Category: Faith

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.

Luke 1:26-38

My sermon from the 4th Sunday of Advent (December 24, 2017) on Luke 1:26-38. Listen to the recording at the bottom of the page or read my manuscript below.

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I think it’s fitting that on this Christmas Eve morning, this fourth Sunday of Advent, we are spending time trying to see Mary. And that word “see” is important. Today’s reading from the gospel according to Luke is known as the Annunciation: the moment when the angel Gabriel tells Mary about what God has in store for her. The passage tells us the general location where this event is taking place and who is there but that’s about it. We don’t know where in Nazareth Gabriel met Mary. And the passage doesn’t tell us any details about Gabriel and Mary themselves. We don’t know what they look like or even how old Mary was. Instead, scripture gives us an opportunity to step into this part of the story and imagine this moment for ourselves. For centuries, artists have done just that. And so, if you don’t mind doing something a little different, I’d like to showcase a few pictures of the Annunciation so that we can see how this moment in scripture has inspired artists for centuries.

Pictures in the slideshow
1200px-Fra_Filippo_Lippi – Filippo Lippi,
Annun_angelico_grt – Fra Angelico: The Annunciation
The_Annunciation_MET_DT404 – Luca Giordano
The_Annunciation_MET_DT1469 – Joos van Cleve
C – greek cathederal.com
Dante_Gabriel_Rossetti_-_Ecce_Ancilla_Domini!_-_Google_Art_Project
The Annunciation 1898 – by Henry Ossawa Tanner
Unknown Artist
Annunciation-patricia-brintle – Patricia Brintle
The Annunciation by John Collier

Now some of those images might have been familiar to you. They might resemble what we imagine this scene to be like. But other painting might have surprised you. Several of the images showed Mary reading a book. The book is usually identified as the book of Isaiah, implying that Mary was literate, educated, and that angel found her in a moment of prayer and study. Other pictures showed Mary in the dark of her bedroom or even while she was still in bed, at the moment when she was waking up. Some of the Marys had the white skin of Northern Europeans. Others were olive, brown, and black. Some artists depicted Mary as a young adult while others imagined her to be the teenager she probably was. Each one of the artist used scripture, their cultures, and their traditions to imagine what it would be like to be a teenager in Nazareth who is suddenly told that she is going to give birth to God.
Now, as Lutherans, I know we don’t usually spend a lot of time with Mary. Her appearances in scripture is limited so we don’t hear her voice very often in Sunday morning. We spend time with Mary usually only during this season – when it’s almost Christmas. We give her a voice in our Christmas pageants and in the carols we sing. We talk about her, about how she’s going to give birth in a barn, and we sort of downplay the rest of her 9 months of pregnancy. We place Mary in our nativity sets and creches, with her hands folded in prayer. But she sort of sits in the back, behind everyone else, behind even Jesus. We place her there and then just let her be. In many ways, we spend this Christmas season letting Mary be a passive participant in her own birth story.

But is she really as passive as we make her to be?

There are two other images of Mary that expand her story for me. And each one appears takes place while the baby inside Mary grows. The first one is this one, an image of Mary based on the song we just sang. She’s standing tall, her foot is crushing the serpent from the Garden of Eden, and she doesn’t look pregnant. Mary sings her song while visiting her cousin Elizabeth. Elizabeth is more than six months pregnant with her own son who will become John the Baptist. But while everyone knows Elizabeth is pregnant, Mary doesn’t yet show. I imagine that Mary, in this moment, is in her first trimester. She’s in the part of her pregnancy where miscarriages are common. Mary can be quiet at this stage but she knows what’s going on. She knows what God is doing. And she sings about who God is, who God loves, and what God’s justice is all about. The second image is one I discovered recently, first created in 2003 by a Trappistine nun in Iowa. The image shows Mary when she is very pregnant. She can’t hide what’s going on anymore. But she doesn’t need to. Instead, she’s everything who she chooses to be – and she’s in this image, consoling Eve. Her foot again is on the head of the serpent because, through her, God is moving us past our sins. Her son, this Jesus, will be the one who will take this broken world and unite it with its creator. And this Messiah, this Savior, this king of all kings, is being nourished, carried, and cared for by this young woman who is someone that the people in Nazareth could not see as ever being the mother of God. In these last two images, Mary is exactly who she’s supposed to be: she knows who she carries inside her; she knows who God is; she knows that’ll she’ll be Jesus’ mom; and she chooses to be an active participant in what God is doing in the world. She doesn’t know the details about Jesus’ story – but she does know that, through Jesus, God is blessing the world. And God wanted Mary to be a necessary part of what God is bringing about.

