2 SAMUEL 7:4,8-16

PSALM 132:8-15

ROMANS 16:25-27

LUKE 1:26:38

Sermon – 12/22/02

The scene described in this morning’s Gospel – the angel Gabriel coming to Mary to announce that God has chosen her to bear the Savior of the world – is an extremely popular subject for painters in the history of Western Art. As such, we see this scene sometimes used for Christmas cards – although it takes place at least nine months before Christmas because Gabriel’s message applies to Jesus’ conception. Therefore the Church celebrates this event as the Feast of the Annunciation – on March 25. Today’s Gospel is, then, the essential “prequel” to the Christmas story, the “prequel” which helps to prepare us to understand Christmas, which is why it is read on the fourth (and last) Sunday of Advent.

Christmas is a colossal holiday in America, the biggest of the year, and Christmas has collected over the years many associations and traditions and personal meanings for people – which may or may not be in any way connected to the Christian origin (and heart) of this festival. Because Christmas so dominates American holidays, some people may think that it is also the most important Christian holy day, but it is not, not by far.

Easter is the supreme holy day for Christians, with Good Friday second in importance. (Many people come to Palm Sunday services, which include the reading of the story of Christ’s crucifixion, as a substitute for coming to church on Good Friday.) Without Easter, Jesus would have been just another good person killed by human ill will, pride or indifference, and we never would have heard of him – nor would we know of God’s victory over death and sin and the hope we therefore have for new life both now and forever. Easter without Good Friday would have either been impossible (a person has to die in order to be raised from the dead) or made no sense (if Jesus had died in bed at the age of 90, how could we say he was the atoning sacrifice for our sins?)

Arguably, Pentecost is the third most important Christian holy day, for that day celebrates the coming of the Holy Spirit to the faithful 50 days after Easter. Without the dynamic activity of the Holy Spirit, the Church would have been a clique and a nostalgia society of those who remembered Jesus personally until they all grew old and died. With the Holy Spirit, the Church became a life-changing, world-shaking phenomenon.

The earliest Christian writing and preaching we have (in the Epistles, especially of Paul, and in The Acts of the Apostles) there is a powerful focus on Christ’s death and resurrection and (to a lesser extent) on the current activity of the Holy Spirit. There is less emphasis on Jesus’ words and deeds during his earthly ministry before the last week of his life and almost no focus on his birth or its circumstances. Why? Jesus’ birth was important only because of who he was, as would be manifested in his adult life, his crucifixion and his resurrection.

Lots of people have been born; only one was the Savior of the World. That is why we celebrate Christmas – which needs, perhaps, to be explained by us (who are in church today) to those whose only time in church is on Christmas!

Thankfully, the first two chapters of both Luke and Matthew (our only biblical sources for The Christmas Story) are written so as to be, in the words of the eminent scholar, Raymond Brown, “the Gospel in miniature.” These stories are not just sentimental appendages to the “real” Gospel; rather, like overtures to an opera, they let us hear in advance the great themes which will be developed more fully in the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ adult life, death and resurrection.

So what are some of those themes? Or, to put it another way, we’ve heard today’s story and the Christmas story; what’s the point?

The most important point is that God planned the redemption of the world (saving people from their sins) by God’s own self (God the Son, Second Person of the Holy Trinity) coming into the world incarnate as a human being.

From the moment of his conception, Jesus was literally the embodiment of God’s plan of salvation. Jesus was not a good person who was chosen by God at his baptism to do God’s dirty work (suffering) for him, nor was Jesus a perfectly obedient human being who was “promoted” by God on Easter to immortality. Jesus was, as the Church has affirmed for centuries, fully divine and fully human.

The way Matthew and Luke explain someone fully divine becoming incarnate as a human being is by talking about the virginal conception of Jesus: that Jesus was conceived miraculously, not in the usual human manner. Luke in particular is careful to describe the conception of Jesus in totally non-sexual terms; not because sex is “bad” but because it was not involved: the fertilized embryo which grew into a fetus and then a baby was a special creation by God. (If we believe that God is indeed “the Creator of Heaven and Earth” and routinely creates galaxies and planets over whatever time span God chooses, God creating a fertilized embryo out of nothing is not exactly a stretch.)

This virginal conception stands in vivid contrast to some pagan stories of divine beings having intercourse with humans. This is not what the Bible describes. The Bible also is careful to make clear that Jesus did not suddenly appear on earth as a 30 year old Palestinian Jewish man ready to preach, teach and do miracles: that would have made a mockery of becoming a human being. It would have sounded more like an alien landing on earth in disguise.

Instead, Jesus was born of a human mother and lived for 30 mostly very uneventful years before the beginning of his public ministry. Those uneventful, “normal” years not described in the Bible were important: “he lived as one of us.” He knew human beings not only because, as God the Son, he knew everything, but because of direct experience while incarnate.

So at Christmas we celebrate Christ’s real humanity and real divinity, both of which are described by Gabriel in his message to Mary. We also celebrate the fact that Jesus not only was incarnate as a human being but as a particular kind of human being. It was not accidental that Jesus was born in Palestine and to a Jew rather than in China or Brazil or France. The Jews were the only people in the world at that time who knew the One True God (a fact which Christians should always remember) and the Holy Land was The Promised Land. Jesus was born to Mary as the fulfillment of the hopes of the only people who had known God, and who had known God for 2,000 years. Jesus, Gabriel says, will receive “the throne of his ancestor David” and “will reign over the house of Jacob [meaning the people of Israel] forever.” The Christmas story tells us that Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s past dealings with God’s people – and that there is no one else to wait for.

There is also something quite spectacular about this scene in today’s Gospel, something so familiar we may miss it. Gabriel comes to Mary. Gabriel wasn’t telling her that she was already pregnant (a fact that she might have already noticed) but that she had been chosen to become pregnant in this extraordinary way (something she otherwise would never have imagined in her wildest dreams). She may seem to us the logical person for an angel to visit with this news, but Mary was born into an extremely chauvinistic and patriarchal culture in which important, never mind extraordinary, business almost invariably came to the attention of men first. Abraham was told by God on several occasions that he would have a son, and only on the final occasion (when the exact timing was spelled out) did his wife Sarah even overhear the news (by eavesdropping).

This is different. The angel visits Mary first – and then waits for her answer. When Mary says “yes”, then Gabriel departs. Clearly, something radical is happening here: and indeed, in his adult ministry Jesus would respect and empower women in ways so radical that the Christian church as a whole still has not digested it.

So, as we stand at the very brink of Christmas, we can in this brief scene in today’s Gospel look back 2,000 years before it to Abraham and forward 2,000 years to us, as well as forward to Christ’s birth, life, death and resurrection.

“Emmanuel – God with us.” “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” “The Son of God.” “You shall name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” It’s all here, all in these wonderfully profound and meaningful Scriptures we read at Christmas. At Christmas we celebrate

the anniversary of the beginning of the fulfillment of God’s promise to offer transformation and new life to all believers and to the world. That’s the point. And whatever’s happening in our lives this particular season, the gift of Christmas from God to us is always true, always real, and always powerful.

(The Rev.) Francis A. Hubbard

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church