Fear, Favor, Peace: Luke 1:26-38
Advent II
In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God
to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name
was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. And he came to
her and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” But she was much
perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. The
angel said to her, “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. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the
Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the
house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” Mary said to
the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” The angel said to her, “The Holy
Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you;
therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. And now,
your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the
sixth month for her who was said to be barren. For nothing will be impossible with
God.” Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according
to your word.” Then the angel departed from her. (NRSV)
When I was a kid, Christmas meant my
father going every week to rehearsals for Handel’s Messiah. When I was in college, it was my turn; I’ve
sung the work probably six or seven times at this point. I was listening to it while writing this sermon,
actually, because for me it just doesn’t feel like the Christmas season until I
heard the opening cascades of strings and the shimmers of overlapped “amens” whose
rhythms I have never yet been able to get right when I sing it. I can do a goodly chunk of it from memory,
even the pieces I’ve never sung, because the music is as bound to the idea of
Christmas for me as getting a tree or the rhythm of lighting Advent candles. I’m sure I’ll sing in the work again someday,
going off to my own rehearsals every week.
What are some habits
or rituals or must-haves that shape your Christmas celebrations?
At this point
in the Christmas narrative, Mary’s life is full of habits and traditions. Sure, her cousin is weirdly pregnant at an improbably
age, but Mary is moving through the life of being betrothed to Joseph, waiting
for him to prepare the house in which they will live together, working with her
family to get together all of the odds and ends of building this new family like
everyone one in Nazareth, like the generations before her whose stories she’s
heard over and over from her parents.
There is not a whole lot that’s unexpected happening.
And then there
is Gabriel. It’s a common feature of
angelic appearances in Scripture that they have to say, “Don’t be afraid.” Some people joke about this because of the
reality of the Seraphim being terrifying, multi-eyed creatures, but I think it’s
more about the fact that there’s a whole other conversational partner who’s suddenly
right there. Did Gabriel use the
door when he met with Mary? I doubt
it. Corporality, and all that. And instead of saying hello like a normal person,
he says, “Greetings! The Lord is with
you!”
Well,
actually, in the Greek of the original Scriptures, Gabriel says, “Χαῖρε!”[1] This is indeed a
way to greet people, sort of the way British folk will say “cheers” these days,
but the root meaning is “rejoice”. Paul
uses it over and over in his letters in exhortation to the fledgling Church to
rejoice in the goodness of the God Who calls them.[2] “Be glad,” says Gabriel, “for God has found
favor with you.
I
do not tend to be particularly grateful to people who disrupt my rhythms. I’m a pretty pattern-bound guy, which is
funny in the job of a pastor where every day is an entirely new schedule that
usually changes twice by lunch. But I
don’t like surprises. I like the comfort
of familiarity, and Mary may have also; what we do know is that she wasn’t doing
a lot of rejoicing with this random angel in her living room. She was, Luke tells us, “perplexed” as to
what on earth—or in Heaven—Gabriel meant.
She’s a random girl in a nowhere town just trying to live her life; why
on earth would God have favored her?
We
don’t get that particular answer in Luke’s account, but we do get Gabriel’s invitation
to be part of something that is decidedly not a tradition; the incarnation of
God, the Son of the most High named Jesus, Whose kingdom will have no end. Not bad for a kid from Nazareth.
And
perhaps the greatest miracle of this story is that Mary says, “Yes.” Yes, I will disrupt any chance at a normal
life; yes, I will trust this person who just appeared in the living room and
the God Who sent him; yes, I will bear this decidedly untraditional child and
love Him and keep Him safe until He grows into His reign over the house of
Jacob.
Here
on the second Saturday of Advent, we light the candle for peace in a decidedly
not peaceful world. We speak of and pray
for peace with this story of a girl in Nazareth taking the disrupted peace of
her day—of her entire life’s course—and saying, “Yes.” It has become tradition for us to hear this
story, to hear this response, to nod to each other and say that of course Mary
accepted this favor, of course she did not need to be afraid. For this moment, though, can we step back and
remember just how deeply strange this story is? How sensible and understandable it would have
been for Mary to say, “No, thank you strange man, I have other plans”? How glorious it is that God promised a young
woman in a nowhere town that she would be part of one of the most incredible
stories in history and then delivered on the promise such that we can
fold it into our holiday traditions thousands of years later with Handel’s
oratorios?
And
how important it is that all of this started with an invitation? God sent a messenger—angelos, angel,
the Greek word for messenger—to tell Mary this could happen through her. We are in an Advent series about the angels
among us, and one of the things angels do is pull us into new things. Perhaps it’s a friend inviting you to a dinner
out with friends where you meet the love of your life; perhaps it’s a colleague
nudging you to actually try for the promotion; perhaps it’s the family member
who gave you the book that changed what you wanted to do with your life when
you were young. Perhaps it’s the one who
would sing snatches of Messiah in the kitchen for two months until music
thrummed in your bones and you spend a lifetime giving it room to unfurl. It may not be someone announcing that you
shouldn’t be afraid, that God has found favor with you, but it is a
change. When have there been moments
when an angel prodded you onto a different path than the one you had envisioned?
We
also gather on this Saturday to take communion.
This may be another habit, a repeated ritual that is simply part of
doing church at the beginning of the month.
I encourage you, however, to come to this as though it is new, as though
it is the sudden appearance of a messenger of God saying hello, rejoice, God
favors you, you are invited into something new and frightening and with so much
capacity for peace because we trust the God Who calls us. We trust the God about Whom we sing.
And
maybe we can even find peace in the terror of a surprise. May it be so.
Amen.
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