DO NOT BE AFRAID
(Preached on Sunday, December 21, 2008)
The angel said to her, ADo not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.@ -Luke 1:30
It=s a lovely little story. An angel appears to a young woman and announces that she has been selected to play a part in a grand new design that God is about to unveil. There is some light banter, a give and take of question and answer, yet the young maid quickly agrees to the role she has been assigned. How does the scene play out in your imagination? Probably like most of the artists down through the ages, with beauty and light, serenity, peace and calm C as a quiet moment shared between heaven and earth. We have truly de-fanged this story.
Yet there is one statement that lends weight to the truth of the scene: the angel=s statement, ADo not be afraid, Mary.@ Of course she would be afraid. Any young teenage girl would be afraid to be told she was going to have a baby C especially if she were not yet married. Many women are fearful of pregnancy. After all a woman=s body is transformed during pregnancy. There is often sickness, and sometimes major health concerns for a pregnant woman. Birth itself is a very painful period of struggle, for both the mother and the child. I read one pediatrician=s statement that babies tend to move into a period of hibernation after birth, in order for their little bodies to recover from the trauma of being born.
Those are just the known concern which might have given Mary pause. What if she had known more about the future? The long trip to Bethlehem at the end of her pregnancy, where she would have to give birth in a shed. After that, the need to flee to Egypt, to live in a foreign land as immigrant aliens for years, to save the child=s life from those in power who sought to kill him. What of the difficulty of watching her son grow distant from her during his years of public ministry, and then watching him be scorned, betrayed, tortured and executed by the time he was 35 years old? Would she have so readily said, AHere am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.@
There are many reasons the angel had for saying to her, ADo not be afraid, Mary.@ The world has always been filled with fearful realities. It continues so today. Each of us today is carrying fears within. What are some of those fears? Will I still have my job after Christmas? Will I be able to finally find a job after Christmas? Will the tests turn out negative? Will this pain ever go away? Will the fighting ever stop in the world? Will the stock market stop falling? Will my money last long enough to take care of me? Will this be my last Christmas?
But perhaps our greatest fear is our fear of the unknown. There is an Arabian story of a spy captured and sentenced to death by a general in the Persian army. This general had a strange custom of giving condemned criminals a choice between the firing squad and Athe big, black door.@ The moment for execution drew near, and guards brought the spy to the Persian general. AWhat will it be,@ asked the general, Athe firing squad or >the big, black door?=@ The spy hesitated for a long time. Finally he chose the firing squad. A few minutes later, hearing the shots ring out confirming the spy=s execution, the general turned to his aid and said, AThey always prefer the known to the unknown. People fear what they don=t know. Yet, we gave him a choice.@ AWhat lies beyond the big door?@ asked the aide. AFreedom,@ replied the general. AI=ve known only a few brave enough to take that door.@ The best opportunities in our lives stand behind the forbidding door of the great unknown.
Mary was told, and we are told, not to be afraid precisely because, in spite of faith, so often we are afraid. It would be nice if faith resolved hard feelings like doubt and anger C and fear. It would be nice if God meant not having to get upset. Fear, at its core, is a faith issue.
Henri Nouwen asked the question, AIs it possible in the midst of this fear-provoking world to live in the house of love and listen to the questions raised by the Lord of love?@ He answers with the following thoughts:
AOr are we so accustomed to living in fear that we have become deaf to the voice that says: >Do not be afraid?= This reassuring voice, which repeats over and over again: >Do not be afraid, have no fear= is the voice we most need to hear. This voice was heard by Zechariah when Gabriel, the angel of the Lord, appeared to him in the temple and told him that his wife Elizabeth would bear a son; this voice was heard by Mary when the same angel entered her house in Nazareth and announced that she would conceive, bear a child, and name him Jesus; this voice was also heard by the women who came to the tomb and saw that the stone was rolled away. >Do not be afraid, do not be afraid, do not be afraid.= This voice uttering these words sounds all through history as the voice of God=s holy messengers, be they angels or saints. It is the voice that announces a whole new way of being, a being in the house of love, the house of the Lord.@
When we listen to that voice and move into that new way of being, a way beyond fearfulness, then God is able to do the impossible through us. Beginning with overcoming our fear. That is the lesson of the example of Mary. Mary is not presented as aloof and ethereal, floating above the trials of life, contrary to the artistic renderings of her. No, she is flesh and blood. She was a woman, the same as you and I are women and men. And to our flesh and blood God still comes with the message ADo not be afraid@: ADo not be afraid (Gloria and Dot, Donald and Jay, Etta and Betty)/(Betty and Barb, Frank and Al, Margarita and Emily, David and Graham, Lorrie and Joy). Do not be afraid for you have found favor with God!@
In challenging times, we have a choice: we can turn to fear or to faith. And, obviously, our hearts can be a battleground between the two. So the question then becomes: Are we going to act on our fears or on our faith? If you decide to say no, you simply drop your eyes and refuse to look up until you know the angel has left the room. Then you smooth back your hair and attempt to go back to your life as you knew it and muddle through the best you can. Undoubtedly this will mean becoming angry, actively defending yourself against the unknown and spending all of your time trying to get your life back the way it used to be. Or, becoming bitter, comparing yourself to everyone else whose life is more agreeable than yours and lamenting your unhappy fate.
Or you can decide to say yes. You can decide to be a daredevil, a test pilot, a gambler. You can decide to take part in a plan you did not choose, doing things you do not know how to do for reasons you do not entirely understand. You can agree to smuggle God into the world inside your own body. Deciding to say yes does not mean that you are unafraid, by the way; it just means that you are not willing to let your fear keep you locked in your room. So you say yes to the angel. You say, AHere I am; let it be with me according to your word,@ and so saying you become one of Mary=s people, one more AGod-bearer@ who is willing to carry God=s presence and love into the world.
From the Hebrew scriptures to the Christian scriptures, our story and God=s response can be told in these four momentous words: DO NOT BE AFRAID!@ According to one count, Ado not be afraid@ is spoken by God 365 times in the Bible, once for every day of the year. It is reassuring to hear these words from the lips of the angels each Christmas.
God came into the world as a baby. God=s coming into our lives is like a baby=s coming; it is never exactly what we expected, and it is certain to involve complications and trouble and hard work C and quite possibly, sooner or later, terrible anguish. We are not called to wrestle out of the chaos of our lives the perfect family Christmas, or the perfect spiritual moment. Our calling is more like Mary=s: to not be afraid, to wonder what God could possibly have in mind, and then to trust, to say Ayes@ and to wait with eager expectation for what God will bring about in our lives.