The Fear of Not Mattering

For many of us our deepest fear has nothing to do with public speaking or the global economic crisis, our greatest fear is wondering if anyone really cares about us? Do our lives matter? One of the things that I love about the psalms is their brutal honesty, look at Psalm 103:15-16. So do our lives matter? Forget about whether anyone will remember us when we are gone – does anyone remember us now? For many of us the fear we experience is that we don’t matter and that people don’t care about us, and we face this fear at every age and stage of life.

When I was a child my least favorite time of school was gym class and the reason I hated gym was because when it came time to pick teams, I was almost always picked last. I was overweight and totally non-athletic and I didn’t know the rules of any sport and most of the people I went to school with knew this, so I was always one of the people left standing there wondering if anyone would want me on their team. If it’s not gym class it’s riding the bus, if we didn’t get into a seat first would anyone move over and let us sit with them, or would we be left standing there feeling humiliated? Will someone invite us to eat lunch with them? Will anyone be our friend in a new class, a new school, a new job, or a new church? You know, studies have been done on people’s biggest fear in visiting a church and do you know what it is? People are afraid of not knowing where to sit and they don’t want to take someone else’s seat? It’s like we have never left kindergarten – we are still afraid that no one will ask us to sit with them, still afraid no one will be our friend, still afraid that no one will care and that ultimately our lives really don’t matter.

Now this is not just a fear we experience as children, it’s a fear we face as teenagers and it continues to be a fear we experience as adults and the reason it’s important for us to overcome this fear isn’t just so our lives will be more peaceful – it’s because this fear of not mattering can often lead us to do things that are unhealthy and even dangerous. Think about how this fear can play itself out in relationships for young men and women. When we think that no one really cares about us, we tell ourselves that we will never find love. We convince ourselves that we will end up alone and lonely. This fear can lead us to enter into relationships that our unhealthy and inappropriate. We can end up going too far and too fast in relationships that are not solid and we can make all kinds of poor choices that will have lasting consequences. We see this kind of behavior over and over again in young people. OK, let’s be honest, we see this kind of behavior over and over again in all people. This fear plays itself out in people of all ages. The fear of never mattering to anyone, the fear of never finding love, the fear of ending up alone can lead us to make choices that we know aren’t right and yet we do it anyway because we are afraid. Deep inside we want to know that our lives matter, we want to know someone cares and that someone loves us.

The fear of not mattering can lead us into unhealthy relationships, but it can manifest itself in other ways. I think it is the fear of feeling insignificant that causes us to do anything and everything to just get noticed. Think about the phenomenon of you-tube and reality tv. People post all kinds of videos of themselves on the internet and will do just about anything to get on tv simply to be noticed. They want someone to see them; they want someone – anyone - to notice them because in our culture and world today, if you are noticed, if you get a lot of hits you-tube – you are someone. But if no one sees us, we don’t matter, so we wear certain clothes to get noticed, we wear jewelry, get tattoos, drive certain cars, engage in all kinds of extreme activities to get noticed and we want to be noticed because we want to know that our lives have some kind of meaning and significance..

This fear of thinking that our lives don’t matter not only leads to poor choices and unhealthy relationships, it can lead us to become self destructive as well. If we really don’t think that our lives have meaning we may begin to tell ourselves that no one would really miss us if we weren’t here. Too many lives have been cut short because people have given in to this fear which is one reason why we need to overcome it, we need to put this fear behind us and as we learned last week we overcome fear when we trust more and fear less. We can overcome this fear of not mattering, of thinking that our lives have no meaning or significance when we trust God more and what we need to trust is that no matter what we may think about ourselves or how we may feel, our lives matter to God. If we matter to no one else – we matter to God!

That our lives matter to God is a common theme throughout the Bible and we first hear this message at the very beginning, look at Genesis 1:27-28. God created us in his image – male and female, individually and uniquely, God created us in his image and so for that reason alone - our lives have value. Because we are created in the image of God we have value because God has value and God. A few weeks ago I was home visiting my parents and I always have to laugh at the front of my parents refrigerator. It is a very odd assortment of pictures, magnets, and very old and yellowed cartoons, newspaper clippings, notes and phone numbers. When I was growing up there was a saying that hung on our fridge for years, I can still see it in my mind. It was a photocopy of a little boy leaning on a wall or counter and he is saying, I know I’m somebody because God don’t make junk. God doesn’t make junk and since we are created by God and since we are created in the image of God and because it is God’s breath that gives us life we know that our lives have meaning. Each and every person in the world has value and worth. Everyone matters to God, in 1 Timothy 2:4 it says God wants everyone to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth.

