Luke 1:26-38

As incredible as it may sound at first hearing, “The Annunciation" is one of the clearest and most important statements in the New Testament. Announcing the identity and nature of Jesus Christ, The Annunciation marks the first event that will lead directly to the birth of  the Savior, the One who brings God and humanity face-to-face.

Gabriel, we are told, is an archangel; and, Nazareth, the town in Galilee to which Gabriel is commissioned, was a tiny insignificant village of perhaps 150 people. Unlike Bethlehem, which was distinguished in Israelite tradition as the future birthplace of the messianic king, Nazareth lacked distinction of any kind.

Let’s be honest about all this at the outset. The first announcement of the coming of the Messiah, although somewhat amazing, is not religiously spectacular. An angel goes to a small town to meet a young girl who is engaged. Everyone and everything named are not very special or mystical. While the people come from “houses,” like that of the great King David, they are common folk who live in obscure places. The big news is simply that God has a hand in the lives of these ordinary people and these ordinary places  or, as Luke suggests throughout his Gospel Account, only the Divine would use such improbable circumstances for such transforming purposes!

Moving right along. . . the angel, Gabriel (so the story goes), tells this very ordinary, young woman that she is “favored.” She is of course perplexed: “Me, favored?” The angel knows that ordinary people aren’t used to being favored and yet, Gabriel makes it clear that God’s hand is to be played-out in this way and there is no backing off or turning back. That ordinary people are being favored, is precisely the “good news” that was on the way! And, how is this “good news of favored status” to be shown? It is to be shown by Mary’s baby! God came into the world in a way everyone could understand: by a human birth.

Even the most skeptical people among us can understand, identify with, and revel in, the magic of birth. In that special moment, that is at the same time universal and particular, we allow ourselves a higher expectation. At that precious moment when our child is about to be born we say, aloud or in the quiet recesses of our hearts:

“I may not be great but my child can be great!”

The angel has no fear of high expectations, saying, this child WILL be great! He will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. And, Gabriel doesn’t stop with these promises of greatness. He moves the child into even grander Jewish lines.

“He will reign over the house of Jacob forever.”

“Of his kingdom, there will be no end.”

Mary hears the scope of these grand promises, but she is still not convinced:

“How can this be, since I am a virgin, a woman with an empty womb?”

Here is where the angel moves from the ordinary to the extraordinary. Gabriel explains that the baby will come to Mary’s womb by means of a visitation of the Holy Spirit---a visitation of the Holy Spirit not unlike that experienced by her cousin Elizabeth who conceived in her old age. Surprise! Elizabeth, thought to be barren, was not barren! Surprise! Even virgins can bear children by the Holy Spirit!

It is too much for such a young, peasant girl to argue against:

“Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”

These lines in which Mary surrenders to the Lord are a fitting conclusion to our Gospel Lesson. In the birth of Jesus a “new hope” for mankind is foretold. An ordinary woman of this world meets an angel from another world and agrees to change history.

It is a strategy, ordained by God, in which “less” is “more.” It is a strategy that demonstrates the victory of “possibility” over what humans see as “impossibility.” In and through Jesus the Christ, God offers ordinary people a new framework for their ordinary experience. Nazareth and Bethlehem, Mary and Elizabeth, become symbols of a new way of looking at life! That which seems hope-less can be hope-filled; ---the impossible, possible!

God’s strategy, in Christ Jesus, says “small” will do as well as “large.” Christmas renews us because it places our hopes and dreams back in tiny Bethlehem, back with the small baby who becomes ruler of the world. Furthermore, if we ourselves are to become renewed through this process of rebirth, we must be prepared to put our old selves in similar, radical frameworks for surprising possibilities.

The big mistake most of us make is placing our hopes and our dreams in the “large” when something “small” will do. God is showing us in the birth of a little baby, that he is with us no matter what! Think about it! God didn’t get smaller 2000 years ago so that man could get bigger! No! Even today, God, in Christ, gets smaller so that we can be part of a “never-ending-story” ---a story that embraces the fundamental belief that,  in spite of all our problems, our pain and hardship, our doubts and fears, our risks and uncertainties, in spite even of our sinful natures ---we can be renewed and saved!

One day I was walking along a pathway in Lake Bluff’s Artesian Park. (By the way, this is not a unique experience; it is an experience we have all had at one time or another). I looked down and saw an anthill that had just been crushed. I saw that the carefully constructed “ant home” was destroyed and that several ants had been killed and many had been injured. As I watched them writhing in agony and running about in chaos and confusion, I wished for a moment that I was an ant. I wanted to be one of them so I could tell them that I was sorry for the disaster that had befallen them and that as their neighbor I wanted to help them. But I had no way of communicating with them, so I went on my way.

In contrast, when God looked down and saw our world---currupted and devastated by sin, he did not go away!

"For God so loved the world

that he gave his only begotten Son,

so that everyone who believes in him

may not perish but may have eternal life"

(John 3:16)         

That is what The Incarnation means. God did not turn his back upon us in our time of need. He did something to change our world and our future in it and beyond it.

The proof of God's amazing love, as expressed in Scripture and Creed, is that he came to us face-to-face. He appeared in concrete form---a human body. He was conceived in our world, at a particular time, in a particular place, in a particular mother, and he was given a particular name: Jesus. There is nothing vague or ambiguous about this human being sent from God. Jesus is a real human being, connected to an earthly time, place, mother, name and mission. He is “God Incarnate,” in the world, in the flesh. The Christ event allows God to meet with humans, and humans with their God, generation to generation---even as we now prepare to enter a new millennium; an era of greater belief or greater unbelief---we have no way of knowing for sure---time will tell! But, of this we can be certain, Christ will be there with us---in the ordinary and extraordinary experiences of our daily lives.

Some years ago, as I was preparing a young couple for the baptism of their first child. The father said to me:

          “I have difficulty affirming parts of the Creed—like the Virgin Birth.

          What should I do when I get to that part of the baptismal service?”

I said:           “You just say it. Especially when you have difficulty believing it.

          And, you just keep saying it. It will come to you eventually.”

But the young father, who had for years been trying to escape the strict fundamentalism of his parents,  persisted:

“How can I with integrity affirm a creed in which I do not believe?”

I replied, as I have on a number of occasions since:

      “It’s not your creed to believe or disbelieve. It’s the Church’s creed. You are simply repeating what generations of Christians, who did believe, confessed!”

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the message of Christmas, as presented for the first time in the “Annunciation of the Angel Gabriel to Mary,” is not about all of the things we are inclined to associate with Christmas ---exchanging gifts of things we already have enough of and could therefore do without or, feeling guilty for living too comfortably or, surrounding ourselves with present moments of good cheer designed to blot-out  bad moments of the past. Christmas is not even about simple charity ---giving to those who are in need of what we are willing and able to give.

No, the message of Christmas is about “change.” The days of Advent, first, and then the days of Christmas are about ordering our lives differently, whether anyone else does or not; ordering the days of our lives so that we reflect, in our own lifestyles and in our own choices, the Word of “God Incarnate” ---the Word made flesh, in a little baby boy born in a Bethlehem stable. And, it just might be that if we are able to DO this---order and change our own lives in these ways, others might know more about who Jesus really was, and is, than from anything we could ever say.

Benediction:  Nothing is impossible with God! Nothing is impossible! Depart in peace. Spread “The Story of Christmas” in all you say and do. Nothing is impossible with God! May the blessings of God our Creator, Jesus the Christ, and the Holy Spirit be with you always.  Amen.