We cannot live our lives in a constant state of fear.

Sure, the world is a pretty threatening place, and fear runs deep in the human psyche. In fact, many philosophers and theologians will tell you that the A feel@ of human existence is anxiety. Because, to be finite is in each moment to dangle over the abyss of nothingness as a A primitive terror.@ We yearn for security. We want to know that we are safe, loved, protected, and cared for.

So we allow our Federal government to spend billions of dollars and thousands of lives to protect our borders, protect us when we fly, fight supposed enemies in bloody wars. We even give up certain freedoms, allowing our wires to be tapped, our basic privacies to be invaded, and our morality to be compromised to assure our national security.

We allow our State & local governments to spend millions of dollars to protect our streets and our homes with police and fire departments.

And businesses and homeowners spend thousands of dollars to protect our properties with elaborate security systems, or security guards, or bodyguards. We pay doctors and pharmaceuticals thousands to protect our lives and our health. Fear drives almost all of our decisions and it controls how we live our lives and how we engage the world.

Fear itself is a divine gift, meant as an alarm to awaken the capacities of soul that can respond to a crisis. But if we are ruled by fear, it becomes an irrational and oppressive taskmaster driving everything we do.

In the movie Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, Yoda, the wise sage of pop culture, links fear and suffering when he proclaims: A Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.@

That is certainly one result of overwhelming fear.

The other result is isolated and frozen lives in which we do nothing and reach out to no one because we are too afraid.

Jesus calls us to another way. Jesus calls us to embrace the life of a risk-taker and the life of one who trusts in God and God= s promises.

This is why Jesus taught his followers over and over again that the way of life he was living, the path he was on, most probably would lead to his death. And when he overheard them arguing over who among them was the greatest (another form of striving for security, trying to secure our place in our groups) he taught them that true greatness was measured not by securing one= s place and worrying about one= s self, but by focusing on others, securing their place, worrying about them, caring for them. So, he took a child, one of the weakest members of society, and held that child to his breast, and told them that if they welcomed such a child, they welcomed him, and if they welcomed him, they were welcoming God.

Jesus understands that if we focus on our own security out of fear, that becomes an overwhelming obsession that prevents us from being able to truly focus on anyone else.

That leads to loss of our lives, our security, our future.

But, if we focus our energy and love and compassion and resources on others, especially the weakest in the world, that will lead to life, and to security and a future for all of us. Paradoxical and nonsense in the eyes of the world, but the path Jesus followed and calls us to follow.

The security this world offers is a delusion. No matter what you do to protect yourself from physical harm, not matter what you do to take care of your body and your health, no matter what you do to plan for the security of your future, you are still going to die.

This has been brought home to me in a powerful way this past month and none of us really knows when that will happen. I had two friends literally drop dead, one in his eighties and one early-fifties. Out of the blue, with no warning, and not by any accident or trauma but something gave out in their bodies and they both died.

We never know and nothing we can do; or only so much we can do.

But the security God offers is a promise. It is not a promise about what won= t happen (especially bad things, like plagues, bombs, loss of loved ones, even sudden poverty) but about what will happen. As the psalmist proclaims: A if I make my bed in hell thou art there.@ No matter where we find ourselves, no matter how bad it gets, God is there with us and amazingly God= s loving presence is enough.

That is the promise that carried Jesus forward.

That is the promise that will help us to be risk-takers.

That is the promise that helps us to live with our fear.

Imagine for a moment what it might be like not to live in the fear that keeps us clinging to our A sense of safety@ a little too tightly.

We would say what we meant. Kindly, one hopes, but clearly, without fear of reprisal. We would give away money, things, time, much less guardedly. We would make our decisions in a spirit of deep attention to the call of the moment, listening and moving with the invitation of the Spirit to act without second-guessing. We would plan less. We would let things unfold. We would behave as children do who know their parents= watchful eyes are on them C in the freedom of knowing someone will catch them if they fall.

There was a small story in the Herald this past week about a Coral Gables resident, Jennifer Behar, who began baking biscotti and other goodies out of her home kitchen last year under the label Jennifer= s Homemade. She just got a plug in October= s Food & Wine Magazine. A Addictive rosemary flatbread and breadsticks with exceptional olive oil flavor.@ Behar, age 38, is self taught. She experimented over the years, baking for fun. Last year she bagged her job as an advertising and marketing executive and started bagging her biscotti. She quickly outgrew her kitchen, so she rented space in a commercial bakery, hired nine employees and peddled her products to local markets, including some national chains. They are also available on her web site.

Not only is her business going strong and growing but she is helping others. She donates five percent of proceeds to the nonprofit Daily Bread Food Bank, which distributes 18 million pounds of food and grocery products a year in South Florida. And when she makes a blunder C not enough chocolate in the biscotti, a batch of too-thick flatbread or broken breadsticks C she donates the product.

Starting your own business, moving away from a secure well-paying job, is frightening and for many people so much so that it prevents them from reaching for their dream.

Jesus calls us to be risk-takers.

That is the way to life.

To live for the sake of others.

Let us embrace that call in our individual lives, and let that call guide our common life as a church as well.