Advent 4: The Annunciation, Luke 1:26-38
December 18, 2005
Rev. Este Gardner Cantor

Six months before our Gospel story of today took place, Gabriel the Angel of the Lord went on another very similar errand. Zechariah, the husband of Mary’s cousin Elizabeth, was startled to see the Angel appear at his elbow while he was offering incense at the altar. The Angel Gabriel assured Zechariah that his aged wife would bear a child. He told him a few practical details, such as the fact that the child must never drink wine or strong drink because he was already filled with the Holy Spirit and that the child would ready many people to receive the Lord. When Zechariah doubted the word of the Angel, he was immediately struck dumb, and remained so until the moment his son was born and Zechariah named him John. The Gospel of Matthew starts its infancy narrative with a nod to the book of Genesis – Abraham begetting Isaac, who begat Jacob, followed by all the other begats. But in the Gospel of Luke, rather than naming Abraham and Sarah, Luke paints their portrait in the persons of Zechariah and Elizabeth – the only other elderly couple miraculously blessed with a son in the whole of the Bible. And the only place in the Old Testament that The Angel Gabriel appears (also at the altar and also striking the unfortunate viewer mute) is in the book of Daniel, toward the end of the cannon of the Hebrew Bible. Thus Luke seems to encompass the whole span of the Old Testament scriptures in his opening story.

After six months, as the Gospel says, Gabriel now approaches a young and unmarried Jewish girl named after the sister of Moses. Fortunately for young Miriam of Nazareth, Gabriel behaves in a more gentlemanly manner with her, and rather than strike her dumb when she questions him, he patiently explains the impossible. He says that she will conceive the son of God by the Holy Spirit. And in case she still doesn’t believe him, he points out that her aged cousin Elizabeth, who was known to be barren, was six months pregnant, for nothing will be impossible with God.

Mary, when she visits her cousin Elizabeth, exquisitely echoes the song of Hannah, the mother of Samuel. Hannah’s joyful song of the raising up of the lowly and the blessing of barren women described her own triumph in the birth of her son. All these Old Testament references underline what Luke presents as the miraculous fulfillment of the ancient prophesy. In the words of Isaiah:

The people who have walked in darkness have seen a great light. Those who lived in a land of deep darkness – on them light has shined… For a child has been born to us, a son given to us.

I can never hear the story of the Annunciation without thinking of the seven Gabriels and the seven Blessed Virgin Marys that I have rehearsed for seven wonderful Christmas pageants here All Souls Church. For some reason is it easier for me to see the miraculous in the faces of those seven Angels of the Lord and seven Blessed Virgins than it is when I read the Holy Scriptures. These Angels of the Lord and these blessed Virgin Marys have greeted each other for seven years. Typically Mary screams and falls down to the floor when she sees the angel. The Gabriels all gamely say, “Do not be afraid Mary, for you will conceive in your womb and bear a son.” Often I am aware that Gabriel has no idea what so ever what “conceive in your womb” actually means, but they boldly go on, in blind faith and say it with sacred conviction.

The meaning of the incarnation has developed slowly over the years for me. I do not have the blind, accepting, miraculous faith of a child, and so I stumble on. When I first came back to the church, I approached Jesus (although he was loudly calling out my name) with great caution and suspicion. I was eased back into the fold only because I read a book by Marcus Borg and felt assured that I could accept Jesus of Nazareth, the historical Jesus, and I had to go no further. I was truly “Meeting Jesus again for the first Time” which is the title of the book. Borg talked about what the human Jesus – the “Pre-Easter Jesus” must have been like. What extraordinary eyes he must have had, how brilliant his language skills were, how passionately wedded to justice and compassion he was. The book barely deals with what he calls the “Post-Easter Jesus,” a term I now find woefully lacking to describe the risen Christ. But at first this was helpful to me. When faced with the incarnation, with the divinity of Jesus, I just didn’t want to go there. But slowly, I began to perceive a curious image seemingly just out of my peripheral vision whenever I thought of the incarnation. I seemed to see brilliant rays of light emanating from something which refused to come into focus front and center, but nonetheless streamed blazingly just beyond the edges of my field of vision. There was a brilliance I couldn’t understand, and could not even fully see, that I began to know was present, nonetheless.

The whole of it still eluded me, but I began to have some sense of the great and overpowering Newness of the incarnation, as expressed so heart-breakingly in the precious newness of the infant Jesus. And I began to understand that the miracle of God’s presence in Jesus Christ has little meaning if we did not relate it to Christ’s presence in us. As I searched for a way to understand the incarnation I also searched for a prayer I could say at waking that would bring this great newness into my life every morning. Upon opening my eyes one anxiety-ridden, guilt-stuffed dawn, I suddenly realized I could simply repeat the words of Paul: “If anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation. Everything old has passed away – behold, all things are become new.” (2 Corinthians)

I finally saw my first flicker of the image of brilliance that had been eluding me, that explosive and irrevocable NEWNESS, blazing right in front of me when I read the words of Father Pierre Tielhard de Chardin:

It is done. Once again the fire has penetrated the earth. Not with the sudden crash of thunderbolt, riving the mountaintops. Does the Master break down doors to enter his own home? Without earthquake or thunderclap the flame has lit up the whole world from within. All things individually and collectively are penetrated and flooded by it, from the inmost core of the tiniest atom to the mighty sweep of the most universal laws of being. (Song to the Earth)

The incarnation causes us – and all things – to be lit up from within. It is as cosmic as the words of this poem and as small and intimate as a morning prayer of newness in Christ. We need only embody the words of Mary “Let it be to me according to your word,” and accept that newness, that utterly forgiving and loving newness, leaving behind the agonies and anxieties of our old life of last night or all the past years. Then we can behold, front and center the great light that will light up our every darkness.

Amen.