"Then the Angel Departed..."

Credit for the direction this sermon took goes to Connie Waters. My thanks to Kathryn Matthews Huey for her excellent commentary, which helped me immensely (as is often the case).


I was tempted to base this sermon on Roger Wolsey's excellent blog post, "Jesus' Mom Was A Punk." I didn't, because sometimes these sermons write themselves in a different direction. Perhaps next year...

2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16

Now when the king was settled in his house, and the LORD had given him rest from all his enemies around him, the king said to the prophet Nathan, “See now, I am living in a house of cedar, but the ark of God stays in a tent.” Nathan said to the king, “Go, do all that you have in mind; for the LORD is with you.”

But that same night the word of the LORD came to Nathan: Go and tell my servant David: Thus says the LORD: Are you the one to build me a house to live in? I have not lived in a house since the day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt to this day, but I have been moving about in a tent and a tabernacle. Wherever I have moved about among all the people of Israel, did I ever speak a word with any of the tribal leaders of Israel, whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, saying, “Why have you not built me a house of cedar?” Now therefore thus you shall say to my servant David: Thus says the LORD of hosts: I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep to be prince over my people Israel; and I have been with you wherever you went, and have cut off all your enemies from before you; and I will make for you a great name, like the name of the great ones of the earth. And I will appoint a place for my people Israel and will plant them, so that they may live in their own place, and be disturbed no more; and evildoers shall afflict them no more, as formerly, from the time that I appointed judges over my people Israel; and I will give you rest from all your enemies. Moreover, the LORD declares to you that the LORD will make you a house.

Your house and your kingdom shall be made sure for ever before me; your throne shall be established for ever.

Romans 16:25-27

Now to God who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the proclamation of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages but is now disclosed, and through the prophetic writings is made known to all the Gentiles, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith — to the only wise God, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever! Amen.

Luke 1:26-38

In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. And he came to her and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. 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 kingdom there will be no end.” Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.” Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.

This is the Word of the Lord.

“Then the angel departed from her.”

And Mary sat there in the darkness. No one else in the tiny house stirred – no one had heard the conversation. What had just happened? Had it really happened at all, this conversation with an angel? Mary tried to think of anyone who had spoken to an angel since the time of Abraham and Sarah, but it made her head hurt.

Instead, she lay back down, and mulled the conversation over in her head.

The angel’s first words had awakened her, but if she’d been wide awake when he… or she? It? …had spoken, the words would have still made little sense: “Greetings, favored one!” "Favored one?" Her? After all, she’s just Mary, just another teenager in a nothing town in the middle of nowhere. And a girl, at that. Everyone knew that women didn’t get to make many of their own choices. Her father decided who she would marry, and her husband-to-be would decide where she lived, she would cook what he liked to eat, when he liked to eat it; she would bear his children and wash and mend his clothes and go with him to synagogue, just as her mother did, and her mother’s mother, and as far back as time itself. It wasn’t a bad life, per se, but to call it “favored” was a bit of a stretch.

Just as it had begin to dawn on her that it might not be the best of situations, this stranger in her room and all, the angel – deep down, Mary thought she had known from the beginning that this… person? …was an angel – spoke again. Don’t be afraid, he (?) said, and the thing about being favored by God again. Then, “You will conceive and bear a son, named Jesus. He’ll be great, he’ll be called the Son of God. He will restore the throne of David, and reign over Israel forever.”

Now, Mary knew all about the Messiah, the one who was to come and restore Israel to her former glory. The promise of the Redeemer was a source of strength when the tax collector came to town, when her father lost a days’ work carrying a soldier’s pack, when the crops were failing and it didn’t make sense to go on another day. Mary might have been “just” a girl, but she knew the burning desire that all of Judea shared to have the oppressive boot of Rome removed from the throat of the Jewish people!

Of course it had to happen! Messiah had to come! But why her, she wondered. And more than that, how?

