Advent 2024 : 10

 

God is the only Three Persons of whom you should never be afraid. You should be afraid – very afraid – of anyone who tells you that you ought to fear God. They will teach you fear, for therein is the heart of abuse in the name of the Church.

But how do we help people who have become entrenched in their (preferred) fear response? How do we learn the difference between holy and unholy responses to fear? The only answer I know is that this comes to us through revelation, and so we must bring our fears before God, seeking wisdom.

The infancy narratives, of John (the Baptist) and Jesus, are pregnant with examples.

Zechariah is afraid of the angel, a creature he has not encountered before. He opts to stand up to the angel – perhaps his habitual response to fear is to fight – but this is a mistake. A priest, chosen to enter the Holy of Holies, Zechariah holds the earthly power God turns on its head. In God’s mercy and grace (for the angel is a manifestation of God’s creative word) Zechariah is given a nine-month lesson in being silent and still – the freeze response, the antidote to the fight response. When his tongue is freed, it is his neighbours who express fear; but Zechariah responds declaring that these are signs that God is about to rescue them from the hands of their enemies, that they might serve God without fear.

Mary also stands her ground – the fight response – in the presence of the angel. But Mary is not Zechariah; Mary is the kind of earthly powerless person whom God seeks out, to fight with. Mary contends alongside the angel, not against him – in the model of Eve, the ezer, the warrior who fights with us, who delivers or rescues us when we are in peril. Unlike Zechariah, Eve choses wisely, the holy response to fear, the response trained by the response to fear that is God’s response. Note that the right response is situational: Zechariah and Mary both respond with fight, but that is only the right response for the powerless warrior.

And what of you? What is your go-to response to being afraid? What do you need to unlearn and learn?