“Be Not Afraid”
Luke 1:8-28
As part of our Advent focus on good news for hard times, I suggested last week that the bottom-line message of the Christmas story, the very best of all the good news of the gospel, is that God is with us. This message is not unique to the Christmas story but the Christmas story brings it home in a way that few other stories or faith teachings do.
In the Christmas story, it’s not simply that God is with us. It’s that God’s love for us is so deep and God’s longing for justice, peace, healing, and wholeness for us and all creation so great, that God comes into the world in a whole new way: Divinity breaks into humanity. The Creator of All actually becomes us—arriving not in a blaze of glory but in the dark womb of a poor young woman; showing up not as a powerful ruler but as a misunderstood teacher wielding no weapon but love; leaving a legacy not of empires or buildings but of small groups of ordinary people learning to love their neighbors.
But that’s not all!
The good news for hard times, the great news of our faith, doesn’t stop with the amazing truth that God is always going out of their way to be with us. It is because God is forever with us and in us that we need not be afraid. The good news is that we need not live in fear.
In the good news of the Christmas story, we are given reasons to not be afraid, reasons to trust God. The angel Gabriel tells Zechariah he need not fear because his prayers have been heard. Gabriel tells Mary not to be afraid because God has chosen to honor her. And the angel tells Joseph he shouldn’t be afraid to take a pregnant Mary as his wife because her son is from the Holy Spirit.
We can do hard things, without fear, because God.
So why are we afraid? What are we afraid of? And how can we live with less fear and more courage? How can we live with less fear and more love?
I invite you now to consider your own fears.
God knows there is no shortage of things to be afraid of—everything from losing our loved ones, our health, and our economic security to losing our safety as citizens, the welfare of our neighbors, the health of our democracy, and the collapse of our earthly home. We may also be afraid of failing, afraid of disappointing others, afraid of being alone.
What are you most afraid of? Take a moment to think about it.
One of the worst things about fear, I think, and one of the reasons the angels, the prophets, and Jesus are always telling us not to be afraid, is fear’s tendency to paralyze us. Fear binds us and limits our lives. If we let it, fear can keep us from trying new things, from following our hearts, from taking a stand or taking a risk. Fear can keep us from being vulnerable, which separates us from others. Fear can not only keep us from following our dreams, but also from even allowing ourselves to dream.
Worst of all, fear can keep us from opening up to the countless blessings of life. Fear can keep us from becoming who we’re meant to be.
But how can we not be afraid?
We fear because we’ve been hurt before. We fear because we’ve suffered, often through no fault of our own. We fear because we know, deep down, that we have much less control over our life than we’d like to think. We fear because so much is uncertain. We fear because bad things happen to good people. We fear because the powers and principalities are real, and because, these days at least, it sometimes feels like cruelty and greed have the upper hand.
I don’t know that the old priest Zechariah was living in fear; he was simply resigned to his lot in life. He was nothing if not dutiful, but his faithfulness came in spite of his great sorrow at being childless.
So focused was Zechariah on making the best out of the way things were that he almost missed the new thing God wanted to do in him and for him, Elizabeth, and the world. He all but rejected the angel’s amazing news.
Thanks be to God that our doubts don’t hinder God’s power!
And so it was that a baby who would grow up to to become John the Baptist, the prophet who prepared the way for Jesus, was born to Elizabeth and Zechariah. And Zechariah had nine months of not being able to talk to remind him that it’s never too late for God to do a new and totally unexpected thing.
Mary had many reasons to be afraid. As a young Jewish girl living under a brutal military occupation, she had no idea what the future would bring. And her engagement to Joseph must have reminded her of how little agency she had in her own life.
Yet when the angel appeared out of nowhere telling her not to be afraid, she wasn’t. And when the angel told her she would give birth to the messiah, her only response to this life-changing news was “how?” And when the angel said nothing would be impossible with God, Mary was able to say “yes” to the unimaginably hard thing being asked of her—not because she understood how this holy child would come to be, but because she trusted God.
The courage to be brave when it matters most,” says Episcopal Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde, “requires a lifetime of small decisions that set us on a path of self-awareness, attentiveness, and willingness to risk failure for what we believe is right. It is also a profoundly spiritual experience, one in which we feel a part of something larger than ourselves and guided, somehow, by a larger Spirit at work in the world and in us.”
Beloveds, it is perfectly normal to be afraid. It is reasonable, considering the circumstances, to sometimes lose hope.
The question is not whether we are afraid, but rather what we do with our fears. Do we give in to them, or do we take the risk or do the hard thing anyway? Do we invest our time and energy in controlling as much as we can, or do we try to let go and let God? Might we develop practices that connect us to Spirit so that we will be prepared when the world needs us to be brave?
Courage, after all, is not the absence of fear but the bravery to take action in spite of our fears.
And thanks be to God that we are not left to our fearful ways! We have come this far by grace. And because of past decisions we’ve made to step out in faith, we can be of good courage, trusting that God’s love and power are with us still.
Praise be that God is not finished with us or with the world, that God’s love and newness are forever trying to break into the world and into our lives. Praise be that God’s love, justice, peace, and newness are forever trying to break into the world through us!
God simply needs people who are willing to say yes to love, brave enough to bear the costs, courageous enough to be persistent in hope and faithful in doing what is right.
Even when times are hard, when the way forward is uncertain, when the forces of evil seem to have the upper hand, the good news is that we need not be afraid. We have a God who is with us, a God who is still speaking, a God who is yet alive and active in the world through us and among us. We have the Jesus way to follow, and we have each other as companions on the journey.
With practice and with grace, may we also be able to say—even in our fear—that nothing will be impossible with God.
With courage and with hope, may we also be able to say, “Yes. Let it be. Come, Jesus, come.”
