“’Twas Christ that taught by heart to fear, and by Christ my fears relieved”

Christmas is great time of year, isn’t it? The carols, the Christmas dinners, the happy children playing in the soft glow of Christmas tree lights. There’s nothing quite like Christmas to warm our hearts, to bring families together, and put us in a good mood. All we have to do is mention the word “Christmas,” and everything becomes sweet, comforting, and nostalgic. It’s like, whenever we think about Christmas, suddenly the camera goes out of focus and everything gets a bit blurred, like one of those movies from the sixties—you know, how, when they would go in for a close up of the leading actress—be it Doris Day or Grace Kelly—they would soften the edges of the shot, and everything would get softer, gentler, more romantic.

Something similar happens when we think about the story of Jesus’ birth. Our pictures of the holy family are softened, even sepia-toned, becoming the picture of all that is lovely and fair: Mary in her blue robe gazing lovingly at her glowing newborn, Joseph attentive to both of their needs, shepherds gazing on in wonder, with a flock of puffy white balls of cotton in the background, and the rays of angels' glory streaming in through the windows of the well-swept stable and strains of "Joy to the World" playing in the background.

It's a nice picture, beautiful even, and I cherish it probably as much as or more than the next person. But of course the first Christmas wasn't like that at all. We’ve domesticated the Christmas story beyond anything those involved would recognize. I mean, if you've ever worked on a farm, or driven by a farm, you can imagine what the smell was like in the place Jesus was born. And, if you've ever been in labor or been with someone who’s in labor, you know it’s not all “calm and mild.” Mary was probably a frightened teenager, Joseph in way over his head…and the shepherds? These were the undesirables of the first century, the folks on the lowest of the low rungs of society, the kind of people you’d be nervous about inviting to your house, for fear they would traipse mud on your carpets and take off with the silver. The fact is, the Christmas of the Bible, in contrast to the Christmas of our minds, was characterized not by peace and serenity but by distress and anxiety.

You see, the world into which Jesus was born was full of fear and uncertainty. Israel was an occupied nation under the domination of Rome. Caesar Augustus whose Empire held Israel under its boot had decreed a head count be taken—for the purpose of determining “proper”—that is, higher—taxation. And, as much as the inhabitants chafed at the taxes, they all knew they better line up and get their heads counted while they were still attached to their shoulders. Caesar’s armies were all too happy to enforce Roman rule, at the point of a sword. Closer to home, Israel was overseen by King Herod. As king of the Jews, Herod was even worse than Caesar, a madman who was prepared to commit any crime to gratify his unbounded ambition, including murdering members of his own family and a great many rabbis. Scarcely a day passed, in fact, without an execution under Herod’s regime. The political climate at the time of Jesus’ birth resembled that of Russia in the 1930s under Stalin. Citizens could not gather in public meetings, and spies were everywhere.

Into this already anxious world, God sent his angelic messenger Gabriel. Now Luke doesn’t give a description of Gabriel, but it’s clear the angel cut an imposing figure. As we just heard in Luke, when Gabriel appeared to the shepherds, they were “sore afraid,” which is King James English for “he scared the pants off of them.” It’s clear, this was no chubby cherub from Renaissance paintings or Clarence from It’s a Wonderful Life—friendly and somewhat benign. No, Gabriel was a fearsome sight. Otherwise, one suspects, he wouldn’t have needed to start every conversation by telling his audience not to be afraid: “Fear not,” he says to the shepherds, as he had to Zechariah and to Mary and to Joseph before him.  

That a messenger of God, a bearer of “good news,” should be so fearsome may surprise us. Yet throughout Scripture, whenever humans encounter the realm of God, the natural response of ordinary people is not joy but fear. Fear was what Adam and Eve felt after they had had eaten the forbidden fruit and God came looking for them. They hid, Adam said, because “I heard the sound of You in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked." Fear was what the Hebrews felt when they had escaped Egypt and came to Mount Sinai. They saw the lightning and thunder atop the mountain and they were scared witless. They said to Moses, "Speak to us yourself and we will listen; but let not God speak to us, or we will die.” Fear was what Isaiah felt when the prophet had a vision of the Lord. The Lord was seated on a throne, high and exalted and surrounded by seraphs, a kind of angel, who were crying out, “Holy, Holy, Holy is the LORD Almighty.” Isaiah’s response wasn’t “O boy, this is exciting.”  No.  His first instinct was fear, “Woe is me… I am ruined!  I am a man of unclean lips.”