Think about how this message was reinforced in the life of Jesus. When God here in the person of Jesus, who did he choose to spend time with? It was not those people who mattered most in society, it was those who feared that they didn’t matter at all. Jesus spent his time with women and children who literally had no standing in their community. Women were considered property and children weren’t held with much more esteem then the family pet – and yet by loving them and welcoming them and spending time with them and including them in his ministry Jesus makes this statement, your lives matter. When Jesus visited the homes of tax collectors and welcomed prostitutes to his dinner parties he is saying, your lives matter, someone cares about you. Someone finds your life significant.

But Jesus goes farther than that, think about the people that Jesus called to be his disciples, they weren’t the elite rabbis and leaders of his day, they were fisherman. Jesus didn’t call the people who mattered most; he called the men who most likely flunked out of rabbi training and were told to go home and work in the family business. In Jesus day, most young boys would start the education and training process to be a rabbi, but only the best were invited to continue and move on. And then only the best of the best were invited to go to the next level, and then only the best of the best of the best were called to study under a rabbi and become their disciple. You might say it was kind of like American Idol, because if you didn’t make the cut, you were sent home to work in the family business. So the fisherman that Jesus called were not the best of the best of the best, they were not the best and the brightest, they weren’t the people that society said mattered the most, but they mattered to God and by choosing fishermen and tax collectors to be his disciples Jesus is saying that everyone has value and worth. Even if the people around you say that you don’t matter – you matter to God.

To the children Jesus said, you matter to me. To the tax collectors Jesus said, you matter to me. To the lepers who were forced to live out of town and away from everyone Jesus said your matter to me. To the demon possessed, the sick and the dying Jesus said your lives matter me. To the sinner Jesus said, you matter to me. Today Jesus says to you and to me, your lives matter. When we fear that no one cares and that our lives have no meaning, Jesus says, your lives have deep meaning to me. In fact, in the scripture reading we heard today Jesus says, you matter to me and your life matters to God. Let’s look again at Matthew 10:29-31.

Just like today, a penny in Jesus day didn’t buy much of anything. It was next to worthless, but it could by two sparrows, which just goes to show us how much a sparrow was worth – they were worth nothing. If we look at this same teaching in Luke 12:6 it says, are not 5 sparrows sold for 2 pennies. OK, if one penny buys 2 sparrows, but 2 pennies will buy five it’s like those great Weis store deals, buy 4 get one free. Think about that poor fifth sparrow –it’s literally worth nothing, and that is what we fear, that we are worth nothing. Standing in gym class knowing we will picked last for the team is like being the fifth sparrow. Going to work and not having anyone ask you join them for lunch is like being the fifth sparrow. Not being missed when you have been away a group of friends for a while makes us feel like a fifth sparrow. We all experience this at times. We fear being that fifth sparrow, we fear that we don’t matter and that no one cares, but look at what God says about the sparrow, not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. God knows when that fifth sparrow falls to the ground because that sparrow matters to God and we are more important than the sparrow, we are more important because the sparrow wasn’t created in God’s image, only we were. In fact Jesus goes on to say that we are so special and precious and loved by God that every hair on our head is numbered.

So if we want to fear less, if we want to overcome the fear of thinking that our lives don’t matter then we need to trust more, and what we need to trust and count on and believe is that our lives not only matter to God, but that we are loved by God. Listen to these words of love that God has for us:

Psalm 139:13-14

Isaiah 49:15-16. The fear God’s people had was that God had forgotten them and that they didn’t matter to God anymore, but God replies, can a mother forget her child? The answer of course is no, but God says, even if a mother did forget her child, I can not forget you. God can not, will not and does forget us because we matter to God, our lives have value, worth and meaning.

We also know our lives matter because God has future for us. God doesn’t create us and then forget about us, he has a plan for our lives, a plan to prosper us and give us future with hope.
Jeremiah 29:11.
This is also said in Eph. 2:10.

We have been created in Christ Jesus for good works and one of those good works is to help people overcome fear and we can do this by communicating to people that their lives not only matter to God, but that they matter to us as the people of God. Jesus cared for people – will we? Jesus loved people – will we? Jesus noticed people and made them feel special and important – will we? Jesus welcomed, forgave, ate with, walked with, cried with and lived day to day with people to say loud and clear that their lives mattered – will we? I have to say that we not only find meaning in life when we trust God more, we also find meaning and value and worth as we reach out to others. We help overcome our own fear of not mattering when we help other people understand that their lives mean something to God and to us. We can help the world overcome this fear by reaching out with this message that everyone is loved by God and every life counts – every life matters.

So let us trust more and fear less, let us reach out and take hold of the love God has for us and remember that our lives do matter, and let’s share that message with those around us who are living in fear.