Many of the images of the Annunciation focus on the moment when the angel first show ups. They dwell on the angel’s arrival, Mary’s wonder and confusion, and her confession: “how can this be?” But it doesn’t take very long before Mary is saying, “Here I am; let it be.” Mary doesn’t know exactly where God will be taking her but she does know that God will be changing the world through her. And as she grows and changes, her son, this son of God, is nourished and loved and changes too. It is impossible for Mary to be passive participant in the Jesus story because Jesus is literally a part of her for 9 months. And as Jesus grows, so does she. Mary shows us that Jesus and our faith are truly gifts that we are given. But this gift doesn’t mean that we are a passive participant in our own faith story. We are, like Mary, invited to move from “how can this be?” to “Here am I, the servant of the Lord.” God has decided that it’s through people, through actual human beings, that God will honor, bless, and love the world. We are, like Mary, called to keep Jesus close. We are, like Mary, called to carry Jesus wherever we go. We are, like Mary, called to listen to the angels God puts in our path. And we are, like Mary, called to sing and work for justice in our neighborhood and in our world. We are, like Mary, called to be the ones through whom God will bless the world.

Amen.

Send the Rich Away – Ben Wildflower https://www.etsy.com/shop/BenWildflower
Mary Consoling Eve – A sister from Trappistine Monks in Iowa made this

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There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light.

This is the testimony given by John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?” He confessed and did not deny it, but confessed, “I am not the Messiah.” And they asked him, “What then? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not.” “Are you the prophet?” He answered, “No.” Then they said to him, “Who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?” He said, “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’” as the prophet Isaiah said. Now they had been sent from the Pharisees. They asked him, “Why then are you baptizing if you are neither the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?” John answered them, “I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.” This took place in Bethany across the Jordan where John was baptizing.

John 1:6-8,19-28

My sermon from Third Sunday of Advent (December 17, 2017) on John 1:6-8,19-28. Listen to the recording at the bottom of the page or read my manuscript below.

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When I was younger, the long string of Christmas lights that wrapped around my Christmas tree sort of scared me. Now, don’t get me wrong – the lights were beautiful to look at. But I never really had a good relationship with the lights themselves. They were always tangled and I was the one assigned to untangle them. I would tested each string of lights and I usually ended up getting a little electric shock while trying to find that one bulb that was burnt out. And when the lights were finally wrapped around the tree, the bulbs would get so hot they would burn me when I accidentally touched them. Old fashion Christmas lights were kind of spooky to me but nowadays, LED Christmas lights are a brand new thing. They come in all sorts of colors; they are incredibly bright; and even though they still get tangled, they at least remain cool to the touch. I really like LED Christmas lights and I know I’m not alone. In fact, it seems like a lot of suburban homeowners are switching their outdoor Christmas lights to LEDs. And this is a good thing because LEDs, in theory, last a long time and use less energy. If, for example, an old fashion string of 100 mini-incandescent lights were turned on and used 12 hours a day for 45 days in a row, that would cost about $3.50 to run. But if you took that string of lights and replaced it with LEDs, the cost to use those lights drops to 41 cents. That’s 1/8th the cost for the same amount of light. We can make our outdoor Christmas lights displays more environmentally friendly and cheaper all at the same time. But some recent studies involving nighttime satellite imagery shows that the transition to outdoor LED Christmas lights is not only about having a less costly electric bill. No, people are using that cost savings to invest in more lights. Because if it costs 1/8th of what it did before to run a new string of lights, it makes sense to get 7 more strings of lights so that you can maximize the your Christmas buck. Our outdoor Christmas light displays are getting bigger and brighter. And if you were up in space and looking down on the United States, you would see the light output in the suburbs increase by 50% during the month of December. And with LEDs now becoming more prevalent, that number grows every year. These new LED lights help us to shine brighter than we ever could before. This is one of the ways, I think, we testify to a truth that we don’t always feel or see. As the nights in our part of the world grow longer and longer, we do the only thing we can do: we flip a switch and throw a little more light into whatever darkness surrounds us.

