Fear Doesn’t Stop Us

So what happens if you have made it through the great trinity of holidays (Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years) and it doesn’t feel like much has changed? The Herods of the world are still on their thrones offering up a four-course diet of fear for your consumption.

The journey of the magi, like all the other stories we have examined this past Christmas, also contained fear. Are you beginning to sense a pattern? They set out towards foreign soil, crossing political, social, religious, and cultural boundaries all because they too were hoping for a new type of leader, a new way forward. They saw the star and within it signs of a royal birth. But fear was on the horizon in Rome’s puppet king Herod. Herod’s fears around this birth were real and in Matthew’s gospel we witness the very worst of what fear can do in what is referred to as the Slaughter of the Holy Innocents. No one likes to include these in a morning reading, but if we are going to take fear seriously, we cannot ignore them. Even within this past year, have we not witnessed the slaughter of holy innocents both in the U.S. and internationally through cruel and inhumane treatment, starvation, the removal of critical supplies and care, senseless violence with multiple mass shootings, bombings, and natural disasters that took innocent lives and left others homeless. Just yesterday we woke up to find we had attacked Venezuela.

So if we are on this journey through our fears but the circumstances surrounding them haven’t changed, what now? Maybe it isn’t about the fear itself but rather what we choose to do with it, how we respond to it, and how we journey through it… together.

Consider for a moment what happens with the magi once they encounter Christ. By the time they reach Christ he is more likely a toddler so it is entirely possible that they may have been on this journey for a couple of years. What is the longest you have journeyed toward something? What is the longest you have waited on something you weren’t sure would ever even arrive? Christ alters the landscape of fear and changes its course. Once love enters the picture, the journey through fear is different. This is epiphany. The aha moment.

But it was an epiphany that left them with a choice.

Who will we really follow? What will really guide us? The Herod of all consuming power or the Christ of all consuming love? The powerful fist or the powerless face of an infant? The voice of fear or the path of peace?

Rev. Boyung Lee says “After encountering Christ, they travel “ home by another way” a new route and a transformed life.” Wade just shared a beautiful reflection on what his word “home” ended up meaning for him this past year. Where might your word take you this year?

Rev. Lee says, “This is the power of epiphany: not merely a moment of recognition, but the beginning of a new path.

The magi do what Herod refuses to do: seek, kneel, and listen. *Before we really launch ourselves into this year might we pause to seek, to kneel, and to listen.

I shared with you how when I was at the Benedictine prayer retreat, I observed how the monks treated the worship space but especially the altar with such reverence. Any time they passed either in front of or behind the altar, they would take a moment and bow. When we bow, there is an acknowledgement of placing ourselves lower than or beneath something or someone else. My word for the year was service. Every time I got up to leave, I would face the altar and bow, making the sign of the cross. Bowing before an infant Jesus instead of a powerful king was both bold and brave of the magis., At the beginning of this year, Bishop Mariann Budde reminded us what it means to be brave.

How might your star word lead you to do something bold and brave for the Lord this year?

I know sometimes the beginning of a new year has a way of making us think “new year, new me.” We begin to think of all the ways we can better ourselves in the new year, but Rev. Derek Penwell says maybe this year doesn’t need a newer and better us, but a braver us. Bravery that looks like speaking up for the vulnerable, visiting the sick and the defenseless, getting to know and actually love our neighbors.

Rev. Lee says, “Epiphanies are not always warm or personal

Sometimes they are disruptive, even dangerous

Sometimes they lead to confrontation

Sometimes they ask us to speak up, to cross borders.

Sometimes they send us home by another way.

And always, they ask something of us.

Will we move the way fear makes us move?

Or will we move the way love calls us to?

In the face of fear, may we journey together not with swords with solidarity and peace.

Let us kneel in awe

not before the powerful

but before the powerless Christ, whose birth marks are the beginning of God’s peace campaign.”

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago how inspired I have been by the bravery of the Buddhist monks and their Walk for Peace, a 2300 mile journey on foot from Fort Worth, Texas to Washington D.C. in an effort to raise awareness for peace, lovingkindness, and compassion. Some of them choose to only wear thin socks or walk barefoot the whole way. Today marks day 71 on their journey. It is beautiful to watch everyone gather to see them, hear them speak, along with the large network of churches and other organizations providing food and shelter. Individuals who have chosen a life of solitude, prayer, and stillness have decided that now is a time that calls for movement, for speaking, and for a path of peace.

Along the way, story upon story and image upon image have been shared, spreading their message of hope, love, and peace. They stopped to bless a newlywed couple. Another man was so overcome in seeing them that it brought him to tears. Like the magi, these monks are modeling for us what it looks like to not let fear and hatred have the last word in our hearts.

In a time when bombs are falling and people running in fear, will we choose the pathway of peace instead? Not the path of tyranny and oppression, but another road, another way, the way of Christ.

Yesterday the Walk for Peace page shared a reflection that said “Let there be peace on earth- and let it begin with me. Not with someone else. Not somewhere far away. Not when conditions are perfect or when the world finally changes. But here, now, with me.

Let peace begin in the way I speak to myself when I make a mistake. In the breath I take before reacting. In the kindness I choose when patience feels difficult. In the forgiveness I offer when holding onto hurt feels easier.

We often look outward, wishing the world would become more peaceful. But the truth is simpler and more challenging: the world becomes peaceful when we do. When each of us takes responsibility for the peace we carry- or fail to carry- in our own hearts…..This is not passivity. This is the most active, courageous work we can do.”

Maybe it’s time that we rise and embark on a different journey, a new path, crossing over our comfort zones. Maybe it’s time to remember that fear doesn’t have the last word, that love will last longer. May God guide us this year to be brave. To step out. To speak up. To cut through the noise of fear, forging our own paths of peace and love.