Thomas J Parlette
“When Angels Come Calling”
Luke 1: 26-38
12/20/20
In our Gospel passage for today, the angel Gabriel comes calling with an announcement to a young girl named Mary that will change the world forever. We wonder a lot about angels. I know several people who are convinced that they’ve had angelic encounters. I have no reason not to believe them. After all, nothing is impossible with God.
But we wonder all the same. Consider these interesting thoughts about angels from some young people aged 5-9.
Gregory, 5 years old has this to say, “I only know the names of two angels – Hark and Harold.”
Olive, aged 9 says, “Everybody’s got it all wrong. Angels don’t wear halos anymore. I forget why, but scientists are working on it.”
And Matthew, also 9 years old, reminds us that “It’s not easy to become an angel! First, you die. Then you go to heaven, and then there’s still the flight training to go through. And then you got to agree to wear those angel clothes.”(1)
But today, we are concerned with one angel in particular – not Hark, or Harold, but rather Gabriel. Long ago, in a remote corner of this earth, God broke into our world through the voice of an angel named Gabriel. Gabriel came to a young woman named Mary.
As was the custom of the day, Mary’s parents made all the arrangements for her marriage. At the proper age she would marry Joseph, the local carpenter. The negotiations were made between Mary’s parents and Joseph’s parents with the couple having little say in the matter. Since Nazareth was a small village, Mary probably knew Joseph quite well already. Perhaps she had seen him working in his shop.
Then came the day when Mary and Joseph were betrothed to each other. Betrothal was a period of one year and was as binding as marriage. It was so official that, during this year, if Joseph died, Mary would be considered a widow.
One day as Mary was probably daydreaming about her upcoming marriage, she looked up and saw an angel standing before her. She was startled and a bit frightened. Mary never in a million years dreamed of being visited by an angel.
“Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you,” Gabriel said to a frightened Mary. What an unusual way to begin – “Greetings favored one!” Why was she favored? Mary was just an ordinary girl, barely a teenager. There was nothing special about her, not that we know of. She didn’t come from a wealthy family. She wasn’t listed in the society pages of the Nazareth Times. No one outside of Nazareth had ever heard of her. She was just your average young woman.
Mary was confused, and Gabriel sensed her fear. He tried to comfort her, reassure her, “Don’t be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God.”
Mary didn’t realize it at the time, but God had chosen her for a very special purpose. “You will conceive and give birth to a son,” said Gabriel, “and you are to call him Jesus.” Mary was mystified. What could all this mean?
Mary listened to the angel’s words. “He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David, and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.”
Still, Mary was bewildered – who wouldn’t be. “How can this be,” She asked, “since I am a virgin?”
And Gabriel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the Holy One to be born will be called the Son of God.”
To satisfy her confusion about bearing a child and yet being a virgin, Gabriel reminded her that her cousin Elizabeth was far past the child-bearing age, but she was six months pregnant. This was God’s doing, the angel told her, for nothing is impossible with God.
At this point in the story, I think there was a long pause as Mary turned this over in her mind and considered the many ramifications of this announcement. She is a thirteen- year old girl after all, and this is life changing news! But she takes the angel at his word and believes him. She accepts her role in God’s divine plan. “Here I am, the servant of the Lord. Let it be with me according to your word.” And Gabriel left. Mary believed Gabriel’s message, and they rest, as they say, is history.
Although we know very little about Mary and her family, we can assume that she was a devout Jew who had listened and believed the scripture lessons read at the local synagogue. Although she was certainly startled by the appearance of an angel, his words didn’t seem foreign to her. Deep in her heart she believed that one day the Messiah would come. She just never realized that she would be chosen to play a part in the Messiah’s birth.
It’s a beautiful story, one that will live in our hearts forever and teach us some things about the life of faith.
First of all, we see a young woman’s obedience to God. “Here I am, the servant of the Lord,” Mary says. “Let it be with me according to your word.”
When a pastor asked a class of boys and girls, “Why was Jesus born in Bethlehem?”, one boy raised his hand and relied, “Because his mother was there.”
True enough. Without Mary’s obedience to God, the Christmas story would be quite different. “Obedience,” wrote C.S. Lewis, “is the key to all doors.”
I once read about a remarkable young woman named Maria Dyer. Maria was born in 1837 in China where her parents were missionaries. Both of her parents died when Maria was a little girl, so she was sent back to England to be raised by an uncle.
Like her parents, Maria felt a call to be a missionary. So at age 16, she and her sister returned to China to work in a girl’s school there. Five years later, she married a well-known missionary named Hudson Taylor.
Life was not easy for the Taylor’s. Their ministry was harshly criticized and only four of their nine children survived into adulthood. Maria herself died of cholera when she was just 43. But she believed the cause was worthy of the sacrifice. On her grave stone these words were inscribed: “For her to live was Christ, and to die was gain.”
