December 21, 10:30am (Sare Gordy)
In the modern media, angels are pretty - disarmingly so. According to Hollywood angels are beautiful, attractive, and they just instantly draw you in. They smell of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies. Not so, it would seem, with the angels of God. Perhaps they’re beautiful - I wouldn’t want to rule that out - but still, I think they must be terrifying, too, or the first words out of their mouths, nearly every time we see one wouldn’t have to be: 'Don’t be afraid.' Maybe throwing in an 'I come in peace,' for good measure.
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Trinity Church Sermons
4 Advent, Year B
December 21, 2008
The Rev. Sare Gordy
“She Sat Alone”
***
She sat alone in her room when the angel came
(or was it a vision?
A hallucination?
Did someone walk into her room?
Was she expecting them?
Did he frighten the life out of her?
He must have, because the first words out of his mouth
Were,)
Greetings, favored one, God is with you,
Said the angel
And just like you or I,
She was confused.
Who is this strange person
Who had accosted me as I go about my life?
How did he get in here?
What does he want from me?
He shouldn’t be in here.
My father is going to be angry
My mother will cry
I hope Joseph doesn’t find out
Does this man want to ruin my reputation,
Coming to visit me alone?
What sort of stranger accosts someone
With words like that?
Greetings, favored one, God is with you.
Is he some sort of prophet?
I hope the Romans don’t find out
They seem to be interested in this area
And I don’t want to cause trouble for my family
But then there is an interruption
To her perplexity -
Don’t be afraid, said the angel.
(And I’ve always wondered about that, you know?
In the modern media, angels are pretty
Disarmingly so
According to Hollywood
Angels are beautiful, attractive, and they just instantly draw you in
Not so, it would seem, with the angels of God
Perhaps they’re beautiful
I wouldn’t want to rule that out
But still, I think they must be terrifying, too,
Or the first words out of their mouths,
Nearly every time we see one
Wouldn’t have to be:
Don’t be afraid.
Maybe throwing in a
I come in peace,
For good measure.
Don’t be afraid, said the angel
The angel Gabriel,
The man who walked into her room
Without so much as an ‘excuse me,
Is Mary, the betrothed of Joseph at home?’
Don’t be afraid, said the vision,
The hallucination,
The intruder,
The prophet.)
And then the rest of the words pour out
You have found favor with God
You will conceive in your womb
You will bear a son
You will name him Jesus,
He will be great.
He will be called the Son of the Most High.
The Lord God will give him the throne of David.
He will reign over the house of Jacob, forever.
His kingdom will have no end.
Stunned, as anyone might be,
Perhaps it was normal for her mind to snap
To the practical, the immediate
For immediate it would be:
Her life would be forfeit
When word got out
That she cheated on her fiancé.
And so she asks,
How can this be, since I am a virgin?
(Which brings up the question:
Does Mary need to be a virgin
For this story to be true?
Does the conception need to be a miracle
For Jesus to have any merit?
And which would have been a greater miracle
At the time?
For Mary to be a virgin, and pregnant,
Remembering that every Caesar worth his salt
Was the product of a virgin birth,
Or was the larger miracle
The fact that Joseph didn’t demand his rights
To have her stoned to death?
Was the larger miracle
The fact that on the eve of dimissing her back
Back to her family to live in shame, but at least to live
Joseph has his own vision
His own angelic eye-opening
Saying,
Marry her anyway.
The boy will need a father.
And whether it was a strange quirk of divine intervention
This virgin birth thing
Recorded, as you see, in more traditions than just our own,
Or whether it was an historical plot device
Intended to do as it did:
Point out with a neon sign worthy of the Las Vegas strip
The one single fact:
This is a Very Important Person being born!
The point is well made, virgin or no virgin:
Something rather phenomenal is about to happen.
Something rather phenomenal is about to happen.
And Mary is called to play a part in it
Someone needs to
And that day is her day.
And after not too much conversation,
Mary says, okay.
And this makes me think of us, here, today
On the cusp of Christmas,
But despite what the radio stations would have us believe
Despite how malls and commercials and TV specials want us to feel
We’re not there yet.
We’re in the highly unpopular period of waiting before Christmas,
And have you noticed?
Patience, and the ability to wait with grace
Is not highly prized in our society just at present.
And yet,
That is just what Mary had to do
Wait.
Wait, as she began to show
Wait, and wonder if Joseph was going to call her out
Out in front of everyone to assert his rights
To have her killed
Wait, traveling to her cousin Elisabeth
To live and wait
And wait
And wait
And wait
Until Joseph comes to collect her,
To go be counted in a census
Travelling in the worst possible time
In winter, nine months pregnant
As big as a whale, and all her joints hurt
And her first birth – away from her mother
And sisters
And cousins,
Everyone who could have lent a hand
Smoothed her brow
And told her to push
Been there, in case something bad happens
If the baby is breech, or malformed, or not breathing…
In case something happened to her
Until finally, it’s late
It’s dark
The contractions are coming closer now
And she’s stuck with the cows
And a fiancé who has never once birthed a child
Did she know that ahead of time, I wonder?
Did the Angel Gabriel let just a hint of it slip?
Would she have said yes if she’d known any of it?
Did she have even a gut feeling about the manger
Or the fact that when full grown her son’s senses would leave him
And he’d start preaching for God and against the Romans
Who would then kill him for his effort?
Did she have a sense that at some point in history
She herself would be deified?
But that few would remember her fear, her patience,
Or her ability to wait with grace,
Her ability to wait without knowing,
Her ability to wait with acceptance
As the plan unfolded around her
And then, when the moment is right,
To step into the dance and take her part?
We could learn a lot from her example:
Listen for the voice of God
Talk, and ask the questions that you have
Accept the role you’ve been asked to play
Wait with grace until the time is ripe
And then enter the dance when the music starts
And act out the role you’ve been called for
And then… the world begins to change.
The world changes, because we have
Listened
Talked
Accepted
Waited
And then Danced
And that… that is exactly what we are all going to be doing
As a community
Just after Christmas.
In the month of January,
As a community we are going gather together in small groups
We are going to listen to one another
And listen to the voice of God in our midst
And we are going to talk, and ask our own questions
And the subject will be this:
How is God calling us to name and heal the wounds of injustice?
And between us all, throughout all of our meetings, all of our gatherings,
The voice of God will be heard.
There are times when God is heard in the stillness, in the silence,
And there are other times,
Times like these,
When God is heard in the cacophony of community
And the only way to hear God’s voice with integrity,
In community,
Is to gather as much of us together as can be found and to listen
And to talk.
And so, we will.
And then, at our Annual Meeting in the beginning of February,
We’ll see what came of the meetings
And we’ll begin to accept
What we are called, as a community, to do
And then… we will wait.
We will wait as we become focused
We will wait as our tasks become distilled
We will wait as the work before us grows and develops,
Like a child in the womb,
Day by day
Becoming more defined,
And then, when the time is right
We will step out into the world and dance
We will name and heal the wounds of injustice around us
We will step into the dance for which we’ve been selected
And the world will be different,
The world will be better,
For us having been in it,
For us having
Listened
Talked
Accepted
Waited
And finally, danced.
Amen.
