“Do Not Be Afraid”

Luke 1:26-38

Advent 4

Luke 1:26-38

{26} In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, {27} to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. {28} And he came to her and said, "Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you." {29} But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. {30} The angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. {31} And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. {32} He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. {33} He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end."

{34} Mary said to the angel, "How can this be?"

{35} The angel said to her, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. {36} And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. {37} For nothing will be impossible with God."

{38} Then Mary said, "Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word." Then the angel departed from her.

The Sermon

I rarely think it’s appropriate to stand in the pulpit and talk about how or why a particular sermon was put together—my philosophy is: dispense with all the explanations of how you came to the decision to say what you want to say, and just preach the thing.

But these are extraordinary circumstances.

I tried about two dozen different ways to get us into this story, all of which walked a wide circle around what has so deeply affected us this week and what is rightly nagging at us for our attention.

The truth is: Melissa, a member of this church’s family, a beloved and beautiful one of us, only 41 years old, is no longer here.

There are some things that may give us some partial explanations, and there are some things that are to be said elsewhere. Illness comes in many forms, and we don’t always know each other’s true conditions, even in a loving atmosphere like this.

We are a people of deep faith and absolute trust in God, but at times like this, even the most faithful people come to God with tears in our eyes; and though they are tears of joy for the beautiful person who shared so much goodness and kindness and generosity of spirit with the rest of us, it is also appropriate that our tears come from some other places, too. There’s nothing wrong with being sad or even angry, as long as we’re honest about it, and express it in healthy and responsible ways.

Nor will there be anything wrong with eventually coming to terms with it. That will happen at different times, and to varying degrees, for those of us who knew and loved Melissa. But it will happen, in God’s time.

Parents should talk about it with your children, but at the time and in the way that you can speak and listen clearly, with undivided attention.

In the meantime, let us never forget what God gave us, what God did for us, in the time that we had Melissa.

Never forget that God came before everything, and will be here after everything; that nothing and no one in this universe is ever lost to God.

God’s will for us is long, abundant, healthy, happy life. And our purpose in having abundant life is to share abundant life. And it’s a tragedy that Melissa left us much, much too soon, before she was able to complete her full life’s project of sharing abundant life and love abundantly.

But know that no matter what our circumstances, God is always—from our first mortal breath, to our last, and beyond—always holding us in loving and eternal arms, every one of us, whether we realize it, whether we think we can feel it, or not.

For nothing will be impossible with God.

Mary, Nazareth girl:

What did you know of Heavenly beings

With messages from God?

What did you know of men

When you found yourself with child?

What did you know of babies,

You, barely out of childhood yourself?

God-chosen girl:

What did you know of God

That brought you to the stable

Blessed among women?

Could it be that you had been ready

Waiting

Listening

For the footsteps

Of an angel:

Could it be there are messages for us

If we have the faith to listen? [ii]

The Hebrew word is malak, as in Malachi, the last book of the Old Testament. The Greek New Testament word is aggelos. They both mean “messenger” or “agent,” and the Greek aggelos became the English “angel.”

The business of an angel is to deliver a message, and Gabriel got maybe the plum angelic assignment of all time.

It doesn’t seem to have gone exactly smoothly right off the bat:

Gabriel came to Mary and said—what else would you say?—“Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.”

And she was, in Luke’s words, “much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be.”

That seems like a fairly cold reception. Am I all alone in this? Wouldn’t you just want to say, “First of all, I’m an angel. The least you could do would be to go, ‘Wow, an angel.’”

“And second, what do you mean, you’re perplexed? I just said ‘Greetings.’ It isn’t nuclear physics.”

So Gabriel tried again, and this time it seems to have gone better. He said: “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.”

Maybe all the angels know that’s the first thing we need to hear.

Before we can get any other message from God, maybe the first thing we need to hear is, “Do not be afraid.”

Perhaps Mary here stands for all of us who encounter God so intimately.

Like his own mother, those of us who follow Jesus are charged with carrying him inside us as well.

That is an awesome gift, and an awesome responsibility.

When God sends you the message that you are to carry the Christ within you, don’t feel ashamed if you are a little bit afraid of that voice, and that message.

Those who are called to carry Christ within them are called to being forgiving, charged with being centered, and spiritual, and merciful, and generous of spirit, in ways for which the world and our own human nature don’t seem to be programmed. (But they are. We know the programmer.)

When I think I hear the angels delivering a message to me, calling me to a new responsibility, telling me to accept things I may not want to accept, or—even harder—compelling me not to accept a status quo—in which I’m quite comfortable, thank you—where some are powerless against violence, or vulnerable to evil, or condemned, by a fluke of society, or an accident of birth, to live lives that are less valued than they should be,

When I think I hear the angels delivering a message to me, my reaction is usually: “How much exactly are you going to be asking from me?”

Buechner tried to imagine Gabriel’s point of view, saying, “She struck the angel Gabriel as hardly old enough to have a child at all, let alone this child. But he’d been entrusted with a message to give to her, and he gave it to her. ‘You mustn’t be afraid, Mary,’ he said.

“As he said it, he only hoped she wouldn’t notice that beneath the great, golden wings, he himself was trembling with fear to think that the whole future of creation hung now on the answer of a girl.” [iii]

But hear the message of the angels: Do not be afraid. In spite of your weaknesses, and your inadequacies, and your inclination to not be any more helpful than you absolutely have to be, God, in an eternal and holy mystery, has chosen you, and me, and the Church, to carry this light into a darkened world.

You don’t have to understand why. All you have to do is say to your eternally loving God, “I love you, too.” Do not be afraid, Mary. For you have found favor with God.

Let us pray...

[i] “The Angel Gabriel from Heaven Came” © 1955 (renewed 1983) by E.H. Freeman Ltd.

[ii] Ann Weems, “Mary, Nazareth Girl”, in Kneeling in Bethlehem. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1987.

[iii] Frederick Buechner. Peculiar Treasures (Harper San Francisco, 1979), p. 39