God Meets Us In Our Fear

There are no small shortage of things to be afraid of these days. It seems there is a phobia for everything, with more than 400 recognized. Fear of heights. Fear of school. Fear of people. Fear of spiders. there is even a fear of fear itself, phobophobia. In rocking my 3-year old to sleep every night, I have to turn on the nightlight, the stars, the sound. I have the monster spray on hand. But as we get older, we realize what we fear is much larger than stuff under the bed. And yet today we gather together and hear those three little words again.

Do Not Fear. One phrase. Spoken 365 times in the Bible. These words were spoken to virtually everyone in the Christmas narrative. Zechariah. Joseph. The shepherds. And here at the beginning of the annunciation, these are the words of the angel Gabriel to Mary as well.

But even before this, the angel greets her and calls her favored one. The angel tells her the Lord is with her. The Message translates this greeting as “Good morning! You’re beautiful with God’s beauty! Beautiful inside and out! God be with you.”

But Mary was much perplexed even though the angel had only just greeted her. I wonder if we would feel the same if greeted by an angelic being. I might be thinking “are you sure God?” I think you have the wrong girl. Maybe this young teenage girl engaged to a man named Joseph was wondering what on earth an angel of the Lord had to say to her? She was just a nobody from Nazareth. We are not told that Mary is this righteous girl always at the temple. I doubt she was well-known by anyone in Jerusalem, and yet, the angel greets her and calls her favored.

While Mary ponders, God favors.God favors Mary before Mary has even heard the rest of the news, before Mary has even said yes. God’s favor rests not on Mary’s response, but in the grace of God.

Then come those three words again: “Do not be afraid.” It doesn’t say Mary is afraid, but surely she must have been. The Greek word for perplexed could also be translated as disturbed or deeply troubled. Sounds kinda like fear to me. Sometimes our familiarity with this story causes us to sidestep the weight of this news upon her.

The angel tells her that she will conceive and give birth to a child and that he will be called Son of God.

Wow! What an honor! She is blessed and highly favored. This barely teenage girl will have to endure pregnancy and will now be the talk of the town. A child out of wedlock! The only way out of a betrothal is divorce, and that certainly wouldn’t help her out any. Did she cheat on Joseph? The penalty for that is stoning. How did she tell her parents? Did she just say, “it’s God’s baby.” I’m sure that will clear everything up.

Suddenly this moment of favor also carries with it some fear. Suddenly it’s the difference between social climbing and isolation, between life and death. In the midst of her fear, she asks “How can this be?” How on earth is this possible?

The angel then says the Holy Spirit will come upon her and overshadow her. The angel also gives her a sign that her family Elizabeth who is barren is now 6 months pregnant. Then the angel says “nothing is impossible for God.”

But when fear controls the narrative, it makes everything else seem too good to be true. It strands us in disbelief, crushed under year after year of impossible. When your life is covered in phobia, there is little room for the pneuma of the Spirit.

Fear of loss of health or mind. Fear of always being in debt. Fear of waiting for news you don’t want to hear. Fear that things will never change. Fear they are changing too quickly. Fear of raising healthy, established children in a world that seems to beat them down. Fear of never feeling safe. Fear of facing the holidays alone. Fear of never fully recovering. Fear of the future, of what is unknown.

And yet in the midst of all this today in our text we hear the words of Gabriel: do not be afraid....for nothing will be impossible with God.

Some of you have kindly asked me how I am doing in the midst of all of this disaffiliation conversation. I would be dishonest if I said that Jim and I hadn’t dealt with anxiety. Will we have to move again next year? Where will we go? What will happen to the denomination I was raised in and am seeking to be ordained in next year? While our stories may be different, fear is a language we all know how to speak.

Mary asks “how can this be?” and honestly I’m with her. How can this be Lord? How can we not fear when there is so much to fear? The fact that the angel says “Do not be afraid” by default implies that there is indeed much to be afraid of. How can a young girl express so much faith when she might lose her reputation or her life? How do we move as Mary does from “How can this be?” to “Here I am?” Are all these “Do not fears” trivializing our fears?

A couple of months ago I went on a retreat with my residency in ministry cohort and we were given time and space to unburden ourselves before God. Suddenly my spirit poured forth and I just let it all out. It let it go.

Now I would love to tell you that all the circumstances and conditions of my fear magically went away, but they are still there. They were there for Mary too. She still had to tell her family and endure public scrutiny and run from a political tyrant who hunted them down.

And yet she says, “Here I am.” She doesn’t stop being perplexed, but she steps forward anyway. Lillian Daniel says “As one who spends much of life in such a state, I take comfort. I see this passage as a great anthem, a symphony, in honor of those of us who move forward not in clarity, not in certainty, not in single-mindedness, but with perplexity.”

Mary’s ability to “not be afraid” doesn’t mean all of her fears and problems were wiped away. It just meant that God met her in her fear.

The conditions and reality of my fear is still there. Maybe it is for you too. The illness. The questions. The uncertainty of what the future holds. It’s all there, but the presence of God suddenly overwhelmed the presence of my fear. This is the peace that doesn’t make sense, the candle that we lit today. This is peace that meets us in our fear and tells us that nothing is impossible with God.

Cole Arthur Riley in her book This Here Flesh says “I hear don’t be afraid and hope that it is not a command not to fear but rather the nurturing voice of a God drawing near to our trembling. I hear those words and imagine God in all tenderness cradling creation.”

She says “turning on the light doesn’t make the monsters disappear from under our beds, but it reminds us who has power over the switch.” When I sit with Adalyn at night, no amount of lights or songs of stuffed animals remove the fear. I have to be present.

It is the presence of God, the presence of perfect love, that overwhelms our fears and makes the impossible, possible. We say “here I am Lord” not out of personal piety or self-righteousness but out of a trust that God will be with us, meeting us in our fear. We say “yes” not because of who we are, but because of who God is.

Do not be afraid, for the Lord is with you. Nothing is impossible with God. Hear these words again. Receive them into your spirit. Carry them into the world and say to one another, “don’t worry. I know how to turn on the light.”