All right, friends, we are going old school this Sunday with the title track that came out in 2008 from Taylor's second studio album, Fearless.

Speaker 2: 2:14

She was 18 when this album was released and it has this youthful innocence to it that is both nostalgic and a little naive. The song is about that weightless feeling of falling in love and it's pretty untainted by heartbreak and disappointment. You'll notice that this 15-year-old music video also has very low production value. It's just a montage of her Fearless tour in 2009. Really, this video and this song is youthful and simple, which is really a part of its charm. So as you watch and listen, I invite you to go back to 18. Remember what first love felt like, when the world was your oyster, anything felt possible and really, regardless of your age. Just remember the first time, or maybe even the most recent time, if there is a most recent time for you when you truly felt fearless.

Speaker 3: 3:36

You guys this tour has been the best experience of my entire life. The street looks when it's just rain. There's a glow off the pavement. You walk me to the car and you know I wanna ask you to dance right there in the middle of the parking lot. Yeah, who are you? You're driving down the road. I wonder if you know I'm shining so hard Now to get caught up now. You're so cool. Run your hands through your hair. Absinthe mind will leave, making me want you, and I don't know how it gets better than this. You take my hand and drag me head first. Feel it, and I don't know who I got with you. I dance in a storm in the best dress. Feel it, you're so brave. It drives slow till we run out of road In this one horse town. I wanna stay right here In this passenger seat. You put your eyes on me In this moment. Now capture it, remember it. And I don't know how it gets better than this. You take my hand and drag me head first. Feel it, and I don't know who I got with you.

Speaker 3: 6:08

I dance in a storm in the best dress, feel it. Well, you stood there with me in the door. Weep my hands, shake our not usually this way. You pull me in and I'm a little more brave. It's the first kiss. It's flawless, really something. It's fearless, oh yeah, cause I don't know how it gets better than this. You take my hand and drag me head first. Feel it, and I don't know who I got with you. I dance in a storm in the best dress. Feel it, and I don't know how it gets better than this. You take my hand and drag me head first.

Speaker 2: 7:17

Feel it, and I don't know who I got with you. I dance in a storm in the best dress. Feel it? Oh, that's so fun. Well, friends, we might have glimpses in our lives of feeling fearless, and I do hope that you were able to recall that feeling while listening to this song, and maybe, if you are closer to the age of 18 than some of us, you can resonate with it in a certain relational way. I certainly can remember that feeling, that youthful feeling, but it's really not a space where we live all of the time, right, maybe that's why it's so fun to sing about, because it's not our emotional norm. We might experience the brief high of new love, or securing the job, or the first kiss, or the baby born, or the new puppy, or the happy reunion, but most of us don't float around in euphoria all of the time.

Speaker 2: 8:47

Life happens, heartbreak happens, disappointment happens, death happens, and even though our scripture tells us hundreds of times to not be afraid, we still are. We can't help it. Our feelings, our information responding to what is going on around us and within us. If we truly walked around fearlessly, well, we would never buckle our seatbelts or we would never look both ways before crossing the street. There are so many ways that we would behave differently, more recklessly, if we were completely fearless. And so we know that some level of fear is healthy. It's even necessary for our survival. So how do we live with some level of healthy fear, but not let it have the final word, not keeping it in the driver's seat Before our hearts have been broken. It's easy to be fearless, like this Taylor song says, but the more we experience this heartbreak, the easier it can be to be controlled by fear and the harder it can be to hope we can build up that armor and build up those walls. The more that we experience pain and disappointment, we lose touch with that fearless, innocent part of ourselves that can easily grow jaded and afraid to open ourselves to life and love and risk and failure. Because fear is in the driver's seat, and sometimes it even feels dangerous to hope, because hope can feel risky. What if we don't get what we hope for?

Speaker 2: 10:55

Here is a portion of what Paul, the apostle Paul, says about hope in his letter to the early Christian community in Rome. This comes from Romans, chapter five, starting with the first verse. Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand, and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our afflictions, knowing that affliction produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. This is the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God. So, based on this passage, it sounds to me like Paul walked around pretty fearless. He encourages us to do the same and even to boast in our hope, which is Kind of a funny notion. I've never thought about boasting in my hope, boasting about how hopeful I am.

Speaker 3: 12:27

Hmm.

