The Fourth Sunday of Advent, Year B

Angels Unaware

Readings: 2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16; Magnificat; Romans 16:25-27; Luke 1:26-38

It is a bright sunny day in Nazareth. Mary is just returning from the well, her water skin bursting with beautiful clear water. There is always lots of water in their town, a real gift in this arid land. She looks out over the valley far below. Then she climbs the last few steps and enters the courtyard to the small home she shares with her family. Setting the water down for a moment, she begins to reflect on her life. A smile crosses her face as she thinks of Joseph, her husband to be. A kind person with a fine reputation in the community! Yes! Hers is an uncomplicated life. She has a calm and predictable future.

Then suddenly, a great surprise! Even in the brilliant sunlight the courtyard is filled with radiance. A messenger from God! She can scarcely take it all in. Indeed, she can scarcely even look at this stranger. Such an awesome sight he is! She recognizes in this messenger, one who stands in the very presence of God. What is it he is saying to her? “Greetings, favoured one! The Lord is with you.”
“Who am I,” she thinks to herself, “that God should favour me? How can I be chosen by God? Why is God choosing me, a poor, insignificant young woman? What is God choosing me to do?”

The angel reassures her. “Do not be afraid for you have found favour with God.” There is that word again. “Favour! Me!” She looks at him tentatively at first, then more boldly. “You will conceive in your womb,” the angel continues. “And bear a son, and you will name him Jesus.”

She can’t quite take it in. Her child, the baby she bears, will be the son of the most high. Then she gets a dose of reality. “How can this be?” she asks, blushing a little at her bluntness with a stranger. “How can this happen when I have never known a man?”

“With God all things are possible.” The angel speaks of this uncommon thing in common language to a woman whose concerns are totally realistic. All sorts of things are going through her mind. “What will people think? What will Joseph say? This is craziness. Is this really a message from God?” And in obedience to God, through God’s grace, she answers, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then as quickly as it began, the encounter is over. Mary is left with her pondering, but at the same time with a sense of incredible joy and peace, for she has been chosen by God to be the God Bearer.

“Well!” you may be thinking. “That’s very nice for Mary. God sent her a very clear and distinct message. If only God spoke that clearly to me! God, I wish I could see your messengers, those who stand in your very presence. I have never witnessed an angel. Nothing in my life is like that. Not anything!”

As incredible as it seems, God sent a messenger to a young Jewish girl, very poor, who held no position or prominence among her peers with the earthshaking announcement that she was chosen by God to be the mother of the Messiah. It is God’s act through Mary, God’s coming to us through the birth of Jesus, that makes her, that young Jewish woman, and every one of us, significant as God’s children.
“Here am I,” she said, “I am the Lord’s servant. As you have spoken, so be it.” Her response is untouchable, incomprehensible. For it is a response full of confidence in God’s promise to accomplish God’s purpose. And how many of us would answer so quickly and without reservation? How many of us would even know that God was calling us to servant hood?

God continues to communicate with ordinary, everyday people. The problem is, we are not always attuned to God’s presence. God communicates with those who listen and respond. God turns the ordinary into the extraordinary. If we do not hear, then perhaps we are not tuned in. Perhaps we are looking in the wrong place. Or maybe we are looking for the wrong thing.

As incredible as it seems, God still sends messengers. Are there not moments in our lives when God is communicating with us? Have we not all experienced moments of closeness to God, times of insight, of enlightenment.
It is astounding the number of stories there are of peoples’ encounters with angelic beings. This is one of them.

On Sunday afternoon, June 1st 1975, Darrel Dore was on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. Suddenly it wobbled, tipped to one side, and crashed into the sea. Darrell was trapped inside a room on the rig. As the rig sank deeper and deeper into the sea the lights went out and the room began to fill with water.

Thrashing about in the darkness, Darrel accidentally found a huge air bubble that was forming in the corner of the room. He thrust his head inside it. Then a horrifying thought sent a shiver down his spine. "I'm buried alive". Darrell began to pray and as he did, something remarkable happened.

Later on he recounted it in his own words. "I found myself actually talking to someone. Jesus was there with me. There was no illumination, nothing physical, but I sensed him, a comforting presence. He was real, he was there." For the next 22 hours that Presence continued to comfort Darrel. But now the oxygen supply inside the bubble was giving out. Death was inevitable. It was just a matter of time. Then a remarkable thing happened. Darrel saw a tiny star of light shimmering in the pitch-black water. Was it real or was he hallucinating? Then the light seemed to grow brighter. He squinted again. It was real. In fact, it was coming from a diver's helmet. The nightmare was over. He was rescued.

Such stories abound. Annunciations happen in any number of ways, through prayer, through worship, through the grace of other people. We ourselves are often messengers of God’s grace, although we may not ever become aware of how or when. In an amazing way, God is born in us and through the Spirit reaches out through us to accomplish God’s purpose in our world. May Christ be born in us this day! Amen.