It may be a bit of artistic license, but Mary strikes me as the kind of person who never met a question she couldn’t ask. Maybe she had inherited the job of milking the family goat early on because she had asked how to do it. Perhaps she occasionally shocked the younger rabbis in the synagogue by daring to ask questions about the teachings – the older ones had long ago gotten used to her cheekiness, and now rather enjoyed her genuine curiosity. I imagine she secretly hoped that Joseph, her husband-to-be, would show her how his carpentry tools worked.

And unlike far too many people, both in the Scriptures and in real life, who laugh and reject the will of God for themselves when a messenger delivers that news, Mary instead reacts with bold curiosity: “How exactly is all this going to work?”

The angel explains that God will be the child’s father. In fact, as proof that God could do whatever God chooses, even now Elizabeth, who had been childless and was now too old to hope to have a baby, was six months along in her own God-ordained pregnancy!

Mary’s head swam. What the angel was suggesting – the very idea! This “favor” she had somehow found with God was staggering, the implications immeasurable. God intended to put things right with the world through the promised Messiah, but in doing so, Mary’s world would be turned irrevocably upside-down.

The angel had not, at any point, asked Mary what her opinion was in the matter. Mary was, of course, use to this kind of thing; a girl not yet fourteen, no one asked her what she thought, there weren’t may opportunities for her to make choices. Her father told her who to marry, her mother told her what to wear, she never went anywhere alone, and it never occurred to her to think this was wrong.

But now, the angel waited. Waited for her to answer, to make a choice, to say yes or no to the task set before her.

The angel waits for Mary’s “yes.” God waits for Mary’s “yes.” All of creation waits; Adam and Eve wait, the dead in the underworld wait; the angels wait.

With Mary’s “yes,” her reputation would be ruined. Mary’s “yes” would destroy her chances of marrying Joseph, forever brand her as a harlot, a loose woman, and it may well get her stoned to death! If Mary said “yes,” how was she going to explain this to her family? What would she say to her friends, and how would she face Joseph, who, though he was older, and a successful, sought-after artisan, always looked at her with such kindness, such love?

But with Mary’s “yes,” hope is enlivened and history is changed. Say “yes,” Mary, and there is an unimaginable future for all people, a future that comes from God. With Mary’s “yes,” all nations assemble in justice, compassion and gratitude. Salvation is created among us, and the fate of history is altered by a godly presence.

I cannot in good faith imagine that it ever crossed Mary’s mind to tell the angel thanks for the opportunity, but please go and ask someone else. What was it that angel had said? “Nothing will be impossible with God.” The Scriptures were packed with the stories of how God had made the impossible a reality – parting the Red Sea, feeding the children of Israel with manna, bringing down the walls of Jericho, raising the dead, cleansing the leper, causing the sun to stop in the sky, fire from heaven and water from a rock…

Mary didn’t have the benefit of higher Biblical criticism to help her determine which stories were likely redactions and insertions from this or that group of writers; she didn’t see the accounts of God’s mighty acts as something to be taught to children and enjoyed by adults as stories with an important moral to help us all in our daily lives. Please understand that I love Biblical scholarship, and I enjoy learning all that I can about both higher and lower Biblical criticism, textual analysis, and history, from a wide variety of perspectives, but there’s something to be said for just believing that “nothing will be impossible with God.”

I wonder what would happen if we all believed – really believed, and by that I mean didn’t just say it or think it but acted like “nothing will be impossible with God?” What if we said “yes” to God? What could we change? What brokenness in ourselves could be healed, and what brokenness in this world – poverty, racism, war, classism, genocide, greed, hatred – could be healed if we, like Mary, said “yes” to God – if we, too, truly believed that “nothing will be impossible for God?”

The angel waits, and, finally, Mary says, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” And with that, salvation was born. This salvation resides in the hearts of those who believe in the gift, who know that, in Jesus Christ, salvation has come, and who stay awake eagerly, awaiting its coming. With David we await it, with the nations we long for it, and with Mary we behold it.

And for Mary, the morning will bring a whirlwind. She cannot know, laying in her little bed in that little house in that little town, that Joseph himself will meet an angel, that somehow he will remain and will marry her, and that he will raise this child, God’s own son, as his own. She cannot now see the miracles, she cannot now hear the words of God which will fall from the mouth of her son, she cannot yet see the cross, the shame, the horror, and she cannot yet comprehend the Resurrection that will bring salvation to herself and the entire world. All this will come. But for now?

