Let It Be

A Sermon for the 4^th Sunday of Advent (RCL B) 12-18-2011

Offered by Nathan Ferrell for Trinity Episcopal Shared Ministry

Texts:              2 Samuel 7:1-11,16; Canticle 15; Romans 16:25-27; Luke 1:26-38

Themes:         Mary, Theotokos, change, discomfort
Title:               Let It Be

Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Strength and our Redeemer. Amen +

Before you sit down, my friends, I will ask you to do one thing. Please move forward one pew. OK? Before you sit down, everyone please move into the pew in front of you. Just one pew forward, that’s all. OK?

There. You did it! Excellent work! Now, was that a bit uncomfortable? Was my request an inconvenience? Good, because today is our time to reflect together upon Mary, the Mother of God, and especially upon how God so completely interrupted and inconvenienced her life.

Our entrance hymn this morning was an old classic appointed for the Feast of the Annunciation on March 25: “The angel Gabriel from heaven came, his wings as drifted snow, his eyes as flame.”

I love this carol. It is quaint, lovely, pious poetry from an old Basque carol, but – to be honest – I doubt very much that this is how it actually occurred.

White wings, flaming eyes, blazing light! Is this how angels really appear?

Well, what about that admonition from the Letter to the Hebrews which calls us to practice hospitality “for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it” (Hebrews 13:2)?

This is more likely, I think. Angels – those messengers of God – are more likely to come among us without fanfare, without flaming eyes, to walk among us as strangers.

I picture Gabriel walking into Mary’s home looking like an ordinary Jewish man, but as a stranger.

And in that part of the world, women have long been discouraged from conversing with strange men, lest they bring dishonor upon their family by suspicion of wrongdoing.

The message brought by this stranger is itself a strange one, and troubling. What is worse still, it was quite inconvenient.

To be pregnant while still engaged to be married? Before the wedding itself? And to have God as the Father of the child? Who could ever believe her story?

This is not at all how Mary had pictured her life to be. 

Gabriel had said that she had found favor with God, but this angelic news was difficult and troubling and uncomfortable.

This should be no great surprise, of course, because that is God’s specialty, after all.

God is the Inconvenient One.

God is the One continually interrupting our lives. God is continually inconveniencing us with plans and goals and purposes which we have not yet chosen for ourselves.

But that, my friends, is a good thing, a very good thing indeed.

Because the basic struggle and challenge of our lives is learning how to deal with change.

Why is it that the ordinary, instinctual human response to change seems to be resistance and anger?

We live in a world, and in a universe or a multiverse, that is constantly changing. Everything is in motion; everything is continually shifting and moving and changing.

Long ago, the Greek philosopher Plato spoke of God as “the unmoved Mover”, the unchangeable Being that set everything else in motion. But given what we know of reality today, it is more fitting to think of God as “the Moving Mover”!

Everything is in flux and motion, and in the midst of all of this movement, God is present, working out plans and purposes that we cannot comprehend.

It is an illusion for us to cling to those few things which only appear to be unchanging around us, as if we can hold onto them and wrestle some security for ourselves out of them by the sheer force of our will!

But this is a lie. The Gospel calls us to truth, and the truth is that everything is changing continually and we have no control over that whatsoever.

What we do have control over is ourselves, at least, this is what we are working on!

There are very few of the major changes of life that are within my control, but I can control how I respond – how I think and feel and act in response to these things.

There is another song that comes to my mind when I hear this story of the Annunciation, a song that is very different from the hymns and carols of the church. It was first sung by a young man named Paul. Most of you know it. You can join in, if you like.

When I find myself in times of trouble,

Mother Mary comes to me,

Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.

And in my hour of darkness,

She is standing right in front of me,

Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.

Let it be, let it be, let it be, O let it be.

Whisper words of wisdom, let it be.

(If you don't know this song,...ouch! You need to hear it. Look here: Let It Be on YouTube)

Now, if you know the story, Paul McCartney is not singing of Mary, the Mother of God. He is speaking here of a dream in which he saw his own deceased mother who visited him and gave him a word of comfort during a difficult time.

