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Advent 4, December 18, 2005 |
In the sixth month, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.” Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end.” “How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?” The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. Now Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be barren is in her sixth month. For nothing is impossible with God.” “I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May it be to me as you have said.” Then the angel left her. CHRISTMAS IS COMING! Christmas is coming! Christmas is coming! The cry goes out from children anticipating gifts and excitement. The cry goes out from merchants, urging us not to wait until the last minute to do our shopping. The cry becomes almost a groan from those who are unprepared and do not see how they will ever be ready when Christmas arrives. Whether in gleeful expectancy or in doleful lament of unpreparedness, the cry is virtually universal in our culture: Christmas is coming! AN ANCIENT CRY While it fell on ears that heard it quite differently from what we hear it today, that word was what came from the lips of the angel Gabriel when he spoke to Mary in today’s gospel: “You will be with child and give birth to a son.” Christmas is coming! That’s not what Mary heard, but it is what the angel said! It is undoubtedly an understatement when Luke says that she “wondered what kind of greeting this might be” when he addressed her in the words, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.” By what right was she called “highly favored?” She is nothing other than a simple, young Galilean maiden . . . hardly “highly favored” so far as anyone in the neighborhood was concerned. Apart from a broad general trust that God was always with her, what, specifically, might “The Lord is with you” mean when this suddenly appearing messenger appears in the midst of her daily chores? Mary didn’t know enough to call it Christmas, but she knew enough to be “greatly troubled” not only at the appearance of Gabriel but also over his message that she would have a child. She did not ask for a child. Why would this angel who so suddenly and strangely materialized before her make such a startling statement? Surely she hoped one day to have a child . . . but not now. She was betrothed to be married, of course, but a pregnancy at this time would only mean an end to all the hopes and dreams that she had placed in that marriage yet to be consummated. She did not ask for a child. She did not want a child. And here an angel appears, announcing, “You will be with child and give birth to a son.” Even the assurance that this son would bear the name Jesus (Savior), and would “be great and will be called the Son of the Most High” would hardly have made her less troubled. What could it possibly mean that “the Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end?” These are words that should be addressed to royal houses. They are foreign words to people of Mary’s station. They were words that clearly bore prophetic echoes such as the promises to David through Nathan that serve as our First Lesson today. Mary must have heard those echoes and echoes similar to them from various prophets of old in the words addressed to her. It was, to be sure an ancient cry of the prophets. But she was Mary of Nazareth . .. not a Queen of Heaven. She was Mary, the young maiden from Galilee, hardly “highly favored of the Lord” so far as she knew. It is really quite astonishing, is it not, that she held her composure so well! Instead of dismissing the whole thing as nonsense she takes it seriously. Instead of going berserk at the very insanity of the idea, she remains calm and collected. Instead of screaming in fear, she stands quietly before the messenger. Instead of being so shocked as to make her speechless, she simply asks the one question that lay between the angelic message and its implementation: “How will this be, since I am a virgin?” With what appears to be a calm tranquility she asks the one question that stands between announcement and realization. The angelic response is twofold: On the one hand, the power of the Most High is behind this announcement. It is for God to do. Mary is mere recipient. She is to do nothing. “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.” That is the reason “the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God.” His title will not derive from her in whose womb he will be borne. It will derive from the one whose initiative will set the conception into motion. Secondly, this moment has a context. God has already begun action toward initiating a new thing upon the earth in another most unexpected manner. Her relative Elizabeth is going to have a child in her old age: ”She who was said to be barren is in her sixth month.” Like Sarah of old, the aged mother of all those children of Israel who came from the loins of Abraham, bringing into being a new nation, so now Elizabeth’s unexpected child of her old age will be the prelude to another new beginning, a new people of God without boundaries and without earthly government. Nothing is like it once was. New things are happening in the midst of what once seemed so stable. But was not that old “stability” filled with the darkness that longed for the light, as we heard last Sunday? Had not the long waiting of which we heard the first Sunday of this Advent season not become filled with futility as the longed-for Messiah remained only a mysterious figure of a never-fulfilled future that was always just beyond the horizon of each succeeding generation? Had not that desolate wilderness into which the prophetic voice had once cried out, “Comfort, comfort my people,” not proved to be a dry and forlorn desert in which they were stumbling in seemingly endless circles? What kind of comfort was there? What light would break into their darkness? Old things simply seemed to get older and nothing significantly new had appeared for hundreds of years. Until now. But now, to use our contemporary term, “Christmas is coming!” ADVENTUS AND FUTURUM Up to now Mary has held our attention as much or more than the announcing angel. This was by design, for it is important to catch a glimpse of how Mary stood before this messenger of God. As a maiden of Nazareth and nothing more she would have sunk into the shadows of the history of Galilee like hundreds of thousands of maidens before her had sunk into the shadows. She is not remembered because of who she was in and of herself. Therein we see an important dimension of what this season called Advent brings to bear upon our faith and understanding. The Latin word futurum (“future” in English, of course . . . which is to say, “A time to which we are going”) has to do with what we humans do to carve out our place in time. It is forward looking in the sense that we must create that future. We get an education; we work hard; we do what good we can do to gain a reputation; we make every effort at insuring that we have a significant place in life. In doing that we establish ourselves as people whose worth is predicated on living productive, helpful, industrious, fruitful, even dynamic lives. It is our hope that people will respect us and that we will be able to provide properly for family and friends as we find possible or necessary. Futurum anticipates tomorrow by using the resources at our disposal today in such a way that makes as