Coda: The Fear of the Lord is the Beginning of Wisdom
Christmas Day,
25 December 2007
In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen
Gospel: Luke 2:1-14
Text: Luke 2:8 — They were terror-stricken, but the angel of the Lord said, “Do not be afraid; I have good news for you. There is great joy coming to the whole people.”
Introduction: Think of yourselves as shepherds
I would like you to think of yourselves as shepherds this Christmas morning. The sun is crisp and clear, the startling events of last night are overwhelming. You are huddled around a small fire out in the fields beyond Bethlehem, trying to grasp what has happened!! For sure, the blaze of heavenly glory enveloped you. You were terrified!! But an angel—you knew it was an angel though you’d never seen one before—said, “Do not be afraid. I have good news for you: there is a great joy coming to the whole people. Today in the city of David a deliverer has been born to you, the Messiah, the Lord.” The angel told you to find a baby in a manger. And a great choir of angels sang praise to God. “Glory to God in highest Heaven and on earth his peace for men on whom his favour rests.” You went quickly and found the newborn baby! Everything happened as the angel told you.
As shepherds, you live on the edge of Bethlehem. You tend flocks out on the fields a couple of miles away. You are kind of misfits in town society. You are not the teachers, the writers, the priests or the merchants. You are not the intelligentsia. You are not the brightest bulbs in town. You are, however, keen of eye and ear, always aware of danger to the flocks, particularly at night when wolves and hyenas and thieves would threaten. It is cold and lonely work, but you have time to think. You are responsible and care for your sheep. You are not likely to be blinded by your own brilliance, therefore, while the whole town slept, you saw the glory of God and heard the angel’s song.
How scared you were!
Even now, thinking about what happened, you shiver. The light was beyond description. It came to you. It gathered you up in it. You like to have died when it engulfed you. Maybe you had died—but then the angel spoke: “Do not be afraid!” Your fear evaporated in a burst of joy that brought you near heaven itself.
But the fear was overpowering. All the truth about God you’d been taught became real, no longer well-spun tales or dull lessons. All reality came together in a moment of panic! This is of God!
You have been taught in Psalms and Proverbs that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” Actually it didn’t bother you not to be so smart but, in this fear and the angel’s message, you understand in the core of your being that God is and you cannot change or control God! You can witness and you can obey!
So you have been telling everyone about last night. You will continue to tell anyone who will listen. And until time ends, people will know what happened to you
How do we understand what God reveals to us?
What we are telling others is mind-boggling in its immensity. Why should they believe us? Our story is not verifiable as a scientific formula. It is a truth that under girds all smaller truths we know.
In the 1920s, a well-regarded German theologian named Rudolph Otto shocked and unsettled his Lutheran colleagues. His book was called The Idea of the Holy. In it he grappled with the notion of the Numinous: the experience of the Holy in human lives. To his staid and sober conservative contemporaries, his acceptance that God does break into human consciousness and that we should take it very seriously, sounded speculative and a little crazy. Nonetheless Otto insisted that God reveals purpose in ways that Otto calls, in a Latin phrase, Tremendums et Fascinans. We find ourselves in the Holy Moment utterly shaken and also deliriously joyful.
Utter fear and complete fascination! Crazy? No. Humans cannot fully understand the mystery of encountering God but we can see and hear and obey. Otto was writing about the kind of thing that happened to the shepherds. Like a frisson of the harp, an echo of the angel’s song catches us.
In the mid-sixties, the Anglican theologian John Macquarrie referred to Otto’s work in his study of revelation as a formative source of theology. Revelation is beyond usual human experience and insight. It has an in breaking quality that stuns and reveals. It has the character of gift, a gift of God.
Macquarrie says persons would like to grasp an understanding of the Divine, but must accept that in the divine encounter we are being grasped by God and we cannot fully apprehend God.
In the divine encounter, God is Creator and we are creatures. To be confronted by this reality is scary and humbling. We know anxiety and awe.
So, we may share the story of the shepherds full of fear, full of wonder, full of joy.
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”
Our culture laughs at the idea of God.
In these last years we have endured, indeed have promulgated, a culture which scoffs at the very idea of God, substituting a smorgasbord of religious choices. We have gone along with “Holidays” and Santas and other divertissments of our own devising in which it is so easy to forget the shepherds’ story, a story that reminds us of what we cannot control and that is very frightening indeed. Our holiday festivities bring warmth and camaraderie—not bad—just not the real gift we need.
Have you ever thought of Bill Cosby as a modern John the Baptist? His is a voice crying in the wilderness, to save our children: “Parents, you know what you must do, so do it! He sees the depravity and despair and calls us to help. He faces fear and sees hope. He has heard the shepherds’ story and calls us to help. I believe that he knows, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”
Digression: Is this my last sermon?
I want to digress briefly. It has occurred to me often in these last weeks that this might be the last sermon I preach. I think that it has been a whole year since I preached here, last Christmas morning. My health has been unstable and I have been undependable: planning and hoping to participate, only to be struck down with infirmities. I would like a last sermon to be my best.
For almost a year, I have heard the voice of God saying, “The next time you preach, talk about the fear of the Lord as the beginning of wisdom.” Incubating a sermon is like being pregnant. As a mother of six I can speak out of experience, with confidence. The life of a sermon begins as a tickle in the consciousness. It swells and moves and assumes an independent expression. One hopes for a sermon, as for a child, that it is well-formed, compelling, full of promise. Therefore this sermon has had a long gestation and I am trying to be faithful in preaching the Word. I find that I do not have to be anxious or feel sad if this sermon should be my last because, truly, every sermon should be preached as though it were the last. So the story of the shepherds’ fear has provided a text that God has led me to preach.
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”
Conclusion:
The “fear” brings the reality of God to us face to face. The vision is a gift to us, God’s grace to us. It tells us something about who God is. It makes all the difference! The gift of the baby Jesus brings overpowering joy. We can welcome with the shepherds the embracing light. We can sing with the angels. Our eyes and ears are meeting God. We shall grow in wisdom even as our hearts are troubled. Why does this matter? It will make a difference in how we live our lives
Go—as the shepherds did—back to your duties, to begin anew with God, now wiser, now exultant. Live daily with the reminder that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Help others to know that too.
Oh come let us adore him!
Amen.
Jeanne Linderman,
Priest Associate
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