For now, her eyes grow heavy, her heart is at peace, and she sleeps.

Mary's Story

I hope you'll forgive a little flight of fancy this week. I'm taking a lot of artistic license with this sermon, trying to be inside Mary's head as she pours the perfume on Jesus' feet and dries them with her hair.

Yes, I could have talked about the meaning of this and the significance of that. Others have done so, and better than i could ever hope to. What strikes me about this passage is the absolute abandon with which Mary worships Jesus.

Please offer comments and constructive criticism. Even if your name is Ken Silva, such comments are welcome.

(Thanks MissBossyPants for the help!)

Isaiah 43:16-21

Thus says the LORD,
who makes a way in the sea,
a path in the mighty waters,
who brings out chariot and horse,
army and warrior;
they lie down, they cannot rise,
they are extinguished, quenched like a wick:
Do not remember the former things,
or consider the things of old.
I am about to do a new thing;
now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.
The wild animals will honor me,
the jackals and the ostriches;
for I give water in the wilderness,
rivers in the desert,
to give drink to my chosen people,
the people whom I formed for myself
so that they might declare my praise.

Philippians 3:4b-14

If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: 5circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.
Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, 14I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.


John 12:1-8

Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus' feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, "Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?" (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) Jesus said, "Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me."

This is the Word of the Lord.

What a strange sight it must have been, even after so many days, seeing him lying there on that couch, eating with his friend Jesus. Laughing, conversing, listening, engaging the other disciples in discussion... you know, just being Lazarus, same as he had always been Lazarus. Look at him, telling that same old joke he always tells about the peddler and the housewife, laughing at the punchline as if he'd never heard it before!

Everyone else always laughs, not because the joke is still funny, but because you can't be around Lazarus and not laugh, not enjoy life just a little bit more.

Mary stood in the corner, ostensibly to be close at hand in case one of the dinner guests needed anything... but in reality someone could have shattered dinnerware at her feet and she wouldn't have flinched. Martha, busily serving the dinner, no longer minded. Truth be told, she would rather have dropped everything and spent all her time clinging to her brother Lazarus, just to experience him being here, just to remind herself that it was real.

Lazarus, their brother, had been dead. Not “dead” as in “spiritually lost,” like the Prodigal Son, no. Really, permanently dead.

The three of them, Martha, Mary, and Lazarus, they had known for awhile who Jesus was, and why he had come. When Lazarus fell ill, the first thing they did was send for Jesus, to ask him to come and heal his friend. Days passed, and no Jesus. Then, no more Lazarus. Just like that, the anchor that kept Martha from working herself into the ground and Mary from flitting off like a butterfly, gone. Entombed. Dead.

For four days Mary and Martha had moved around their house like ghosts, like zombies, doing what had to be done, but feeling nothing. At some point, through the fog, Martha told Mary that Jesus was here, and was asking for her. Mary remembered weeping at his feet. She remembered Jesus' tears.

She remembered the stone being rolled away, and everyone recoiling at what they expected to smell.

She remembered Jesus saying the silliest thing she'd ever heard, yelling at an open tomb, “Lazarus, come out!” and the impossible, the unbelievable, the overwhelming joy of Lazarus doing just that!

She knew what that had cost Jesus. It lay there, like a rock in the pit of her stomach, the knowledge that, even now, the Temple leaders were plotting his death. Such a display of authority, such a demonstration that even death could not defeat the Christ – and rather than fall at his feet, as she had, rather than hailing him as God's anointed, their lust for power and dedication to their own greed and grandeur had driven them to a thirst for blood. And now Jesus was less than two miles from their power base, Jerusalem. She had heard some of the men talking, had heard Lazarus making sure that Jesus knew what it meant, this trip to Jerusalem.
He was signing his death warrant, walking right into the jaws of the beast.

Of course he knew. Everyone knew what it meant. Jesus had known what it would mean when he had the stone rolled away, but he did it anyway. And because of Jesus, she had Lazarus back.

