DO NOT BE AFRAID

Isaiah 7:1-2, 10-16; Matthew 1:18-25

December 19, 2004

Born on a mountaintop in Tennessee, greenest state in
the land of the free; raised in the woods ‘til he knew every tree, and killed
him a b’ar when he was only three.

Davy, Davy
Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier, my hero, my model, my safety, when I was
only ten.

It was1957, deep into the “Cold War,” and I was scared, a lot.  That fall, the Asian flu, strongest epidemic
in many years, had closed my school for two weeks.  When we were in school, we practiced civil
defense drills, learning to distinguish between a three minute steady blast—the
bomb will hit in moments, take cover now!—and a three minute wavy blast—you
have half an hour to . . .to what?  . . .
to think about being blown up?  . . . to
try to run the mile home? . . .  to hide
under my school desk, next to the bank of windows?  How would I save my little sister, where
would we hide?  And when the Russian
armies marched across the blacktop and into the school, would I hold my nerve
under certain torture or would I give away state secrets?  Could I be silent in the face of impending
death, better dead than red, I regret that I have but one life to give for my
country?  We studied American history:  I drew the Alamo on my notebook, talisman of a fight
to the death, of not surrendering to the forces of evil, to my reality of
fear.  Every time an ambulance, or a
police car, or a fire truck roared down Division, siren blaring, I froze,
counted, tried to determine the direction to nearest cover, prayed I wouldn’t
die.

In such a climate of fear, I turned to my faith in . . . in Davy Crockett, to keep me
safe.  I learned his story, watched his
TV specials, could sing the whole song, and, when Christmas came, was more than
thrilled that Jackie, beloved neighborhood grandmother figure, made me a
“coonskin” cap out of an old muskrat jacket.
I felt safe, and strong, when I wore it.
It was much later that I learned that Crockett was a relatively minor
and not particularly admirable frontier figure, looked nothing like Fess
Parker, and certainly had not killed any b’ar at three, or five, or ten. 

Isaiah, the prophet, writes of another time, years ago, when fear drove a king, King Ahaz,
to put his faith in someone other than God.
Ahaz was king of Judah, the Southern half of the former Kingdom of David.
Pekah, King of the Northern Kingdom, Israel, and Rezin, King of Syria, had
formed a coalition to resist Assyria, the dominant nation at that time.  As a part of their coalition strategy, they
threatened to attack Judah if Ahaz did not join forces with
them.  Ahaz, trying to read how the chips
would fall and fearful of defeat, wavered, planning to make an alliance with Assyria in order to protect his realm and
his throne.

It was in this setting that Isaiah traveled to the court of King Ahaz to tell him that he
should not fear the attack or enter into an alliance with Assyria.
Look, he said, my young wife is pregnant.  Before the child she bears is old enough to
make it clear what he likes and doesn’t like, before he knows good from evil,
in just a short period, Syria and Israel will be no more, defeated by Assyria.
Don’t make an alliance with Assyria.  Stay out of
it.  If you don’t, our land, Judah, will be destroyed as well.  Fear not, Ahaz, remember what I have named the
child to come:  “Immanuel, God is with
us.”  Trust God to be your protector and ally, not Assyria.
For if you don’t, God will allow Assyria to invade us as well, as captor and
conqueror, not ally.  Arms and military
alliances can not keep us safe:  only
living in God’s righteousness can do that.

It is a wonder almost akin to Davy Crockett’s “b’ar” that this became Matthew’s
reference to a virgin who would conceive a son, Emmanuel, God with us.  The link is a turn of translation.  The Hebrew word that Isaiah used was  ‘almah,
which means “young woman of marriageable age.”
Years later, when the Hebrew Scriptures were translated into Greek, in a
translation called the Septuagint, so that Jews living and speaking throughout the
Empire could read and understand the Torah in their everyday language, the
Hebrew word ‘almah was translated
with the Greek word parthenos, which also
means “young woman”, but can also mean “virgin.”  Matthew, a Greek speaking Jew, used the Greek
language Septuagint as his Scriptural source for his Gospel of Jesus, a
narrative written about Jesus for the purpose of shaping the identity of the
community of Jesus’ followers and guiding their lives.

