Christmas, the Shepherds, and Fear

In Alice Walker’s novel, The Color Purple, a wise blues singer named Shug says “I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.” Because then God has to go and make another purple flower to catch your eye and dazzle you.

Christmas is when the agenda changes, when it is no longer about our longing for a God who is missing-in-action, but rather about our recognizing the One who is already here, right here, Emmanuel, God-with-us.

When God was the one missing, we could shake our fists at the sky and ask the ticked-off rhetorical questions that have no answers: “Where the hell are you in this mess? How long, O Lord?”

But when the agenda gets switched up, and we are the ones missing, then God can’t be blamed. Our flickering mind, unable to see and touch the One right here in our midst, that is the problem.

So I guess spiritual guides and gurus are right when they urge us to wake up, be attentive to what’s really going on all around us, pray, meditate, take up a spiritual practice so we won’t fall asleep, so we won’t become numb to what’s happening right in front of us. They’re right.

But what’s also true is that all our efforts to be alert to God’s presence are matched by God’s relentless determination to catch our eye. This is what God does, relentlessly trying to catch our eye, dazzle us, as he did in a more spectacular than usual way on this night with the shepherds.

It happened at the birth of a child. An angel of the Lord suddenly stood before them. The glory of the Lord shone all around them. And they were terrified.

This is what our scriptures call “the fear of the Lord”.

This fear is not like the one that permeates the rest of this Christmas story, the fear arising from the Roman occupation of Israel with its massive registrations to keep a restless Jewish population both under control and taxed. It is not the fear unleashed by an empire that mercilessly slaughters infants and violently and bloodily destroys their temple in Jerusalem, the very center of Jewish universe and all they hold dear.

The fear felt by the shepherds is not that same kind of fear that endures to our very own day -- the kind that results from drone strikes and terrorist attacks and torture. It is not the kind that results from the police killings of Amilcar, Alex Nieto, Mario Woods. Nor from the recent announcement from Homeland Security that they are about to launch another round of raids against immigrant families, deporting 100,000 immigrants back to the violence in Central America from which they fled for their lives -- with so many families destroyed along the way, so many children left without their parents.

The fear that overcomes the shepherds when the angel stands before them is not like the worry you feel as you wonder where you’ll move in these days of gentrification if the landlord doubles your rent.

Rather, their fear, the "fear of the Lord", is a defiant counterpoint to the one unleashed by the Caesars of this world. This fear of the Lord does not cause you to cower, or despair, or weep.

Rather, the fear the shepherds feel is more like a billion glorious sunsets all rolled into one -- all bright purple and orange and salmon colored. Overwhelmingly beautiful. In fact, too much.

The fear the shepherds feel is like when you look up at the sky on a dark, clear night and see our vast Milky Way galaxy, and you realize it is just one of over a billion galaxies in an even more vast universe, and that you are somehow a part of it all.

This is the kind of fear the shepherds feel, this “fear of the Lord”.

They had never felt this before, didn’t know what to make of it, and they felt overwhelmed, terrified.

But the angel tells them, “Do not be afraid.” “Do not be afraid.” There is no phrase repeated in our scriptures as frequently as this one: “Do not be afraid.” This great joy revealed to you is something you can drink in. Go ahead, drink it in! As much as you possibly can!

Unlike the fear of the Caesars of this world, this kind of fear brings them to their feet, swells their hearts to overflowing, gives them goosebumps, tears of joy, more music, more life.

And then the moment fades, the angel goes back to heaven, and the shepherds are left to treasure and ponder that moment, to let it work its great work in them, to transform them, make them more in love with the world and with life.

Once in awhile all of this happens in the ordinary course of our own lives. For the shepherds, it was triggered by the simple birth of a child -- and if you’ve ever held your own newborn child in your arms you may know something about this. Other moments along the way can can also take us there.

It happened to a friend of mine whose husband died of cancer a few years ago. She writes of her final days with him:

I remember having to walk with Eric once we entered the "night side of life". Those days were the richest fullest moments I have lived with someone. Once the pain comes and their body starts to go, it gets harder but that's when we got to really realize the full meaning of being alive, right there at the scary edge of the unknown -- when it's too late to go on trips or to do farewell parties because his body and mind could barely withstand living-- but that's when we were able to see the sweetness of life and truly say our goodbyes. 

Four hours before he died, when his body was completely in pain and broken, he told me "Lore, I am going to die"; and I asked him if he was afraid still, and he said "No, I am really curious about what comes next". We smiled with each other and fell asleep in a soft embrace. 

Three hours later, his breathing changed into a disturbing rattling sound "the death rattle" and I gathered his brother and mom to just be with him, I played his favorite songs, his breathing got soft and then it stopped. 

The hard part is to be the one that did not die and had to stay behind and keep on living without knowing when it will end. I try to hold on to the urge to live fully and with intensity. Life became more important, extremely urgent and in full HD color after I got to witness the edge of death. I am more curious about life now. And grateful. 

I can’t say for sure if there are times like these in every life, but I hope there are -- a beautiful angel lighting up a forebodingly dark night sky at the birth of a child, an intense feeling of life while standing with a loved one at the edge of death.

If you have not yet had such a moment, I hope you will. And I hope that when God gives it to you, you will be awake and not miss it. And when the angel goes back to heaven and that moment vanishes, I hope you will do as Mary does: Treasure that moment and ponder it in your heart. It is given to you as a gift, and it is given for a reason: to transform you so that you can transform the world.

This week in our parish email I included words from the great African-American theologian, Howard Thurman. Let me close by reading these words once again as we treasure and ponder what is given to us on this night.

When the song of the angels is stilled,
when the star in the sky is gone,
when the kings and princes are home,
when the shepherds are back with their flocks,
the work of Christmas begins:
to find the lost,
to heal the broken,
to feed the hungry,
to release the prisoner,
to rebuild the nations,
to bring peace among the people,
to make music in the heart.