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Sermon at The Church of the
Holy Apostles, New York City,
December 24, 2006, The Fourth Sunday of Advent, Year C
The Reverend William A. Greenlaw, Ph.D., Rector
Michah 5: 2 - 4
Psalm 80
Hebrews 10: 5 - 10
Luke 1: 39 - 56
In the Name of the One who is coming. Amen.
If any of you are feeling this has been a short Advent,
you are not alone. Just three weeks ago we had Luke’s version of
“Apocalypse Now” for the first Sunday of Advent, full of cosmic
upheaval with signs in the sun, and moon, and stars. Then two
weeks ago and one week ago, we focused on St. John the Baptist.
In a collective sense of repentance we can scarcely imagine in our
world, great throngs of people thronged to the desert to hear this
strangely dressed ascetic who ate locusts and honey. How far
would a modern-day preacher get greeting his or her hearers with
these inviting opening words of John the Baptist’s sermon: “You
brood of vipers!”? You have to give Luke credit for having a
sense of humor when he notes: “…so he proclaimed the good news to
the people.” Last Sunday may have been our “rose Sunday,” one of
two times in the year when we dust off and bring out our
fiddleback chasuble—to the dismay of some but to the delight of
others. But even so, the message of the gospel lesson was stark
even in the midst of beautiful music and lessons that bore a
message of hope that we enjoyed.
It is only today that we turn to the first Advent—that
is to say what most of us think Advent is about most of the time,
and we hear the story of Mary and we reflect on her role in the
cosmic drama that is unfolding—and the holy birth that is nearly
upon us. Yet because Advent IV and Christmas Eve take place on
the very same day this year, we have but a few hours until
Christmas is here.
But hold on just a minute.
I need to confess to you that I don’t know when I have
ever felt so unsure, so halting, so tentative in being open to
what is before us this morning—and what awaits us this evening.
For today I find myself reeling in darkness and despair, in
uncertainty and anguish over the state of our world, and our
nation. Of feeling stuck in a world hell-bent on death and
destruction and delusion, as the violence done to our good earth
goes on as unabated as the violence we see consuming so many
peoples of the earth. There is a part of me that wants to let
those “brood of vipers” have it. Except that there are two small
problems: on the one hand, I don’t think they are listening, and
on the other, I’m very much one of them. Stuck. Paralyzed.
Deeply uncertain. Very fearful. Wondering what the future can
hold. And yet consuming daily along with nearly everyone else in
America much more than the good earth can possibly sustain for
many more years. And at the same time feeling almost powerless in
addressing the challenges of the environment, powerless in being
heard by an administration that feels the answer to last month’s
election results is to send 30,000 more troops into a war that we
cannot win in any conventional sense—and that we cannot end,
either. And so the killing goes on, world without end—and all
this in our name.
And yet parallel to all this, all one needs to do is to
venture into Midtown to be confronted with a glitzy culture of
ever more extravagant consumption writ large and run amuck. A
culture denying most anything that might question the propriety of
ever-greater wealth and the accumulation of more and more goods.
The frenzy goes one until folks are ready to drop. With precious
little sense of disconnect with the rest of the world, our own
nation, our own planet.
The frantic activity that produces exhaustion more than
happiness, despair more than fulfillment is simply too much. I
need to get off. I must get off. But I don’t know how, for it
seems so much bigger than me. I feel trapped and full of
despair. It is no wonder that at this time of year is so
difficult for so many—when more alcohol is consumed, when there
are more suicides, when there is more serious depression than at
any other time of the year.
I know that I am not alone in having such feelings on
this final morning of preparation. This final morning of
preparation for something I am not at all sure I am ready for or
can handle. Not this year. Not now.
But then, just as I am ready
to scream, at the eleventh hour, it comes to me. I realize I
can’t squeeze it out. I can’t manufacture it. I
can’t use my wits to once again land on my feet. I can’t
make it happen. Not for me. Not for you.
No, what comes to me is that I must simply offer it up,
let it go, surrender what is not mine to control, give up that
which is not mine to possess. To remember that in our common
humanity, we discover who we are, what our hope is, what alone can
deliver us, not in having it all together, Lord help us, but
rather in our being open and vulnerable, for that is
the way of God It was the way of Mary. It is the way of Jesus—in
his birth, in his life, in his death.
And slowly it dawns on me that what can speak to me,
and what might have the possibility of speaking to many of you, is
not in my laying out a message that is “just so” in its
compellingness, but rather in finding a way of being open once
more to that sacred story which has the possibility of touching us
even so, even today, even now.
But we can’t just go there, or arrive there, without
acknowledging where we have been, the resistance we have felt, the
despair we have known. No, we need to look deeply at ourselves
and our world—and then confess that we cannot make it on
our own steam. For only then, can we be open to hearing that
sacred story in a new and fresh way that speaks to all of
life—and holds it all together.
That sacred story comes to us this morning in hearing
of Mary’s visit to her kinswoman Elizabeth—of that Elizabeth who
was old and barren bearing in her womb John the Baptist, and Mary
bearing in her womb Jesus—and John leaping for joy in Elizabeth’s
womb. And Mary singing that most amazing and powerful of songs,
the Magnificat. In this simple story of simple folk so very long
ago, something truly cosmic is going on that can touch us still.
And, most tellingly, the real truth and authenticity
and reality of these stories is conveyed, not through critical
analysis—at least not this morning—but rather through the arts,
where we still might have the possibility of being touched in the
deepest part of ourselves, in our hearts. Sacred story-telling,
poetry, the visual arts, and music all have the possibility of
communicating something that in my current condition, I simply
cannot access, cannot grasp with my usual linear mind racing
frantically, trying to connect the dots, the loose ends.
I have learned over the years that when I get into this
state—a not infrequent occurrence, I’m sorry to say, I need to
listen to music, music conveying the love that God bestows on to
us, even in our blindness, even in my blindness. And, as many of
you know, one of those pieces that in recent years has spoken to
me and cut through my defenses most readily is Franz Biebl’s
Ave Maria. When I was struggling a few days ago with what in
the world I would do with this sermon, I once again got out my
treasured Chanticleer recording of this piece, and within the
first few bars, quite simply found myself dissolving inside—as
seems to happen whenever I hear this piece. Somehow the haunting
melody and harmonizations along with plainsong chant using the
traditional Ave Maria and Angelus texts conjure up
for me an ineffable sense of wonder and hope and beauty and love
that can only be of God. In hearing this piece, something cuts
through all the hardness, all the defenses, and I am taken to a
place of holiness and deepest truth. “The angel of the Lord came
to bring Word to Mary, and she conceived by the Holy Spirit.”
“Behold the handmaiden of the Lord. Be it unto me according to
your Word.” “And the word was made flesh and dwelt among us.”
We are blessed beyond measure at Holy Apostles in
having David Hurd and our wonderful choir as integral parts of our
parish community. Today, once again, they are offering Franz
Biebl’s Ave Maria. It will be sung after our
communion hymn, so that we have the possibility of being truly
quiet and open, where we have to possibility of receiving the
remarkable gift that is offered to us, the gift of putting us in
touch with that sacred and holy time that is upon us.
May Christ, at his coming, find in us a mansion
prepared for himself. Amen.
Note: An excellent recording of the Biebl Ave
Maria mentioned in this sermon is available and can be found
using the following link. It is performed by the Choir of
Trinity College, Melbourne, directed by Michael Leighton Jones:
http://www.trinity.unimelb.edu.au/choir/cd4/track11.mp3
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