Have Courage! (Fear Not!)

Rev. Dr. Christopher Carlson

I am reminded that by hearing Eduardo’s story and some of the experiences I’ve had over the last couple of weeks…that to live life takes courage. It takes courage to live life when it’s so tough in some ways. We ourselves by the world’s standards have it so easy. But go to Tijuana or other places like that, then cardboard houses become the norm. They are there and life is tough for them. But it’s tough for us as well. The last couple of weeks, I’ve done a couple funerals. One was for a man named Bill Liggett, many of you knew Bill. In his later years, Bill got a disease that is akin to Lou Gehrig’s disease. Simply losing all your ability to move, or do anything. And he faced those last days with courage. It takes courage to live. To deal with the problems in our family. To look for work. It takes courage to do anything in life, no matter where we are.

The scriptures that I will read to you today are about courage. Each one, as I read them…they’re really a part of the Christmas story – each one has an angel come to someone, and the angel says, “fear not”, which is another way of saying, “have courage”. The first story is about Zachariah.  Now Zachariah was the father of John the Baptist. And Zachariah, with his wife Elizabeth, were fairly old. We don’t know exactly how old they were. They probably were in their sixties, maybe even in their seventies. And yet the angel comes to Zachariah and says “you’re going to have a child”. He says this: “Do not be afraid Zachariah, your prayer has been heard! Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son and you will give him the name John.” And what’s interesting, as we’ll see in just a minute, is the reaction of Zachariah to that announcement.

The second story is one we’re all familiar with, it’s the story of Mary. And how an angel came to her and told her not to be afraid. This is the account of that story:

In the sixth month, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, the town of Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. The angel went to her and said “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you”. Mary was greatly troubled at his words, and wondered what kind of greetings this might be. But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid Mary, you have found favor with God. You will be with child and give birth to a son and you are to give him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the son of the most high. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, his kingdom will never end. “How will this be”, Mary asked the angel, “since I’m a virgin?” The angel answered “the Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the most high will overshadow you, so the Holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. Even Elizabeth, your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who is said to be barren is in her sixth month. For nothing is impossible with God. “I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered, “may it be of me as you have said.”

The third story is none other than the shepherds. The angels appear to the shepherds and they too say, “Fear not”. And there were shepherds in the fields nearby keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the lord appeared to them and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. The angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David, a savior has been born to you. He is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign to you. You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”

This is the word of the Lord

Oh Father, we ask you to come upon us now and calm our fears. Please Lord, help us to listen to your word, to listen and to obey. To have courage, to not fear. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Many of you probably remember Carl Sagan, who wrote a book called The Cosmos, and had a TV show on PBS for awhile, a series by the same name. He wrote another book, called The Dragons of Eden. In that book, he describes the complexity of the human chromosome. He says this, “A single human chromosome contains twenty billion bits of information”. Not twenty million, but twenty billion. How much information is twenty billion bits? What would be its equivalent? Twenty billion bits are the equivalent of about three million letters. If there are approximately six letters in the average word, the information content of a human chromosome corresponds to about five hundred million words. If there are about three hundred words on an ordinary page, this corresponds to two million pages. If a typical book contains five hundred pages, the information content of a single human corresponds to some four thousand volumes. It is clear then, that the chromosome contains an enormous library of information. It is equally clear that such a rich library is required to specify is exquisitely constructed and intricately functioning an object as a human being.

You know I find myself curious. How does a brilliant man like Carl Sagan list off such incredible information about human beings and the creation and not make the connection between God and that creation? If you do the math, there are forty-six chromosomes in every cell, forty-six times how many billion bits of information in every cell? The story is told of a science professor who constructed a planetarium, a precisely scaled model of the universe. A student came into his office and asked him who made it. The professor said, “No one, it got here by itself.” The student laughed and said, “Come on! Who made this fantastic piece of work?” The professor replied, “No one, it just happened”. The student got a little angry about this, and the professor said, “Well if you can go out of this class and look at the nature around you and believe it just happened, you can also believe this precise piece of work just happened without a creator.”  This is precisely what men like Carl Sagan do, and many, many do. I often ask myself the question “why?”  

Well, I think for some people, it has to do with being hurt. I often say if you scratch an atheist or an agnostic hard enough, you’ll find someone who’s been hurt in their life, who’s had someone die tragically, or whose felt that life was unfair and they wonder how God can allow all that. That’s a legitimate question. Some people, I think, are just afraid. I think that even some of these great intellectuals are afraid. You think of the culture that’s around us now, how hard it is for someone to bring up God in schools, or how even talking about creation in schools, and I’m not really here to debate that, but how hard it is. How it’s often called “un-intellectual”, or “un-scientific”. You think of anyone like that and what kind of culture they’re in, there’s a certain fear to it. There’s a certain fear to all of us in some ways in sharing the Gospel to anyone. We’re doing a class called How to Share Your Faith in the Sunday school, and you always hear when you do that class, “well, what if somebody says this, or what if somebody says that? What if they raise this objection?” and there’s a certain kind of fear in that because we don’t always know the answer. That’s natural. Doubts are always with us. I think we have to live with that, but it’s what we do with them that counts. I love these stories, because they address different human situations, very real situations. You have Zachariah who has been praying for a child all of his life, and even though he’s gotten to be probably sixty or seventy years old, he’s still praying. You know it was pretty hard in that culture to be childless, and he prays for a child somehow and then suddenly there’s an angel, saying “Guess what? You’re going to have a child.” Well instead of being just overjoyed, Zachariah begins asking questions. How can this be true, I’m old? My wife is old. We can’t have children, and on and on he goes. When you read this story, he’s kind of whiney. Probably exactly like me, I’d be kind of whiney too. But here he is, he’s been praying for this, finally he’s going to get it, and he goes, “How can this be?” It’s a fairly natural question. Well the angel answers, “It’s not impossible for God. Your job is to believe.” You know sometimes it’s hard to believe, it really is. After all, we are asked to believe a God who created the whole universe, all the bits of information involved in that. God is so big, he’s done that. We’re asked to believe in God and yet we can’t see Him with our eyes. We’re asked to believe a lot of things, required to believe them if you will. Yet God certainly left witnesses, in the creation. Forty-six chromosome, and DNA and stars and nature. A babe in the manger, the Bible, millions upon millions of believers, the presence we have of Him in our lives. He’s left us witnesses. It takes courage to believe. Courage not to have fear.

