St. John’s Episcopal Church
Tallahassee, FL
Luke 2:1-14
The truth is
I have gone by many names.
In Hebrew they called me a malách.
In Greek, I was known as an án-ghe-lahs.
They have called me
the holy messenger,
the divine Metatron,
angel,
archangel,
and the voice of God.
But I suspect you may know me
by my real name.
I am . . . Gabriel.
In the beginning,
in the midst of all that eternity,
my kind and I watched
as those jubilant, joyful Three—
the Father,
the Son,
and the Holy Spirit—
danced and sang,
laughed and guffawed,
filling the heavens
with their ebullient joy
and contagious love.
You see, in heaven
with the Three of them,
every day is a party. [1]
One day,
the Father looked around and said,
“This is all so much!
It is all so good!
Why not bring others into being,
that they too might join us
in the splendor of existence,
love, and life?”
And so,
before we even knew what was happening,
the Spirit hovered,
the Father spoke,
and BANG!
In an instant,
the full course of the cosmos,
the whole of human history,
the beginning, middle, and end,
sprang forth in love,
swirled and churned,
and began its great and glorious existence.
And all of us—
angels,
archangels,
and all the company of heaven—
looked on in wonder
and exclaimed,
“Holy moly!”
There was everything!
There was water, and earth, and sky.
Blood, and feathers, and fur.
There were fuzzy mushrooms
and little martini olives.
There were zebras,
and tigers,
and duckbilled platypuses.
And the people!
Oh the people!
Men, and women, and children
of all shapes, sizes and colors.
Each and every one of them—
each and every one of you—
shone as bright
as the Light himself!
From where we sat,
all of it—all of Creation—
looked like a billion shining stars,
like a sparkling web of synapses
firing endlessly
through the beautiful mind of God.
Every soul,
every connection,
every life flickered and glowed
with brilliant radiance,
and the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit
danced all around it and through it,
singing, “So good! So good! So good!”
Then, one day,
in an instant as quick as that brilliant beginning,
something unexpected occurred.
A pin-prick of darkness,
a shroud of despair,
settled in over one of the lights . . .
over one of you.
Then another,
and another,
and another.
Before we knew it,
the whole Creation that had been conceived
in perfect love and freedom
began to choose itself
over its Creator.
We all watched with horror
as little by little,
the light of your lives grew dim,
the web came apart,
and the whole of human history
crusted over with a scab of
dark indifference and oblivion.
And something else happened
that we had never dreamed possible:
it broke the heart of God.
Never to be outdone, though,
the Divine Three attempted everything they could.
They tried with all their might
to break through the scars of humanity’s heart,
reaching out to what few bright lights they could find.
Sometimes all three would punch through,
like when they stood under those oak trees in the desert
and said:
“Abraham! Abraham!
Sarah will bear a son . . .”
Or sometimes only the Father would go,
as in that mysterious business with the burning bush:
“Moses! Moses! I am! I am! . . .”
And sometimes all they could manage
was a mere whisper to a sleeping boy:
“Samuel! Samuel! Wake up . . .”
But every time we watched in disappointment,
for it turns out that the scales and scabs of willful indifference
are always more than enough
to shut out even the most powerful Diety.
So, for what seemed like an eternity,
the Three pondered all this in their heart.
“What shall we do?” they asked.
“These whom we made
in love,
for love,
to be loved
are dimming,
darkening,
and dying.
“They do not want us.
We cannot reach them.
If only we could get someone in there.
If only someone could find a way in,
surely they could make a way out.”
A heavy silence filled the heavens
as all of us—angels, archangels, all of us—
pondered and prayed
about who could go,
who could actually get fully, truly in there.
Then, as if out of nowhere,
we heard a voice say:
“I will go.”
“What?” said the Spirit.
“I,” said the Son.
“I will go.
I will go.
I will live their life.
I will think their thoughts.
I will dream their dreams.
I will feel their pain.
And if I have to,
I will die their death.
“I will penetrate
to the marrow of their bones,
to the depths of their hearts.
“I will know them
and be made known.
“I will make a way—
a new way of freedom,
the new way of love.
“I will go, and I will bring them back to life.
I will bring them back to us.
I will bring them home—
even if I have to die trying—
and if I cannot do that,
then I will bring home to them.”
Some of us gasped,
for nothing like this
had ever been said before.
Had it not come from his own mouth,
it would have sounded like blasphemy
to our heaven-tuned ears.
Some in our angel chorus
even pushed back and said,
“It can’t be! It mustn’t be!
You are our most precious treasure!”
But it was too late.
His mind was made up.
And so they, all Three—
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—
studied the whole Creation.
They searched all the matrices
of now decrepit
epochs and eons,
molecules and mitochondria,
looking for the one chink in the armor,
the one peel in the scab,
the one light still bright enough
by which to see.
Then suddenly . . .
“I found it!” said the Spirit.
“I found a way!
But . . . ” he said,
“it will have to be a choice . . .
for love is not love
without a choice.”
In that great moment,
to my utter surprise,
the Father summoned me.
Out of all the angels and archangels,
he called upon me,
the first malách,
the first án-ghe-lahs,
the first messenger to be sent into Creation
in such a long, long time.
“There,” he said.
“There, Gabriel. Do you see?
Do you see that one bright spot?
That one unhindered heart?
Go, Gabriel.
Go quickly to her
and ask her our question.”
So I flew.
I flew,
and I crawled,
and I dug through the crusts of sin and time
until finally I was there,
barely visible in that dim and dusty room
where a young girl lay impoverished
on a dirty floor.
With fear and trembling,
I said, “Mary! Mary!
Wake up, Mary,
and be not afraid.
I come with a question
from the Most High God.”
You know, it’s funny.
They train us to say, “Be not afraid,”
but the truth is
I was far more terrified in that moment
than she ever was.
* * *
Of course,
you already know the rest of the story,
which must be why you’re here tonight.
You already know
that she not only said yes.
She said, “Magnificent!”
And so, we have waited these nine long months,
which even to an archangel
feels like an eternity.
Nine months of confusion and convergence.
Nine months of poverty and protection.
Nine months of waiting and wondering among ourselves,
“Will it happen?
Will it transpire?
Will it work?”
They say that tonight is the night.
All the heavenly host and I
have crawled our way,
dug through the scabs of sin and time
just to be here,
just to see.
They say that tonight,
heaven and earth will collide;
that those billions of lights will catch fire again;
that your weary souls
will begin to stretch back to life;
that love will be made real again.
They say that tonight is the night,
over in a barn
in the unlikeliest place on earth.
By God, we are ready to sing.
Won’t you join us?
Gloria! Gloria!
In excelsis Deo!
Amen.
[1] These first few paragraphs draw inspiration from the whimsical account of creation in Robert Farrar Capon’s The Third Peacock. Capon, Robert Farrar. The Third Peacock: The Goodness of God and the Badness of the World. United Kingdom: Image Books, 1972. 11-12.