2025.12.24 | Good News Is Louder Than Fear
Good News is Louder than Fear
Luke 2:1–20
Preached by
Rev. Dr. Marvin Lance Wiser
Eden United Church of Christ
Hayward, CA
24 December 2025
Que la paz de Cristo sea con ustedes. May the peace of Christ be with you. On this night, we gather around a story we think we know by heart—a manger, a young family, a quiet stable, a smelly stable if you recall last year’s homily. But if we listen closely, Luke’s account of the Gospel is actually far less gentle. The story is not hushed. It is the sound of heaven interrupting earth. It is the sound of angels who refuse to whisper. It is the sound of joy that refuses to stay orderly and polite, interrupting the days of Herods and Caesars.
“Glory to God in the highest!” Exclaim it with me, like you mean it. “Glory to God in the highest!” That is not quite a lullaby, like La Nanita Nana. That is a shout that echoes across empires and millennia, paying homage not to a demagogue, or even a demi-god, but to the One who creates, liberates, and eventually upends every false claim to power. Amen?
En esta noche, el Evangelio no susurra. El cielo irrumpe en la tierra. Los ángeles rompen el silencio del imperio: «¡Gloria a Dios en las alturas!». No es una canción de cuna como la Nanita Nana; es una proclamación audaz que resuena a través del tiempo, desviando la alabanza de los gobernantes terrenales hacia el Dios que crea, libera y derriba toda falsa pretensión de poder.
Christmas, if we’re truthful to the story, is the birth of an asylum-seeking child into a world ruled by fear. It is a story set under the shadow of an imperial census, a tool of population and labor control designed to count and extract. This is good news arriving among people who know what it feels like to be counted, taxed, displaced, and unseen—noticed only when they are scapegoated and used for the prison industrial complex or for the deportation regime.
And into that world, the first ones entrusted with the good news are not kings, emperors, governors or priests—or even wise men—but the shepherds, semi-nomadic workers on the margins, always traveling, always improvising a life, often on another’s land. They become the first evangelists, the first to carry the Gospel message. They don’t debate it, they go, in spite of being initially terrified, they act. They run into Bethlehem with breathless wonder, telling the truth as best they can that something new has broken open amid the night: God’s anointed one is a humble babe, not a tyrant upon a throne of might.
Imagine that kind of joy. Joy that is unruly, disruptive, louder than fear, stronger than fascism.
La Navidad revela a un Dios que irrumpe en un mundo atemorizado: un niño refugiado, nacido bajo el dominio imperial, anunciado no a gobernantes ni a reyes, sino a pastores, personas nómadas y marginadas, que se convierten en los primeros evangelistas porque acuden, a pesar del miedo. En un mundo donde el miedo se utiliza como arma para dividir y dominar, el evangelio se niega al silencio, proclamando: «No teman», y se difunde no por decretos ni por la fuerza, sino a través de un testimonio lleno de alegría y amor que trasciende generaciones.
Esta noche nos unimos a ese coro indomable, gritando con los ángeles, corriendo con los pastores, cantando no por nostalgia sino por resistencia, proclamando que el miedo puede ser ruidoso, la violencia puede ser poderosa, pero el amor es más fuerte, la esperanza es más poderosa, y la buena noticia de Dios y del pueblo no será silenciada: «Gloria a Dios en las alturas», osea no a Cesár ni a Herodes.
Fear is loud in our world too—and it’s getting louder. It is stoked, sold, and sharpened. It floods our news cycles, hijacks our politics, and is amplified by algorithms that reward outrage and impressions over truth. Fear fractures communities and clears the path for strongmen to rise. It shows up in uniforms and masks, in broken windows and torn lives, targeting bodies marked by skin tone or accent, in bills threatening life affirming care for our trans siblings.
And yet the Gospel does not retreat. Neither does it negotiate with fear. It breaks in anyway, announcing good news that refuses to be silenced. “Do not be afraid,” the angel says, “for I bring you good news of great joy for all people.”
And that news spreads, not through imperial decrees or executive orders—because “all” has never meant all under empire—but through the witness of people whose lives have been touched by love, wonder, and joy. Shepherds praised because they could understand the good news that would confound the world; they already knew of a shared life outside the economy of Caesar. Communities today throwing bigger, louder parties of justice and joy, because this is not our first encounter with Herods and Caesars.
Our parties will be bigger. Our joy will be audacious. Our love will be revolutionary. And we will refuse to let fear have the final word. Let me say that again: we will refuse to let fear have the final word. Amen?
Tonight, we join that witness.
We are invited to amplify the good news
to be a people who shout with the angels,
to be a church that runs with the shepherds,
to be a community that sings “Go Tell It on the Mountain” not as nostalgia, but as a movement of resistance and hope.
Not because fear has vanished—it hasn’t.
But because love and light have arrived.
Because God is here. God is here.
And the holy child—wonderful child—born tonight reminds us:
“Fear may be loud, but love is louder.
Violence may be strong, but hope is stronger.
And the good news—God-with-us—will not be silenced.” (1)
So tonight, gathered in candlelight, we add our voices to the chorus across the centuries:
“Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth.”
Que nuestra alegría sea indomable. Que la paz sea proclamada, no el miedo. Que esta buena noticia resuene más fuerte que nuestros temores y rompa la oscuridad con la luz de la esperanza eterna.
Amen and Merry Christmas.
And now may we be blessed by the San Lorenzo Community Church Choir as they sing “Love Came Down at Christmas.”
(1) Rev. Dr. Boyung Lee, “Commentary on Luke 2:1–20,” in “What Do You Fear: A Sermon Planning Guide for Advent-Epiphany [p. 22]” by Sanctified Art, 2025.