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How many of you remember where you
were when you heard the announcement of the attack on Pearl Harbor? A few. How many remember where you
were when you heard the announcement of the death of President Roosevelt? When you heard the announcement
of the death of President Kennedy? More of you, in each case.
How many of you remember where you were when you first heard the announcements of the big events
of last year and this year -- the announcements of airplanes crashing into the World Trade Center and
the Pentagon, of the collapse of Enron, of snipers in Maryland and Virginia and Washington?
How many of you remember where you were when your first heard the news that the angel Gabriel
brought to Mary? One.
How much press will Gabriel's announcement get this year? Very little. It's interesting, isn't
it, what claims our attention and holds it. Yet Gabriel's news is by far the most stunning. "The
mystery, which for endless ages has been kept secret, is about to be revealed," the angel says. "The Word
which has been with God from the beginning is about to become flesh in you, Mary. He will be your child;
he will take a human form and live a human life among us here in Galilee, and in Colorado Springs."
It's easy to miss Gabriel's announcement, because it doesn't take place at a press conference or
in a board room or on TV. It happens in obscurity, in a bedroom perhaps, or out in a field somewhere. In
any case, it takes place in private, just Gabriel and Mary alone, just the angel of God, alone, speaking
to Mary's heart.
"How can this be?" asked Mary.
Mary asks the question we all ask about what we do not understand: How can this be? How can it
be that on the very same day Japan would negotiate with one hand and attack with the other? How can it be
that Lee Harvey Oswald would take a rifle and kill President Kennedy? How can it be that some people
despise us so much that they are willing to take their own lives in order to kill us? How can it be that
a man and a child are so deranged or angry that they ambush thirteen people in Maryland and Virginia and
the nation's capital?
How can it be that someone kills his whole family in Colorado Springs? How can it be that so
many of our children live with fear and without fathers? How can it be that the rich get richer and the
poor get poorer, while the mighty and the proud sit on their thrones?
There are, of course, proximate reasons for all these things, and perhaps even a few proximate
answers to our question. Maybe there are even a few proximate solutions.
Maybe taking the guns off the streets would reduce the number of murders. Maybe, sadly, teachers
wearing bullet-proof vests, as they do in some of our cities now, will save a few lives in our schools.
Maybe a Homeland Intelligence Agency would prevent some terror. Maybe.
Maybe schools and government agencies will produce some proximate answers and solutions to the
question, "Why? How can it be that these things happen in the world?"
But there is a deeper "Why?" -- a deeper "How can this be?" -- which is never asked, and
certainly never answered, by government or by school. There is a reason for all the things we read about
in the papers every day, a reason behind all the things that concern us in our own lives and families.
How can all this be? It's because of sin, of course, that deeper reality of human life of which the Bible
is the transcript, a record that reaches back into our history at least 4,000 years and that reaches so
deep into our souls and psyches that we have hardly begun to plumb the depths of it.
As Chesterton or Mark Twain or somebody said about the doctrine of original sin, "I don't
understand why so many people have trouble believing the doctrine of original sin; it's the only religious
doctrine that can be empirically verified." The Scriptures name what the newspapers record.
But now comes -- again this year, and once again in obscurity -- now comes again the angel
with his announcement. Now comes the angel, once again this year with his news for the Virgin Mary in the
privacy of her heart and mind, and now comes the angel, once again this year with his news for you and me
in the privacy of our hearts and minds. "Rejoice, you who enjoy God's favor!" he says. "The Lord is with
you."
Gabriel is sent by God again this year, again today, to announce it again, once again in the
obscurity of this parish church and other parish churches, and probably in some other wildernesses
somewhere, and in some prison cells, perhaps, and in some other solitary hearts as well. But don't look
for this announcement in the newspaper. Don't wait to see it on TV or to hear it on NPR, because it's not
news about the proximate solutions to the proximate questions the media deal with. It's news about the
ultimate reality of who we are and who we can be:
"Rejoice, you who enjoy God's favor! The Lord is with you. God's Word is coming to take human
form and to live a human life among us. And he has chosen you, Mary -- and you George, and you Jack,
and you Jill; God has chosen you to bear his Son, his saving Word, his gracious Light, to the world."
And again this year Mary asks her question, and once again we ask it with her, "How can this
be?"
And once again from the heavens, though once again not from the newspapers or TV, but only from
the angels, comes the reply: "Because." Because, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer reminds us, "in the holy child
of Bethlehem, the life of the world that is to come has come into the life of the world that is." Because
"God loves the world so much, that he sends his Word and his Light to be born in the world that is as the
child of God, so that all who accept him might become children of God in the world that is. For God sends
his Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that through him the world might be saved."
Jesus's coming into the world that is, Jesus, born of the Spirit and of the flesh of Mary in
Bethlehem, Jesus, the Word and Light of God made flesh, is not a remedy for sin in the sense that sin is
removed from the world by his coming. All we have to do is recall yesterday's headlines and look deep
into our own lives to know that's not true. That sin continues to exist can be proven by the evidence in
the newspapers and by an honest search of one's own soul and life. After all, the Word and Light of God
had no sooner been born in Bethlehem than Herod sent out his troops to wreak terror on every child under
two years of age with his evil design to destroy the one who carried the power to topple his throne. No,
sin remains alive and well in the world that is.
