Over the next four weeks, we are going to take an Advent journey where we will explore fear and hope. What do you fear? Are you able to name those fears? Do these fears paralyze you or dominate the way in which you live your life? Do they become settled within you so that fear drives your every move?
What can we learn about expressing our fears – 
acknowledging our fears from our two Scripture passages this morning? Let’s start with these three verses from the Book of Lamentations. The writer of this book knows fear and sorrow and despair. Lamentations is written by someone who has witnessed the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple during the time of the Babylonian occupation and exile.
Many have been forcibly exiled to Babylonia. Those who remain face terrible conditions – starvation, violence, death all around. I imagine scenes like this in Gaza or in Ukraine. How can one find hope in the midst of such despair and fear? How can one not be afraid of one’s survival in such a harsh situation?
Likewise, we see fear in our reading from Luke this morning. Notice it begins with “In the days of King Herod of Judea.” In both Luke’s time and in Jesus’ time, folks would have immediately understood the fear contained in those words. Herod, the Roman-appointed King of the Jews, was both insecure and paranoid making his reign particularly brutal for the people of Judea.
His power was derived through coercion, spying, and alliance with the Romans – not the makings for nice things happening for the people. There was economic hardship as well – given the heavy Temple tax they paid for Herod to rebuild the Temple. There was much to be afraid of in this time – would the people survive.
Then we are introduced to Zechariah and Elizabeth, an aging priestly couple who have no children. One can imagine their fear living under Herod’s rule. One can imagine their longing for children given the cultural expectations to bear children and the society induced shame particularly for Elizabeth at not having produced a child. I pray we have come a long way from this with better understanding of our bodies!
We see Zechariah performing his priestly duties offering incense as he has been chosen by lot to do. All alone in the sanctuary of the Lord with all those people praying just outside, suddenly an angel of the Lord appears to him and he is absolutely terrified with fear overwhelming him. In the Greek you really see this – he wasn’t just afraid, he was shaken to the core of his being with fear – it gripped him. How would you react? I think this is an entirely acceptable human emotion – all of the sudden seeing an angel appear – not your everyday occurrence!
Fear overtakes the writer of Lamentations. Fear overtakes Zechariah. Can we sit with that for a minute? Can you put yourselves into their shoes? What does this fear evoke for you? How might you react? Is there hope amid this fear? And, what is hope anyway?
We can get a clue certainly from what the writer of Lamentations and Luke thought hope might be. In Lamentations our writer has called on God – prayed to God – begged God from the depths of their pit for God to hear them and to come near to them. Hear my cries for help and give me relief and the message received was “Do not fear!” Likewise for Zechariah, the angel responds to his prayers saying: “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard.”
Maybe that is one definition of hope – a deep trust that our prayers are heard? In both of our passages today, God interrupts the fear with a message of hope. God’s interruption helps us see that we are listened to, our pleas and petitions and fears and prayers are heard. Our very real fear is not dismissed or made fun of or condemned – our fears are heard.
Can we see the hope in that? In MaryAnn McKibben Dana’s book: Hope: A User’s Manual, she quotes Cornel West: “Hope wrestles with despair…. It generates this energy to be courageous, to bear witness, to see what the end is going to be. No guarantee, unfinished, open-ended (page 18).”
On page 20, she also writes that “true hope defies cause and effect and has impact regardless of outcome.” Hope then gives us the courage to continue witnessing to the goodness of God even when we don’t know the outcome, even in the midst of our fears, even in the midst of our despair at the way things are going in our lives, or frankly in the life of our nation.
In our passages today, we witness fear, we witness despair, we witness hardship, we witness lament – what does that tell us? That it is ok for us to feel and express all of those things and to not be afraid to take all of that to God. To not be pollyannish about the state of things because the state of things is pretty awful these days, and I speak from a place of privilege.
But we also witness hope in these passages. Hope that is a way of being in the world. Do not be afraid doesn’t mean your fears are invalid – it means that hope can exist within you as you navigate these fears. This is what Advent can teach us about fear and hope and the way that God breaks into our world, into our lives reminding us we are heard. God enters our silence, our barrenness, our ache, our despair, our fear, our longing for a better world. God hears us and breaks into our world – and there is such hope in that. Amen