Park Avenue Presbyterian Church; Des Moines, Iowa
Texts: Micah 5: 2-5a
Luke 1: 47-55
Hebrews 10: 5-10
Luke 1: 26-45 *
“The Angel Came, Mary Went, Jesus Lives”
--} Today is the last Sunday before Christmas. For those of you waiting for Christmas—we’re almost there! Is it time to be excited yet? We’re always excited this time of year! And we should be. What’s waiting up ahead of us at the conclusion of this spiritual season is GREAT good news! It begins with promises and is initiated by the announcement that things are underway. The appearances of the Angel Gabriel tell us God is coming.
Luke’s word that a vision is being fulfilled with Zechariah and Elizabeth, and that the angel Gabriel has visited Mary—is the announcement that God’s story is being brought to fruition. We believe that God decisively entered (past tense) the world in Jesus Christ—a story that begins with Mary and her family and her family history in getting to Nazareth. And while we come to the story from our perspective of “what a beautiful thing to have happen”—the birth of a child—still, worldly realities creep upon this grand invasion for our benefit.
Though we ultimately believe Luke’s story is “all good news,” think with me for a moment about just “what” makes it good?
- Though “chosen by God,” Mary likely has to endure the social criticism of being a young, unwed mother; which may in fact, precipitate her visit to Elizabeth’s—to avoid social scrutiny or bringing shame upon her family.
- Beyond the hardship of being pointed out as someone with lesser morals, the journey to Elizabeth’s and back would have been long and difficult with its own set of dangers; and she was essentially exiled from her immediate family in favor of a distant cousin.
- Tradition holds that Mary and her family were first-century cave-dwellers—which shouldn’t have the stigma we might attach to “cave-dweller” today; they lived as the other 300-400 residents of Nazareth did, on a mountainside. Markings on rocks nearby, dated to the first century, indicated the “location” of some caves being an important site related to Mary; thus, Crusaders who found the marks were the first to build a large church in Nazareth. The picture on your bulletin cover of the “sanctuary” with the altar was believed to be Mary’s home; the other “cave” pictured was believed to have been one of Mary’s neighbors, and depicts better what the living conditions might have been.
- Certainly not people of opulent living, Mary and her family were Galileans trying to make a simple living and serve God. So that “Nazareth” makes a pretty good place for the Angel Gabriel to have appeared looking for humble servants for a specially-chosen mission. Another tradition is that Gabriel’s “appearance” to Mary took place at the well where everyone gathered water. The other pictures on the bulletin are of the famous painting of that story, with Gabriel speaking to Mary who is depicted with the child, Jesus, in her womb; and the actual “well” as it appears in the Church of St. Gabriel, today.
- So this “good thing” we believe God is doing or has done in the world is complicated by our human living. It’s not an “easy” or “simple” matter that God sends an Angel to tap Mary and ask her to bear God’s son. It doesn’t reside on how much or how little we might “believe” in these things, but rather the powerful importance of what God is doing. And not just for Mary and her life—it should also point us to our own lives and invites us to ask the question, “what is God doing in my own life?”—in the midst of MY daily realities?
We celebrate “Christmas”—the incarnation—not because Jesus is born, but because God is changing the world! Our celebration of Christmas—while while it’s related to the details of Mary’s life and God’s special role for her, and the story of Jesus being born—is ultimately the whole story about God’s ability and willingness to change the trajectory of human living. And while the season of Advent ramps up to that famous story we’ll share once again on Christmas Eve, the story about Mary and Elizabeth and the Angel is pregnant with other meanings and themes worthy of our exploration.
For my own self, I almost always hear the “Christmas stories” as being really divorced from the lives we live today. I think of them as “biblical stories” without associating them with my own personal experiences. I don’t often think of Mary as one who surely must have endured ridicule for being an unwed, pregnant, teenager—who’s father and mother may likely have wanted her out of the house to avoid their own shame. That surely, part of why Mary goes to see Elizabeth was not moral support, but to hide the fact that she was with child; and when she returns to Nazareth, Luke portrays she and Joseph leaving for Bethlehem pretty quickly. What else might we know to be true for Mary and Elizabeth because of our own experiences in the world that are similar to theirs?
I’d like to think that we’re past some of those issues in our own time; but we are not. We still presume it to be inappropriate: young, unwed, teenage mothers. In the same way we make assumptions about people who are homeless or “not-properly-documented workers” who come to our country in violation of immigration laws. Or maybe it’s how we react to same-sex marriages.
But what the “true” Christmas story invites us to consider is not just “how” a baby would be born to Mary as a “savior,” but the reality that God chooses decisively to enter our world for the purpose of changing human living for the better. That God comes to us as one inhabiting flesh and blood like ours to help us see it’s possible to live in new ways—even when we have been wrong, or especially when we have done wrong! Jesus’ whole life story represents the possibility of life out of death, and new possibilities where none are envisioned before. And it changes the whole nature of what we know about God and ourselves—beginning with visits from Gabriel and visitations among human beings.
These appearance stories announce pregnancies. In the Greek Orthodox tradition Mary is often pictured either with a child Jesus, or, Mary is presented with Jesus clearly “en-fleshed” in her womb. You can see that in the picture on the front cover where Gabriel and Mary are talking. So what if our Advent could remind us that we, too, are en-fleshed with the possibility of the living Christ? Not that we physically give birth to a savior, but that by virtue of God’s incarnation (a past-tense event), we are all “pregnant” with the reality that God is with us—a possibility that can change how we live and what we choose.
By virtue of the incarnation we celebrate, we KNOW that Christ has come among us. And that “coming among us” is meant to change us—not just give us a holiday. We are opened to the possibility of changed attitudes, changed beliefs, changed lives—because God came into the world. Mary is perhaps as innocent as we are in the sense that suddenly, one day God appears to her in the form of the Angel Gabriel—announcing new life and new possibilities. If Mary is the model, she begs the question of us: How has God “appeared in your life?”
And as Mary goes quickly to Elizabeth to share the news, perhaps to try and understand better what all this might mean, she remains the model for our own sharing. Christ’s en-fleshment requires a shared contemplation. It’s not so much a private matter between us and God, it needs to be a shared reality with the assumption that Christ is in and through all of us. Mary and Elizabeth a part of the same story, as we know as brothers and sisters of Christ, we are a part of the same story, too.
Christmas is a time, not just for celebrating the birth story of Jesus, but for us to be reminded of God’s work of changing human living. It’s a time for contemplating the times and places that God has appeared to us. It is a time to acknowledge the “pregnant possibilities” that exist in all of us, because God decided to decisively enter the world and become flesh and dwell among us. Let us contemplate those things, as we come again to celebrate and acknowledge what God did, collaborating with Mary a long time ago, and not forget what God intends to do in collaborating with us, as well.
To celebrate Christmas, is to celebrate not just a birth, but the pregnant possibilities in all of us: possibilities that our living can be changed for the better; possibilities that we can carry the Spirit of Christ to others; possibilities that we will discover new yearnings and new ways to participate with God. As we recall Mary’s story, and what we think was an emphatic: “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word;” let us ponder not just the holiday that is coming upon us, but also the power of God that works with us and among us. Let us celebrate, not just a festive remembrance of an occasion long ago, but the ability for us to say emphatically, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” And we should know that our living is not the same, because we celebrate the God who came into the world as one of us, to transform and transfigure how we live—so that we live not just for ourselves, but for others.
--+ AMEN.
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