Speaker 2: 12:29

This might be easier said than done In one of my favorite podcasts, harry Potter and the Sacred Text. Yeah, that's real and it's awesome. The hosts read through the chapters of the series through the lens of a theme and approach the text in conversation with the world, and one of the hosts, vanessa Zoltan, speaks openly about her struggles with hope as a Jewish chaplain and granddaughter of Holocaust survivors. Her skepticism with hope is rooted in the reality that it often leads to disappointment. We often hope for things that don't become a reality. We hope for resolution to war, but what about those who don't survive? We hope for healing for our loved ones, but what about those who don't recover? We hope for a happy ending for ourselves, but we also have to acknowledge that tragedy is real.

Speaker 2: 13:40

I just saw the musical Les Miserables a few weeks ago when it was in town and a spoiler alert the vast majority of those characters end up dead. I totally resonate with Vanessa's struggle with hope. Maybe you do too. We hope for the relationship that doesn't come. We hope for the baby that doesn't come. We hope for our parents and our pets to live forever, and they don't. We know they don't and that the pain of loss is really baked into the cake of human life. That's just how it goes. It's a cycle and because of this we can become afraid to hope and close ourselves off to living life fully. Again, fear ends up in the driver's seat and we are fearful instead of fearless. And yet, as Christians, we know that hardship and death does not have the final word. Yes, in lame is there is a lot of death, but there is redemption and grace and love and forgiveness and reconciliation. And, like I, wept through the whole thing, it's a beautiful story. And Vanessa, my podcast host, she also speaks to the beauty and resilience in the human capacity to hope, even in the face of horrible tragedy. Even if we are sometimes disappointed, we still have this innate sense within us to not give up, to persevere, to look for the positive, to desire goodness, to see goodness around us. We hope. Perhaps we are not completely fearless, but still we hope. And, according to Paul, the root of our hope is not actually that we always expect to get what we hope for, but that through a life of faith, we are held in peace and grace through God, in Christ. Affliction into endurance, into character, into hope. Paul's equation might not add up to a totally fearless life, but it certainly doesn't give fear control over our lives.

Speaker 2: 16:32

I heard Oprah Rinfrey talking about this recently with author Anne Lamott, and Anne said to Oprah we live in the hope that love is true and that God is true and that goodness is true and that the light shines in the darkness and that the light has never been extinguished, no matter how many horrible things happen in the world. And Anne goes on to share about when her best friend Pammy died years ago and she said to a priest friend do you believe that God will catch her as she crosses over and her little daughter will be okay and I will see Pammy again? And he said to her I hope so. And she says I never forgot that because we live in the hope of truth and the hope of light and the hope of spiritual healing. And Oprah jumped in and said to hope makes you so vulnerable. And Anne agreed, adding your heart is open and it's going to get bruised and knocked around the world. To hope is to put yourself in a vulnerable space. The world teaches us to be in armor, but when you're in hope, you're like a snail between shells. What a slimy, soft and tangible image. I mean ew, but like yeah, at the same time, right when you're in hope, you're like a snail between shells. That's scary, being that vulnerable. That snail might not be totally fearless, for they are exposed, but they also know that they cannot stay in their current shell forever, for they have outgrown it and it is time to venture out. Have you ever felt like that? Like a snail between shells? It's uncomfortable and yet it's where some of the best human connection can be made.

Speaker 2: 18:56

Yesterday, at this Presbytery meeting that Pastor Dave referenced, the sermon was given by Reverend Carlton Rodin, who's the pastor at Westminster Presbyterian Church, and Pastor Carl spoke about the sudden death of his father on Easter Sunday in 2021 and the depression that followed and the sabbatical that he needed earlier this year to grieve, to rest, to recover and, ultimately, to stay in ministry. It's a story that exposes one's own vulnerability and need for help that is so relatable in its humanity. It's a story that was shared openly to the entire community, both those in person and online. Fearless Life might not be all innocence and openheartedness. It's not all sparkle leotards and red lipstick. I mean it is those things.

Speaker 2: 20:10

Obviously, there is holiness in friendship bracelets and dancing in the parking lot and these self-indulgently fun sermon series. But it's more than that it is. We know that it's more than that. To follow Jesus Christ, who lived and suffered and died and lived again, is to follow a vulnerable God who goes with us through the fullness of the human experience, through all of it, and is with us still. The invitation is to feel our bright sparkles all the way to the shining sun and to feel our deep sadness all the way to the dark side of the moon. Paul says hope does not put us to shame. So maybe for today we can look at life in Christ through this lens of Taylor's innocence and dance in the storm in your best dress, fearless Amen.

Speaker 1: 21:32

You've been listening to Resilient Faith. The podcast Resilient Faith is sponsored by Brentwood Presbyterian Church in West Los Angeles. You can follow our church and this podcast on Facebook at BPCTeam and Instagram at BPC underscore USA. Make sure to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and thanks for listening.