How do you say “thank you” for something like that? Oh, she had said the words, over and over so many times. But she owed him more than thanks. She owed him everything.

It was almost as if she were watching someone else do it. She walked to her room, where she had kept, hidden away, that jar of spikenard. She had bought it a few weeks back, to pour on Lazarus' body, but the tomb had been sealed too quickly.

She wouldn't be too slow this time.

Made from an extract of the roots of a plant which grew only in the Himalayas, spikenard was stunningly expensive – the jar held enough to pay a years' wages to a common laborer. Thousands of dollars, but Mary didn't hesitate. Money meant nothing, dignity meant nothing, propriety meant nothing, not in the face of the gift that Jesus had given her.

As she entered the dining room, she did something that women never did in public: she let down her hair. Kneeling by the couch where Jesus reclined, she broke open the jar and poured the contents on his feet, and wiped them dry with her hair.

The weight of the shocked silence pressed in on her. No one understood what she was doing, no one understood the depth of her gratitude, the compulsion to worship at the feet of the One she knew – she knew – to be the Messiah.

The fragrance of the spikenard filled every corner of the house, thick enough to cut, as she looked into his eyes – a bold move, but there was nothing left of propriety now, was there? – someone was protesting, and loudly. One of the Apostles. It didn't matter, she could see that Jesus understood.

Less than two miles – that's all that's left between Jesus and the night where he will wash the feet of his disciples – all of his disciples – even the feet of Judas. Less than two miles separate Jesus from the Garden of Gethsemane. Less than two miles from the trial, the torture, the scourge, the crown of thorns, the cross. Less than two miles from the cold, dark, silent, airless tomb.

What should our faith cost us?

What did faith cost Mary?

Mary probably didn't understand what Jesus' death would mean for humanity. She didn't understand any of the six or more doctrines of atonement, didn't understand the weight of sin that Jesus would bear on that cross, probably had no concept, even with Lazarus sitting right there across the table, that Jesus would conquer death once, for all. She didn't know that the redeeming work of this man, whose feet she knelt at, would permeate every nook and cranny, every time and place of creation like the perfume that still hung in the air of that house. All she knew is that no amount of money, no level of dignity, no expectation of social propriety was as important as this man, this teacher, this Lord, this Messiah.

The theology, the doctrine, the nuances meant nothing. Mary had seen what salvation looks like. She had seen salvation as it walked into the sunlight from the open tomb door. She had seen the face of salvation when she loosed the rag over Lazarus' eyes.

Our time? Our treasures? Our dignity? Our social standing? Does any of this really matter in the face of the Cross?

What should our faith cost us?

Mary Sang and John Danced...

This sermon got its fuel through the generosity of my Twitterfriends. I started a conversation about us Protestants not knowing what to do abouot Mary, and received lots of suggestions and eye-opening guidance from Keke Pounds, Minister Bob Chapman, Rev. Heather Dethloff, and Rev. Katie Mulligan. While only Heather's quote made it into the sermon, they were all instrumental in helping me see important messages in the Lucan account of Mary and Elizabeth.

Honestly, it never ceases to amaze me, this phenomenon of social networking. This past week, the loose group that identifies itself by the #outlawpreachers hashtag on Twitter lost one of our own. Gideon Addington, whose Tillich quote helped write my sermon two weeks back, passed away. To one degree or another, many of us have been reeling from this, - shock, raqe, loss, it's all there. By all appearances Gideon should have been no more than a collection of letters in groups of 140 characters or less. Instead, I've lost a friend, somehow.

I've got no real smooth way to transition from that into the message, so I won't try. I look forward to your comments.

Luke 1:39-55
In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry, "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me?
For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord."
And Mary said,
"My soul magnifies the LORD,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.
Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
for the Mighty One has done great things for me,
and holy is his name.
His mercy is for those who fear him
from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.

He has helped his servant Israel,
in remembrance of his mercy,
according to the promise he made to our ancestors,
to Abraham and to his descendants forever."


This is the Word of the Lord.

