Fear Not, Just Believe Series

Fear and Christmas aren’t words that I would think go together. Maybe Halloween and Fear, or birthdays and fear. But Christmas and fear? I mean, really what is there to fear about Christmas?

Well, according to those in the know there is plenty to fear about Christmas.

If you are selaphobic, it means you have a fear of flashing lights.

Or if you suffer from Cyssanophobia then you have a fear of kissing someone under the mistletoe.

If getting together with relatives is a fear that you suffer from then you are suffering from Syngenesophobia.

And Meleagrisphobia refers to a fear of turkeys, presumably even if they are cooked. Might I recommend a Christmas Goose instead, or perhaps Christmas Pizza.

And even gift giving takes a hit if you have ghabhphobia. That refers to a person with social anxiety who hates the attention placed on them once they receive a gift. What do you say? What do you do? I figure, “thank you” is always appropriate.

And maybe it’s not all the bells and whistles that you fear. If the obligation to attend church on Christmas Eve or Christmas day gives you the willies you have ecclesiophobia. That fear of church seems evidenced in many people through the rest of the year as well.

Or maybe it’s the entire season, with all of its trappings that you are afraid of.

You’ll be glad to know that while it may all be in your head, there is a name for it, and that is

Christougenniatikophobia.

This is the first Sunday of Advent and our series over the next four weeks and Christmas Eve is entitled; Fear Not. And we will be looking at various times in the Christmas story where the characters are told to not be afraid.

And we are going to start in the months leading up to the Christmas story.

It is a familiar story for this time of year. A heavenly messenger, a miraculous birth, a normal childhood a short ministry preaching to people who loved his message and hated his message and then an untimely death at the hands of the authorities he had offended.

Most people could fill in the missing details if they were asked and they would be wrong. They would talk about shepherds and wise men, heavenly choirs and stables and little animals, drummer boys and stars and flying reindeer.

But none of those were part of the story. I know that you are thinking, “Well maybe not the drummer boy and the flying reindeer but the rest were.” Nope, the problem is that the story is familiar but only because it mirrors another story.

At this time of the year we are all too familiar with the Christmas story and all that goes with it, and most of us can parrot back the details, both the details that are biblical and the details that are extra biblical. Seriously, there was no little drummer boy.

Wrapped up in the Christmas celebrations are facts and legends, poems and songs. And that is why Christians, both committed, and nominal will celebrate around the world in less than a month. And even those who would never darken the door of a church 364 days out of the year will take time to at least tip their hats to the birth of Christ.

But the story didn’t start when the Angel appeared to Mary, no the story began half a year earlier and 100 kms away.

Before the angel appeared to Mary and Joseph, he had already appeared in Jerusalem to a man named Zechariah to announce the birth of a boy who would be named John. Part of the story was read for us earlier and this morning we are going to look at the tale of Jesus’ older cousin John, because the story of Jesus would never be complete without the story of John. Actually we are going to take a look at John’s parents and in particular his father.

Many people feel that there is so much detail in the book of Luke about what happened prior to the birth of Christ that it could only have come from one source and that was Mary, and so the feeling is that what we hearing in Luke’s account is a firsthand view of the miraculous.

So, let’s begin our journey where our journey should begin, at the beginning. Historically we are at the end of four hundred years of silence in the story of Israel. The last recorded words from one of God’s prophets had been written in the book of Malachi and the people of Israel have been waiting to be delivered from the various occupiers of their country.

As so here is the account of how our story begins, Luke 1:5 In the time of Herod king of Judea there was a priest named Zechariah, who belonged to the priestly division of Abijah; his wife Elizabeth was also a descendant of Aaron.