And flipping that switch – that’s a very Advent thing to do. As we hear in our reading from John today, testifying – shining – witnessing to this light – is what this season is all about. Now, this week is a little odd because we met Mark’s version of John the Baptist last week. And John’s version of the Baptist is a bit different. John’s Baptist spends a lot of time saying no. “No, I’m not Elijah. No, I’m not the prophet. No, I’m not the Messiah. No, I’m not the light.” Instead, what John’s Baptist does is testify. He shares and bares witness to the truth. Mark depicts John the Baptist as a bit of a wild man who is eating bugs out in the desert. But John’s Baptist is a guy who primarily just talks. He shares what he knows and what he has experienced. Over and over again, he breaks the silence that wants him to stay quiet. John’s Baptist keeps talking about God, pointing out to others where God is and where God is active in the world. At every possible moment, he is pointing to that light that he knows is out there. And he does this even though he knows not everyone will believe. Once john’s Baptist tells the truth, he has no control over what other people will say or do once they hear it. He doesn’t get to tell others how they should react. So John’s Baptist just keeps on talking – and he doesn’t let his fear about how other people will respond stop him from telling the truth; the truth that is Jesus – this God in the flesh.
And this kind of testifying, this kind of witnessing, is really hard. It’s hard because keeping silent is sometimes the safest thing we can do. Any time we share a truth or an experience that we’ve had, it’s easy for others to not believe us. How many times have you had your feelings brushed aside after you shared how you felt? How many times were you blamed for that thing that you experienced? Too often, we are told that our feelings or responses to our personal experiences are, somehow, wrong. We’re the ones, we’re told, who misinterpreted what happened to us. We’re the ones who are being too judgmental and our experience wasn’t really that bad and we’re being a little too sensitive. We start believing what others say, learning that we can’t trust our own experiences, and that other people are the only ones allowed to interpret our own story. We discover what it’s like to be disbelieved and, in that process, we lose the ability to tell our own story. We lose a bit of who we are because this shadow that surrounds us has more say over our lives than we do. We end up doubting the truth and we try to cover up whatever light we see.

But the truth is something that always needs to be brought out into the open. When we tell the truth; when we give witness to the light as we know it, we are, in the words of Dr. Karoline Lewis, “[insisting] that [this] light will indeed shine, [overcoming] the darkness that has hidden so much for so long.” This season, this Advent, is more than just a countdown to Christmas. Advent is an opportunity for all of us to flip a switch, to turn on every light, and give witness to the truth that we know. Every experience we’ve had is our experience and the story we tell is a story that has value. Now, I know that not every story will be told. And there are some stories that we might not be ready to share with those around us. And that’s okay. But when we hear someone else’s truth, we are called to protect their truth and believe them. We’re not here to dismiss them. We are here to listen, to learn, to comfort, and – if need be – to change. And if we can, we add a little more light to their story by telling one of our own. We show through our words and actions that they are not alone. Because, as we see in today’s reading from John, testifying to the light – sharing and giving witness to the truth is our Christian calling. It’s what Advent – this time of waiting – this time of anticipation – this time of expecting – is all about. Because Jesus invites us to remember that “our God…moves about this world feeling everything we feel.” Our God is always with us, no matter what. And because God is with us, because God decided to be born, to grow up, and have actual human experiences, our God, our Jesus, will be with you even when telling the truth ends up being the hardest thing you’ve ever done.

Amen.

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