Gabriel: God’s Messenger

Scripture:  Luke 1:26-38

Proclamation:                      

Long before churches started scaring people into Heaven with judgment houses, my home church in Port Wentworth, GA simply tried to scare the teenagers in our community.  Pure and simple – terror in the name of fun.  In an effort best described as outreach, for several years we built a haunted house in our upstairs Sunday school rooms.  Children, families and teenagers entered waiting to be scared. 

            First, they walked into a mock hospital room with an old gurney holding an injured patient.  A youth worker disguised as a surgeon invited each person to touch discarded intestines – spaghetti, and eyeballs – grapes.  If they did not flee the room in fear just yet, guests were invited into the next fog filled room.  Here - members of my youth group with hoods and masks cried out for help and jumped from behind walls to scare each person.  By the time folks made it out alive through the other 3 rooms their faces looked ashen and laughter filled the night sky.

            Frankly, my experience with this Baptist Haunted House of my youth has been the source of much folly for most of my years.  Friends would tell me stories of scary experiences of their youth and I would share about my fear of touching the eyeballs at the haunted house at my church.

            This week, though, as I have been reflecting on Gabriel, our Christmas angel, I wondered if my home church was not unintentionally on to something about faith. 

             You see – every time the angel Gabriel appears – once as a man to interpret events for the prophet and then twice here in Luke 1 – it is a terrifying experience.  In Daniel 8, Gabriel frightens Daniel and he falls to ground – prostrate, afraid to move, terrified before he gives him the interpretation to a vision. 

After 400 years of silence – Gabriel returns to greet Zechariah in the temple’s holiest place.  As we saw last week – as Zechariah places the incense upon the altar inside the Holy of Holies of the Jerusalem temple Gabriel appears.  Once again Gabriel’s appearance terrorizes:  Luke says fear overwhelms Zechariah.   

After his message to Zechariah - Gabriel’s duties remain incomplete.  Today, in our scripture passage – we see him return a few months later to speak to a young teenage girl.  She is no veteran Jewish prophet who stood up to King of Babylon or  an old Jewish priest who spent his life around the trappings of the Temple – this is a young girl named Mary in an out of the way hamlet named Nazareth in the sleepy province of Galilee.  If Gabriel terrifies these men of faith when he arrives – what can we expect with Mary?  V.29 But she was much perplexed by Gabriel’s words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be.” 

Gabriel then tells her – “Do not be afraid, Mary.”  For Mary Gabriel’s appearance and message elicit fear and terror – as we wonders what really is happening. 

In scripture an encounter with the God and God’s messengers often involves fear.  The shepherds fall to the moist grass in fear when the angel and the heavenly host appear in the night sky around Bethlehem to announce the birth of Jesus.  The disciples almost tip over the boat during a raging thunderstorm on the Sea of Galilee as they watch Jesus walk on the water towards them.  Peter, James and John fall in terror and amazement as Jesus greets Elijah and Moses on the mount of Transfiguration.  The blinding light of Jesus throws Saul to the ground on his way to Damascus. 

            We have lost the experience of terror in the life of the church and our lives as Christians.  This is what my home church in Port Wentworth unexpectedly brought to our small community – an experience at church that scared you, left you ashen, and wondering what really was happening. 

            Think about it – when was the last time you felt terror in your walk with Jesus?  We have left experience of terror to those outside the church.  In fact, scaring people is now a $7 billion business in the US.  Haunted Houses like Atlanta’s Netherworld or Six Flags’ Scarefest have made scaring people a Hollywood production.  It seems people love being scared and it is becoming harder and harder to scare without just being corny.  Each year professional haunted houses must take the scare factor further to help give people the small thrill. 

            What if … we advertised “Want the biggest scare of your life – come to church!”  This is not about scaring people with hell or the devil … Gabriel was God’s messenger – not Satan’s.  What if we offered people the opportunity to be scared with an experience with the Holy, the divine, God – Jesus?  What if after every worship service you attended – your first words out of your mouth when people asked you about God’s message to you during church were “It scared me to death!”

            In most cases – it will never happen.  We have domesticated our faith and our church experiences.  We have lost the wild, untamed life with God in scripture and replaced it with planned activities, moral lives, and a controllable vision of God.  The God of the desert experienced in the smoke on the mountain has been replaced with a benevolent being we sing love songs too, write soaring anthems about, and take for granted. 

            Think about how we have domesticated angels in the Christmas story.  Beautiful angels sit atop our trees to look benevolently down on all that happens.  Little children dress in the most adorable angel costumes in Christmas plays around the world – white robes, fluffy wings and halos worn by our cute children have blazed a vision of angels on our corporate memories.  Angels like Clarence in It’s a Wonderful life have made us smile every time we hear a bell ring at Christmas with the most unbiblical idea that another angel has achieved their wings. 

            None of these images provoke fear and terror like we see in Luke 1 and 2 when Gabriel and the Heavenly host break into the world.  Gabriel is wild and unpredictable.  Who knows when he might slow up?  And if he does - we know his appearance will drop us in our tracks and make us cower in fear.    

            This is the Good News for us today:  The terrifying experience with Gabriel invites us to experience the untamed adventure of life with Jesus. 

Implication

This Good News has implications for each of us.  Look again at Gabriel’s appearance to Mary. 

