Special Delivery

The United States Postal Service (USPS) will have delivered approximately 16 billion cards, letters, and packages between Thanksgiving Day and New Year’s Day this year! That is 16 billion with a “b” or maybe even a capital “B!”. According to their website the USPS indicates these numbers represent an increase of about 12 per cent over last year. This does not even include all the packages shipped by FedEx, UPS, DHL, and others! 

 

Perhaps like me you have noticed more delivery trucks driving around town. The other day I observed at about 7 AM a UPS truck pulling up to a house. Before the driver had even stopped another UPS worker jumped out of the truck with a package. Within 15 seconds the driver had his foot back on the accelerator as the second worker hopped back in and off they went—efficiency at work!

On top of the beauty of these workers doing their jobs effectively, something more stands out about all these deliveries. They are bringing presents, gifts, messages of hope, and other good news! At last count Kim and I have received 37 Christmas cards. (I honestly believe more will come in even after December 25^th because clergy families wait until their cards actually arrive in the season of Christmas instead of Advent—yes, we know we are a little rigid about liturgical seasons!)

The cards we have received have pictures of happy couples, children, grandchildren, and even pets smiling back up at us! Often I forget that our mail and packages do not just magically appear at our doorstep, but reading these USPS statistics, seeing the UPS workers hustle, and looking at all these marvelous Christmas cards has helped me to see that postal workers are angels or at least God’s messengers of good news. (Now, theologically speaking this is not what I believe, as angels are actually a different order of being than humans, but just play along as it’s ALMOST Christmas.) When I had this thought I quickly began thinking of how Gabriel might visit Mary if the story of Christ’s coming were to happen today.

Would Gabriel just text Mary out of the blue? Certainly not! Would Gabriel drop off a package of instructions, like a postal worker? Despite what I have already said, probably not! Gabriel met Mary face-to-face and as much as I love Christmas cards and birth announcements, the way that God had to intervene into human history was way too intimate for even the best designed stationary in the world.

We hear the story so often that it might lose its shocking nature, but what Gabriel came to tell Mary ought to shake us to our cores! “Greetings favored one! The Lord is with you” probably did little to comfort a startled Mary, especially considering that Gabriel followed this welcome up with a shocking announcement. As Frederick Buechner put it in his book Telling the Truth, “The gospel is bad news before it is good news” (New York: Harper One, 1977, 7). Initially what Gabriel spoke terrified Mary: “You are going to get pregnant out of wedlock and all those plans you had about marrying Joseph and living happily ever after… Well, they may not come to fruition, as you planned. Instead you are going to give birth to God’s Son!” Even as Gabriel said that the child would be great, the Son of the Most High and would reign forever, Mary stuck with his initial announcement that she would bear a son! “How can this be since I know not a man?” Out of wedlock pregnancy meant not just disruption of plans, but also potentially shame, disgrace, and even sometimes death! This was bad news at first! The mailman was not delivering a Christmas card, but a death notice!

I wonder how long Mary sat there perplexed before Gabriel dared to say something more. Maybe it was instantaneous, but if in her shoes I believe I would have been stupefied for quite a while. Slowly though, Gabriel explained that God’s Spirit would bring this child to Mary and to assuage her doubts the angel even told of Mary’s cousin Elizabeth’s miraculous pregnancy. Yet, even this thing could have been received as bad or at least scary news: a high risk pregnancy! And yet, the final words of this divine mail man resonate so profoundly that they transform all this shockingly upsetting news into something more hopeful for Mary: “For nothing will be impossible with God.” After these words Mary’s posture shifts.

The mother of God uttered boldly a statement that made the bad news into Gospel: “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Wow. Call it righteousness. Call it faithfulness. Call it unconditional love. Mary showed us all the epitome of trusting God. She consented to God’s will and became the servant of God, not completely abandoning her questions, but something else. Instead she let her wonderings gestate until she could see her cousin Elizabeth, until she could bear this son, and until the shepherds could come announce their vision of angelic hosts! Mary allowed God to dwell within and even though she had questions she said yes to God!

Sometimes in our lives a messenger will deliver bad news, or what at first appears to be bad news. What Mary exemplifies for us is how to respond in these difficult moments. May we consent to God, may we become servants of the Lord, and may we allow God’s word to be born in us as it was in Mary. May we say now and always, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”

Greetings Favored One

Frank Capra's It's A Wonderful Life (1946)

I love Christmas movies. I know we aren’t in Christmas yet, but I can’t help but watch them at this time of year. I’m sure the Liturgical police will issue me a citation, but I have a hard time not getting ready for Christmas by viewing some of my favorites. My friends in college would laugh at me because I could never make it through Love Actually without crying. When my family first saw Elf we laughed so hard that I thought we would be kicked out of the theater. That movie along with Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and It’s A Wonderful Life all seem to be on a similar theme of the protagonist figuring out who he is and what is his place in the world.

