"In the middle of the night..then you chose to come" Sermon for 4th Sunday of Advent 2020
Sermon for
Sunday 20 December 2020
Lutheran
Church of the Redeemer, Jerusalem
The Rev.
Carrie Ballenger
May the words
of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight O Lord,
my rock and my redeemer. Amen.
CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE SERMON
On this 4th Sunday of Advent, we hear the
story of the Annunciation, the moment when God’s angel Gabriel came to Mary to
say “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you
will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus.”
Reading this passage from the Gospel according to Luke
again this week, I looked around my home to see what the angels in my collection
of nativity scenes look like. One is made from an old quilt, a gift from a
church member many years ago. One is delicate, made in Sweden. A favorite is
from Bethlehem, made from broken glass collected from the streets after the 2nd
Intifada. There’s a sweet little angel giving a blessing, from the Sisters at
the convent in Beit Gimal. And then there’s my favorite, a very tall
serious-looking angel from the Masai tribe. For sure, he’s come to give an
important announcement.
I’m sure you have various angels depicted in your home
at this time of year as well.
But I have noticed that in the Bible, angels are
always showing up and saying “Don’t be afraid!” which makes me wonder: What did
they really look like?
Recently a friend suggested that we should start a
campaign to have angels depicted as they really are in the Bible, which is generally
not as babies with wings and chubby cheeks. Often, biblical angels are
appearing as humans, and are not even recognized as humans until after the
encounter. In Luke chapter 2, when the shepherds were in the fields watching
their flocks by night, an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of
the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. (Or, as I remember from
the story I heard as a child: They were “sore afraid” which somehow sounds even
worse!)
Then, in the book of Ezekiel, angels are described in
this way:
“Their entire bodies, including their backs, hands,
and wings, were full of eyes all around, as were their four wheels” (Ezekiel
10:12).
Can you imagine us decorating our Christmas trees with
angels full of eyes all over their bodies? All of our visitors would be “sore
afraid” to come to our homes for the holidays!
I don’t think a loving God intends to scare us with
these messengers. Still, “Do not be afraid” said Gabriel to Mary. Whatever
Gabriel looked like, we know that he came to give her some really big news,
unexpected news, news that would change the world. And I think that in this
year 2020 we have learned all over again that big, unexpected news isn’t always
so welcome. No matter what the messenger looks or sounds like, news that will
change the world is scary to receive, scary to watch on the news, scary to
experience. Even if it’s good news, it can make us “sore afraid.”
When Gabriel appeared to Mary, the news was not only huge
for her. It was huge news for the world. From that day forward, things would be
different. Nothing would ever be the same, because God was coming near to
humankind. As Anglican priest and theologian Sir Edwyn Hoskyns put it, the
Incarnation is “a dagger thrust into the weft of human history.” In other
words, the birth of Jesus forever changed the fabric of our world. In fact, the
birth of Jesus in Bethlehem made us fully aware of how God the Creator is woven
into our lives and relationships, into our joys and our sorrows, into our pasts
and our futures.
This is Good News, of course, but it could also make
us “sore afraid”. Anything this big is bound to give us pause, to make us take
a step back and say “Wait—am I ready for this?”
Along with contemplating the size and shape and nature
of angels this week, I also thought about how, in my mind’s eye, the
Annunciation always happens at night. And yet, in the Scriptures, there’s
nothing to indicate the angel Gabriel came to Mary at night. I suppose my own
assumption about this comes from a picture I must have seen in my children’s
story Bible, or in Sunday School class. I don’t know exactly where this image came
from, but I can see it now: It was the deep of night, and stars were shining
outside the window. Mary was sitting up in bed (in a room that looked a lot
like my own) when an angel with huge wings stepped into her bedroom through a
window. (Not an excellent image to show to earnest church kids before they go
to bed, by the way!)
Honestly, we don’t know when Gabriel appeared to Mary.
It could have been while she was doing laundry. Maybe she was taking a walk,
and he stopped to ask her for directions, and then the conversation suddenly
took a turn. Maybe Gabriel was a family friend, and she invited him to lunch,
and then he shared this big news with her when she least expected it.
The point us: Angels are messengers of the Lord, and
in my experience messages from God don’t come in perfectly wrapped packages. They
don’t look like we expect. They don’t come on our time schedules. They
certainly don’t always appear during the proper season of the church year, when
we’ve decorated with the proper liturgical colors, have lit the candles in the
right order, and have sung the appointed hymns.
Messages, and messengers, of God come when they will.
In God’s time. In God’s way. Through the people (or, I suppose through the
creatures with many wings and eyes) that God sends.
But I do think there’s a reason that we might imagine
the Annunciation happened at nighttime. The night is magical, and full of
promise. When the stars are in the sky and the hours before dawn loom before
us, it makes perfect sense to hear the message the angel gave to Mary: “For
nothing will be impossible with God.”
I remember as a child I would lie in bed and
sometimes, suddenly, I would be completely overwhelmed thinking of the vastness
of the universe and my own smallness within it. I would almost become dizzy
lying there, wondering if just the contemplation of this vastness would swallow
me up and I would become nothing in an instant.
But I had also heard the Good News. I knew that I was
not alone in the world. And for many Christmases in a row, I had heard the
words of the angel: Do not be afraid.
And so at night time, even if I was a little afraid,
because the hours before dawn stretched out before me, I also dreamed the most
amazing things: Things I wanted to do and see. The cities and countries I would
visit. The family I might have some day. The love I might experience. And I was
not afraid.
Some of us are afraid of the dark, and some of us
embrace the dark. I think all of us probably do both, at different times. I’m
reminded of an amazing Good Friday sermon in which the preacher invited the
congregation to imagine the hours of that day, after the cross but before the
resurrection, not as the darkness of the tomb, but as the darkness of the womb.
As the moment when something new was about to be born.
In this hemisphere, tomorrow is the longest night of
the year, and it comes at the end of what feels like the longest year ever. For
many of us, this is a difficult time. We can’t celebrate the way we would like.
We can’t be with all the people we love.
And yet, although tomorrow is the longest night, the
day after tomorrow, there will be more daylight. The day after tomorrow, more
vaccines will have reached more people. The day after tomorrow, we will be one
day closer to Christmas. The day after tomorrow, we will be one day closer to
the day when Our Lord Jesus will come again, bringing the fullness of the
kingdom of justice, peace, and reconciliation for all the world.
We don’t know what this next year will bring, just as at
last Christmas, we could never have imagined what 2020 would bring! So much has
happened. So much has been lost. It feels like everything has changed.
And yet, so much remains. And there’s so much to look
forward to! Above all, the love of God is with us still. God is still sending
messengers to bring us good news—through unexpected people, at unexpected
times, and just when we need it most. Through friends, through family, through
strangers, through Scripture, through bread and wine: God breaks into our
regular days, as well as our terrible ones, with love, companionship, and hope.
Thanks be to God!
And therefore, even in the longest night, at the end
of the longest year, we heed the words of the angel Gabriel, and we are not
afraid. We are not afraid!
Each year at this time, I am drawn back to this poem from
Archbishop Dom Helder Camara (1909-1999), and this year it feels even more
appropriate:
***
In the middle of the night,
when stark night was darkest,
then you chose to come.
God’s resplendent first-born
sent to make us one.
The voices of doom protest:
“All these words about justice, love and peace—
all these naïve words will buckle
beneath the weight of a reality which is brutal and
bitter,
ever more bitter.”
It is true, Lord,
it is midnight upon the earth,
moonless night and starved of stars.
But can we forget that You, the son of God,
chose to be born precisely at midnight?
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