Faces on Faith: ‘Do not be afraid’
Soon, those of us in the Christian spiritual tradition will once again celebrate the Christmas story. Well, stories, actually. Plural. Despite the fact that most Christmas pageants, the wider culture and many Christians recall only a single story with shepherds, angels, wisemen and a manger, there are actually two markedly different stories about Jesus’ birth — one in the Gospel of Matthew and the other in the Gospel of Luke. For example, there are shepherds and a manger in Luke, but no wise men. In Matthew, it’s the reverse.
There is, however, one essential detail they do have in common. In both Christmas stories, the first words spoken by any character are the same: “Do not be afraid.” In Matthew’s gospel, an angel speaks those words to Joseph in reference to the coming birth of Jesus. In Luke, they are spoken by an angel to Zechariah in reference to the coming birth of his son, John the Baptist, which for Luke is actually the beginning of his Christmas story. But the words are the same: “Do not be afraid.”
Yet as we enter this Advent and Christmas season, as well as the season of Chanukkah for our brothers and sisters in the Jewish tradition, fear seems to be everywhere and growing. As Martha Nussbaum, perhaps the most prominent American moral philosopher of our time, puts it in her book, “The Monarchy of Fear, fear has “suffused” our current society due to a combination of extreme polarization and forces such as automation and globalization, which have left many feeling powerless.
But still, the very first words God speaks to us through angels — a word which means “messenger” — are “Do not be afraid.” And the Jesus who is born as the central act of the Christmas story will, as an adult, say “do not be afraid” to those with him, and to us, more than anything else.
Easier said than done, of course, as science understands fear to be a natural part of the human condition, and with the daily reminders of war, economic uncertainty and political discord in so many parts of the world. But my sense is that what first God, and then Jesus, are really pointing to with those words has much less to do with feeling the emotion of fear and much more to do with our response to it. As Nussbaum discusses, to respond to fear with the determination to thoughtfully participate in needed change is helpful; to respond with the desire to make others suffer, as is seemingly, and tragically, so prevalent in our time, is not.
The former was clearly the way Jesus responded to, and called others to respond to, the things they feared in their time. And it is the way he and the God who sent him at Christmas call us to respond to what we fear in ours.
The Rev. Dr. Mark Boyea is senior minister at the Sanibel Congregational United Church of Christ.