"How Can This Be?"

Anna Blaedel
First UMC, Osage
12.21.08

4th Sunday in Advent—PEACE

Ephesians 2:14-20
Luke 1:26-38

“It gets darker and darker, and then Jesus is born.” It gets darker and darker, and then Jesus is born. Today is winter solstice, the shortest day, the longest night, of our year. When we most need light. As we tell and retell the Christmas story in the sing-song rhymes and soul soothing familiar carols, read of the Magi following a star in Matthew and shepherds tending their flocks in Luke, seek out Christmas concerts and adjust travel plans to the snow, it seems to me this sentence by Wendell Berry sums it up. “It gets darker and darker, and then Jesus is born.”

The Prince of Peace, Emmanuel, God With Us, this One for whom we wait and watch, is coming into the world. Soon, now… It gets darker and darker, and then Jesus is born.

Today we light the Peace candle. Today we read from Ephesians and from Luke. “For Christ is our peace.” Jesus is coming, Jesus the one who breaks down diving walls and reconciles hostilities between us, who creates a new humanity, and enables a new intimacy with the Divine. Making peace, reconciling those who remain stubbornly divided. “So,” we read in this epistle lesson, “Jesus comes to proclaim peace to those far off and peace to those who were near, so that no one, anywhere, will be strangers or aliens.” No border fence or hardened heart, no war machine or deep despair can thwart this one who is being born. It gets darker and darker, and then Jesus is born.

The Holy One, birthed in a manger in the Middle East. And, given the task, how poignant, the birth place of this Prince of Peace. How fitting, the dark skin, the Arab ethnicity, of this Middle Eastern messiah, born to save us, to bless us when we are peacemakers, to break down barriers and reconcile hostilities. It gets darker and darker, and then Jesus is born.

It is all a bit absurd, isn’t it? Our God, the Holy One of power and majesty, born in a barn? The Prince of Peace, coming to the world at the very site of decades of bitter hostility, terror and warfare, exile and division and violence? The one who we worship, coming to us in the form of utter vulnerability, depending on us, us!, to make room in the world, room in our hearts? At least to me, it’s all a little bit absurd. How can this be?

“Holiness,” writes Anne Lamott, “Has often been revealed to me in the exquisite pun of the first syllable, in holes—in not enough help, in brokenness, mess. High holy places, with ethereal sounds and stained glass, can massage my illusion of holiness, but in holes and lostness I can pick up the light of small ordinary progress, newly made moments flecked like pepper into the slog and the disruptions.” Newly made moments flecked like pepper into the slog and the disruptions. It gets darker and darker, and then Jesus is born.

Yesterday I sat in the very last pew of the sanctuary at Our Saviors Lutheran for Shawn Berg’s funeral. Even having never met Shawn, I wept as his friend Al spoke of Shawn’s love for his daughters, his devotion to his three girls, Elizabeth, Isabel, and Payton. I wept for their unimaginable loss, their unfathomable grief. Al shared a quote Shawn had valued, a quote, I am learning, reflected how he lived and died. “Like is not about waiting for the storm to pass, it’s about learning to dance in the rain.” Give peace to every heart, God, even when, especially when, peace seems impossible. It gets darker and darker, and then Jesus is born.

In the sixth month, God sends Gabriel to visit Mary. “Greetings, blessed one! The Lord is with you!” Mary is perplexed. God, with her? And, because Mary is Mary and not me, she doesn’t brush this off as absurd. She ponders these words in her heart. She prays. “Do not be afraid,” the angel tries to reassure her. “You are going to bear a child. Name him Jesus. This baby is going to be very, very special, Mary. He will be called the Child of the Most High, and he will create a new kind of kingdom, one without end. This child will be holy.” “How can this be?” asks Mary, glimpsing the absurd. Not only is she pregnant, without participating in the due process, she is pregnant with the child of God. “Oh, you know, the Holy Spirit,” says Gabriel. “For nothing is impossible with God.”

And, unlike Abram, Moses, Samuel, Jonah, the list goes on and on of those who question God, who give a big fat No, at least initially, to God’s sacred callings. Mary does not cry, “You’re crazy! Nor, I cannot. I am not worthy,” nor, “I’m not strong enough or good enough or ready enough or…” Mary says simply, “How can this be?” And then, with courage and faith and deep deep peace, after only a few sentences from the strange angel in her midst, she replies, “Here am I, the servant of God; let it be with me according to your word.” Even though she will be shamed. Even though people will talk. Even though there will be whispers and glances and frowns when she walks down the street or into a room or perhaps even into her place of worship... Even though she is young, and unmarried. Even though, even though, even though. “Here am I. Let it be…” she says.

God invites the unimaginable, offers the unfathomable. And Mary says, simply, “"Let it be.' I will participate in this sacred story."

The Prince of Peace, born to a world at war. It gets darker and darker, and then Jesus is born. “So, Jesus comes to proclaim peace to those who were far off and peace to those who were near…so then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but members of the household of God.”

Members of this community of the household of God have gathered on Thursday evenings this Advent season for a time of prayer, scripture, spiritual practice, and song. Many of the songs we have sung are from the Taize community in France, a Christian lay monastic community committed to the belief that contemplative practice—simply praying and singing in community—can birth God’s justice and peace in the world. By inviting God into our hearts and our lives, by taking time out, carving time out, by gathering together when it is cold, lighting candles in the darkness, we celebrate Jesus’ birth. In preparing ourselves to meet God, we prepare the world for God’s work, and enter the process of welcoming the Prince of Peace into this world so desperately in need.

Each Thursday, we have lit candles and prayed for the people and places in need of Peace, in need of God’s tender care. In a few moments, these same candles will be lit. As we offer up the prayers of our hearts, name in silence and aloud in community, the people and places waiting for the Coming Care of Jesus.

And, in doing so, we welcome the Prince of Peace into the world. In the midst of it all, in the mess of it all. The Holy One, coming into the holes and cracks in our hearts and lives and world. How can it be? It gets darker and darker, and then Jesus is born. May it be so. Amen, and amen.