Responding to Fear with Joy (Advent Week 3)
Scripture Narrative Luke 1:26-39
26 When Elizabeth was six months pregnant, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a city in Galilee, 27 to a virgin who was engaged to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David’s house. The virgin’s name was Mary.
28 When the angel came to her, he said, “Rejoice, favored one! The Lord is with you!” 29 She was confused by these words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. 30 The angel said, “Don’t be afraid, Mary. God is honoring you. 31 Look! You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you will name him Jesus. 32 He will be great and he will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of David his father. 33 He will rule over Jacob’s house forever, and there will be no end to his kingdom.”
34 Then Mary said to the angel, “How will this happen since I haven’t had sexual relations with a man?”
35 The angel replied, “The Holy Spirit will come over you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore, the one who is to be born will be holy. He will be called God’s Son. 36 Look, even in her old age, your relative Elizabeth has conceived a son. This woman who was labeled ‘unable to conceive’ is now six months pregnant. 37 Nothing is impossible for God.”
38 Then Mary said, “I am the Lord’s servant. Let it be with me just as you have said.” Then the angel left her. 39 Mary got up and hurried to a city in the Judean highlands.
There are moments in life when the news comes so suddenly and so unexpectedly that the ground shifts under our feet.
A diagnosis.
A phone call.
A decision we didn’t see coming.
Sometimes it is good news and bad news braided together.
Sometimes it is the kind of news that changes the shape of our future in one breath.
Our scripture today plunges us into a life-defining moment with Mary, the mother of Jesus. A messenger appears to Mary from God. The text says that Mary is “confused by these words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be.”
That English translation tries to be polite. But the Greek translation διαταράσσω (diatarassō) - to trouble, points to something far more human. Mary isn’t politely puzzled. She is troubled – she’s shaken. She’s thrown into a state of mental uneasiness.
Think about a moment when you’ve experienced a state of mental uneasiness.
You pick up your phone, and the caller ID is not someone you want to talk to.
Perhaps you see some highway patrol lights while driving on the highway.
Maybe it’s that time between when you take a test in school or a medical test and don’t have the results back yet.
What does your body do in those times?
How do you physically react?
A catch in your breath? That adrenaline pouring into your system like firewater down your face? A punch in your gut?
Her body knows before her mind does that something enormous is happening.
And of course she’s afraid.
She is young.
She is poor.
She lives in a world where the powerful make all the rules, and a significant portion of a person’s fate is in the hands of others who may not necessarily care for them.
There is danger all around her
But now, suddenly, there’s also this possibility of danger inside her.
When Gabriel says, “Don’t be afraid,” it is not a rebuke.
It is a blessing spoken to a girl whose life has just tilted on its axis.
Mary’s fear does not disqualify her.
Her fear is part of her calling.
The scripture immediately after our scripture today tells us of a song, the Magnificat, that Mary sings in response to this terrifying good news. Mary is in this moment of fear, but somehow, she responds with joy. We are invited into Mary’s journey from “Do not be afraid” into “My soul exalts the Lord and my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior.”
Responding to fear with joy doesn’t mean losing fear. It means doing things scared.
Let’s take a closer look at Mary’s emotional response to this news.
She says, “How will this happen?”
Not because she doubts God, but because she knows her own limits.
She knows what she cannot do, what she cannot control.
It is a boundary, “God, I’m only human” – not a refusal.
And after Gabriel speaks of the Holy Spirit overshadowing her, after Gabriel reminds her that “nothing is impossible for God,” and not only reminds her of some distant miracle, no, the messenger tells her about someone she knows –“ Look, even in her old age, your relative Elizabeth has conceived a son. This woman who was labeled ‘unable to conceive’ is now six months pregnant. Nothing is impossible for God.”
Mary does not stop being afraid in order to say yes to God.
She says yes, while her voice trembles.
“I am the Lord’s servant. Let it be with me just as you have said.”
That is a sentence spoken by someone who is scared but still saying yes.
She’s doing this thing scared.
That is courage in its truest form.
Courage is not the absence of fear.
Courage is the decision to move anyway.
The invitation comes right into the middle of our anxieties, not after we’ve conquered them.
So how do we do this? How can we help ourselves live into these scary “yeses?”
How can we do things scared?
We “do it scared” by seeking community. Mary goes straight to Elizabeth.
Right after Mary says yes, she does not stay home and muscle through it on her own. She’s leaves.
Perhaps this is a fight-or-flight reaction, where she flees – maybe she is avoiding telling her parents. We don’t know, but she’s outta there.
The messenger from God has sort of incepted in Mary the idea, “your relative Elizabeth.” So that’s where she goes.
“Mary got up and hurried to a city in the Judean highlands.”
