4 Advent B - 21 December 2008

4 Advent B - 21 December 2008
2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16; Romans 16:25-27; Luke 1:26-38
James V. Stockton

Christmas Day is almost here. After three more days, people will be right here or somewhere else similar celebrating the birth of Jesus in song and worship and prayer. Shortly thereafter, they will awake to that morning that has that special hush, perhaps to that nostalgic sweetness of childhood memories, perhaps to that bittersweet recollection of loved ones now no longer here to celebrate Christmas with them, but whose memories and love still ring true on that most special day. In most every case, Christmas Day will be just that: it will be special and precious and touched with the Love of God for all.

But before people arrive at this annual taste of the intoxicating Love of God, whose intoxication, by the way, they could not experience apart from the Love of God come near enough for them to hold - before Christmas Day arrives, the Church’s season of Advent invites people to pause one moment more, long enough to consider the preparations long ago that led to what would be the first day ever to celebrate the birth of Jesus.


Is it possible that God has had to search for untold generations through untold masses of people, until finding the person who chooses, and chooses freely, to welcome the responsibility of caring for the incarnation of God’s own Love? Who on earth has the capacity to accept into his life or hers the perfection of love itself? Who is capable, really, of welcoming within herself or himself most literally, Wisdom itself of godly proportions? Who is truly able to offer up himself or herself as a vessel for the emergence into the world around them of the personification of holiness and godliness of life? And setting that aside, who is able simply to find the person who is capable of all this?

The Gospel writer tells us that it all begins for Mary in the sixth month. Luke is referring to something about which he has written in the passage immediately preceding ours for today. There, he describes a couple who are elderly beyond the usual age at which they would expect to become parents. He writes of how God sends to the husband an angel, the same angel Gabriel, to announce that the couple is soon to have a son.

The man Zechariah is understandably skeptical, and asks the angel, ‘How can I be sure?’ Gabriel responds by taking away Zechariah’s ability to speak until the child is born. Who knows, but it may be God’s way of making sure that Zechariah will dwell upon this question, being the last one that he will ask for quite a while.

The wife and mother-to-be is Elizabeth, who is also cousin to Mary. Elizabeth’s son will be forerunner to the child now promised to Mary. Her son will be John the Baptist, cousin to Mary’s son, Jesus. ‘How will it be that I will have a son?’ asks Mary, ‘since I am a virgin and not yet married, much less a mother?’ ‘Your cousin Elizabeth,’ replies the angel, ‘even in her old age, is about to have a baby.’ ‘For the will of God,’ says Gabriel, ‘everything is possible; nothing is beyond the power of God to accomplish.’ ‘And so,’ Gabriel continues, ‘it is possible, now, Mary, for you to bring into this world, the Son of God Most High, heir to the throne of King David, and Savior and Redeemer of the world.’

But is she able? God seeks welcome into the heart of what it is to be human. Yes, in theory God could break in upon our world; but in reality God would not do so. God would not use force to compel the world to accommodate God’s power and will. Instead, God would come only when humanity is able and willing to say ‘yes’ to the miracle and mystery of God.

And so, who could know how long the world must wait until that welcome would be found? Who can know if perhaps God sent the angel Gabriel on a perpetual mission seeking around the world and across time a heart to welcome home the Love of God in person? Does God know that Gabriel’s search is over? Does God know before Gabriel arrives that Mary will say, ‘yes,’? God surely knows what is in Mary’s heart, just as surely as God knows what beats in the heart of every woman, man, and child. But, does God know with certainty what Mary’s answer will be? Or does God leave it to Mary freely to choose?

Advent asks us to pause just a little longer, and ask ourselves: who is truly able to offer up oneself as a vessel for the emergence into the world around them of the Love of God for all in person? Who is able simply to find the person who is capable of doing this? Would an angelic vision change me, or change you? Who can really say? Possibly it would. But just as possibly, you or I might dismiss the event as a dream, as the after-affect of a bad piece of fish, or we might convince ourselves or those around us that we’ve gone completely mad.

Who is able? Or who is able merely to find one who is able? The angel Gabriel finds the Virgin Mary. And in Mary God finds the welcome that God and heaven have long desired. And for all the glories of a Temple for God, the likes of which King David wants to build, as we hear today in the reading from the Second Book of Samuel, yet far more fit for God than any Temple never built by the ancient King David or ever built by the great King Solomon, God finds a place to dwell in the heart of Mary.

And Gabriel’s appearance does not automatically change Mary. To the contrary, Mary changes only because Mary is able to say, ‘yes.’ Mary is capable and accepts her call. Mary has the capacity to become in herself a bridge between the absolute magnificence of God and her own wondrous complexities and those of all the human race. Mary is capable of allowing the message of God and its messenger first to disrupt her world, and then to order it again. The capacity is there always, and so Mary isn’t changed by the appearing of the angel. At the same time, at the appearing of the angel, everything is changed for Mary.


Christmas Day is nearly here with us, now. But Advent begs us to pause just a bit longer to allow the coming of Jesus to hold our attention, that we might find within ourselves that capacity to allow God’s presence to disorder our lives and to orient them again around God’s Love for us and for all. Advent invites us to pause just long enough to discover that God’s preparations include you and me, that God is preparing us to be always who we are in Christ Jesus, even while all around us everything is changing, and everything is changed.

Advent asks us to wait just one moment more, that we may recognize ourselves as God’s people being prepared as messengers sent by God. If not by name yet still by function God is sending you or me to be someone’s angel. In all that we do and do not do, in all that we say and do not say, you and I are announcing the person of God now born to them and to anyone who has the capacity simply to hear the mystery, to witness its beauty, to welcome the utter joy of it.

Together in person, in prayer, in work and in play, you and I are in this way together with God. In this way is Jesus continually brought into this world more tangibly, more audibly, more visibly, more meaningfully. You and I and God’s people everywhere are giving new birth to God’s Love for all into the world around us.

Soon after the angel’s visit, Mary would be caring for her new born son. Advent invites to pause and recognize that we also are caring for God’s Love, born within us; that we also are raising up God’s Love in one another; that on Christmas Day, yes, but also the day after, and the day after that, we are nurturing God’s Love in the lives around us, and setting it free to find its way in those whom God leads us to find. And that they also are becoming, with us, new mothers of God’s Love, making each day a day most special, a day ringing true and sweetly, a day with God’s Love born again in Jesus, and looking and sounding especially like you and me.

And now, may Almighty God, by whose great mercy we are given renewal of mind, refreshment of body, and vitality in spirit, grant that we be numbered among all faithful people, now and at the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit, One God, for ever and ever. Amen.

© 2008, James V. Stockton