One day a man was walking through the woods, when he came upon a huge, nasty bear. The man tried to run away, but the bear was gaining on him, so he tried climbing a tree—and the bear followed him right up, getting closer and closer and looking very hungry.
The man, fearing for his life, began to pray: “God, please don’t let this bear eat me. Make him a merciful bear, a good Catholic bear.”
For a moment, the bear stopped, and you could see that his expression changed just a bit, and then he began to say:
“Bless us our Lord, and these thy gifts…”
This is an old story, but I mention it today because it talks about fear, and our Gospel addresses fear as well, in the context of the angel’s direction to Joseph that he should not be afraid to welcome Mary, and her son Jesus, into his life.
“Do not be afraid.” That direction from the angel to Joseph is exactly the same thing that the angel Gabriel says to Mary when he talks to her about becoming the mother of the Lord.
And it is what Gabriel says to Zechariah announcing the birth of John the Baptist.
In fact, that expression—“do not be afraid”—is the most common direction, or exhortation, found in the Bible.
And there is a reason for that: fear truly stands in the way of our opening ourselves up to a relationship with God, with welcoming Jesus into our lives. Fear puts us in a defensive crouch, closed and guarded.
So on this last Sunday of Advent as we continue to wait for Jesus’ birth and reflect on His coming to be with us, we might reflect on fear— the fear of welcoming Jesus that the angels warned both Mary and Joseph to avoid, to watch out for, to overcome.
Let’s start out by acknowledging something: the emotion of fear often is a perfectly appropriate and understandable reaction to a situation.
My friend in the little story I told had every reason to be afraid of the bear.
Joseph in today’s Gospel has perfectly good and legitimate reasons to be afraid to take Mary into his home as his wife. After all, she has become pregnant during this time when it was especially fundamental that she not be pregnant.
The Gospels tell us that Mary was “betrothed” to Joseph, but that the two had not yet lived together. To understand what is going on her we need to realize that the Jewish people had a three-step marriage ritual. We just have two steps—people get engaged, in which they agree to marry, and then they are married.
In the Jewish culture at the time, there was an engagement—the promise to marry—but then there was a “marriage” when both people promised themselves exclusively to the other, but after the “marriage” there was a period before the couple actually consummated the marriage—actually lived together.
The point of this delay between the promise and the consummation was so there could be no doubt who the father was of any children that might be conceived, something that was of central importance in a patriarchal society like ancient Israel.
It was during this critical time that Mary became pregnant, and Joseph knew the baby wasn’t his.
So Joseph had every reason to fear welcoming Mary and her baby. From his point of view Mary had been unfaithful, couldn’t be trusted, and welcoming her would mean that he would be asked to raise and be responsible for a child that wasn’t his—whose father was unknown.
By all appearance Mary had violated one of the most fundamental rules of the culture, and deserved to be stoned to death.
Who knows what a woman like that could do in the future?
Did Joseph experience fear? You bet, and with good reason.
Mary had good reason to experience fear as well—she was heading into completely uncharted waters.
And we have reasons that undoubtedly sound good to us for being afraid to welcome Jesus into our lives as well.
After all, letting Jesus actually enter our hearts moves us into uncharted waters too. We’ll be changed. Jesus challenges us to love people we don’t want to love, to care for people we don’t want to care for, to set aside our selves for the sake of others—very scary stuff.
We might even have to stop worshipping idols, and don’t think that idol worship is something just in the past—golden calves and all that. We are a society of idol worshippers—fame, money, power, publicity, how many “likes” we have or how often our tweets are re-tweeted, beauty, sex—the list goes on of the idols allowing Jesus truly into our lives will mean we will stop worshipping when we worship Him.
Change is scary. The unknown is scary. Welcoming Jesus is scary, and if we are fearful people, that fear stands in the way of our incorporating the great mystery of Christ’s birth into our lives.
So what to do?
I don’t think we can reason our way out of fear. After all, it can be real and legitimate.
I think Joseph today gives us the example of what to do.
Joseph doesn’t agonize, or debate, or do a cost/benefit analysis, or seek advice.
He gets up the next morning and “did as the angel of the Lord commanded him.”
He may have felt fear, but it didn’t define him. He wasn’t a person who was “afraid.” It didn’t stop him from acting.
My father was a forward observer in the Army in World War Two—got two purple hearts, a bronze star and a silver star for bravery in combat. He knew a thing or two about fear.
I once asked him about the scariest thing he ever did, and he told me about a nighttime rolling barrage in Holland. His Army unit was ordered to move forward and it was thought that the German army opposing them had withdrawn, but no one knew for sure.
So the idea was that as my dad’s unit moved forward, the artillery would lay down shells ahead of the advance to force out any remaining German troops.
My dad’s job as forward observer was to walk with his radioman about 100 yards ahead of the American troops and call in artillery fire 100 yards ahead of where he was, and see what happened—at night, in unfamiliar terrain, across ditches and canals, with the possibility of land mines and booby traps, not knowing if or when you might stumble on German troops.
So my dad and his radioman paced off 100 yards ahead of the American lines and called in fire 100 yards ahead of them, hoping the guns were set correctly and the powder loads were right so the shells didn’t land on them, watched for Germans, and then did it again—all night long.
Terrifying.
I asked my dad how he did it. He said: “You just put one foot in front of the other and go ahead.”
As was the case with Mary and Joseph, the risk is real, the fear is justified, but you just put one foot ahead of the other and go forward anyway—Joseph just got up and did what the angel commanded.
So we might reflect on how fear stands in the way of our truly entering into the mystery of this season, of welcoming Jesus into our lives.
Our response is not to be people who “are afraid” to move forward, are defined by our fears.
Our response is to get up and do what we know we should do, to put one foot in front of other, walking toward Bethlehem. When we do that we’ll find that we forget about our fears, and before we know it, like Joseph we’ll find ourselves holding a newborn infant in our arms and letting Him melt our hearts.