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Second Sunday in Advent
December 4, 2022 | 10:00 a.m.

From Generation to Generation: Mary, Gabriel, and Fear

Shannon J. Kershner
Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Isaiah 11:1–10
Luke 1:26–38

What are you afraid of? What do you fear? Perhaps for some of us a list of responses to that question comes quickly and easily to mind. After all, it often does feel like we have much to fear. From the mounting consequences of climate change to the daily gun violence in our city; from the toxicity in our political life to the unexpected life-changing health diagnosis; from the ongoing war in Ukraine to the effects of inflation on our families; from the post-COVID rise of the social epidemic of loneliness to the steady increase of racially motivated and anti-Semitic hate crimes — yes, I imagine that for many of us we can make a pretty quick list of those things that wake us up in the middle of the night and sit on our chest like an 800-pound gorilla, not letting go until the sun begins to rise again.

Therefore, it might not surprise you to know that in 2020, the most frequently searched-for Bible verses on Bible apps were verses that had to do with fear and courage. People across the globe searched keywords and Bible verses that held scripture’s most-often uttered reassurance of “Be not afraid. Fear not” (Kate Shellnutt, “2020’s Most-Read Bible Verse: ‘Do Not Fear,’” Christianity Today, 3 December 2020). Obviously, over these past few years, fear has been holding quite a few of us in its tethers, piercing us with its talons.

This is why I am so grateful that Mary was afraid. I am grateful because her own fear reminds us that we are not alone, that even the first disciple wrestled with the tethers and talons of fear. Now I realize that we often hear angel Gabriel’s words of greeting to her — words that include “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God” — and conclude that any fear Mary must have felt immediately dissipated in response to that assurance of divine favor. In previous sermons, I have made that assumption myself. But looking back, I wonder if by doing that, I, we, have not allowed Mary to be fully human, for of course she was afraid!

After all, Mary was young, barely out of what we consider childhood, yet engaged, following her ancient culture’s traditions for marriage. More than likely, her father was the one who arranged her betrothal to Joseph. Mary, herself, was in the middle of a year of engagement, during which she continued living with her parents. After that year, it was expected that Joseph, her groom, would come to get her. And following a week-long wedding celebration, they would then move into his home (New Interpreter’s Bible). Yet into the middle of all of that comes this divine messenger, who seems intent on interrupting her entire life full of all her plans and inherited tradition in exchange for some strange and ridiculous-sounding plan of God.

We hear echoes of Mary’s genuine fear in the words Luke uses to describe this moment. Our English translation states: “But Mary was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be.” That is putting it lightly. The original Greek has more dramatic nuances than our English words perplex and ponder. It would be more accurate to say that “Mary was troubled / agitated / bewildered by his words and deliberated / debated / reasoned just what kind of greeting this might be.” If we were to translate her response into direct speech, we would hear her question as “What sort of greeting is this?” (F. Scott Spencer, Luke, p. 41). Mary must have been terribly afraid, set on edge by this divine interruption.

And yet what I also deeply appreciate about young Mary is that she does not allow the power of fear to take complete hold of her. Rather, as she listens intensely to what Gabriel is telling her will happen if she consents, Mary also gives birth to a kind of curiosity that grows alongside her fear. As scholar Scott Spencer puts it, “Mary’s shock over Gabriel’s announcement is mounting by the minute — leading her, however, not to crumble in a helpless heap, but to ask for clarification. She does not immediately give herself over to the angel’s plan, however much he claims divine authorization. This is her body, and she would like to know how it is going to be used” (Spencer, p. 42). How can this be, she asks the angel, as she takes seriously all that he has declared.

In his work The Good Book, Peter Gomes wrote, “Mary has been so often depicted as weak and submissive, ‘the handmaiden of the Lord,’ . . . that we forget the feisty and challenging nature of her initial response. . . . Rather than rushing to anticipate her humility or to make an argument about the doctrine of the Virgin Birth, we might do well to pause and [to] ponder her wariness, her caution, indeed her reluctance to being pushed into joy” (quoted in Spencer, p. 41).

Exactly. And though it might not show up explicitly in the text, it is also not difficult to imagine that in response to everything the angel has told her, Mary takes a pause. She pauses, seemingly to take it all in and to try and think it through — what exactly might it mean to be called God’s favored one; what is going to happen in her body if she says yes; what would unfold in her betrothal once Joseph and her family find out.

In response to everything Gabriel has told her, we can easily imagine Mary allowing herself to pause. And in that pause, she both recognizes and wrestles with the feelings of fear and caution and reluctance and curiosity all flooding into her mind and filling her heart at the same time. That is what we would do, isn’t it? As Debie Thomas once stated, “For better or for worse, I can’t relate to a person who leaps headlong into obedience. I can relate, however, to the one who struggles, to the one whose ‘yes’ is cautious and ambivalent” (Debie Thomas, “The Pause Before Yes,” 21 December 2014, journeywithjesus.net). I imagine many of us can too. And yet, just as Mary teaches us by her pause, she also teaches us in its aftermath, for even as she pauses in that moment of anxious silence, Mary still manages to find her voice.

