I must admit that when I looked at the lectionary lessons for today, my first thought was that they didn’t have much to with Advent. They look more like Christmas lessons to me.
But then I kept thinking about the meaning of these lessons? What are they about?
An angel makes an appearance to Mary, a young woman of Nazareth—most likely a teen-ager. And we know from other lessons that Mary was troubled by the message of her impending pregnancy. Can you imagine the thoughts going through her head—who is this feathered creature (if angels truly have wings made of feathers) and what’s this that’s going to happen to me? We know from the lessons that ultimately Mary concedes to the angel and finally says, “I’m available." Available to this mystery, available for this birth, available to the persuasion of the Holy Spirit.
What about the other characters in this story? Think about Joseph. His girlfriend, Mary, turns up pregnant and he knows he’s not the father. No paternity suit issue here. Should Joseph marry her, or should he put her away from him? And then another angel appears to Joseph in a dream, according to our gospel lesson, and tells Joseph not to be afraid. And after this dream, Joseph chooses to take his part in this greatest of love stories. He chooses to remain with Mary. So he is the one who protects her and cares for her during the difficult journey to Bethlehem. Mary is great with child and awkward and easily fatigued.
Then there is the innkeeper. Maybe he’s a good man, a fair man. But he surely didn’t recognize the specialness of this couple who came to his door. He just couldn’t make room. Besides, Mary is about to give birth and he doesn’t want to deal with that. Furthermore, it might upset his paying guests. So he turns away from the Holy, back to the mundane. And he can’t be bothered.
In contrast to the innkeeper, the shepherds aren’t very busy. They are, as we know, “abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night”—just hanging out with the sheep, making sure none of them wanders off and gets lost. And, once again, an angel appears in a great swath of light. These shepherds were astonished—actually they were afraid. But they did pay attention. And once again the angel says the words that were said to Mary and to Joseph, “Be not afraid”. The shepherds needed that reassurance. The coming of the Holy shakes them to their roots, turns them around, and points them in a different direction. Be not afraid. Come and see the child. Come and receive the Holy. So the shepherds drop everything and go. “They came with haste,” the scripture says. And when they saw this baby boy they went throughout the countryside telling others of this wondrous event.
The wise men, too, put everything aside to follow the star that directed them to the baby. They dressed in their finest robes and took their most expensive gifts to the child, we’re told. After all, when the star appears, the star you’ve waited for all of your life, then you don’t dally around with lesser things. You focus. You move. You get on with it. The wise men were ready for this birth; they were prepared for the journey and gave the best they had to give.
For us—for you and me—there is no angel and there is no star. There is no announcement of something as mystical as the birth of a savior. For us, that which is mystical usually comes unannounced—it comes in places and in times that are not always convenient; it comes dressed in the ordinary and the humble, even though we may wish for the big, the large and the grand.
For us it’s pretty hard to psyche out the Holy, or to predict when something is going to happen as important as the birth of Jesus. But we can begin to understand something about faith if we begin to prepare ourselves –if our hearts are open. But we may have a problem here. Because I believe that in order to prepare our hearts, we have to be willing to go into some darkness. We have to give up some control or the illusion of control in our lives. This kind of darkness is different than we usually think of darkness. It’s the kind of darkness that helps us become childlike again, childlike in our ignorance of what will happen next, childlike in our vulnerability and our innocence.
That’s where we have to go—to the purest, most simple form of who we are, the part of us that is the most honest, the most spontaneous, the most creative—the part that opens us to our most tender and loving feelings.
We need to know that opening ourselves to these tender and loving feelings inevitably includes losing something: for everything that we are becoming, we have to give away something of what we have been in the past. And this leaving something is difficult for us—because we are most comfortable when we live with the comfortable and the usual. And moving ourselves toward the new doesn’t always feel comfortable. We may feel confused, or sad, or just scared. But when we feel this way we are becoming fertile ground for the Holy to enter our lives.
At some point in our lives we all feel fear—or confusion—or sadness—or we’re scared. There are reasons for these feelings. The world seems unsafe and the times that we are living in seem insecure.
What would it take for us to be visited by an angel—like the visit to Mary and Joseph, to the shepherds and to the Magi? What would it take for us to hear and believe the words, “Be not afraid”?
Advent is the time in our own lives when we have to be willing to prepare, to be patient—we have to wait for the fullness of time. There will be times of confusion, and ambivalence and even despair. We may feel all alone. We may want someone else to do all the hard work for us. But what will it take to hear the words, “Be not afraid”?
There is darkness and there is light. I don’t know why we have these endless cycles that face us. I don’t know why fear and promise appear to come together at the same time. The season of Advent is the darkest time of the year.
But if we are willing to prepare ourselves, if we are willing to let the wings of the Spirit enfold us and bless us and prepare us for what is coming that is new, then we should never forget the words of the angel: “Be not afraid. I bring you good tidings of great joy. Be not afraid”.
Amen