certain as possible the security and reasonable comfort of tomorrow. The Latin word adventus (“advent” [come to] in English, of course . . . which is to say, “Time is coming to us”) also has to do with a time yet to come. Notice the phraseology, though. It has to do with “a time yet to come.” That time will come to us. We will not be the active energizer in what will happen. We are a waiting people, as we heard on the first Sunday of this season. Waiting people go to the window to see if someone is coming. Waiting people crack the door in hopes that the coming one is just outside. Waiting people cannot make the one coming come any more quickly than he / she is coming. Christmas is coming for adventus people. They are waiting. Those who go to Christmas in futurum fashion are busy buying, wrapping, decorating, baking, etc. There is nothing wrong with doing those things, but futurum remains quite distinct from adventus . It is not hard to illustrate this. When an exam is to be administered, a student often does everything possible to hold back the time of the exam, but try though he / she may, there is no holding it back. It comes to the student more swiftly than the student wants it in many cases. Everything depends on how the student “waits” for it, however. The exam will be there no matter what the student does. But what will happen in the exam depends on how the student has waited. Or when an engaged couple are looking toward the day of their wedding, that day comes upon them in spite of their frantic preparations. They are, in a sense, moving toward that day as a “future” day, but the fact is that they find it moving toward them more than they are moving toward it as preparations seem to pile up in such a way that they feel constantly “behind.” That which is coming makes them feel “behind!” The day of the wedding will come apart from anything they do. How they greet that day, however, depends on what they have done in their “waiting” time. We are in the season of Advent. This is when time comes to us – as it came to Mary! CHRISTMAS IS COMING With that in mind, we turn again to the Gospel and discover that significant though Mary is, she is almost “in the shadows,” so to speak. For it is God who is the significant “behind-the-scenes mover” of this text. He is coming to Mary. She did not bid him come nor did she ask for that which was to be given her. Everything in the text speaks of the initiative of God. Mary waits with simple words on her lips: “May it be to me as you have said.” She will receive what the angel spoke to her – and more! Little did she realize at the time what her words encompassed. The angel spoke of a child to be born. Nothing else. What was coming to her, though, was a difficult trip to Bethlehem where the child would be born in harsh circumstances . . . a group of shepherds speaking of angelic messages regarding a Savior born and peace among those “on whom his favor rests” . . . Gentiles from the east coming to worship a Jewish child . . . a terrified flight to Egypt to escape the sword of Herod . . . an adolescent young man concerning whom she could only treasure the things he did in her heart . . . a mature man who would worry her and her family to the point they would try to restrain him . . . a son at odds with the religious authorities and finally with the political authorities to the point of being crucified . . . a deeply sorrowful three days before a highly unexpected reunion with her son. All these things and more would be part of her waiting. All these things would “come to her” as startlingly as this angel who appeared before her in this moment announcing the advent of a child who would be called the Son of the Most High. For now, though, she received the word quietly, calmly, with equanimity, even with praise. “My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,” she would say to Elizabeth, her kinswoman who was equally astonished at this strange turn of events that would throw both of them onto the stage of world history in most unanticipated ways. When God comes to his people, everything is turned upside down and inside out. Are you not aware of that in your own life? Has he not come to you in the waters of your baptism and, in claiming you for himself, called you to be who you would never be on your own and to do things you would never do on your own? Has he not come to you in bread and wine, nourishing your life when it was in need of strength, giving you food for the journey that is set before you? Has he not come with a word through messengers of today, whether they be parents and relatives, pastors and teachers, friends and acquaintances, printed word and pictured word, pressing upon you that which he has brought into the world and which he would bring to you in rich and full measure? Has not the Holy Spirit come upon you and the power of the Most High overshadowed you to bring you to this time and place to hear again the good news that a Savior is to be born of Mary who will bring a peace beyond understanding to all in whom he dwells? Surely this encouraging word of his coming to you lies imbedded in these words to Mary when the promise is given that God’s Christmas present to her . . . to Israel . . . to the world . . . to you and me . . . was wrapped in her womb with a ribbon of salvation. THE WAITING Does this mean that, since everything depends on God’s coming, we are to be passive receivers only? Hardly! As was suggested earlier, an exam “coming to” a student requires diligent preparation. An approaching wedding calls for intense planning and working toward the moment of the wedding’s arrival. There is nothing passive about this “waiting time” for that which “comes to us.” It is an awareness of what . . . or in this case, very specifically, who . . . comes to us that establishes those things we are to do. The preparation of the young woman for an exam carries with it very specific things she will do. A bride preparing for a wedding does not frivolously spend all her time at the beach. That which is coming sets the tone for what the waiting person does. That is doubly true when we know, as Mary did, that one who is as special as the one whom the angel announces is coming. Will not the most significant gift of Christmas from you to another be the love and care that flows from a heart cradling this child? Will not the most important things you do with the whole of your life be done with the earnest awareness that a Savior, who is Christ, the Lord, lives in the deepest recesses of your very being and works through your voice and body, through your arms and legs, through every fiber of your existence offered, as was this child, on the cross of self-giving in order that others might have life, and have it more abundantly? Only you can know how that will work in your life. Nobody else can tell you that. Yet as a person still waiting for the final and ultimate redemption of the world when the new heavens and the new earth arrive, your eyes will search for, your ears will listen for, your mind will be alert to those of whom Jesus said, “Inasmuch as you have done it to the least of these, you have done it to me.” Christmas is coming! Christmas is coming! We say with Mary, “My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.” And, with Mary, we prepare for the coming of the Christ as people who are birthing a whole new way of living on this earth Hubert Beck, Retired Pastor
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