The Entire Thought

An Antidote to Fear

“Don’t be afraid!” said the angel to Joseph in a dream. This exhortation against fear, preserved in today’s Gospel, enabled Joseph to shake off what must have been nightmarish worries about Mary, about the coming child, about the need to do the right thing by his pregnant betrothed, as well as follow the law and keep the curious and the judgmental at bay.
According to the NRSV Exhaustive Concordance, the exhortations “Fear not” or “Don’t be afraid" occur countless times in scripture (Bruce M. Metzger, ed.,
Thomas Nelson Pub., Nashville,Tenn.:1991)Each time, the one who hears these words is assured that God is greater than any fear and that there is indeed an
antidote to fear. As Walter Burghardt has point out (Speak the Word with Boldness, Paulist Press, New York: 1994), God told Abraham to “fear not" (Gen 15:1) before making a covenant with him. Gabriel said the same to Daniel (10:12) when he was terrified by a vision. An angel messenger said it to Zechariah (Luke 1:13), father of John the Baptizer, while Gabriel similarly encouraged Mary (Luke 1:12, 30). Angels said it to shepherds startled by Christmas glory (Luke 2:10) and Jesus said it to the disciples when they thought the Lord to be a ghost walking on the water (Mark 8:50). A voice at Jesus’ transfiguration told Peter, James and John not to fear the moment (Matt 17:7), and the same assurance was offered to Mary Magdalene at Jesus’ tomb (Matt 28:5).
But in all of these circumstances, the people had good and valid reasons to be afraid. Indeed, as the words “Do not be afraid" and “Fear not" are addressed to us through the proclamation of the living Word, do they not remind us of all that makes us tremble and cower in trepidation? How does “Fear not" speak to the loss of a job? A diagnosis of cancer? A child’s addiction to drugs or alcohol? How does an injunction against fear enable us to cope with the death of a loved one? The effects of hatred and violence? The horrific dangers posed by pedophiles and other
criminals who prey on the defenseless? The seemingly endless spate of storms, floods, mudslides and fires and the overwhelming destruction these leave behind?
How does “Do not be afraid" even begin to speak to the tragedies of war,
genocide, famine and disease that strike with merciless frequency all over the world?
The reason for this admonition is clear and simple: Believers should not live in fear or allow it to stifle their spirits and drown their hopes because through it all, within it all, despite it all—God is with us.
This assurance, proclaimed by Isaiah as a sign to Ahaz and his eighth-century B.C.E. contemporaries, was fulfilled, as the Matthean evangelist has affirmed, in the birth of Jesus Christ. Indeed, as Burghardt has noted, Christmas, God-in-our-flesh, assures us that fear is not the critical or identifying characteristic of the Christian. At the heart of Christianity is God-with-us. At the very root of who we are as believers is the assurance that God is love and that “perfect love casts out fear" (1 John 4:18).
In the ultimate act of fearlessness, God trusted the divinity to human flesh and willed to be born of a young woman and her betrothed into a world of pain and struggle, suffering and dying. A child of the divine trust, Jesus entrusted himself to 12 friends, many of whom were disappointed and confused by him. For his trust he was denied, betrayed and deserted. Before dying, he entrusted himself to his
followers in Word, in Bread and in Spirit so that he might remain with us as guide, transforming all our fears into trust and faith.
If God can so trust human beings with the divine presence and purpose, can we do any less than entrust to God all that we are, all that we fear, all for which we hope? Christmas, warns Burghardt, does not automatically create trust or cast out fear. But when you go to worship, “carol like crazy, kneel at the manger, look at the divine become vulnerable. Will fear evaporate? No!” But the antidote to fear lives. God-is-with-us!

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