When You’re Afraid, Give Me Your Hand

“Hold my hand.” I have said it countless times over the years to both my daughters. When you cross the street. Hold my hand. When we go into a busy store. Hold my hand. When you are afraid. Hold my hand.

Now, if you are waiting to hear this word (or any word for that matter) from Joseph this morning, then I’m afraid you will be here awhile. In all four gospels, there isn’t one recorded word from Joseph. Just a whole lot of …..silence. But not just any silence. Rather quiet actions that speak volumes.

If this were a modern day soap opera, there would be all sorts of drama if the bride-to-be ended up pregnant with someone else’s child before the wedding. When Joseph receives the news from Mary, it would have brought about intense ridicule, shame, public scandal, and even fear. Joseph’s story isn’t without fear either. Although it remains unspoken by him, we hear it in the angel’s words again, saying “do not fear.” As a male under the law, Joseph wasn’t without options, but they were pretty severe for Mary. He could have cast Mary aside and even had her stoned to death. But Matthew tells us that Joseph did not wish to disgrace Mary, and instead was going to divorce her quietly. Even here, we sense something different about Joseph. He is afraid and confused, but he still is being considerate of Mary.

Then he has a dream that changes everything, altering the landscape from one of fear to one of solidarity. He not only rejects shaming Mary but takes her to be his wife- taking her hand in marriage. Can you envision Joseph in the midst of both of their fears, quietly reaching for and taking Mary’s hand saying “hold my hand. You are not alone.”

Rev. Dr. Boyung Lee says “The Gospel opens with a quiet act of resistance: Joseph lays aside patriarchal expectation and legalistic judgment, choosing instead to protect Mary and the unborn child. In doing so, he becomes a quiet but vital part of God’s liberating plan….God’s work in the world unfolds not through lone heroes, but through the joined hands of those who choose: relationship over self-protection, accompaniment over certainty, and presence over perfection.”

Joseph moves forward through his fear for the sake of Mary. What fears might you be called to move through for the sake of someone else, for the sake of solidarity? Perhaps we should consider what solidarity even means? Is it kinship? Shared experiences? Hannah Bowman says “solidarity isn’t charity. It isn’t enough for us to just give money or stuff or our time to good causes. Instead, solidarity is about deepening relationships and basing those relationships on a shared recognition of our common human destiny and humanity. As Martin Luther King Jr. wrote in his 1963 “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.”

When we reach out our hand in the midst of our fear, we reach out in love, and the perfect love of God casts out fear. The Message says, “There is no room in love for fear. Well-formed love banishes fear. Since fear is crippling, a fearful life—fear of death, fear of judgment—is one not yet fully formed in love.” In Bell Hooks’s book All About Love, she says “When we choose to love we choose to love against fear—against alienation and separation. The choice to love is a choice to connect—to find ourselves in the other.” See this is what makes Advent love different. Advent love isn’t fickle or fancy-free. It doesn’t shy away from hard things but displays a quiet resolve to move forward and keep reaching out. Rev. Dr. Mark Sandlin says “This is not Hallmark-card love.Not the kind that smiles sweetly and avoids hard conversations. Advent Love is stubborn.It stays soft without becoming spineless. Advent Love is choosing to remain human when everything around us is trying to turn us into categories, caricatures, and enemies.It is refusing to let fear write your theology or outrage shape your soul.It is remembering that people are always more complicated, more sacred, and more worthy of care than whatever label has been slapped on them. It is about staying open in a world that keeps demanding we close off.It is about choosing compassion when bitterness would be easier.It is about lighting one small candle and trusting that even now, even here, the light still matters.” When we choose Advent love, we choose against fear. We choose to connect instead of isolate or dominate. Instead of walking away and turning our backs, we reach out our arms and say “hold my hand.”