She woke up in that breathless, shocked kind of way that says she hadn't realized she'd gone to sleep in the first place. Her mind had raced all night, replaying again and again what she had seen, what she had heard, how she had answered when the angel revealed her destiny. It had been so exciting, the thrill of being used by God to bring the Messiah into the world!

But now, in the stark light of day, she began to see the trouble ahead. A virgin with child? Yeah, right. She was barely even engaged, and now she could kiss marriage to Joseph goodbye. Her parents were going to freak when they found out!

Just then she thought about Elizabeth, about that strange story circulating about her pregnancy – Her husband had been struck mute, hadn't said a word since the day he had performed his priestly duties in the Holy of Holies.

It had gotten out that he'd seen an angel who had prophesied about Elizabeth having a child, and lo and behold she was six months along by now! And oh, how the gossip mill was grinding over that one! Surely, if anyone would know what to do, if anyone would believe her at all, it would be Elizabeth!

Her parents were more than willing to let Mary go; Elizabeth was a relative, after all, and not getting any younger, so having Mary there to help around the house made perfect sense.

I can imagine that, as she walked the road to Elizabeth's house, Mary's spirits lifted and her thoughts soared. Imagine – God chose her, a teenager from a backwater town, as the one to bring the Hope of Israel into the world! At last, after all these centuries, these thousands of years of waiting, the Messiah would enter into the world!

It seems like we Protestants only really talk about this unwed teenage mother once a year, this Sunday before Christmas. Yet there she is, kicking up the dust of the narrow country road as she hurries to Elizabeth's house – she is what Reverend Heather Morgan Dethloff calls “the first evangelist,” and her response to Elizabeth's excited and prophetic greeting – “My soul magnifies the LORD, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior...” was “her first sermon.”

But this was more than a sermon, more than a song. It was prophesy.

God had for too long been transcendent, remote, and unreachable. In many ways, it could be argued that this remoteness was something that humankind – or at least the part of humankind with voice and authority – found comfortable. A God who was appeased by sacrifices and communicated to through a professional priesthood (if at all) was in many senses a predictable, a controllable deity. If the only way to God is through a priest or some religious official, then both the people and, in some sense, God, can be kept in a manageable position.

But a God that can be controlled, predicted, limited, held at arm's length? That is no God at all.

Anyone who reads Scripture consciously can see that this transcendent God fully intended all along to be immanent, to be present with Creation, to be involved and invested and immediate! All of the sacrifices are done away with in that once-for-all sacrifice of God made flesh! The barriers to all of humankind being in direct relationship to their loving Creator are, like the Temple veil, forever torn away! And now, as Mary sings her song, as Elizabeth's son dances in her womb, that great day of Emmanuel, God-With-Us, is at hand!

At hand... but, as Mary sings and John leaps with joy, (and like so many things in our spiritual journey), not yet. Scripture tells us that Mary and Elizabeth stayed together for three months. Reverend Kate Huey quotes Henri Nouwen, saying “'For three months Mary and Elizabeth live together and encourage each other to truly accept the motherhood given to them.'” Huey goes on, “As Nouwen reads this story, neither woman had to wait alone for the extraordinary events to unfold, slowly, as pregnancies do: 'They could wait together and thus deepen in each other their faith in God, for whom nothing is impossible. Thus, God's most radical intervention into history was listened to and received in community.'”

This final week of Advent, we are reminded that we, too, wait. And like Mary and Elizabeth, we wait not as individuals, but as community – as the Body of Christ. We wait not just to celebrate the fist coming of Christ as to experience that “meteor of grace” that will be Christ's second coming! Like Mary and Elizabeth, we wait in community... supporting, guiding, and most of all praying for one another. Timothy Mulder writes, "here is a preface for Emmanuel. We humans are not meant to go through the tough or the wonderful alone. Both need to be shared.”

And we Resurrection people share not only with one another, but with the risen Christ, through that same Holy Spirit which gave the good news to Elizabeth, which gave Mary song.

Whatever gifts await us under the tree, whatever Santa brings, we share with one another that greatest of gifts – Christ has come, has died, and has risen again! And that same Christ both lives in us, unites us as His Body – and will come again!

Thanks be to God!