Fourth Sunday of Advent Luke 1:26-38
December 24, 2023
Faith-La Fe Lutheran Church, Pastor Jonathan Linman
Christmastime is a busy season in an era when we’re already too busy. The traffic is heavier with people out shopping and going to holiday dinners and parties. The streets of my neighborhood are filled with cars from people going to holiday outings at Aunt Chilada’s Restaurant. People are on the move.
We’re busy. We’re distracted. We’re constantly in motion – not just in our day-to-day activities, but also in terms of our moves, our re-locations from one place or another. The Phoenix area is filled with people who have moved here from someplace else. I’m one of them. Arizona is the ninth state I’ve lived in in my life.
And during the holidays, we travel more, millions flying or driving to spend time with relatives in far-flung parts of the country. The world is also seeing record numbers of immigrants, human beings seeking a better life someplace else because of poverty, violence, war, and the effects of climate change at home.
Being people on the move gives us one thing in common with our ancient cousin forebears in the faith, the people of Israel, who wandered in the desert for forty years and who were displaced again and again from their homeland in periods of exile.
And this puts the people of Israel and us in league with all of our human forebears, for we as a species have always wandered from our places of origins to establish settlements throughout the world. We humans emerged from Africa and now have populated the whole planet.
Amidst this constant motion of one sort or another, we may be led to ask the question: where is God in all of this?
Being in constant motion, overwhelmed by our busyness and activity, can distract us from things divine. Awareness of God is arguably best served by the example of the experience of Christian mystics who sought to stay put in one place in quiet contemplation in order to be aware of God. Constant motion, provoking our lack of awareness of God, takes its toll on us individually and as a society.
Going through our days without being aware of the ultimate and important things of God can get us into trouble because then we are more readily prone to indulging our sinful appetites that can lead to the ruination of ourselves and others. Like God’s ancient people who wandered off to worship idols and to exploit each other, especially the poorest among us, so too we are prone to doing the same things.
Moreover, the distraction of our constant motion can cause some to conclude that God is absent from us and our current circumstances altogether. Sermons are generally easily forgettable. But there is a moment from one of the sermons delivered by my home pastor when I was a kid that I remember to this day. Pastor Youngquist told the story of a church that was vandalized by a graffiti artist who spray painted on the church walls, “God is nowhere.” The adults were, of course, deeply offended by this act of vandalism until a young child in the congregation read the graffiti differently: “God is now here.” Same set of letters, but one spacing difference changes the whole meaning. Not God is nowhere, but God is now here.
The good news is that God is now here, and always has been, even amidst our constant motion and distraction. For the ancient Israelites, God journeyed with them in the ark of the covenant which contained the tablets of the Ten Commandments, the centerpiece of God’s presence and of God’s covenant with the people. The ark was kept in a tent as the people journeyed, as we heard in today’s reading from 2 Samuel, when the Lord reminded the people, “but I have been moving about in a tent and a tabernacle,” thus “moving about among all the people of Israel.” (2 Samuel 7:6-7)
Once God’s people were more established in the promised land, the Lord’s presence was focused in the temple in Jerusalem, a different mode of presence among the people, but the same God of the covenant, still Emmanuel, God is with us.
In this holy season as we are on the brink of observing Christmas later today, what we are really celebrating is a new mode of God’s presence. In Christ we have a new way of God being with us. In the birth of Jesus, God becomes incarnate as one of us. This is what Paul is writing about when in today’s second reading, he speaks of “the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages but is now disclosed” in Jesus Christ. (Romans 16:25b-26a). That mystery revealed is the Christ child, the Son of God, fully human and fully divine. In Christ, God is now here, as ever, but in a new way.
Which brings us to the heart of today’s gospel story, the Annunciation, the announcement by the angel Gabriel to Mary: “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 dominion there will be no end.’” (Luke 1:30-33)
With this Announcement and the mysterious pregnancy that resulted from it and Mary’s assent to it, a new version of Emmanuel emerges, namely, the Word of God made flesh to dwell with us, among us full of grace and truth. This is the uniqueness of the Christian witness, that God would become one of us.
Throughout the ages, God’s presence had largely been external to us, but in Christ, God’s Word comes from outside of ourselves to dwell literally in Mary, and then in the birth of Jesus to live among us in the flesh, one of us, not transcendently apart from us and external to us, but one who is personal and not an abstraction.
That’s what we celebrate at Christmas. And there’s more! In the sacraments of the church, in baptism and the Eucharist, we share in the reality that Mary knew – God in Christ in us through the Spirit, the word of God interacting with earthly means of water, bread and wine, such that we too through the bath and the meal become pregnant with the Word, individually and communally, universally as body of Christ, the church. In the sacraments, we internalize all of Christ, his birth, ministry, death, resurrection, ascension, and promise to come again.
And there’s still more: our pregnancy with the Word generates our faith and keeps the fires of our faith burning. So, when we gather at church as we are doing now, we can settle down from our constant motion and activity, and can rest a bit, basking in the awareness of how God continues to journey with his people, that is, with us, we who are also people of the covenant with God. In short, God is now here, still, in the reality that is the church, which is the body of Christ, today’s version of the holy incarnation.
Think of it this way: it’s as if in each Sunday assembly, the angel appears to us with the greeting that the Lord is with us, and the angel calls us to embody the Word for the sake of the world. In this the Holy Spirit comes upon us and the power of the Most High overshadows us, for nothing is impossible with God. And the Spirit moves us to reply, echoing Mary’s words: “Here we are, the servants of the Lord; let it be with us according to your word.”
And then we’re sent on the move again, God in Christ going with us in the power of the Spirit as we journey forth from this place. And then back home and in our lives beyond these four walls, we give birth to the Word yet again in our loving words and actions, and in our justice seeking, thus revealing still that God is not absent from us even amidst the busy, crazy, ever-moving world we live in. In Christ, God is now here. Thanks be to God. Amen, come, Lord Jesus. Amen.
