Christmas Eve, 2006
Luke 2:1-7

Fear Not!

It’s hard to know which Christmas you and I have come to celebrate – the one in our heads or the one in Luke’s head – the one in the shopping mall or the one in the Bible.

Don’t get me wrong. I like the Christmas in my head. I’m as nostalgic as the next guy. I’m a sucker for the umpteenth showing of "It’s a Wonderful Life," and for chestnuts roasting on an open fire. Personally, the only thing I ever cooked on an open fire were hot dogs and marshmallows, and I usually burned them. Still, my childhood memories of Christmas are pretty good. I like an old-fashioned Christmas.

So does the Bible, but the Christmas story in the Bible really old-fashioned – first century old-fashioned. This world in Luke’s story is not blanketed in snow, a lá Courier and Ives, but baking in the sun and longing for refreshment. This is a hard world, a dangerous world, where kings rage and wickedness flourishes. It’s a world where babies are murdered and people are tortured in the name of homeland security. It’s a world where people hate each other because they don’t worship the same God, or even if they do, don’t worship God in exactly the way their religious leaders would have them worship.

We tend to think of Christmas as an escape from the real world. In the Bible, Christmas is the real world. Put the Gospels of Matthew and Luke together, and you get a shocking picture: innocent babies massacred, politicians vying for power, insurgency, counter-insurgency – all the marks of a modern mess.

From the Bible’s ancient, but all too familiar, mess a message comes to us this night. The angel Gabriel conveys it to Mary first, when he visits her with the preposterous announcement that she would be conceiving a child without the assistance of Joseph. The same message comes to Joseph as well, assuring him that Mary has not, in fact, been unfaithful to him. It’s the same message both times, and it comes up again addressed the shepherds.

"Fear not!" "Don’t be afraid."

I don’t know about you, but that’s exactly the message I need to hear tonight.

Fear is in the air we breathe these days. It hangs over our schools, our houses of government, our churches. Politicians get elected on a platform of fear, and when their policies fail, they simply turn up the volume. Fear has prompted us to erode our constitution, blur the separation of powers, and turn a blind eye to torture. How many more Americans and Iraqis will die or be maimed before we cotton on to the fact that you can’t fight terror with more terror?

Even the church has become paralyzed by fear. We’re afraid that if we reach out to gays and lesbians, people will leave the church, taking their checkbooks with them, and no one will be left to pay the bills or teach the Confirmation class.

I’m not saying there’s no basis for our fears. I’m saying that the message of Christmas is "Fear not!" Do not let your fear become your god. The very fear that reminds us that we are human can also make us less than human, can twist our hearts, distort our souls, and blind our eyes to the light.

Mary had plenty to fear. She could have been stoned to death. Joseph had plenty to fear. He could have become the laughing stock of Nazareth. The shepherds had plenty to fear – not only from Caesar’s army of occupation, but also from the terrifying display of power taking place in the heavens above them.

The Christmas message does not put our fears to rest. It puts them in context. It places them over against the "good news of great joy for all the people." To us – to all of us – has been born the Savior who is Christ the Lord. God has come among us, has made a home with us, has declared his love for us. Over against this good news, no terror can stand. Caesar can do his worst – and probably will. Rulers can strut and posture and issue their orders. Illness can nibble away at our resolve. Death can claim that it has won the victory.

The good news of great joy, the perfect love of God made flesh in Jesus Christ, casts out fear. This baby, born to these two nobodies, will be the undoing of Herod and Caesar, and every fear monger who has, or will, walk the earth. He has scattered the proud. He has put down the mighty. He has given the hungry good things, and he has put fear in its place.

It is he who rules the earth, not fear. And it is he who redeems our life from the pit and draws us out of the dungeon of despair. We did not rise to God. God came down to us. To us is born the Savior of the world.

Fear not! God is with us. Don’t be afraid. Emmanuel is born.