In response to all that she has just seen and heard, she still “reaches deep within herself [to pull out] the most confident response she can manage. [And as she does so, she shows us] there’s a reason Jesus is always reminding adults to become like children. Adults have layer upon layer of all things adult that keep our guts in lock-down; our voices too far away to find . . . [but] teenage Mary [seems to] connect with something inside her and [she] answer[s] the angel’s voice with her own” (Heather Shortlidge, paper for The Well, Baltimore 2013).

Despite the presence of fear, despite all the questions that still swirl in her mind and in her heart, despite everything that might scream “Don’t do it” were she to only listen to logic, she takes a pause, perhaps a deep breath, and replies, “‘OK, God. Here I stand. Ready or not for what you would have me be, have me do. Here I am, a servant of the Lord. Let it be with me according to your word.” For while Mary might have paused and allowed herself to truly feel her fear, her caution, her anxiety, and her reluctance, after feeling those very human feelings she also somehow summons the courage, the trust, and the moxie to say yes.

And in the end, isn’t that what it means to have faith, to lean into the trust that God really is as good as Jesus said? For being people of faith does not mean that we need to pretend to have it all together. Being people of faith does not mean that we must ignore our real feelings of fear, or caution, or anxiety, or reluctance. Being people of faith does not mean that we are required to immediately jump headlong into total obedience each and every moment of our lives without question.

Rather, being people of faith, living as disciples, following Mary’s lead, means we feel all of those things; we take whatever pause we need to acknowledge and confront what’s going on in our spirits; and then, we still try to say yes to God’s call and claim on our lives nevertheless. For courage rises despite the fear we carry, not absent the fear we carry (Christine Hong, Sanctified Art commentary on Advent 2, 2022). If we wait to say yes to whatever God would have us be and do in our day and in our time until the moment when we no longer felt any fear at all, we might never say yes to anything.

In her book Learning to Walk in the Dark, Barbara Brown Taylor writes, “What if I could learn to trust my feelings instead of asking to be delivered from them? What if I could follow one of my great fears all the way to the edge of the abyss, take a breath, and keep going? Isn’t there a chance of being surprised by what happens next?” (Barbara Brown Taylor, Learning to Walk in the Dark, p. 75).

I remember when I was eight months pregnant with our firstborn, our daughter, Hannah. All of the sudden, I realized that despite all of the What to Expect When You’re Expecting books I had read, I had absolutely no idea what Greg and I were going to do once she was actually born. I had never liked babysitting as a teenager. I had never held a newborn. I had barely changed a diaper. And yet apparently, after she was born, as long as we could get the car seat installed correctly, the doctors and nurses were going to give us the gift of this helpless, completely vulnerable, totally dependent child to take home like we had a clue as to what we were doing! I found myself completely taken aback by my fear. What if we could not do it? What if we somehow got everything wrong? What if we were totally hapless in our parenting? Fear pierced me with its talons and tethered me by its power.

But somehow, in what I can only now say was God’s graciousness, I was given the gift of a pause. And in that pause, I remembered something. I remembered that we were going to one day baptize baby Hannah. And when we did so, we were going to say out loud that despite all our fear, despite all our anxiety, despite all our reluctance and our doubt of our own capabilities, the truth was that Hannah did not primarily belong to us. The truth was that Hannah would always be, first and foremost, a child who belonged to God.

And in the moment of her baptism, we would have the awesome gift of announcing out loud in public that claim on her life. And in that pause of remembering the truth that God would always hold her close, I was able to breathe, to relax just a bit, and to say “OK, God. Here we are. We will do our very best, and we will trust in your love.” And the 800-pound gorilla that sat on my chest in the middle of every night departed for a season.

Friends, we have many reasons to be afraid. There is, indeed, much to fear in our lives, in our city, in our nation, in our world. And as we see in this story, God does not intend for us to pretend that is not true. But as Barbara Brown Taylor wrote, we can treat those feelings with respect and without judgment. And then all of us, like Mary, can also give birth to curiosity alongside that fear.

All of us, like Mary, can take a pause, can be honest about all the emotions we have swirling around in our hearts and in our minds, and can find our own voices in the middle of all of it. “Here we are, O God,” we can claim. “Here we stand. Ready or not for what you would have us be, have us do. Here we are, servants of the Lord. Let it be with us according to your word.”

And then, in God’s great goodness, we might indeed be surprised by what happens next, just past the abyss, as we keep going forward together.

What are you afraid of? What do you fear? Take an honest pause, a deep breath, and see if a yes like Mary’s might just arise in you.

Amen.

Sermon © Fourth Presbyterian Church