But when I hear this song, I can’t help but to think of our Mother Mary and of her response to Gabriel in the midst of her own time of trouble: “Let it be.”

“Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word” (Luke 1:38).

And here, my sisters and my brothers, is our example of one who lives in accordance with the truth.

We speak of Mary as the Blessed Virgin, the Mother of God. All of the Church acclaims her as the Theotokos – the God-bearer. David desired to build God a house on earth, but she is the divine Tabernacle, the true Temple, in which God came to dwell on the earth. She is the new Eve, who overcame, by her trust and confidence, the disorder wrought by the ego-centered choice of the first Eve. It is her body which was taken up by Jesus and through which the world was redeemed.

She is worthy of honor, worthy of praise. But don’t misunderstand! Mary had a choice to make.

God brought drastic and sudden and unexpected change into her life. She did not ask for it. She was not preparing for it. And when it came, she had a choice to make. How would she respond to this change?

We are like her. God brings change into all of our lives  - sudden, drastic, unexpected. It comes into all of our lives, and rarely – if ever! - do our lives progress the way that we had envisioned.

When change is brought to us, we have a choice to make. How will we handle it?

We can complain. We can fight the change. We can pout. And so we can continue on in our spiritual immaturity, clinging to the falsehood of our own desire to control.

Or we can choose to see in each change an opportunity to grow, a chance to become more than what we are now.

When confronted by the unwanted changes in life, we can in fact choose to respond with trust and confidence, like Mary, and so to give praise to God who fills the hungry with good things.

May it always be so among us and among all who are preparing to greet the festival of Christ’s birth with joy. Amen.

The Mystery of Life

A Sermon for the 3^rd Sunday of Advent (RCL B) 12-11-2011

Offered by Nathan Ferrell for Trinity Episcopal Shared Ministry

Texts:              Isaiah 61:1-4,8-11; Canticle 15 ; 1 Thess. 5:16-24; John 1:6-8,19-28

Themes:         the Spirit of God, praying without ceasing, mystery
Title:               The Mystery of Life

Please put down whatever is in your hands, stand up and follow my lead and repeat after me:

Praise be to the Father who makes us (hands straight up, palms upward);

Praise be to the Son who saves us (hands out, like on the cross);
Praise be to the Spirit who fills us with life (hands in, pointing to the heart);
Praise be to God who calls us each by name (hands ahead, palms up and open).
Amen! Please be seated.

There once was an overly confident scientist who took a trip to New York City on a train. In his train cabin, there was also a farmer, upon whom the scientist looked down condescendingly. So, in order to pass the time, the scientist decided to play a little game with the farmer.

"I will ask you a question,” the scientist said, “and if you don’t know the answer, you have to pay me 1 dollar. You ask me a question, and if I don’t know the answer, then I’ll pay you 10 dollars! OK? You go first. Ask me any question."

The farmer thought for a while, and then said. "OK, I know. What has three legs, takes 10 hours to climb up a palm tree, and only 10 seconds to climb back down?"

The scientist was a bit confused by this. He thought long and hard about the question.

Finally, the train pulled into Penn Station. As they prepared to disembark, the scientist took out a 10 dollar bill and gave it to the farmer, and said, "Wow. You stumped me. I have no idea. What in the world has 3 legs, takes 10 hours to get up a palm tree and only 10 seconds to climb back down?"

The farmer took the 10 dollars and then gave a single dollar bill back to the scientist. And he shrugged and said, "I have no idea!"

My dear sisters and brothers in Christ: this morning, I want to encourage all of you to be wary of any hint of over-confidence, to steer clear of any temptation to feel too secure in your knowledge of life and the universe.

John the Baptizer was clothed in camel’s hair, unshaved, a wild man living in wild places. He stood before the people gathered around him and he spoke words of truth and power:

“Among you stands one whom you do not know.”

I have always loved this phrase from the mouth of John the Baptizer because of its recognition of the mystery present in the midst of our life.

