Sermon for 12.18.11

Scriptures for today are Here

Frederick Buechner, in his book Peculiar Treasures, wrote: “She struck the angel Gabriel as hardly old enough to have a child at all, let alone this child, but he’d been entrusted with a message to give her and he gave it. He told her what the child was to be named, and who he was to be, and something about the mystery that was to come upon her. ‘You mustn’t be afraid, Mary,’ he said. And as he said it, he only hoped she wouldn’t notice that beneath the great, golden wings, he himself was trembling with fear to think that the whole future of creation hung now on the answer of a girl.”

We don’t see the angel in our icon of the Annunciation (created by Laura Fisher Smith) – we have no way to know whether Gabriel was truly trembling or not. We see Mary, as she becomes aware of a reality unseen by anyone else. An icon is more than a painting, a decoration – an icon is painted with prayer at every step, from selecting the background material to making the paint to every brushstroke the artist makes.

And therefore an icon is intended to be an aid to prayer – not something you pray to – but something a bit more like an icon on a computer screen. When you click an icon on your computer, a new world opens up. This is what Christian icons are: think of this icon as a passageway between our ordinary everyday reality and the deeper reality that exists around us at all times and places – the reality of God.

In God’s reality, we see Mary as a dark-skinned peasant girl – not yet transformed into the Queen of Heaven in our other icon – but in the moment that she becomes aware of an angel’s presence. In this moment, she herself has become the window, the entryway, the portal between heaven and earth, as angels hold their breath and wait for her reply.

She stands expectantly, hands upraised, bathed in light. Young, dark-haired, she seems to be a young woman poised on the threshold of adulthood, still full of the dreams of childhood. You can imagine what the girl Mary has been dreaming – dreams of the carpenter Joseph, of the new home that awaits her when she marries him, of the large and happy family she hopes will come her way. And maybe she has bigger dreams too – dreams that the Romans who oppress her people, and the Israelite hierarchy that profits from the common people’s distress, will be overthrown, that peace and justice will come to her people so that no one will starve and no one will risk crucifixion by speaking against injustice.

Maybe she dreams of a new world in which the rich and powerful will be brought down and in which God will lift up the lowly. Maybe she dreams of a God who will defeat death and renew all of creation. Maybe she dreams of a new kingdom of God, of possibilities that seem impossible. And maybe it is her sheer openness to impossible dreams that allows her to become aware of the presence of an angel.

We don’t see the angel in our icon – we see only Mary experiencing him: a rush of wings beating around her ears, a sudden warmth that fills her with fear and longing, a light that bathes her in the illumination of angel’s presence. And, as Gabriel and all the angels tremble in anticipation, Mary says yes, and becomes the mother of God, the window that opens up to allow heaven to pour through into our world.

About a year before my first child, Sarah, was born, I had a dream about a little girl who would be my daughter. The little girl in my dream looked a lot like Sarah turned out to be, and she acted a lot like the daughter I eventually had. Maybe that dream was just my own hopes of what a daughter would be like. Or maybe God had a way of letting me see the gift he was bringing me – I don’t know. But I treasured that dream as a picture of my hopes for my daughter.

As mother of our Lord, Mary is more than a passive vessel – she is somehow open to the hopes God has for her and for her child. In the gospel of Luke, Mary is clearly a prophet. A prophet is not someone who foretells the future. A prophet is someone who is a window into a different reality – God’s reality. A prophet sees things with God’s eyes, is able to speak God’s words to us and open up our eyes to God’s reality that exists all around us at all times and places, if only we had eyes to see. A prophet is an icon of God’s kingdom.

So Mary opens her eyes to see what God is doing in her and through her. And then she opens her mouth and begins to sing – the song that we heard in place of the psalm today – the Magnificat, named for its first line in Latin: my soul magnifies the Lord. The Magnificat helps us see the truths that Mary sees with prophet’s eyes, the reality that God wants us to experience, we who are so often blind to God’s reality: that in Jesus, the mighty have been brought down, the humble have been exalted, the hungry have been fed, rich have been sent away empty. She sings that in Jesus, all of God’s promises to Israel have been fulfilled.

The interesting thing about her song is this: with a prophet’s voice, Mary expresses all these things in past tense: these are things God has already accomplished, not things in the future. Well, we can look around our world and ask ourselves – is this true? The mighty have been brought down, the hungry fed, the humble exalted? One look around our world tells us that God’s reality is not yet our reality. Yet with prophet’s eyes, Mary sees into a deeper truth: that God’s kingdom has already begun to break into our world.

Think of it this way: our present time is the reality most of us can see. Alongside it, parallel, just as real but mostly invisible to us, is God’s kingdom. Every now and then, a window opens up so we can see through. It takes the eyes and voices of prophets to become icons, windows into that reality. Because we are not prophets, most of us are blind to God’s angels, God’s dreams. We must put our faith in the words of other prophets like Mary who can see.

Mary invites us to live as citizens of God’s kingdom, in the age to come and here and now. Mary is describing the truth that a prophet’s eyes can see: that in Jesus, the kingdom of God has already broken into our world, because God has taken flesh. And one day, God’s kingdom will be the reality that all creation lives in: the kingdom Mary sings of – the kingdom of peace, justice and love. It may seem impossible – but Gabriel tells us: nothing is impossible with God.

So what might God be working to bring to birth in us, 2,000 years later? Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann says that “Few of our people imagine God to be an active character in the story of their lives.” But 14^th century German mystic Meister Eckhart wrote, “What is the good if Mary gave birth to Son of God a long time ago, if I do not give birth to God today? We are all Mothers of God, for God is always needing to be born.”

Do we think of God as a benign presence that hovers in the background scenery of our lives, kindly hoping that everything turns out all right, patting us on the back with a little bit of comfort now and then? Or do we believe that angels might come to us, ordinary everyday people that we are, making dangerous requests, promising the impossible? Do we believe that God is active in our lives, opening our eyes to greater hopes and deeper realities? Do we believe that Jesus’ kingdom is not only something far off, but a hidden reality that we can see working here and now? Can we believe that God’s visions can become reality for us, if we say yes?

How many of us, like Mary, are nurturing dreams within our hearts? Longings for a world yet unborn, hopes for a time when God’s justice will prevail and God’s people will no longer suffer. Dreams of how God might be calling us, ordinary everyday us, to bring new ways of life to birth. Dreams of how even we might be filled with the Holy Spirit to become God’s prophets, singing God’s hope to the world.

Mary’s song is a song for today, just as much as it was for 2,000 years ago. The dream that brings Christ to birth in this world, the dream of Christmas, is more than a sentimental story of a small child born in a manger. It is God’s story and God’s dream that the prophet Mary sings about today: a dream that transforms this world, that enters into our own hearts and begins to speak through us, that sings us out into the world where we can live God’s vision of a world made right.

God’s true Christmas dream is the new creation that has already become a reality in Jesus. And you and I? We are Mary too. We are ordinary people called to see God’s reality with prophets’ eyes, we are people hoping, praying, expecting a new and better world – a world that has already begun to come to birth in Jesus.

And like the young Mary, we stand, expectantly, hands lifted, bathed in the presence of God – waiting on the threshold of new life; and as we wait, angels hold their breath – waiting, hoping, praying that our answer will be yes.