Pastor Paul Chappell makes this comment about the Taylor’s ministry. “In a day when many are self-absorbed and care more about what they can get rather than what they can give, we need a renewal of sacrificial love. It was God’s love for us that sent Jesus into the world to die for our sins, and it is that kind of giving love that our world needs so greatly today. When we love God as we should, our interests fade as we magnify God.”(2)
That was true of Hudson and Maria Taylor. Without obedient servants like the Taylors we would not have the Gospel today. Certainly without the obedience of a young woman named Mary we would not have the story of Christmas.
The second element of the story that endears the Christmas story to us is how God chose to work to accomplish this mission. God chose to work through the least and the lowest of people and places – reminding us of our responsibilities to the least and lowest as well.
Many of the deprived and outcast of this world identify in a special way with the Christ child who lay in a feeding trough for a bed and was attended by shepherds, donkeys, and cattle. Everything about Christ’s birth affirms God’s love for the least and the lowest.
Galilee, the region where Jesus grew up was sort of an Appalachia of its day – up in the hills, and a bit backward compared with Judea.
Nazareth, the village that Mary and Joseph called home had such a poor reputation that in John 1: 46, Nathaniel sums up its disrepute like this: “Nazareth?! Can anything good come from Nazareth?”
Even that little town where Jesus was born was not exactly a teeming metropolis. Bethlehem was the city of David, but as cities go, there wasn’t much to make it stand out. It was a small town not too far from the Holy City of Jerusalem.
Then there were the cattle and the shepherds and the bed of straw because there was no room for them anywhere else. How astonished Mary and Joseph would have been if they could see what Jesus’ humble birth means to us now, how it has morphed into a materialistic extravaganza. However, remember that the first Christmas was aimed at the humblest of people – it is a reminder that we who follow Jesus have a responsibility for those for whom life is a constant struggle. And there are many who struggle in these difficult times.
There was once a story that appeared in AARP magazine a few years ago. It was about an unemployed salesman in 1971 who received an act of kindness that changed his life. This man was living in his car, just scraping by, when a local diner owner gave him $20.00 and a tank of gas.
Fast forward eight years. That unemployed salesman in now hugely successful. He begins giving away money anonymously in order to repay the kindness of that diner owner. What started as a simple gesture of gratitude has grown into a wonderful Christmas tradition. Over the last few decades, this anonymous businessman has given away tens of thousands of dollars every Christmas to people on the streets of Kansas City, Missouri.
And just a few years ago, the businessman returned to the old diner to thank the man who changed his life. The diner owner was retired now and taking care of his ailing wife. Imagine his surprise when a man showed up on his doorstep and handed him $10,000 and then disappeared without a word.(3)
It’s amazing how often things like that happen at Christmas time. Christmas brings out the generosity in us. And it should. Christmas began in a stable surrounded by shepherds and animals, and a humble young couple and a baby in a manger.
But most importantly, Christmas is the celebration of God’s greatest gift to humanity – God’s own Son. The tradition of giving gifts at Christmas time is usually tied to the story of the Magi giving gifts to baby Jesus. But surely the far greater gift at Christmas time is the gift of the baby Jesus himself. There is no greater gift than that.
Most of you probably remember the late Dave Thomas, the founder and long-time CEO of Wendy’s hamburger chain. Dave Thomas wrote a book in which he told about an incident out of his own experience.
Dave was scheduled to film a short television spot urging people to consider adopting a child. Dave himself had been adopted as a child, so he was happy to support the cause. He and a friend of his were to meet with a brother and sister, potential adoptees, to talk with them before they filmed the TV spot.
It was shortly before Christmas, but these two children had little hope of celebrating the holiday with a family of their own. Dave helped the TV spot would help. Unfortunately, the little girl had a problem that couldn’t be hidden. She had an ugly scar across her face where she had been hit with a beer bottle by her father.
As they were talking with the children, the boy blurted out, “I don’t want to be adopted with her – just look at her ugly scar!” The boy was worried that his sisters scar might mess up his opportunity to be adopted. Dave knew how important it was that they be adopted together but he was at a loss as to what to say.
Fortunately, his friend saved the day. He took two $100.00 bills out of his wallet and gave one to each child. He told them that the money was for Christmas presents – but there was one catch. They had to use the money to buy something for their sibling, something that would make them very happy. Then he asked that they both write him a letter and tell them what they bought.
And his plan worked. The children actually bonded more strongly after buying presents for each other. They were eventually adopted together, and their adoptive parents remarked on how well the children took care of each other.(4)
A gift given in the right spirit can carry with it a wondrous amount of love. That was God’s intent in the gift of God’s Son. In the Christmas story we see a young woman’s obedience to God, we see God’s love for the least and the lowest, and most importantly, we see God’s love for each of us, as well as all people on earth, through the gift of Jesus Christ our Savior.
And for that, May God be praised. Amen.
1. Dynamic Preaching, Vol. XXXVI, No. 4, p66.
2. Ibid… p68.
3. Ibid… p69.
4. Ibid… p69-70.