But why? How can this be, if the Word and Light of God are here now?
Why, in the child of Bethlehem, did the life of the world that is to come come into the life of
the world that is and not abolish sin? Why didn't he come into the world that is to wipe out sin from the
world that is? Why didn't he come to make it impossible for someone to shoot someone else? Why didn't he
come to make it impossible for some people to live in poverty while others live in prosperity? Why didn't
he come to make it impossible for someone to kill the innocents? Why didn't he come to make it impossible
for nations to go to war with each? Why didn't he come to make it impossible for you and me to sin? Why
didn't he come to make the world morally perfect?
But we know the answer, of course, as soon as we ask the question. Because, for God to wipe out
sin for us would be manipulation, not freedom. It would bring magic, not religion. It would mean death,
not life. And the child of Bethlehem is the Son of the God of freedom and life.
In Jesus, in the child of Bethlehem, God sends the Word and Light that has been with God from the
beginning into the world that is now, not to remove sin from the world that is, but to give us a way to
deal with it. Not to make it impossible for us to sin, but to give us a new way to live in the world that
is.
Have you looked closely at the stable in Bethlehem? If you look closely at the light which the
star of Bethlehem shines down on Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus, you will see that the light striking
the stable throws the shadow of a cross across the world that is. Jesus, and Mary too, will suffer.
God loved the world that is so much that he sent his Word and Light to live in the flesh among us,
not to remove sin from the world that is, but to provide us with the Word and the Light we need to live in
the world that is the way he lived in the world that is, to provide us with the Word and the Light we need
to forgive in the world that is as he forgives in the world that is and to die to the world that is as he
died to the world that is, so that we might know the world that is to come as he knows the world that is
to come.
That's the stunning news the angel brings again this day, again this year, in the obscurity of
this parish church, and in others. It doesn't answer any of our proximate questions, and it doesn't solve
any of our problems. Answering our proximate questions and solving our problems is not God's job; it's
our job.
But the angel's announcement and the shadow of love we see being thrown by the star and the stable
do give us a new and different way of hearing the questions and of seeing the problems. They herald a
cruciform way for the world that is. They herald the way the child of Bethlehem would later walk as the
man in Galilee and Jerusalem. They herald the life of the Cross, the way of compassion and love.
Gabriel's news is the greatest gift you can receive this Christmas, and the greatest gift you can
give.
But as Frederick Buechner reminds us, people see only what they expect to see. And, as Ann Weems
adds, "in [every] heart [there] lies a Bethlehem, an inn where [each of us] must ultimately answer whether
there is room or not." So whether we here this morning see and hear the angel's news in our own lives
today all depends, doesn't it? It depends, as Sophy Burnham says, upon the cut of our eye and the cup of
our ear, because "the mystery comes as the shadow that hovers at the corner of our eye. And when we turn
to look -- it has vanished, though [still] beckoning to our hearts. ...How is it seen? Sometimes it
enters slowly into consciousness like mist, seeping into you over the course of a lifetime. Or perhaps it
comes as an angel's touch: invisible hands, a vision, a series of miraculous small coincidences that
cannot be ignored...." (The Ecstatic Journey, 1997)
Sometimes, perhaps, the mystery comes as an event, or in story:
The soldier was ending sentry duty on Christmas morning. At home, he always worshipped at his
parish church on Christmas Day, but here in the outlying areas of London during the war in the world that
is that wasn't possible. So, with a couple of his friends, just as dawn was breaking, the soldier walked
down the road toward the city.
Before long, they came upon an old graystone building. Over the building's entrance were carved
the words, "Saint Anne's Orphanage."
Now Saint Anne was the mother of Mary. And the soldiers decided to knock and see what kind of
celebration might be taking place inside, and to see if they might join it.
A Sister answered their knock and explained that the children there were war orphans whose parents
had been killed in the bombings. The soldiers went inside just as the children were tumbling out of bed,
but there was no Christmas tree, and there were no presents, not in that year of the world that is.
The soldiers moved around the room, wishing the children a Merry Christmas and giving as gifts
whatever they had in their pockets -- a stick of chewing gum, a mint, a small coin, a pencil or a knife,
a good luck charm.
One soldier noticed a little boy standing alone in the corner. He looked a lot like his own
nephew back home, and he went over to the little boy and asked, "And you, little guy, what do you want for
Christmas?" And the little boy replied, "Will you hold me?"
And the soldier picked up the boy and nestled him in his arms, and, with tears in his eyes, he
held him close.
That's what the Word and the Light made flesh who is the life of the world that is to come brings
for you and me in the world that is.
Go out this Christmas, and this year, into the world that is, and do likewise, where you will find
the world that is to come.
In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. |