My family tends to watch another movie along this same line over the Holidays, although this year we watched it around Thanksgiving. Perhaps you’ve heard of it, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban? Harry Potter is a wizard. Maybe you already knew that. Now some of the film adaptations of J.K. Rowling’s books are pure garbage, but this one, at least in my humble opinion, does the fantasy writing justice. Without fail though whenever I watch this movie I cannot help but weep uncontrollably, even worse than watching Love Actually. Yes, I’ll admit it. I cry big alligator tears watching a movie about a teen wizard. Let me explain.

Harry Potter attempts to save Sirius Black and himself from dementors

Throughout this film Harry Potter, a teenage, orphaned magic maker finds himself chased by dementors. Dementors make one feel as though one will never be cheerful at all every again. These death-like creatures suck the happiness right out their prey. Typically they are used to keep prisoners held within Azkaban, the maximum security containment facility for the most heinous criminal witches and wizards. Yet, they have been summoned to protect Hogwarts, Harry Potter’s school.

All happiness and life itself begins to leave Sirius Black

The scene that makes me cry the most happens two times. A criminal named Sirius Black has escaped from Azkaban supposedly to find and kill Harry. The dementors have been called to keep Harry safe, but the truth emerges that Sirius never committed a crime and he escaped to protect Harry, his godson. Dementors suck so much joy from Harry and Sirius, as they chase them through the Forbidden Forest that for a moment life appears to leave Sirius. All of a sudden, Harry sees the shape of a stag made out of pure light and joy and life charge through the crowd of dementors sending them in a hundred different directions. Now why on earth would I cry about this scene?

Harry passes out from all that has happened. When he awakes he believes that his father, who had been dead for over a decade, came back to save Sirius and him. Harry had discovered earlier in the movie that his father could cast this stag-producing spell, so he thinkis his father must have produced it in the forest.

A twist occurs in the story that causes Harry and his friend Hermione to go back in time to rectify some things. Wouldn’t that be nice this time of year? So we see the exact same scene from a different vantage point. Harry waits and waits and waits for his father to come, but he does not appear. Finally Harry realizes that it wasn’t his father, but he himself who must cast the spell. He must send a beam of happiness to cast out the life sucking dementors. Now you might think I’m strange for crying at this point in the movie, but it’s probably not for the reason you think. I cry when I see this scene not because Harry saves the day, but for some other reason.

Harry Potter's Stag Patronus

We are here at St. John’s Church a mere four days from Christmas Day. Perhaps you have checked off everything on your to-do list. Maybe everything this year turned out exactly as planned. Possibly all relationships in your life are as bright as they seem to be on the Christmas cards we send to friends and family. However; things might not be exactly the way you had hoped they would be at this time of year. Things are left undone. The list has not been completed. The budget has been abandoned. Family members are angry. At a time when everything is supposed to be “merry and briii-i-i-ight,” you may feel sad, stressed, or like you will never be cheerful at all ever again.

At the Rite I service just before we receive Communion we pray what sounds like a dreadful prayer, the Prayer of Humble Access. It begins, “We do not presume to come to this thy Table, O merciful Lord,” we begin and often take an untimely breath here, which makes it sound like we are miserable scum. Some theologians might even tell you as much. “We do not presume to come to this thy Table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy great mercy.” We cannot trust in our own righteousness, our own right relationship with God, but we can trust in God’s mercy. The prayer continues, “We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy table, but Thou art the same Lord whose property is always to have mercy.” In a season of the year when I myself can feel so gloomy and overwhelmed and over budget despite all the advertisements that I should feel differently this prayer helps me to gain my bearings. It’s not about me, it’s about mercy.

Harry Potter did not feel worthy. He kept waiting on someone else to come and save the day. He was unsure of trusting in who he was and the abilities that he was given. We can believe just as much today, and a poor young woman so long ago might have felt the exact same way.

The virgin’s name was Mary. According to someone much smarter than I am, “She is young in a world that values age; female in a world ruled by men; poor in a stratified economy. Furthermore, she has neither husband nor child to validate her existence” (Luke Timothy Johnson; Luke, 39). I grew up in a church that had Mary everywhere: in front of votive prayer candles, on church hangings, and even in a chapel dedicated to her. So it is hard for me to remember that Mary came from NOTHING! She was worthless according to society.

She is unworthy, just like we might feel unworthy. And yet, God chose her not just to prove a point, but to bring salvation into the world. She did not know what to say when Gabriel came to her. We may not know what to say or what to do when God comes to us. We may believe that sinking feeling within us that we are unworthy; however, the story of Mary bearing God into this world proves to each and every one of us that we are not worthless.

Mary responds to God after her confusion wears off saying, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord, let it be according to your word.” You, like Mary are chosen. You are chosen to bring God into this world. God’s Spirit dwells with you just like it overshadowed Mary. In this season when so loudly you hear that you are not worthy until you get everything accomplished on our list, everything wrapped under the tree, and every relationship just like on a Christmas card God is trying to tell you something else. “Greetings favored one! God has found favor with you, do not be afraid, for the Holy Spirit is with you and you are called to bring Christ into this world.” You are chosen. God has made you worthy. Now bear Christ into the world!

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.