Advent 4B, 24 December 2023. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz
- 2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16. I will not take my steadfast love from him.
- Romans 16:25-27. The revelation of the mystery…is now disclosed.
- Luke 1:26-38. But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be.
O God in whom is heaven, may we have the wisdom, the strength, and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth – come when it may and cost what it will.
Every once in a while, our liturgical calendar gives us the Fourth Sunday of Advent in the morning and Christmas Eve in the evening. It always seems to take us by surprise even though it’s possible to see it coming for a long time. The last time was in 2017, and the next time will be in 2028. Plan accordingly!
Over the past weeks, our scripture readings have been full of prophetic calls to vast numbers of people for large scale relational and economic repair projects, leveling the playing fields and making it easier for all people to experience the love of God. Today, in a dramatic downshift, we are invited into intensely intimate scenes between David and Nathan, between Mary and Gabriel. You can almost hear our theological engine revving as we slow down to make this big turn. For the Gospel of Luke (and the Gospel of Matthew), this passage from Samuel about David and Nathan was essential to understanding just who Jesus would be.
In what might be the most important theological development of the Biblical literature of Deuteronomistic History (that is, the large portion of scripture of Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, 1 & 2 Samuel and 1 & 2 Kings written down during the Babylonian exile), we read about King David’s desire to build a house for the Holy One of Israel more than 500 years before the exile. David tells the prophet Nathan that God should not be living like a nomad in a tent, but should have a proper dwelling place, a seat of power. At first Nathan agrees, but then Nathan has a dream in which the Holy One acknowledges David’s desire, but insists on not a building, not a secure location, but a lineage and a heritage of everlasting love. There’s a word play going on here on the Hebrew word “bayt” which is the word for house or dwelling or place, temple or palace, family line or a people. In English we use the word house the same way: house is a building a person might live in, a “house of worship” means a church or temple or mosque, and the House of Windsor means generations of a royal family of the United Kingdom. Same word, house, or in Hebrew, “bayt.”
This story marks a huge theological movement from the conditional covenant delivered to Moses on Sinai, that essentially says, “when you will be my people, then I will be your God,” or “when I am your God, this is how you will behave,” to what Biblical scholar, Bruce Birch, calls a “nevertheless” promise of unconditional love. No matter how people miss the mark, no matter what bad behavior people engage in, the love of the Holy One will be everlasting and unbroken.[1] Devastation of a building and the exile of a people cannot destroy the house of God – or the house of Love, or Desire for the Shalom, for the well-being of the children of God. This David and Nathan story teaches that God will not and cannot be confined to a single location; God is not homebound. Even in exile, God’s love for the people is becoming steadfast and unconditional. I want you to hear the ancient promise of God’s love, of divine grace in the First or Old Testament. Obedience to the ethical mandate of Torah is still required, and the people will suffer the consequences of sin, but God’s compassion and mercy are sure and enduring.
This ancient promise was a message of hope for the generations of Jesus followers and other Jews in the devastating time after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman Empire toward the end of the first century of the Common Era. It is a hallmark of Rabbinic Judaism – that the Holy One was not confined to the Temple in Jerusalem, and that fidelity to the covenant didn’t require a particular geographical location, but rather a particular inclination of the heart of the community. Our collect for today begs that Love will purify our conscience daily, so that Jesus Christ will find in us a big roomy house – a mansion prepared for himself. Just to be clear, the mansion is not a place for Jesus to live alone, to finally get some peace and quiet. The mansion called for is a dwelling place for all the people, people of all sorts and conditions.
What our Gospels of Matthew and Luke assert is the importance of this theological heritage and they go to some lengths to demonstrate the lineage of Jesus back to the House of David (even though they don’t exactly agree on how to get there – their genealogies cannot be reconciled). It’s not so different from our Episcopal Church’s concern with Apostolic Succession. (Apostolic succession is a little sketchy if we are asserting something literal rather than spiritual, something factual rather than something true.) As you know, I prefer to stake my life’s work on spiritual and true, and not get stuck in the weeds of literal or factual. Many of you also know I so love the teaching that, “just because it didn’t happen, doesn’t mean it isn’t true.”
