Be not Afraid!
The Rev. Scot Sherman
The Fourth Sunday of Advent, December 18, 2022
Isaiah 7:10-16 • Romans 1:1-7 • Matthew 1:18-25
Do you have a favorite Christmas movie? “It’s a Wonderful Life?” “Elf?” At my house it’s a toss up between “The Muppet Christmas Carol” and “Die Hard.” (Yes, Die Hard is a Christmas movie)! We’ve recently added the musical, “Annie”--it’s fantastic! It’s based on a comic strip that started in the 1920’s, Little Orphan Annie. It was written by Harold Gray, who was a right-wing populist that believed the poor should pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and who loathed FDR and the new deal. But when Thomas Mehan adapted it for Broadway in the 1970s, he subverted Gray’s politics. Anni is compassionate toward the homeless, and when she’s rescued from the murderous orphanage director it is by none other than FDR himself! Musical ends with a rousing number, “we’ll have a new deal for Christmas!” We watched it last year, toes tapping, reminding each other: “We have nothing to fear but fear itself!”
Of course, that didn’t last long. We were back to our doomscrolling ways by bedtime, which is why I think the angel’s words to Joseph are so timely: do not be afraid.
Fear is not all bad. It’s a function of the God-given limbic system of the brain, which is capable of 1500 different biochemical responses to threat! From dilating your pupils, decreasing the sense of pain, even producing more blood clotting platelets in case you’re injured. Fear triggers the limbic system, makes you stronger, faster, more focused. Fear’s good for you!
Clinical psychologist, Chanequa Walker Barnes, distinguishes this healthy fear from unhealthy fear: “Unhealthy fear is that which is afraid of itself, fear that has morphed into anxiety.” FDR, if you will, fearing fear itself.
So why is Joseph paralyzed by anxiety? He’s had a life-changing conversation with his fiancee.She’s pregnant, he’s not the Father, but “it’s not what you think.” Matthew calls Joseph “a righteous man”—he’s a devout Jew, and from that perspective, Mary has committed fornication, a capital crime according to Jewish law. Joseph is torn—he’s devout, he loves God, he sees it as his religious duty to end the relationship, but he loves her. So he decides not to accuse her publicly, to just end things privately without humiliating or endangering her.
But God intervenes in Joseph’s dreams! Wherever Mary is, I imagine her at her parent’s house; there’s yelling, there’s accusation; I doubt she’s sleeping; I imagine her bundled up and weeping: “what is happening to me? Am I crazy?” She lives the nightmare of so many women, of not being listened to, of not being believed. Joseph is probably going back and forth between rage and heartbreak. Then comes the dream.
The message? “Don’t be afraid to marry her.” What’s his fear? Well, I think he’s afraid God’s disapproves, and so he can’t trust his mercy instinct, the disruptive empathy bubbling up. The angel understands: “THIS is from the Holy Spirit, it was all foretold.” And he unpacks it with instructions on naming the baby. (We’ll talk about those in a minute).
Joseph shows us that to follow Jesus, you have to confront the tension of “you have heard it said..but I say to you” (as Jesus will proclaim in the sermon on the mount. Joseph chooses to trust the new thing being revealed in Jesus). He shows us a way out of exclusionary and violent religion towards the generous love of the God being revealed in Jesus.
It’s so important that we understand what God is doing that God doesn’t even let the parents name him. The angel says, call him “Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” Jesus is a form of the old Hebrew name, Yeshua, Joshua, which means “YHWH saves!” It’s a fairly typical name, so the angel doubles down to make sure it’s understood: “this fulfills the prophecy... they shall call him Immanuel.”
How does that tie in with calling the child “Jesus”? Curiously, only here in Matthew 1 is Jesus called Immanuel, nowhere later, not in Mark, Luke or John. What’s going on?
Immanuel means “God-with-us” and in Matthew’s mind, this sums up everything we need to understand about the name Jesus. All of Jesus’ other names and titles add up to the reality of Immanuel, of God-with-us. None of Jesus’ other credentials matter unless it is somehow true that in this one dwells the fullness of God. If God is not with us through Jesus, then God cannot save us through him.I think the angel knows Joseph is about to wake up from his God dream, and the crushing weight of a miserable world is about to come crashing down on him.
Some Christians take the name Jesus and turn him into one who save us out of the real world. But if he’s Immanuel, then we don’t have to go anywhere to find him because he has found us right here.
Immanuel means there is no place you can go where God is not there with YOU. Immanuel is God with you during the cancer testing, with you when you don’t get the 2nd job interview, with you when your child tells you they hate you, with you when a dear friend betrays your trust, with you when your true love looks at you with through the eyes of dementia and asks you, “what’s your name”?
In his book, Everything Belongs, Francisan Richard Rohr likens trusting that God is with us in Christ as entering into a River of Love:
I believe that faith might be precisely that ability to trust the Big River of God’s providential love, which is to trust its visible embodiment (the Christ), the flow (the Holy Spirit), and the source itself (the Creator). This is a divine process that we don’t have to change, coerce, or improve. We just need to allow it and enjoy it. That takes immense confidence in God, especially when we’re hurting. Often, we feel ourselves get panicky and quickly want to make things right. We lose our ability to be present and go up into our heads and start obsessing. At that point we’re not really feeling or experiencing things in our hearts and bodies. We’re oriented toward making things happen, trying to push or even create our own river. Yet the Big River is already flowing through us and each of us is only one small part of it.
Faith does not need to push the river precisely because it is able to trust that there is a river. The river is flowing; we are already in it...Stay in God’s hands. Be not afraid.