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In his first inaugural speech on Saturday, March 4, 1933(The Twentieth Amendment moved the beginning and ending term from March 4 to January 20, and was adopted on January 23, 1933), FDR offered what has become a timeless quote. One of the first lines was: So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is…fear itself - nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. Eleanor Roosevelt later suggested, when asked, that she presumed that the source was Thoreau, who wrote in his journal entry on September 7, 1851: “Nothing is so much to be feared as fear”.

In the address card part of my email(that’s the part that comes after one’s name), I share the following quote attributed to Master Yoda: Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to H. H leads to suffering.

I’ve been reading through a slender volume of select sermons by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., entitled “Strength to Love”, first published in 1963.  It is not a sit and read book. Rather, I read one sermon and reflect upon it, picking up the book again at another time. With the national celebration of Dr. King’s birthday this coming Monday( born January 15, 1929), I picked up the book yet again seeking inspiration, and chose the sermon “Antidotes for Fear”. Dr. King begins by asking the rhetorical question - is there no one who does not experience fear these days? If he made that observation sixty years ago, what might he say now? He continues by elucidating a variety of fears that we might face every single day: health; aging; future; economic; religious; ontological. He quotes Emerson: He has not learned the lesson of life who does not every day surmount a fear. Fear is present every day of our lives. The question before Dr. King is how we respond to it.

He offers four steps in this daily challenge. The first is that we must “face our fears and honestly ask ourselves why we are afraid”. The second step is to master fear through courage, “one of the supreme virtues known to man”. “Third, fear is mastered by love”. As Dr. King wrote, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. H cannot drive out H, only love can  do that”.

His final step is notable - “ fear is mastered by faith”. Of course this is something that you would expect a religious leader to say, but he also believed it. And so do I. Faith is that inexplicable quantity that carries us through the challenges that we face in life. Faith is that there is a God to turn to in times of trouble. Faith does not fill the hole that someone has just drilled in the boat you are sitting in, but it provides us with the strength to face the challenges of life and support our internal gyroscope to maintain balance when you think its about to land on its side. Faith is exhibited in community when we gather to worship, strengthening the bonds with each other as well as with our Maker. Faith and its practice thereof is the ultimate weapon against the antisemite, whose faith has been replaced by the disease of H.

When our faith falters, we cling to it even more preciously and engage in greater acts of faith, dispelling fear. May the memory of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. be for a blessing.