“Just because it didn’t happen, doesn’t mean it isn’t true,” is my recommended way to hear the magnificent story of the encounter with Mary and a divine messenger whose name means “God is my strength.” Why Gabriel and not another angel of the Lord? The text assumes we know so we are not told, but perhaps it’s because Gabriel is the angel who is known for providing sudden insight and guidance for the future when explaining the prophet Daniel’s perplexing visions in the First Testament. While we don’t know how long this surprising encounter and understanding actually took, the story reads like Mary’s insight and guidance for the future came in a flash. Mary goes from perplexed and afraid to “all in” in the course of just a couple hundred words. But it might have taken years and only become clear in the imagination of generations after her. The revelation of the mystery as the Apostle Paul calls Jesus, takes time, I think.
Prior to our lesson for this morning, the Gospel of Luke first tells the story of John the Baptist’s mother Elizabeth’s impossible pregnancy, saying that Elizabeth spent the first five months of her pregnancy in seclusion and her disbelieving husband, Zechariah the priest, lost his ability to speak. It sounds like a very difficult time. Then in the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, Mary was told that she was about to become pregnant with Jesus and got the news that her relative Elizabeth was also expecting a child.
There are three things that I want you to understand are deeply true, even if they didn’t happen. They have to do with angels, virgins, and cousins. First, the deep truth of angels. Angels come in all shapes and sizes. They usually start their message with “do not be afraid.” That’s the most reliable clue that angels can be frightening or that they arrive in the midst of very frightening circumstances. In the book of Daniel, Gabriel is described as looking like a man. That says to me that there were probably no wings involved. The artistic depiction of wings on angels is a way of visually communicating that they came out of nowhere, or that they came directly from the heavens, like a dove or an eagle or a sparrow. In the Bible, angels are only recognized in hindsight, after the message from God has been delivered. In the Second Testament book of Hebrews, Jesus’ followers are instructed to “stay on good terms with each other, held together by love. Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers because some have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it!” [2] The Biblical idea of an angel is one sent by the Holy One who is not visibly different from any ordinary person. I am quite sure that we have all encountered angels of the Lord and I know that some, if not all of you have served as angels of the Lord.
Second, I want to say a word about the deep truth of virgins. This is not a medical record that we are reading. This is a great love story. Consider this: we have a great love story here about the Savior of the world being entrusted to a young woman without prior knowledge or consent of a man. Think about the power of that in a patriarchal social construct like the Roman Empire, or the Episcopal Church. At the end of our Gospel portion, Mary says, “Here I am.” I don’t want you to miss that. In Biblical literature, this is the disclosure of divine availability – of presence and promise. Abraham says it. Jacob says it. Moses and Joshua say it. Samuel and Isaiah and Jeremiah say it. And most of all, God says it. God says it in the revelation to Moses in the burning bush and throughout the books of the prophets. Here I am. To say, “here I am,” is to pause to make a statement of radical and intense availability for whatever impossible situation might come. It’s deep calling to deep, and it’s especially radical when spoken by a woman.
Finally, a word about the deep truth of cousins. Whether one spends a lot of time with cousins or rarely sees cousins, there is a relational security in shared heritage, a strong bond, a fierce loyalty that doesn’t carry the baggage that can weigh down or trip up siblings. According to Luke, Mary didn’t have to go through this impossibly difficult thing alone and neither did Elizabeth. Although Elizabeth isn’t mentioned after Luke’s birth narrative, I imagine their kinship was also a source of strength and comfort when the most terrible things happened to their beautiful sons.
We are to understand that this story is not just about Mary of Nazareth or her cousin Elizabeth of Ein Kerem 2000 years ago. It’s about the hope and the danger, the risks and the possibilities in the impossible situations we are in, in the impossible situations we are witnessing. It seems to me that that God is calling on you, on me, on Emmanuel Church, on all people to give birth to something entirely new, to say “Here I am” when we find ourselves in impossible situations. None of us is alone. And everything is waiting for us to make ourselves ready to sing a song of love, a song of mercy and a song of compassion for all people.
- Bruce C. Birch, “The First and Second Books of Samuel,” in The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. II (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1998), pp. 1254-1260.
- Hebrews 13:1-2.