Among you stands one whom you do not know. This is just as true in our own day as it was in John’s.  Among us stands those whom we do not know. Around us, and among us, are mysteries unknown, undiscerned, inscrutable. John’s words pointed to the mystery of God hidden in the life of one who appeared as an ordinary human being. Today, we are bombarded by mysteries being uncovered and discovered all around.

Just last week came another announcement from NASA concerning the discovery of a seemingly new habitable planet only 600 light years from Earth – a relatively near neighbor in terms of space travel (see http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2011/1205/New-earth-like-planet-discovered-by-NASA-spacecraft-Video).

Here is a planet which seems perfectly suited to support life. We do not yet know if there is life on that planet – if there are any conscious, sentient beings.

But such a discovery is inevitable. There are likely to be millions of planets out there with conditions suitable for life. Understand this: at some point, humanity WILL make contact with other life forms.  

Think about that. How does this affect your perception of God as Creator? How might this change your understanding of the meaning and purpose of human life?

Many physicists today speak not of the “universe”, but of the “multiverse”. The growing perception in this field is that our observable universe must, by definition, by only one of many universes that relate to one another in ways which we do not yet grasp. Hence, the idea is that we do not, in fact, live in the “universe” – meaning one, but in the “multiverse” – meaning many.

Other scientists speak of this growing perception as multiple dimensions of reality. Some physicists are speaking now of 11 or 12 or 13 dimensions of reality, far more than what was understood about life just a few years ago.

And what about neutrinos? Have you heard about neutrinos?

Neutrinos are produced by the nuclear fusion and decay processes of stars throughout the universe. They are a natural, normal, and abundant by-product of these nuclear reactions.

It appears that neutrinos are second only to photons in being the most common particles in the universe. Our own star, our sun, produces millions of trillions of neutrinos every second.
In fact, it is estimated that around one trillion neutrinos pass through your own body every single second of your life. They pass through other matter with unstoppable ease. They pass straight through the earth with hardly no resistance at all.
A trillion pass through your body every second, but only one or two of them will impact the cells of your body over the course of your lifetime.
Which ones? Can you feel or see these neutrinos passing through you? Do you know what they are doing inside of you?
Do any of us really know what is going on in the heavens around us every second?
One hundred years ago, people did not know about neutrinos or about the multiple dimensions of reality. They did not have satellite telescopes to observe distant planets.

But what will people know 100 years from now about which we have absolutely no clue today?

All of this new discovery and amazing knowledge leads me consistently back to one question: what does this mean for our lives? How does this knowledge of the complex and multi-faceted nature of the universe guide and shape how I live every single day?

What was it that John the Baptizer spoke? “Among you stands one whom you do not know.”

You see, at the core, I am but one small speck of dust in space. There exists around us and within us and among us mystery that we never will fully fathom or understand.

There is profound mystery in life about which we know next to nothing.

And guess what? We don’t have to know. We need only to be open, to embrace the mystery, to relish the new discoveries of science, to look forward in hope to what is yet to come.

Among us stands one whom we do not know. That one is Christ – the Incarnate Son of God who remains a mystery. How can this person be both fully human and fully divine without the one canceling out the other?

We do not claim that the Son came into this world from beyond it. That is super-naturalism and this the Church rejects.

No, Christ comes from within the world, the full flowering of consciousness, the first fruits of the end toward which all life is moving. In only 2 weeks, we will celebrate the mystery of this Incarnation – this perfect union of the divine and the human, the uncreated and the created in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.

How can we understand this? No more than we can understand what happens when we follow the guidance of St. Paul and learn to “pray without ceasing.”

These things cannot be grasped with the mind, but only experienced in the soul.

Be open to the mystery, my friends! Shun the hubris that closes your mind with too much faith in your own ability to understand things. Do not be afraid to experience God standing unknown and hidden in your midst today. For Christ comes to us bringing good news that transforms all those who embrace it.  May it always be so among us. Amen.