When Is It Real?

Sermon-4 Advent B-Dec. 18, 2011
O Lord, we pray, speak in this place, in the calming of our minds and in the longing of our hearts, by the words of my lips and in the thoughts that we form. Speak, O Lord, for your servants listen. Amen.
As most of you know, my mother passed away 12 days ago. I was in Texas this week. Constantly people kept coming up to me saying that I seemed to be taking her death very well (meaning that I wasn’t crying or breaking down). And I kept saying, “it’s because it isn’t real to me. ” I hadn’t seen her in 3 weeks, and it just didn’t feel as though she had left. So I went to every place that I had seen her the last year-to the bed in the nursing home, to the place in the dining hall where she ate, to the chair she sat in a lot when she read and worked her crossword puzzles. I kept trying to feel her passing by looking at the places where she had been. But every place I looked she still seemed to be there. She did not feel gone. A second thing that happened was that whenever I told someone that my mother had died, they immediately told me about a loss they had suffered. It was as if they wanted to say, “yes, I understand, this is real for me, too.”
I was thinking a lot about that this week, and thinking about today’s sermon. I began thinking about how hard it is for me, and I assume for others, to feel that something is “real”. It is not easy.
The first person ever to have a nativity scene was St. Francis of Assisi. You know why he did it? The first crèche? He did it to make the birth of Jesus feel more real for people. He wanted people to understand God coming into the world-he wanted them to believe it- “St. Francis of Assisi is credited with creating the first nativity scene[3][4] in 1223 at Greccio, Italy…..[6][7] Staged in a cave near Greccio, St. Francis' nativity scene was a living one[3] with humans and animals cast in the Biblical roles.[8] Pope Honorius III gave his blessing to the exhibit.[9] Such[exhibits] …. became hugely popular and spread throughout Christendom.[8] Within a hundred years every church in Italy was expected to have a nativity scene at Christmas.”
In a sense every sermon, every story has that as a goal-to make God real, to make God alive. It is not easy. We have made God so distant, so far away, so untouchable, that it is hard to ever believe that God is real, God is near, God is active, that God is still alive in our lives. At Christmas we try to convince everyone the unbelievable belief that God came as one of us. It can be hard for us to believe that God is real.
Novelist Ron Hansen writes: “Each day at noon the bell of Holy Angels Catholic Church slowly gonged, and if we schoolchildren weren’t at lunch or recess we were instructed to stand and recite “The Angelus.”
“The angel of the Lord declared unto Mary,” our teacher would say. Our memorized response was, “And she conceived of the Holy Ghost.” Which was followed by the prayer called the “Hail Mary.”
At the next gong, the teacher recited, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord.” And we said, “Be it done unto me according to thy word.”
Another “Hail Mary,” another gong, and then the final petition, “The Word was made flesh,” to which we added, “And dwelt amongst us.”
Some fifty years later I still recite “The Angelus” when I hear a church’s noontime bell, and that recitation is a regular reminder of the crucial importance of the announcement and acceptance in our gospel passage from Luke.”
Church bells as a way of seeing that God is real. When I read that story I thought of me looking at mom’s chair where she always sat. I told a woman on the plane that my mother had died and she immediately said, “I know what you’re feeling-my father died 12 years ago.” We use images, reminders, sounds, smells, and especially memories to help us understand and to know.
We use these ways to help us remember and to feel. We use these ways for us to believe that something is real.
Kate Huey writes in her weekly column: “And that brings us to how God is doing such wonderful and seemingly impossible things here in this story about Mary and an angel's astonishing announcement. We note that it isn't called "The Request," or "The Invitation," but "The Annunciation." And we suppose that God could have chosen to save the world, to fulfill God's promises of old all on God's own; after all, nothing is impossible with God. However, this humble but earth-shaking conversation tells us that God wants humanity to be part of the effort, even if it makes things much more complicated and even difficult (which it does): "God intends to draw Mary and all of us into what God is doing," Brian K. Peterson writes, "and God apparently is not willing to do this behind our backs or without our own participation" (New Proclamation 2008). And this is what, in some mysterious way, makes Mary's story our own, or at least it makes her story something we can understand much better.”
God uses a human, a young girl, a birth, a child, to show us, to teach us that he is real. God uses us to break into our world.
I’ve told you several times about a parishioner who was here when I first came (and has long since passed on). I would take him communion, and he would say to me, “ok, father, I’ll take communion, but I want you to know that I don’t believe in the Virgin Birth.” I’d ask him, “how about the Resurrect ion?” Not a problem, he’d say. “The feeding of the 5000?” “Oh yeah, I believe that”, he responded. “Then why,” I’d ask, “is the virgin birth such a problem?” “It goes against science!” he replied. I would say, “None of the story is scientific!” And he always responded, “yeah, but the virgin birth is just too much of a stretch!”
Maybe it is too much of a stretch, but it shows what lengths God will go to, to make us believe that his love, his presence is real.
Today we hear the story of God using Mary. It is a wonderful story, full of drama and charm-but is it real for you? When you hear it do you think, “what a cute little story!” Or does it have power ?
I think for something to be real for us it has to be part of us, in us, something w can see and touch and feel. It has to be part of our lives, too.
Barbara Brown Taylor quoting from the medieval mystic Meister Eckhart once wrote:
"We are all meant to be mothers of God. What good is it to me if this eternal birth of the divine Son takes place unceasingly but does not take place within myself? And, what good is it to me if Mary is full of grace if I am not also full of grace? What good is it to me for the Creator to give birth to his Son if I do not also give birth to him in my time and my culture? Then, then, is the fullness of time: When the Son of God is begotten in us." (Meister Eckhart, quoted by Barbara Brown Taylor in her sermon, "Mothers of God" in Gospel Medicine).
Today we hear the story of a young girl who said yes, “use me”, bless me with this terrible blessing. We have made it beautiful, and sweet and miraculous. But that is not what we need to do. For this story to be powerful and life changing for us, it must also be real. We have to see that God is still being born, still calling unlikely people, still asking if we are ready to be his servants. Is this story too much of a stretch for you? Or is it possible for God to be born in you, also? In other words, does this story feel real for you? Amen.