Sometimes we understand a narrative better when we see it in its original context, just
as setting the story of Davy Crockett against the fears of the late 50s makes
its appeal more readily apparent.  The
Gospel of Matthew was written during the 80s, about fifty years after the death
of Jesus and, more to the immediate point, a short while after the Roman
destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. It’s hard for us to grasp what a
shock that was to the Jewish community, what a point of redefinition.  For all the years since the return from the
Babylonian captivity, Judaism had been a faith with its center in Jerusalem, in the temple.  The feasts and festivals were celebrated at
the temple; families journeyed to Jerusalem for the Passover; even Jesus took
his witness to the temple at the climax of his ministry.  When Rome destroyed the temple, local
synagogues became the many centers of the faith.  It was there, in the local synagogues, among
neighbors and friends, that Jews reconceptualized their faith and wrestled with
the claims of some among them, the followers of a young rabbi named Joshua,
that he had been the Messiah, the promised one.

What would this mean?  They had been conquered by Rome, ground into dust.  If Joshua, Jesus, was the Messiah, the
anointed one, the Davidic King, how could that be?  The Romans had executed him, crucifying him
as a political discontent.  How could a
dead man be the carrier of the dreams of a return of kingdom, of empire, of a
time of national ascendancy?  To agree
with these followers of Jesus, that would mean acknowledging that the promise
of God’s realm was not a promise of empire, or even of national autonomy.  How could a people ground into dust embrace a
crucified Messiah?

And, as we know, mostly they didn’t.  The followers
of Jesus were driven from the synagogues, cursed, no longer welcome to worship
among Jews, even as they were despised by the Roman rulers.  There was a desperate need for Good News, for
a Gospel whose name means, “A Gift from God.”

Rome ruled as an imperial power, controlled by a small powerful group who ruled through alliances with local leaders.  Roman rule controlled political, economic and
military structures, all with an eye to benefiting the ruling group at the
expense of all others.  Roman theology,
as is usually the case with nations that have embraced empire, claimed that
Roman emperors ruled with the blessing of the gods, that Roman actions carried
out the will of the gods, that the politics of empire and domination reflected
the essential structure of all that was holy and good. 

Warren Carter, author of the introduction to Matthew in The New Interpreter’s Study
Bible, claims:

The Gospel is a counter-narrative that helps its audience to
live a countercultural, alternative existence in the midst of such claims and
commitments.  The Gospel asserts that it
is God’s world, not Rome’s; that God’s reign and presence are manifested in
Jesus, and not in the emperor; that God’s blessings extend to all people, not
just the elite; that Jesus, not Rome, reveals God’s will.  Rome is [an agent of evil] whom God will
overcome when God’s empire is established in full at Jesus’ return.  The present sinful world, marked by
exploitation, is the world from which people need to be saved, through Jesus’
ministry now and upon his return.
Followers of Jesus . . . must not render to Caesar the things that are
God’s, nor are they to imitate the domineering practices of the [Roman]
rulers.  Instead, Christians are to be an
active and faithful alternative community of loving, merciful, inclusive,
praying, missional servants, anticipating the completion of God’s purpose.

Well, suddenly it sounds as if this could be about us.  What then are we to make of today’s story of
Joseph, a humble and righteous man faced with such a common and difficult
problem:  his betrothed, the woman he
planned to marry, is pregnant, and not by him.
How is he to believe the voice of the Spirit, of the angel, telling him
that this child is yet God’s child, to be loved and claimed and raised as
Joshua, as the one who will save his people?
Biographies of the Emperor Augustus, of the earlier Greek Emperor
Alexander, claimed that they were offspring of the gods born to conquer, rule
and dominate.  Well, here would be a real
child of God, born to heal, serve, and save, born to end oppression and establish
God’s rule of justice and love, born to Mary, claimed by Joseph in a choice
that was the epitome of mercy and love. Joseph could have had Mary stoned.  He could have quietly called off the
marriage, and left her to raise the child by herself.  He did not.
As Joseph put the life and needs of a mother and child ahead of his own
wounded dignity, he became a model of Christian community, claiming the
children, all the children, as our own to care for and to nurture,
understanding that it is out of such care that God’s realm is born.

Can we speak openly here?  We know that Matthew
and Luke wrote birth narratives that contradict each other in many points.  That doesn’t matter, for the truth of them is
larger than the details.  Luke wrote,
Matthew wrote of the “Gift of God,” creating metaphors for the ways that God
enters human history.  People, captured
by fear, wishing for safety, long for the knight on the white charger, for the
Lone Ranger, for Davy Crockett.  God
comes to us instead in dreams and whispers, cautioning us not to fear. “Do not
be afraid,” the angel whispers.  Look
into the situation before you and see God, alive, awaiting birth, see God,
vulnerable and indestructible, in the midst of it.   You, you and I, we can be the ones who tend
the baby, who nurture the realm of God, who keep the hope alive here and now,
even in the midst of empire.  Immanuel,
God is with us, now and always.  Amen.

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