The Only Logical Response to Fear

Hear the story of Joseph in a new way

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Transcript

Sermons from 

Mission Hills UCC

San Diego, California

Rev. Dr. David Bahr

pastor@parkhillchurch.org

December 21, 2025

“The Only Logical Response to Fear”

Matthew 1: 18-25 – Common English Bible

This is how the birth of Jesus Christ took place. When Mary his mother was engaged to Joseph, before they were married, she became pregnant by the Holy Spirit. 19 Joseph her husband was a righteous man. Because he didn’t want to humiliate her, he decided to call off their engagement quietly. 20 As he was thinking about this, an angel from the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, don’t be afraid to take Mary as your wife, because the child she carries was conceived by the Holy Spirit. 21 She will give birth to a son, and you will call him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” 22 Now all of this took place so that what the Lord had spoken through the prophet would be fulfilled:

23 Look! A virgin will become pregnant and give birth to a son,
         And they will call him, Emmanuel. 

(Emmanuel means “God with us.”)

24 When Joseph woke up, he did just as an angel from God commanded and took Mary as his wife. 25 But he didn’t have marital relations with her until she gave birth to a son. Joseph called him Jesus.

Gloria Jean Watkins grew up in the 1950s in Hopkinsville, Kentucky.  A Black girl before desegregation, Gloria attended Black schools, taught by Black teachers, shaped by Black expectations. Those schools were not as well-funded, but they were places where teachers knew their students and families.  They were classrooms that when Gloria enthusiastically raised her hand, she was seen. When she spoke, she was heard. Then desegregation came.

From the outside, it looked like progress. Signs came down. Laws changed. Black children were finally allowed to attend formerly whites-only schools. But inside Black communities, desegregation carried a different cost. Many of those Black schools were closed. Many of those Black teachers and principals lost their jobs and those Black authority figures were replaced by ones who had little relationship with the children sitting in front of them.

Excited for her first day in her new school, she raised her hand the way she always had. This time, it was as if she were invisible. When she spoke, teachers sometimes looked startled, as though the voice did not quite belong to the body it came from. No one named the change or called it a problem. But Gloria could feel that something had shifted.

So she began to watch carefully. Without being told, she learned to calculate what moved things forward and what was quietly discouraged. Writing became a place where she did not have to rush or disappear. On the page, she could follow a thought all the way through. 

As she grew older, the pattern repeated itself in new rooms. New institutions. Each one carried the same unspoken instruction: if you want to belong, answer the way we want. Ask the right questions. At the right time. In the right tone. 

She learned how the system worked. The rewards and quiet consequences. And because she understood it, she learned something else. She was not powerless within it. She could comply. Or not. 

Joseph lived in another small town, in a very different century. He was a carpenter, shaped by the expectations of his world, until the woman he was engaged to marry was found to be pregnant.

Joseph knew the law, the customs. He knew what people would assume, and what he was expected to do.

Scripture tells us he was a decent man, righteous. He didn’t want to expose her to cruel public shame. So he chose what seemed like the careful path. No confrontation. He would walk away quietly.

And then he had a dream. No thunder or spectacle. Just a voice in the night interrupting the decision he’d already made. “Do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife.”

The words didn’t remove the risk to his reputation. They invited Joseph into a larger story and left him free to decide whether to bear the cost. God placed the decision in his hands.

And so, Joseph chose not to take the exit he’d planned. He bound his future to hers and stepped into a life that wouldn’t protect his standing in the community or offer easy explanations. He didn’t solve a problem. He simply chose not to walk away.

Gloria and Joseph lived in vastly different worlds. Different cultures. Different centuries. And yet they shared this in common. Each of them could have stepped back and saved themselves the trouble. Stay quiet.  Dismiss quietly.  They knew that, in the face of power, silence is rewarded.  Those are the kinds of exits people take every day – that often seem reasonable.  Even logical.