We should pay attention to that.
She seeks her relative. She seeks safety. She seeks someone who will understand. She seeks some camaraderie, maybe.
She does not go to Joseph.
She does not go to the neighbors who have known her since she was little.
She doesn’t even go to her parents.
She goes to Elizabeth—someone who is also living through an implausible story.
Because sometimes the bravest thing you can do is refuse to be alone.
When fear grows loud, we need people who will remind us of who we are.
We need people who will say, as Elizabeth does later, “Blessed are you.”
We need companions who speak encouragement into places where anxiety tries to take root.
Community is not optional for courage.
Community is fuel for courage.
We can ‘do it scared’ by giving ourselves space and rest, so we can be brave where it matters.
Mary received the revelation from God’s messenger in Nazareth.
Nazareth is rather unremarkable. But it’s kind of a suburb of the capital of Galilee, Sepphoris. Sepphoris is about 4 miles away from Nazareth. Sepphoris is where King Herod Antipas had his palace. It’s the political hub of Galilee. Sepphoris is where the bad people in power live and rule. In Mary’s backyard.
This area is rich in history and tension. After King Herod the Great died in 4BC, the Jewish citizens seized the city, but the Romans re-conquered the city, burnt it, and sold the Jewish rebels into slavery. Herod’s son, Herod Antipas, rebuilt and fortified the city.
We don’t know exactly when Jesus was born, but it would have been around this time. This is a place of tension – certainly not somewhere where it was safe for an unwed pregnant woman to sing praises to God, saying things like “God has brought down rulers from their thrones, And has exalted those who were humble.”
So Mary gets out of Nazareth.
She removes herself from the eyes and opinions of people who will not understand.
She flees to a place where she feels safe and has time to process.
She doesn’t run away from her calling.
She runs toward the place where she can bear it.
Sometimes the most faithful thing we can do is name and remove ourselves from the places where we cannot thrive, where the noise is too loud, where the scrutiny is too heavy. And then we make choices that help us survive long enough to say our yeses with enthusiasm.
This is not avoidance.
This is wisdom.
We need Sabbath, margin, people, laughter, and breathing space. We need practices that keep us steady so we can be brave in the moments that matter most.
We ‘do it scared’ by trusting that we never have all the answers and that God will work in the gaps.
Mary does not have a plan.
The messenger didn’t give her a “how-to” manual along with this message.
She does not know how Joseph will react, how her village will respond, or how she will survive childbirth as a Jewish woman under Roman occupation.
Her yes is not based on certainty.
It is based on trust.
“Let it be with me just as you have said.”
Mary trusts that if God is calling her, God is also equipping her.
God is also guiding her.
God is also walking the unsteady road with her.
And that is true for us.
Most of the callings we face will not come with clear instructions.
We step forward into fog, not sunlight.
But God is the one who meets us in the fog and makes a way where there was none.
Mary’s story tells us that God does not wait for us to be fearless before calling us.
God calls ordinary, anxious, overwhelmed people, and then walks with us every trembling step.
This is the promise that we are taught throughout the story of God and God’s people.
That is Emmanuel - That God is with us.
So what does this mean for us, here, this Advent?
It means that God invites you toward something new, toward healing, toward honesty, toward generosity, toward reconciliation, toward courage.
If your first response to those nudges is fear, you aren’t alone. Fear might rise first.
Fear is not the opposite of faith.
Fear is not failure.
Fear is information.
Fear is the threshold of transformation.
Your calling may ask more of you than you think you can give.
It may push you outside of what feels safe or familiar.
It may require a kind of courage you have not practiced before.
These callings are not always an angel from God coming down and speaking directly to you.
More often than not, these callings are small things.
That nagging feeling that you've forgotten something or need to go somewhere.
A thought that pops into your head that you don’t recognize as your own.
Someone is on your mind.
A song or scripture you just can’t get out of your head.
We are all given callings by God every week – every day.
The invitation for Advent is to listen – to anticipate – anticipate God’s call for you this season, this week – today.
Anticipate and expect God is with you – anticipate Emmanuel.
And when you feel that nudge or an angel pops up out of nowhere, we’re invited to say a courageous yes - do ‘do it scared.’
Bibliography
Lee, Boyung, Rev. Dr. “Good news is louder than fear” In What Do You Fear? Sermon Planning Guide: Advent–Epiphany. Developed by Rev. Lisle Gwynn Garrity. A Sanctified Art LLC, n.d. https://sanctifiedart.org.
In keeping with transparency, this post was developed with the help of AI editing tools. (Like Grammarly) These tools support the creative process but do not replace human reflection, discernment, or authorship. All sources are fully cited, and all other content is my original work.
