Don't Be Afraid

"Be afraid. Be very afraid."

It's a theme you'll pick up on quite quickly if you spend any time listening to "Christian" broadcasting. And you may have even heard it sitting in your own church pew. God is coming to kick fannies and take names, so you'd better shape up or else.

Interestingly, though, that's not what we hear in the Gospels. That's not what Mary hears on the fateful day of her angelic encounter. It's not what Joseph hears as he agonizes about doing the right thing about the major complication in his upcoming nuptials. It's not what the disciples hear, even when they're blockheaded enough to deserve it. It's not what we hear as the resurrected Jesus we can easily see and hear and touch leaves us for a time.

What do we hear instead?

Don't be afraid.

How interesting that, when God "comes down," as God always does, the first thing God does is reassure us that God's presence is a good thing. For whatever reason, we humans seem hardwired to assume the opposite, in the same way that the wild animals in my backyard assume that I am not their friend, even as I come slogging through the snow with food for them every day.

And it's also interesting that God tends to tell us Don't be afraid in the context of giving us a job to do. Although some of God's assignments do seem frightening indeed: To undertake tasks on God's and on others' behalf that we don't believe we're capable of accomplishing; to go among people hostile to God and to ourselves, on God's behalf; to turn around and walk in a different direction than the one we've been traveling, and head into terra incognita; to be a part of situations where our role in the story is unclear. For some of us maybe even the assignment of being open to God's presence in our lives for another 24 hours, or another hour, or another minute, is a daunting one.

In Sunday's Gospel lesson this is where Mary finds herself; about to be given a job by God. Folkloric embellishments aside, we really don't know a lot about Mary except that she was a small-town girl, probably only 12 or 13 years old, looking ahead to the narrowly defined role assigned to her by her family and culture. An unremarkable young girl; a nobody. And then, suddenly, the message of God came down: Don't be afraid.

And here's another thing we know about Mary: She said yes. Yes to this nutty, nonsensical proposition from God. The funny thing about how this works is, when we let go of our fear and defensiveness, our assumption that God is out to get us, and give ourselves over to God's presence in our lives -- we find ourselves saying yes to the most unlikely things. Yes to turning outward when every fiber of our being tells us to keep turned inward; yes to forgiving when we want to nurse our wrath to keep it warm; yes to tasks that frighten us, that appall us, that cause us discomfort, that cost us.

No matter what the circumstances of our lives are telling us about the "next right thing" we're called to do -- our Gospel lesson tells us that we're not alone; that God is a God who cares enough about us to pour Godsself into our very humanity, and to stand with us, no matter who or where we are. Don't be afraid.

"The Annunciation," William-Adolphe Bouguereau