1^st January 2013

Rev Dr Max Champion at St John's UCA Mt Waverley Sunday 23 December 2012

Lessons - Isaiah 7:10-14; Galatians 4:4-7; Luke 1:26-45

And Gabriel came to Mary and said: 'Hail, O favoured one, the Lord is
with you!' (Luke 1:28) And Mary said to Gabriel: 'Behold, I am the
servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.' (v38)

Gabriel and Mary are key players in Luke's dramatic portrayal of the coming of Jesus. The angelic messenger announces the movement of grace towards humanity and the young woman responds in faith.

Gabriel is a fascinating but obscure 'angel of the Lord'. His name means 'Man of God' who 'stands before God's face'. Apart from his appearances to Mary and to Zechariah (announcing Elizabeth's pregnancy with John the Baptist (1:19), he does not appear elsewhere in the New Testament.

In the Old Testament (and related literature) he is thought of as one of the seven highest 'archangels' whose role is to speak a word of hope. In the book of Daniel, Gabriel interprets Daniel's terrifying visions to mean that the end of evil and a time of atonement will follow the dreadful oppression suffered by faithful Jews under King Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon.
In frightful circumstances, he was a messenger of hope!

It is noteworthy that Gabriel's name only occurs in Luke and Daniel in the Bible. For centuries Jews had implored God to end their suffering, persecution and oppression. They cried out for an end to the silence of God! Thus by introducing Gabriel, Luke deliberately connects Jesus with Daniel to suggest that their present experience of God's silence - when there had been 'no word from the Lord' for a long time - would soon come to an end.

Entering into the silence of God is the precondition for hearing the Word of God! If, in the midst of endlessly repetitive Christmas muzak, we do not stop to listen for a word that we do not expect to hear, then we will miss the seriousness of our own situation and the word of hope that speaks to us in this situation

Over-familiarity with Christmas is destroying hope. Sentimentality about the baby Jesus, and failure to connect his birth with his adulthood - when he was despised, rejected, crucified, risen and ascended - makes us deaf to the hope that has been enfleshed uniquely in his entire life.

It is better to suffer the silence of God and to identify with those who are oppressed, abused or persecuted, than to let shopping-mall carols and family celebrations deafen us to the true meaning of Gabriel's earth- shattering announcement to Mary.

If you are distraught at the extent of evil throughout the world - in which life, goodness and truth are often destroyed - then you may become a bitter atheist. But that is better than throwing a blanket of 'Christian'
goodwill over our efforts and ignoring both the extent of (human) sin and the costliness of (divine) grace.

Christians, like our Jewish cousins, are not immune from experiencing the silence of God! Persecuted Christians (living under tyrannical rulers) experience God's silence, as do those who bemoan the decline, apathy and compromise of the Church (in supposedly 'tolerant' societies) or who suffer terrible personal tragedies (of one kind or another).

So often, in the face of widespread idolatry and inhumanity, God's voice/word is deafeningly silent - at best, a very faint, muted or indistinct whisper in the ears of those who have lost hope. In such a silence Gabriel speaks to Mary, announcing that hope is to become a reality in the one to whom she will give birth: 'Jesus, the Son of the Most High God' (vv31,32,35). In him the promise of God's saving grace will come to fruition. In the silence of Israel's disappointed hopes, Mary hears what Gabriel has to say.

Medieval artists often painted her receiving the news through her ear.
That is to say, she conceived Jesus by listening to God's word of hope - her ears were the organs of conception!

The fact that neither they nor Luke were ignorant of biological processes, but had a keen theological sense of occasion, should discourage fundamentalists and liberals alike from getting involved in fruitless debates over the 'virgin birth'. It is enough to say that Jesus was 'born of a woman' (Galatians 4:4) whose humble listening to and reception of Gabriel's earth-shaking announcement enabled God's gracious plan to come to reality in and through her body.

Accordingly Mary has a special place in the life of the Church. She is the 'Mother of the Son of God', the Person who is of one being with God the Father, as the Nicene Creed puts it. She is also a 'Daughter of Grace', the one who is favoured by God to receive the great privilege of bearing the Messiah and one whose humble faith all followers of Christ are called to embody. Through her, the unmerited, unmotivated grace of God has come to us all.

The word of grace spoken by Gabriel and the word of humility spoken by Mary both need to be heard today. It is particularly necessary when God's voice is silent and sentimentality, conflict, suffering and persecution can so easily deafen us to the word of hope which has been uniquely embodied in the birth, ministry, crucifixion, resurrection and ascension of 'Jesus, Son of the Most High God'.

May we, too, listen for the Word of God that is unlike any other word because it speaks of One who is unlike any other. May we rejoice in the announcement of the incarnation to Mary, give thanks for her humble and receptive faith, and open ourselves to hear what God is calling us to do in a world and a Church where God often seems to be silent.

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Rev Dr Max Champion is minister in the St John's Uniting Church, Mt Waverley, Victoria, Australia. Dr Champion is Chair of the Assembly of
Confessing Congregations within the UCA.