"Do Not Fear"

... as we stand on this bridge, I want you to hear what God’s voice repeats, and what people of faith claim, over and over, to people across the centuries: do not fear!

A selection of scriptures featuring the word “fear”

December 28, 2025

Dr. Todd R. Wright

Welcome to the first Sunday after Christmas, the last Sunday of the calendar year, and the bridge from one year to the next!

You have heard a representative litany of scriptures. I could have chosen others. There are a lot more. But as we stand on this bridge, I want you to hear what God’s voice repeats, and what people of faith claim, over and over, to people across the centuries: do not fear!

I don’t know what your mood may be as we wrap up one year and prepare to start another.

For some, each new year sparks a sense of optimism: fresh starts, new opportunities, second chances, turning the page! For those, this word of encouragement may be unnecessary.

But for others, a new year offers no escape from the problems we have covered with tinsel. And once the tree and the decorations are packed away, darkness will squeeze and swallow the light like a python.

There are a lot of things that go bump in the night: in a few days those with ACA coverage will see their costs skyrocket; winter utility bills are punishing, holiday credit cards will come due, seasonal jobs will end, family tensions will push some onto the streets, the current stopgap funding measure expires at the end of January, winter months see spikes in the flu, COVID, and RSV, measles is spreading again, people in Ukraine and Gaza and South Sudan worry about more violence, ICE raids have some afraid to go to work, or school, or church, Washington State is dealing with widespread flooding and WV holds its breath for the next time the rivers rise.

I could go on, but you can see why some are afraid.

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Vincent van Gogh understood the paradox of the glad and the grim at Christmastime.

He considered his painting, “At Eternity’s Gate” to be a Christmas painting. That may seem off because instead of a baby in a manger it depicts a frail, elderly man cradling his head in his hands as he sits beside the fire.

“My intention” with this portrait of an old man, Vincent wrote to his brother, was “to express the special mood of Christmas and New Year”.[1]

“I was trying to say… that one of the strongest pieces of evidence for the existence of a God and an eternity, is the unutterably moving quality in the expression of [this] man, as he sits quietly in the corner of his hearth. Something [so] precious, something [so] noble, can’t [only] be meant for the worms…”

Instead, he says, “the fact that the poorest woodcutter, heath farmer, or miner can have [such] moments of emotion … gives him a sense of an eternal home that he is close to.”

This is not a picture of the glow of star and stable, but it does claim that we can glimpse and grasp hold of God as much in the darkness as in the bright lights!

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The last scripture I read, from Hebrews, is very much in that vein.

It is written to a community that is suffering … and asking questions.

Paul responds by reminding them that Jesus suffered in order to free “all who cower through life, scared to death of death” and to enable him to provide “help where help was needed”.[2]

Tom Long writes, Jesus’ suffering “joins him completely to the human condition. Through his pain Jesus becomes a ‘brother’ to every other human being. [Hebrews] is saying that when the eternal Son of God gazes at a criminal on death row, when the glorified Son sees a homeless woman crawling into a cardboard box to keep from freezing, when the Lord of all sees a man robbed of dignity and purpose by schizophrenia, when the divine heir of all things sees a mother weeping over the death of her child, or a man battling the last savage assault of cancer, or the swollen body of a child slowly starving to death, he does not see a charity case, a pitiful victim, or a hopeless cause. He sees a brother; he sees a sister.”[3]

Long continues, “When we see someone who’s hungry, or imprisoned, or homeless, we sometimes say something like, ‘There, but for the grace of God, go I.’ Jesus says, ‘There, because of the grace of God, I am.’”

So hold on to that – do not fear! Not because God’s love will protect you from all suffering, but because God protects us in all suffering. God is at work in our world and in each of our lives this Christmas, and in the new year, and forever! Amen

[1] Here and following, from Letters to Theo, #288 and 294

[2] From Eugene Peterson’s translation of verses 15 and 18 in the Message

[3] From Hebrews, part of the Interpretation series of commentaries, page 42