Rev. Daniel B. England
December 24, 2007
"Fear Not. What, Are You Kidding?"

Have you ever seen an angel? No, well neither have I but it must be a discouraging line of work. I mean every time you show up somewhere, you have to say Fear Not. Just look at the Christmas story. An angel comes to Zechariah and what’s the first thing it says? "Fear not." Then the angel Gabriel comes to Mary. Same drill. "Fear not." Angel of the Lord comes to the shepherds and Luke says quite plainly, "they were terrified." So the angel says the first thing they must teach you in angel training, "The first thing you must say is, 'fear not.'" So I have never seen an angel but it must be something else, like a meteor coming at you or the way we all felt on 9/11. The angel reassures the shepherds right away that he comes with good news. And then Luke says there was with the angel a heavenly host. So if the shepherds were afraid with one angel, imagine hundreds of them showing up, each one saying, no doubt, "Fear not." I’m sorry but the story doesn’t translate too well these two millennia later, does it? I think any sensible modern person would respond to the admonition "fear not" with "What, are you kidding?"

Look, I don’t know what kind of world you live in, pal, but in my world there is plenty to be afraid of. I could get sick. My kids could get sick. Terrorists could blow us all to kingdom come. The housing market is about to implode. The stock market is being held up by a thread. My parents are failing. Heck, I’m failing. I could lose my job. I could lose my house. I could just plain lose it altogether. And that doesn’t even count my secret fears. Fears that someone is going to find out about that. Fears that I don’t really know what I’m doing half the time. Fears that my marriage may not be as strong as we both like to pretend. Fears that our kids won’t turn out all right, or get mixed up with drugs. And then of course there’s the cheery prospect of death. So I say again, Fear not, eh? What, are you kidding?

They have a point. So I was thinking about all of this – I’d already picked the text with "fear not" in it -- and what I was going to say this evening, I got stuck. This happens from time to time and the only thing to do is to figure out why you’re stuck. And I realized I was stuck because of angels. It’s not that I don’t believe in angels, at least, I don’t not believe in them. But forgive me for saying they simply don’t have much currency with me and so it’s hard to have their message resonate if I find the whole notion of these beings hard to deal with.

And that’s as far as I got – feeling vaguely resentful about angels and yet wanting to understand the dynamics of fear and of comfort and really coming to believe that the message fear not can make sense to modern people, whether they believe in angels or not. When I get stuck like that, I know I need to take a break, get some air, something. And so I put on my coat and I left my office here at the church and I walked outside. And as I walked to the street, I came upon the little stable we’ve erected out on the lawn. And there, I saw the two sheep we’ve rented, apparently. One is black the other is white and they are, I’m told, brother and sister. They are very nervous sheep. A car roared away from the stop sign and it really disturbed them. They scattered around the pen for a few seconds and then came back to the middle together, touching side by side until the noise abated. Then one walked over to where I was standing and I reached down to pat it on the head. And when I did, the thing freaked and when the white one freaked the black one freaked and there was general commotion until again they came together, one pushing tight against the other and it seemed to calm them down.

In a remarkable number of passages Jesus compares people to sheep.

And Jesus, when he came out, saw many people, and was moved with compassion toward them, because they were as sheep not having a shepherd: and he began to teach them many things.

What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he loses one of them, does not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he finds it?

I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd gives his life for the sheep.

John 10:27
My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me:

And as I stood there watching those sheep so terrified by my presence – I must have seemed an angel to them, an alien being – all I wanted to say to them was "Don’t be afraid." Of course the fact that I mentioned mint sauce and rosemary a couple of times may have upset them. No just kidding. But as I watched them huddling there, so afraid of every noise, of everything that wasn’t the other one, I suddenly understood.

We are those sheep. We are afraid. And neither they nor we are unreasonably afraid. So what are we to do?

First, the way they calmed themselves down and felt less afraid was when they were up close with each other. We too need hugs, not only physically but metaphorically. Most of you will be with your family tonight or tomorrow. There’re lots of jokes about dysfunctional families, but at least for a moment or two forget about them and concentrate on the love that can happen in families and how much we need that love. We need that mother, or that brother or that spouse who says to us, maybe not in so many words, but in reality, no matter what, no matter what fears come true, I will be there. And I’ll tell you this, because there are some of you home from college, sons and daughters can do that for parents just as much as parents can do that for children. And if all you have tonight is the memory of someone in your family who is gone, hold them close. It will help. So this Christmas, do whatever you can to tighten the bonds cause the brother sheep needs the sister sheep. We need to know the other one is there.

Second, don’t forget about this flock we call First Church. If you’re a sheep in trouble, there are people here who will help. Take for example, Lilliam Rodriguez, our sexton. She came to this country from Costa Rica and spoke no English. Despite that, and yes, that fact that she was a female who was thinking about doing a job that was very demanding physically, George Handley, our administrator, took a chance and hired her. Recently, she’s had cause to be afraid. She passed her citizenship test and a letter from the government arrived. But instead of it saying Welcome to our latest citizen it said instead that there was a deportation order issued for her. It seems the government sent the necessary papers for her to stay to the wrong address and she never knew about the forms she was supposed to fill out. Her home is here, her job is here, her kids are here. But still Homeland Security was determined to have this hardworking, lovely, honest, taxpaying member of our community deported. So this community of faith stepped in, helped find her a good lawyer and last week she appeared in court. After all the evidence was presented and it was determined that a bureaucratic blunder on the part of the immigration department caused the whole thing, the government still would not relent. They were determined to have her deported and the judge granted them a little more time to see if they could make the deportation stick. Finally, the word came that in fact the government had finally given up and the case was dismissed. She had lots to fear but the sheep of this particular flock gathered round and made it safe for her once again.

And finally, Jesus may have compared us to sheep, but he also assured us that he is our shepherd. Luke tells us of Jesus.

3 So He spoke this parable to them, saying:
4 "What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he loses one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness, and go after the one which is lost until he finds it? 5 And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. No wonder one of our favorite passages is The Lord is

my shepherd.

So on this Christmas Eve, the word comes again, Fear not. For we are not like those in the world who have much reason to fear and no reason to have their fears relieved. We have families or friends who love us no matter what, we have dear friends in this congregation who will at a moment’s notice come to our aid if we get lost or are in trouble, and we have a God that loved us so much that he became one of us. You see, I started at the wrong place to find out what the angels meant. I shouldn’t have started with angels at all, nor shepherds either, but with two little sheep who taught me what it is like to be afraid and how much comfort can come from pulling close together to each other and to the shepherd who notices we are missing, who finds us and who carries us home. So we can truly say tonight to each other, fear not. Unless of course, you encounter an angel.

Amen