Readings: Luke
1:26-33 Luke 1:39-45 Luke
1:68-79
Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations
of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our rock and our
sustainer. Amen.
Ursula Franklin
was a well known pacifist, Quaker and feminist, a holocaust survivor - she was
also a scientist, an engineer, an academic and had a PhD in experimental
physics. She was born in Germany, she came to Canada in 1949 where she died a
couple of years ago in her mid nineties.
One, just one, of the things she is remembered for is the quote “Peace
is not the absence of war, but the absence of fear”.
There have been
other attempts at defining peace in the world – Einstein said that ‘Peace is
not merely the absence of war but the presence of justice, of law and order’
but I believe that fear can make justice unjust, law untenable and turn order
into oppression. So I see fear as the
more dangerous, an emotion that has tendrils far more invasive than we can
know.
Zechariah, in his
canticle of praise to God on the birth of his son John, both urges us to serve
God without fear, and to allow the light that will break upon us (Jesus) to
guide our feet on the way of peace. In
God’s mercy and through the one whom John the Baptist will prepare the way for,
we will know the peace of God.
So it is
interesting that the readings today offer us a narrative full of potential fear
situations. Let’s just put on our fear
identifying glasses for a moment and see what we can find.
There is Mary –
young, virginal, inexperienced confronted by the angel Gabriel (that would have
got the heart rate pumping for a start), Mary, told she will take on a task
beyond her comprehension on so many fronts. As an ordinary human being, she will
have known fear; for her ability to do this, for her reputation, her
relationship with Joseph, for her child – Mary,
did you know… did you know what faced your child/man as he grew – did
you anticipate sharing him with the world in quite that way, the pain of the
cross – yes I suspect you did.
There is Elizabeth
– she and Zechariah’s high status had not made them immune to the heartache of
infertility. And then she promised a
child and then found herself with child – and all the anxious moments that that
brought, especially at her age. Fear too
for the life of her child and the difficult path he would take.
And Zechariah –
his was a real up and down journey – delighted at the news that they are going
to have a child who, he is told, will be the forerunner of the coming Saviour
of Israel, terrified to believe that it will be so (and made mute for his
disbelief), absolute delight when he becomes a father, then frustrated when he
cannot speak his child’s name – and underlying all this, fear for the future of
their son.
Fear is very much
a part of all their journey’s, a reality of their lives, which makes it all the
more interesting that Zechariah would,
with his first words, preach that we are to serve God without fear!
Jesus himself tells
us to not fear, I am with you – then points us onto a road that for many of us,
is terrifying. ‘If you follow me then
you must take up your cross daily’ and ‘your ministry will be as sheep among
wolves’. We are asked to confront the
principalities and powers that rule the world and the prospect of doing so
would have most of us doing a Jonah – running the other way.
So I have no doubt
that Mary and Elizabeth and Zechariah and Joseph were confronted with fear – as
was Ursula Franklin and so many of us. But
the thing is – how do we respond? Do we allow it to paralyse us or do we do as
they did, as Jesus did, do we turn our steps towards Jerusalem and the cross
anyway. In the midst of our fear do we
trust God to know the way and to be with us on the way?
I don’t think we can
live our lives without fear - as it is very much part of the journey of life
for all of us. Fear of failure, fear of
what might be asked of us, fear of the powers that can harm us, fear of the
unknown – all these play a part in our lives.
But do we allow it to rule us, make our decisions, guide our steps?
Fear plays a large
part in our culture too. We can so clearly see where it has taken control –
even without going to the usual suspects, even if we just look at life in New Zealand
– we can see where fear rules in our culture.
Financial fear has
our society encouraging the lining of our pockets way beyond our needs, has
rendered us ungenerous, has us forever seeking, with little regard for impact, new
ways of making money. It has held us in
paralysis for decades unable to speak against the powers and principalities that
perpetuate the culture of greed and exploitation.
People fear – the recoil
from those who are different, those outside our experience. The need to put up barriers to keep our patch
our patch. The narrowness that believes
our way is the only way and all others are a threat to that. White supremacy, immigrant bashing, gated
communities, racism, sexism all point to
our inability to embrace the diversity of our world.
Fear that nurtures a blame society – we do
that well, leaping in to assign fault at the slightest hint of something going
wrong – before anyone can point the finger at us. Fear that we might too be
culpable has us looking for scapegoats rather quickly.
Yet as we look to
ourselves as the church, as followers of Jesus Christ, we have this conundrum -
the encouragement for us to serve Christ without fear against the very real presence
of fear in our lives, in our ministry. I
would presume to say that, for most of us, we could not imagine the existence
of effective ministry without a healthy dollop of fear being present. In fact I
would go so far to say, if it is not present, then there may be a degree of
paralysis set in. I might be taken to
task on that one but it is worth thinking about. For I have experienced fear in ministry (that
is small m ministry, by the way, the one that we are all involved in as the
people of God) as being just that – a place of doing nothing, where barriers go
up, especially between God and myself, and where each direction I am pushed in becomes
self-limited to my comfort zone, a peace of my own making. Out of that come mediocre faith at best and a
failure to grow in grace and mercy.
Jesus requires of
us a different response – he requires us to trust that in the presence of fear,
our love for and by the one whom we call God is stronger, wiser, transforming the
world in ways we cannot begin to imagine.
Mary was taken so
far out of her comfort zone that she could have been completely paralysed – but
she chose to trust in her God, to believe that she, unknown, weak and
vulnerable had been chosen to bear a child, become a refugee, help that child
grow to become a man who would turn our world upside down – show us a new way –
the way of love. All the while acknowledging
the lurking fear of what was to be.
Elizabeth and Zechariah
experienced the delight of a child born to them and yet were terribly afraid of
such a happening in their old age – still they chose to be delighted that they should be so blessed, to understand that
even in the uncertainty and pain that was to come, God’s purpose was stronger
than their disbelief.
To serve God
without fear is about our ability to trust God in the midst of our fear. To know peace us to understand that in Jesus
Christ, all the whirlwinds of life are subject to the immeasurable power of love
and grace – far stronger than the uncertainties and worries that plague our imaginations
when asked to be uncomfortable for God.
So, let us not
become preoccupied with the ‘what if’s’ and the ‘not me’ when new directions
are thrown in our path, but instead might we do a Mary and say ‘yes I do know’ -
and I am still walking this way because that is what God is asking of me and I
trust, against all human logic and wisdom that this child born in a dusty manger,
will be the saving of the world. Love did
indeed come down at Christmas. And for
that we say, thanks be to God. Amen.
Margaret Garland