1.      Terrifying Presence

For all who encounter him - Gabriel has a terrifying presence.  Gabriel is this heavenly being who breaks through the veil that separates God’s Kingdom and our world.    Creative minds throughout history have tried to help us imagine what this presence looks like.  From Byzantine mosaic artists to eastern orthodox icons to Hollywood movies – all have tried to visualize this terrifying presence.  All we know is that Gabriel’s presence caused fear and terror.  He could not be contained. 

20^th Century English writer J.B. Phillips tried to encapsulate our limited understanding of the nature of God in his book; Your God is too Small.  He says, for centuries, humans have tried to reduce the terrifying nature of God by reducing God to imagines we can control.  We have pictured God as the divine policeman, a heavenly parent, a good old man, a meek and mild benevolent king.  We have put God in a box, made him a second hand presence, and simply made God in our own image.

      Instead of these inadequate imagines which limit God’s nature and presence – Phillips invites us to unleash God beyond all of our limits.  Imagine the intense, explosive nature of an atomic bomb and realize that the presence and nature of God is even more powerful and intense than even this biggest force of nature.

      Gabriel’s presence invites us to explode our attempts to control God with doctrine and religion and allow him to break through the veils separating the heavenly world and our world to see what new things God can do. 

2.      Terrifying Message

Besides, Gabriel’s terrifying presence, Gabriel also comes to Mary with a terrifying message.  Gabriel tells Mary - ““Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. 31 And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. 32 He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High.”  Can you imagine receiving a message like this?  The message itself would send fear down through your bones. 

            It did for Zechariah.  When Zechariah heard that he and old Elizabeth would have a child – he couldn’t believe it.  Gabriel took his voice and his hearing just to help Zechariah to hear the message of God. 

Gabriel is just doing his duty.  The word Angel comes for the Greek word for “Messenger.”  Throughout scripture we see angels bringing God’s message to the people. 

Receiving a message from God brings terror because it invites us to respond to the world in ways we never expected. 

Like Gabriel’s messages to Mary and Zechariah – when God’s message invites us to change our lives completely – to move past the status quo – to relate to the world in a completely different way.  This is absolutely terrifying! 

This week a friend told me his testimony.  Two days before Thanksgiving over 20 years ago God brought a message to him to quit drugs and alcohol.  With purpose and calling – he never touched cocaine, drugs or alcohol again.  When the message of God came – it terrified him and it motivated him.  The status quo would not be enough. 

The unlimited, unpredictable nature of God delivers a terrifying message to follow Jesus. 

Terrified of the Response

            Finally – there is one other terrifying aspect to this story – Gabriel’s wait to see how Mary would respond.  Frederick Beauchner describes this terrifying moment in his account of Gabriel in his book Peculiar Treasures.

            He writes:  “Mary struck the angel Gabriel as hardly old enough to have a child at all, let alone this child, but he'd been entrusted with a message to give her, and he gave it.

He told her what the child was to be named, and who he was to be, and something about the mystery that was to come upon her. "You mustn't be afraid, Mary," he said.

As he said it, he only hoped she wouldn't notice that beneath the great, golden wings he himself was trembling with fear to think that the whole future of creation hung now on the answer of a girl.”

            God choose wisely with Mary – yet, still, she had a choice in the matter.  The whole endeavor depended on the openness and faith of a teenage girl. 

            The untamed life of faith with Jesus God offers us is still an open invitation.   We have a choice – to follow or not. 

            I once had a retired preacher friend tell me about a man in his church who would come by his office every Monday to complain about the previous Sunday’s sermon.  The man rode the preacher hard week after week.  Finally, in a bit of desperation, the preacher asked the man to tell him his story of faith.  The man shared how as a young man, God called him into the ministry.  The man was scared of where this may lead – so he chose a profession that would keep him close to home. 

            He did well in his career, rising to be a leader in his community.  Yet, there was always this awareness that he had not followed when God had called.  So, now, in bitterness and unannounced anger, he claimed a new calling – keeping every preacher in line. 

            God waits anxiously for each of us to respond to our calling as well. 

Invitation

            This morning – the story of the Christmas Angel, Gabriel, invites us to untame our images of God’s nature, our predispositions of God’s message to us, and our belief that our lives don’t matter.  Where have you domesticated God in your life and lost the terrifying nature of an encounter with the holy? 

Gabriel calls us to embrace the wild, unpredictable God of the bible who comes to us when we least expect it – in the car, at church, in the shower, at work, in the woods – to deliver a divine, terrifying message to us that calls us out of comfort zones, away from our status quo – and to a life of adventure, faith, and terror. 

What might happen if you un-leased God to work in my life? What would happen if you took off the training wheels of your faith to walk in wild abandon a new life with Jesus?  What would happen if you took seriously your role in the Kingdom of God and realized that God needs us to live our created and divinely imagined lives to their kingdom potential? 

What would happen if we as a church began to expect a little terror in what we do for God’s kingdom?  What would happen if our efforts to live by faith created terror as much as comfort?  Would we see God at work?  Would we experience a new kind of faith?  Would we develop a new understanding of God?

Gabriel invites to say “Yes!  Why, not.  Let’s try it.  Let’s get started.  Let’s see what God will do when we live our faith with Jesus with untamed adventure.