Let’s drive those things out. It takes maybe even more courage to be used of God. It’s one of the great stories of the Bible. I’m fascinated by it as I read it, the story of Mary. Here you have a teenaged girl, probably about fourteen, and Joseph was probably around eighteen, nineteen somewhere in that area. She has a visitation from an angel as well, with incredible news. You’re going to have a child without the benefit of a man. Now this girl is smart, she knew all the implications of that. Anyone would, I mean imagine if someone walked into our midst and said, “Hi, I’m going to have a baby”, “Well, that’s great, where’s your husband?”, “Well, I don’t have one,” well, some people don’t.  “Well, how did you get pregnant?” Now, you don’t want to get too intimate with that, but you know. “Well, you know, God came upon me, some Holy Spirit came upon me and zapped me.” What would our reaction to that be? You can imagine the reaction of Mary’s friends. Joseph’s reaction was very kind, actually. It says that he was simply going to put her away, and not say anything. He was quite a man, he really was. She knows all that. She sees it immediately. She knows what’s going to happen, and yet she agrees.

You know, I’m kind of like Phil Yancey, he says he trembles to think of the fate of the whole world lying on the shoulders of two young teenagers. You have to think about that yourself. Think about your own children at this age, receiving such an instruction. Or, your grandchildren. Your present grandchildren, or I don’t want to beat up on your children or your grandchildren – think of yourself when you were that age, of what would have happened. Frankly, I’m kind of skeptical, but I’m more than simply skeptical about people, I’m skeptical about the age we live in. We live in an age which basically says we should never have pain. Whenever we have pain, or anyone is hurting, we say “Oh, we have to go fix this, we’ve got to go fix this!” and judging from the amount of cold remedies and pain medications, pain is just not something we ever want. We live in a ‘me first’ sort of generation, and it would be hard to see that happen. Maybe it would, but the point is to be called of God, to be used of God, often is a two-edged sword. There is the joy of serving the Lord, but there is often the pain. You read the Bible and show me anyone who didn’t suffer for serving God. There are not many, not many at all. And yet, we’re called to that. It takes courage to serve God. It takes courage to serve God because God does not promise us an easy path, any one of us. You know when I first went to Seminary I thought it was going to be a wonderful experience, this great spiritual experience of learning about God and studying the Bible and all that. Well I hate to tell you, it just wasn’t so. It was one of the hardest experiences spiritually I’ve ever had. I’m not sure why, maybe it was me, but all of us can point to times when we have served God and it hasn’t been that much fun, and yet that’s what we’re called to do. We’re called to have courage and Mary knew that. You know in history, there are folks who have made Mary into kind of a goddess and I think she would be embarrassed by that, truthfully. What’s remarkable about her is that she was an ordinary young woman who did an extraordinary thing. An ordinary person, not some “holier than thou” person, but a person just like you and me who was given an extraordinary thing and she wasn’t quite like Zachariah, I love it, she wasn’t quite like Zachariah, no whininess in her. She’s rather matter of fact, saying “Well, how’s this going to happen?” very matter of fact, and the angel says, “this is how it’s going to happen,” and she ponders it a moment, then says the most remarkable words: “Let it be to me as you have said, I am your servant. Let it be to me as you have said.” Those are stunning words. These are words that we ought to pray, ourselves.  I am your servant. Let it be to me as you have said, whatever God wants us to do. You know it embarrassed Anna and Eduardo to lift them up to you, but I think that’s what they did. God said, “Go, form an orphanage,” and they did. Incredible. What would your reaction be men, if you brought three young boys home to your wife? It would take a lot of courage, wouldn’t it? Or one hundred boys, and now one hundred girls, the vision grows because they said yes to the Lord.

The last fear not was to the shepherds. It not only takes courage to be used, it also takes courage to go. Now shepherds, we have this quaint little image of shepherds on our Christmas cards, you know the wonderful human beings who are dressed in their robes and that type of thing. We dress up our kids as shepherds, and they’re usually the cutest ones, except in ours it’s the sheep that are cuter, but our shepherds are dressed in dad’s bathrobe and all that kind of thing. In that society, shepherds were looked at like thieves, liars, you know they were unclean religiously because they were always stomping around in sheep droppings, always trespassing on people’s property without worrying about property lines.  They were also people who were looked at as thieves because they were in a position to take things, yet these are the people the angels go to. You can imagine not only being terrified by the bright light at night and hearing this incredible message, but then “Do we go, or not? I don’t know what do you wanna do? I don’t know, what do YOU wanna do?” And they went. It took courage for them to show up in all their glory. God tells us to come as we are. Come as you are. Come to the child as you are. Have courage. Come to the Christ child. Go. That’s the message for today.

Will you pray with me?

Father we thank you for servants who have said yes. We pray that in our own lives we would do the same. Put away our fears, or at least help us to work through them, help us to believe, help us to be used, help us to go, to have courage in our life. Not in ourselves, but in You, who is the Lord of Life and death, and eternal life. We pray these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.