You may know Gloria better as bell hooks. She chose to write her name in lowercase.  Why would she do that?  To make the point that we are quick to argue about such trivial things and debate presentation while ignoring what is being named.  In part because it unsettles us.  

And what she named was that force she had been living with since childhood. The force that makes silence feel necessary. But not with a complicated academic theory. She simply called it fear.

Not fear as panic or weakness. Not fear as a feeling that comes and goes. Fear as a system. A force that convinces decent people to step back quietly. And then she named the only force she believed could interrupt fear’s grip. Love.

That is where some who admired her sharp critique began to dismiss her as naïve. As out of touch, out of her lane. As though love were a soft answer to a hard world. But bell hooks was not sentimental about love. She was precise.  She defined it clearly:

• Love is care and commitment.
• It is also knowledge and truth.
• And it is respect.

For her, love was a disciplined practice of choosing what fear tells us to avoid.  Fear trains us to accept versions of love that feel safer.  But she warned, if you remove any part of what she named, love will collapse into something else. 

• Without care, love stops noticing when it causes harm.
• Without commitment, love learns to leave when it gets hard.
• Without knowledge, love mistakes ignorance for innocence.
• Without truth, love avoids conflict and calls it peace.
• Without respect, love slides into possession.

For her, love was demanding, not dominating. That is why she insisted love must be politicized. Not partisan. Political in the deepest sense. Concerned with how we order our shared life together. With who is protected. With who is dismissed quietly. With who is asked to carry the cost for others to feel safe.

She said, “Love is the only force strong enough to interrupt that pattern.” And that is not just her conviction. That is what God does.  That’s what stories like these are doing in Advent. God interrupting fear in the middle of it. Not waiting for everything to calm down, but God entering lives shaped by risk and hard choices and helping us refuse fear as the final word.

I’m not talking about extraordinary events but ordinary people, like Joseph, deciding what to do when staying present will cost something. Maybe even everything.

I’m talking about things that happen to us almost every day. The ways fear is woven into conversations we avoid.  The ways fear pulls us back from relationships that protect us from getting hurt, but leave the other person exposed. The situations where keeping your mouth shut would keep things smoother for everyone. Except you.

Those are the exits fear has trained us to take. They don’t look dramatic. They’re reasonable. But this is exactly where God enters the world. Not by removing the risk, but ensuring we don’t take that risk alone.  And like Joseph, God asks, where am I being invited to exit quietly, and where is love asking me to stay present?

Fear gives Joseph a respectable exit. He can be compassionate and still disappear. But Joseph understands Mary is already carrying the risk.

Her body carries the danger.
 Her reputation is on the line.
 Her safety is uncertain.

Joseph’s respectable exit would have protected him. It would have allowed him to remain righteous and untouched by scandal. But it would have left Mary to carry the full cost alone. And love refuses that arrangement.

Love, as bell hooks describes it, begins with seeing clearly and ends with staying present. Using her framework:

• Knowledge shows up when Joseph stops looking only at what the law permits and begins to ask what love requires.
• Truth shows up when he recognizes that walking away is a choice Mary cannot make.
• Care shows up when he prioritizes Mary’s safety over his own security.
• Commitment shows up when he binds himself to a future he cannot control.
• And respect shows up when he shares Mary’s fate instead of deciding it for her.

This is what love looks like. And this is how fear is interrupted.

So, our own lives, where does fear keep repeating itself, with whom?  And where is love inviting us to break the pattern? This Advent, whatever way we need to hear it, that is the witness Joseph offers us.

One of my favorite newer Christmas songs is written from his point of view.

I am a carpenter. Not a king. Not a prophet.
 A man with ordinary plans, living a life that made sense until it didn’t.

Again, what did he do?  He made himself vulnerable. He tied his future to someone else.
 
 

That, too, is Emmanuel.  God with us.  Emmanuel. Not God watching from a distance.
 Emmanuel. Not God waiting for fear to pass.
 But Emmanuel. God with us.

Just like the carpenter who stayed.
 Because love does not take the easy way out.