But all too often, we don’t respond with quiet obedience. Sometimes we are loud and impatient and mad and scared to death. Let’s face it, we don’t like things that are uncomfortable and hard. Jebediah Jenkins describes our modern day as friction avoidant. He says “Anything that is a bit hard, remove it and make a billion dollars. Is hailing a taxi hard? How about an app. Is going to the grocery store annoying? How about an app? Are dating and rejection hard? How about endless swiping. You get to swipe right on thousands of people! You can do the rejecting from your sofa! You never have to feel awkward again!

But study the virtues, study the mystic poets, study the stoics… and it seems that friction is the only teacher.”

Maybe friction or the fears we hold have something deeper beneath them. Maybe within them lies an invitation to lean in and love more. Maybe the real friction we need is the friction of my hand in yours, standing with and for one another.

Anyone ever play Red Rover as a kid. The idea was you built a human chain that couldn’t be broken by someone charging at you. Now that was a game we played as a kid but let it be said today that even when we are afraid, might we reach out and say “here, give me your hand, you are not alone. I’m not going anywhere.”

On December 16th, 42 faith leaders gathered together and linked arms while chaining themselves to the entrance of the San Francisco immigration court in protest of ICE arrests. this was organized by the Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity.Together they “stood in front of the courthouse doors, singing, “If you come for them, you’ll have to go through us.” Stoles featuring monarch butterflies, a symbol of migration, hung on their necks, and the group held a banner reading, “People of faith choose love over cruelty.” They were all arrested, but the building closed at 11 am. “We sang ourselves into arrest with a song about joy and love,” said Reverend Lee. The group was taken to a processing space where asylum-seekers are also processed when detained. “While we were there, we just kept thinking of all the folks that have been forced into this space,” she said.

**walk for peace

Perhaps this scenario is one you aren’t presently faced with, but what if we move through our fears with love instead, reaching out for connection and using our voices and minds and gifts and talents to stand with and for those on the margins, those we are told to ignore, undervalue, or fear? Over the years, I can’t tell you how many countless hands I have held: to offer comfort, to join in prayer, to let them know they are not alone. Something happens when in the midst of our fears we keep choosing love and connection. Every single time I see my dad I reach and grab his hands, multiple times and I squeeze. Just like he always used to do with me when I was afraid. And within each squeeze is “I love you. You are not alone.” And today I ask myself, God, whose hand needs holding today? Who needs to remember that you are truly Emmanuel, God with us?

Rev. Derek Penwell shares a beautiful prayer around this. I leave you with his words.

God of risky love, we come to this final Sunday of Advent carrying Joseph's question

in our bones: What does faithfulness look like when nothing makes sense? Like him,

we have been handed circumstances we did not choose. Like him, we are being asked

to trust what we cannot fully see. Like him, we know that the decision before us will

cost something.

We confess that we often prefer a safer faith, one that protects our reputation, our

comfort, our certainty. Yet you keep calling us to a love that looks foolish to the

world: the love that shelters scandal, that makes room for mystery, that says yes

before all the questions are answered. So meet us in this liminal space, just days

before the birth. Teach us that love is not a feeling we wait for but a risk we take. Give

us the courage of Joseph, who trusted a dream more than his fear and chose

solidarity over self-protection.

Make us a people willing to shelter what the world calls scandalous: the

undocumented, the uninsured, the unloved. Make us a people who trust dreams

more than fear, who say yes before we have all the answers, who use whatever power

we have to make room for what you are birthing among us.

God of the impossible birth, we trust that you are still at work in the scandal and the

uncertainty, still calling ordinary people to extraordinary courage. We trust that love

is not naive or weak but the most powerful force in the universe, powerful enough to

take on flesh and dwell among us.

So, in these final days of waiting, give us Joseph's quiet bravery: the willingness to

change our plans, the courage to stand with those the world has shamed, the faith to

believe that what looks like disgrace might be the beginning of salvation.

Come, Lord Jesus. Come quickly. Come as you always have: not to the powerful but

to the precarious, not to the certain but to the confused, not to those who have it all

figured out but to those willing to take the risk of love. Come as Emmanuel, God with

us, and teach us to be with one another.”

Come and say “give me your hand. I am with you.”