The instinct to run and hide continues in the New Testament.  In Luke’s telling of Peter’s first encounter with Jesus, Peter had been fishing all night and hadn’t caught a thing.  Jesus sees Peter and his crew and tells them, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.”  Peter does what Jesus said, and they pull in two boatloads of fish. When Peter saw this, “he fell at Jesus’ knees and said, ‘Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!’” A little later, the disciples were in a boat again when they were caught in a great storm on the lake. When Jesus stands and stills the storm, Mark the author doesn’t say, “The disciples were jumping up and down for joy.”  Mark says, “They were terrified and asked each other, ‘Who is this?  Even the winds and the waves obey Him!’” And when the apostle John, who knew Jesus so well, saw Christ’s risen glory, he fell at His feet as though dead. This happens again and again. Jesus heals a paralytic and the crowds are afraid. He exorcises the demon-possessed man and the people are frightened. Jesus rises from the dead, and the disciples are scared out of their wits. (Ok, I’ll concede the last one. If you or I saw a dead man come back to life, we would likely be scared too.) The point is, fear is the typical response whenever heaven is opened, whenever God comes near.

And this makes sense. God is so much larger than us, so far above us, beyond us. He is holy, completely other, incomprehensible, his ways inscrutable, his thoughts unfathomable. Should the Lord Almighty, the Great I Am, pull back the curtain and reveal himself to us, we’d likely have the same reaction that fish have when you look into a fish tank—we’d run for cover.

Which is all the more reason why it’s important for us to understand that, whenever someone in the Bible talks about “the fear of the Lord,” they’re not talking primarily of the fearful expectation of judgment, God taking his wrath out on us sinners. As CS Lewis describes it, the fear of God is not a fear that one feels for a tiger, or even a ghost. Rather, it is a fear that is filled with awe, in which one "feels wonder and a certain shrinking" or "a sense of inadequacy to cope” with the reality before us. It is like the sense that one gets when standing before the Grand Canyon or gazing up at the stars on a cloudless night out in the country—you are at once captivated by the immensity and you also just feel so small.

And so, the thought that God, who is bigger than the Grand Canyon and deeper than the heavens, has come to earth, has set aside his divine prerogatives, confined his infinitude to come to us in the form of a small child—that’s an amazing, awesome, fearsome idea. God is not just peeking in; he has entered into our world, become one of us. And neither we nor the world will ever be the same again.

The awesome, fearsome nature of what happened on Christmas is lost on most people, especially among those in the retail industry. I saw in an advertisement for a big name department store once that showed a picture of the most peculiar Christmas display: giant plush bears robed as Mary and Joseph, beaming at a swaddled Baby Jesus bear in the manger. Absent was any notion of the grand mystery of the Incarnation. Three jolly bears now convey everything we know or expect to know. It is a scene smitten with stupidity. Jesus as a doll. God as a pet.

As much as we might fancy a god like that, a god that you can keep in the closet and pull out once a year at the holidays to cheer up a room, such a god is powerless and of no use to us. It can’t heal us, can’t save us, can’t comfort us or give us hope. Such a god has nothing to say to the person whose company is going under and who is afraid he won’t be able to support his family. Such a god has nothing to offer the retired couple who has lost two-thirds of their retirement fund when the market collapsed and is having to sell their home and move someplace less expensive. Such a god can do nothing for the parents who have lost a child to substance abuse, or the widower facing his first Christmas without his wife, or the woman whose parents died before she was able to tell them she was sorry, who wonders if they will ever forgive her. Such a cute and cuddly god is helpless in the face of the very real and very scary troubles we face in life. We need a God who is bigger than our troubles, a God who is stronger, more powerful, more fearsome than our fears, a God who commands respect from governments and rulers, who inspires fear in those who do evil and oppress the weak, a God whose power is above all earthly powers, whose rule overrules even the power of death. Only a God who can command such fear can command our fears away.

This gets to the heart of the Christmas story. For, the coming of Jesus, the incarnation of God, brings fear, but it also relieves fear. Such is the message that Gabriel brings. To Zechariah, he says, “Fear not, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to give him the name John.” To Mary, he says, “Fear not, Mary, you have found favor with God.” To Joseph, he says, “Joseph son of David, fear not to take Mary as your wife, because what is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit.” And to the shepherds in the fields, in tonight’s reading, he declares, “Fear not. For I bring you good news of great joy.” 

When this child grows up, he will repeat Gabriel’s message, God’s message, to all who will listen. Walking on water, he will say to his frightened followers, “Take heart. It is I. Do not be afraid.” At another time he will say, “Fear not, little flock, it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” When he is crucified and risen from the dead, he will proclaim, “Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you.” And when life seems too much for us, he will assure us, “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart. I have overcome the world.” The coming of Christ at Christmas most assuredly brings fear, but at the same time his arrival relieves our fears.

You’ve probably seen the bumper stickers that bear the slogan “No fear.” They were rather popular a few years back. I’ve often thought that we Christians should have our own stickers, ones that proclaim instead, “Fear not.” For that is the message of Christmas: fear not, for God has made himself known, has come to be with us, to live and die as one of us, to open up heaven to us and to share with us a perfect love that drives out all fear. Then again, we don’t need some bumper sticker to say that. It is our joy and privilege to live this good news and to share it with others, to join with Gabriel as he declares to the world, “Fear not; for behold-- I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ, the Lord.” Amen.