Three times in this stretch Jesus tells his disciples where to put their fear. 26"So have no fear of them." 28"do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul." 31"Fear not, therefore." Danger is named first, and then fear itself is relocated.
The danger is specific. 17"Beware of men," he says, for they will hand the disciples over to courts and flog them in their synagogues. The first courts are religious and the second are political, and the disciples will stand before both. Then the fracture reaches the home, where brother will hand over brother and a father his child. In a world where loyalty to family ranked among the highest duties, Jesus describes a break that would have sounded almost unthinkable said aloud.
He gives one steadying promise for the hour of trial. 19"do not be anxious how you are to speak or what you are to say." They are told the Spirit of their Father will speak through them, so the dread of saying the wrong thing is answered before it arrives. Jesus also gives them permission to leave. When one town turns hostile they may flee to the next, because the mission is to bear witness and finish the work, and staying to be destroyed is no part of it.
Then comes the reason suffering should not surprise them. 24"A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master." Just before this the Pharisees had called Jesus himself a servant of the devil, and he tells his disciples what that predicts for the household. They called the master of the house Beelzebul, and 25"how much more will they malign those of his household." Trouble of this kind is the ordinary shape of following someone the authorities have already accused.
Now the relocation. 28"Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell." When a person's fear settles finally on God, every smaller threat loses its grip, because none of them was the largest thing in the room. Fear that has found the one place large enough to hold it stops running around the house looking for a place to land. What is whispered in the dark is to be said in the light, since nothing hidden will stay hidden, and the person who fears God alone can afford to say it.
Then the reason it is safe to fear him. Sparrows are sold for a penny, the cheapest meat in the market. 29"not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father." Even the hairs of your head are numbered. No one alive has counted their own. Sparrows still fall. Nothing falls outside the attention of a Father who already knows the count, whether a bird, a hair, or a disciple's own death.
Take the fear you carried in with you today and set it next to that verse. 31"Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows." The Father who tracks the sparrow has not lost track of you.
Prayer
Father, thank you that fear finds its proper size and place with you. Give us the courage Jesus describes here, the certainty that you already hold every hair, every sparrow, and every hard thing that could happen to us. Let our fear of you grow large enough to make every smaller fear shrink beside it. In Jesus' name, amen.