"Do not be afraid"-Sermon for Christmas Eve, Luke 2:1-20
Just moments ago, together, we sang, “Angels we have heard on high singing sweetly through the night, and the mountains in reply echoing their brave delight…Gloria in excelsis Deo!” And, surely angels heard on high and down low on earth feature greatly in our Christmas stories, more than perhaps anywhere else in all of Holy Scripture. It is the angel Gabriel who appears in glory before Mary with the most unexpected of announcements, “Greetings favored one! The Lord is with you…. Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And, now you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord will give him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” And, similarly, it is an angel of the Lord who visits Joseph in a dream telling him, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid […do not be afraid] to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people….”. And, then some 9 months later…on that most holy night…the night of our Dear Savior’s birth…angels appear again to the shepherds in the field watching their flocks by night. Luke writes, “Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord…. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!’"
From pregnancy to birth, in all three of these encounters with the angels of the Lord, which both the evangelist Matthew and Luke mention in their gospels…I am sure you noted these angels begin with the same refrain, “Do not be afraid”. To a teenage girl, both newly and unexpectedly pregnant, to a bewildered and confused father and husband to be, and to regular folk just like us…shepherds just attending to another day of hard work…the angels say, “Do not be afraid.” And, I will note further that these three angelic encounters are expressly stated as happening or traditionally thought of, in Mary’s case, as happening at night. And, I think it is no accident that these most glorious, light-filled, hope-filled, and soul-soothing words…“do not be afraid”…are delivered at night. Jesus is betrayed, arrested, and unjustly tried at night. Peter denies Jesus 3 times at night. Friends, nighttime is a spiritual metaphor for this present darkness. The darkness of sin, disease and death that seem, seem to hold sway in our night-time like world. That of Mary, Joseph, and the shepherd’s world…and…and that of ours as well.
And, I will say our response to such darkness, as we experience it uniquely in our own lives…for it looks differently for each of us…but we all know it…as it comes to us in our news feeds…in that unwanted diagnosis…when courage fails…when families fall apart…when jobs are lost…when we lose someone to young or too soon…when the retirement account is drained well before retirement…when respectful conversation can no longer manage such huge ideological divides…our response to such darkness is often fear. And, as that great sage, Jedi Master Yoda, once said, “Fear is the path to the Dark Side. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.” And, thus, the angels of the Lord offer, not just to Mary, Joseph and the shepherds, but to all of us…an even more ancient and divine wisdom…saying to us in the very midst of our own night-time moments, “Do not be afraid.”
And, such angelic wisdom, is surely not intended to create in us any sort of shame for any sort of fear we may feel. For fear, when we feel it, is the reasonable offspring of vulnerable people living in what is, at times, a profoundly dark and broken world. Instead, the angels are asking us, inviting us to courageously face the fear and the darkness…to even peer into it…such that we might see, with the eyes of our hearts, that which stands just behind it…that which surely follows after the darkness and in whose presence the darkness cannot stand. Or, as the Evangelist John uniquely describes the birth of Christ, “What has come into being in [Jesus] was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” Or, further, as we also sang moments ago, “Yet in the dark streets shineth the everlasting light; the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.”
Friends, everything we hope for…which is not a reference to what we hope we might find under the tree tomorrow morning…but that which our hearts hope most deeply, most profoundly for…our hope for the love of God to rule the hearts of all people…our hope for peace, justice, and plenty for all who God has made…our hope for victory over the power of sin and death…is met and made complete in Jesus’s birth that we celebrate this night. And, all the fear hoisted upon our shoulders by the darkness and suffering in this death-dealing world is met and, in the fullness of time, will be totally torn down beginning with the birth that we celebrate this night. The bright light that has come down into this dark world in the birth Jesus…a light that the darkness did not overcome…is why…it is the only reason why…the angels say to us…remind us…invite us…ask us…implore us…to not be afraid…to allow the light of God’s love…and not the darkness of fear…to rule in our own hearts.
I have quoted three of the four evangelists thus far in this sermon…Matthew, Luke, and John…didn’t mean to leave Mark out…I love the Gospel of Mark. And, one way we use the term evangelist in the church is as a title for the four Gospel authors. But, of course, we also use the term evangelist for those Christians, like us, who in every age and every place bear witness with their words and with their lives the good news of God in Christ…the very thing we celebrate together this night. That God came to us in the person of Jesus as a vulnerable baby who would grow into an adult to die and live again overcoming the darkness of sin and death for all people and for all time. This is our great good new…this is the story of the salvation of the world…the defeat of darkness by the light of God’s love born to us this night so long ago. And, it was pointed out to me recently that inside the word evangelist…is the word angel…not some or part of the word…but the whole word with each letter in order…a, n, g, e, l.
I have often quoted from the poem by Dylan Thomas that concludes, “Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” And, I believe tonight, we are being invited to take our place among the angles…to be evangelists…to share the good news of this most holy, light-filled night…to join in the surround sound spirituality of the angels’ song…to give voice to the angels’ proclamation “do not be afraid”…to help give voice to those who are suffering most or lost in the dark…and to invite everyone we can to join us…as we sometimes shout and sometimes sing sweetly…into the darkness…into the places where the light seems to be dying…joy to the world the Lord has come…with angelic host proclaim that Jesus Christ is born…come adore on bended knee Christ the Lord the new born king…Go tell it on the mountain, over the hills and everywhere; go tell it on the mountain, that Jesus Christ is born…come and behold him, born the king of angels…hush the noise and cease the strife and hear the angels sing. Amen.