William H. Willimon - "Los Angeles" Christmas Eve Service (December 24, 1990)
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| - | December is a big month for school groups | 0:05 |
| to come visit the chapel. | 0:08 | |
| I think it has something to do | 0:11 | |
| with elementary school teachers | 0:13 | |
| despairing of doing anything of substance | 0:15 | |
| after December the 1st. | 0:17 | |
| And so everybody comes to a field trip | 0:21 | |
| in Duke Chapel. | 0:24 | |
| This year, one group from an elementary school | 0:26 | |
| entered the chapel in typical hullabaloo. | 0:30 | |
| The teacher had told them this was a church, | 0:34 | |
| they were supposed to be quiet. | 0:36 | |
| But none of them were, and by all the time | 0:38 | |
| that they all got inside and stampeded | 0:41 | |
| down the center aisle, there was great raucous commotion. | 0:43 | |
| But unknown to these clamoring visitors, | 0:49 | |
| that evening there was to be a medieval mystery play | 0:53 | |
| performed here in the chapel and the cast | 0:56 | |
| was going through one more dress rehearsal. | 0:59 | |
| And so as they all ran down the center aisle, | 1:02 | |
| they were greeted by a gold bedecked, | 1:04 | |
| very large, wings outstretched angel, | 1:10 | |
| right in the middle of the chancel right there. | 1:15 | |
| And everybody having run down the center aisle | 1:20 | |
| came to a sudden halt and stood there | 1:23 | |
| in gaping complete silence. | 1:26 | |
| Until one was heard to say, | 1:30 | |
| "I've always heard of 'em, | 1:33 | |
| but I never thought I'd see one." | 1:35 | |
| (audience laughs) | 1:38 | |
| And that is the way it is with angels. | 1:41 | |
| Most of us have heard of them, | 1:43 | |
| but how many of us have ever actually | 1:45 | |
| laid eyes on an angel? | 1:48 | |
| And you hear a lot about angels, | 1:52 | |
| particularly this time of year. | 1:53 | |
| In the opening chapters of the New Testament, | 1:56 | |
| as they tell the story of Nativity, | 1:59 | |
| there is an angel appearing in every other scene. | 2:02 | |
| Angels are everywhere. | 2:06 | |
| They're taking messages to Mary and to Joseph, | 2:07 | |
| to Elizabeth, to Zachariah, they're frightening | 2:11 | |
| the shepherds who are keeping watch | 2:14 | |
| over their flocks by night. | 2:16 | |
| And I ask you, where are all those angels now? | 2:17 | |
| Well, what do angels do anyway? | 2:23 | |
| Over the main window of the chapel up behind me, | 2:27 | |
| high up in the central arch, at the very top, | 2:31 | |
| there is a face. | 2:35 | |
| It is the face of God looking down | 2:38 | |
| with great, large, all-seeing eyes. | 2:42 | |
| God is right up at the top of that window, | 2:48 | |
| up above Jesus, up above all the apostles | 2:50 | |
| and the saints. | 2:54 | |
| And you cannot see the face of God now, | 2:56 | |
| because it's dark. | 2:58 | |
| But I call it to your attention, | 3:00 | |
| even in the dark, especially in the dark, | 3:02 | |
| because, let's face it, that's how God seems | 3:07 | |
| to many of us. | 3:10 | |
| High, somewhere up there, distant, dark. | 3:12 | |
| Something that a preacher says is there, | 3:18 | |
| but you cannot see it for yourself. | 3:21 | |
| Now over at the Divinity School, | 3:24 | |
| we call this divine characteristic transcendence. | 3:26 | |
| God is transcendent. | 3:30 | |
| And that's just a fancy theological way | 3:32 | |
| of saying that God is high and lifted up | 3:35 | |
| beyond our reach and out of our sight. | 3:38 | |
| God is transcendent. | 3:42 | |
| So if God is up so high and so distant | 3:45 | |
| and so dimly seen, the question is, | 3:48 | |
| how can God get through down to us here, | 3:51 | |
| across all that great gap of transcendence? | 3:54 | |
| It's a big theological question. | 3:59 | |
| And one way that the Bible sometimes attempts | 4:03 | |
| to answer that question is through angels. | 4:05 | |
| God gets through to us through angels. | 4:10 | |
| Angels are God's messengers to us. | 4:15 | |
| In the Old Testament, Isaiah talks | 4:20 | |
| about coming into the temple one day, | 4:22 | |
| and there in the great temple being met | 4:24 | |
| face to face by God and God's angels. | 4:26 | |
| Isaiah 6: "I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, | 4:31 | |
| "high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple. | 4:35 | |
| "And above him stood the seraphim." | 4:38 | |
| The seraphim, that's the angels. | 4:40 | |
| "And each had six wings." | 4:42 | |
| Why wings? | 4:45 | |
| The wings made it possible for these seraphim | 4:48 | |
| to get from the throne of God | 4:50 | |
| all the way down to people. | 4:52 | |
| And they needed six wings because | 4:54 | |
| it was such a long trip. | 4:55 | |
| "Then one of these seraphim flew to me | 4:58 | |
| "and touched my mouth and said, | 5:00 | |
| "'Behold, this has touched your lips. | 5:01 | |
| "'Your sin is forgiven.'" | 5:03 | |
| The letter to the Hebrews says | 5:07 | |
| that angels are ministering spirits | 5:08 | |
| sent forth to serve. | 5:10 | |
| Angels serve God by taking messages | 5:14 | |
| from the high and lifted up throne of God | 5:17 | |
| down to low and ordinary humanity. | 5:21 | |
| In fact, our word angel comes directly | 5:25 | |
| from the Greek angelos, | 5:28 | |
| which means messenger. | 5:30 | |
| And sometimes in the New Testament | 5:33 | |
| when the Bible says that somebody is an angelos, | 5:35 | |
| you don't know whether they're saying | 5:39 | |
| that this person is one of our angels | 5:41 | |
| with these wings, or whether it's just | 5:44 | |
| an ordinary postman kind of messenger. | 5:47 | |
| And therein lies my point. | 5:51 | |
| Angels are God's messengers. | 5:54 | |
| They are beings who let people down here | 5:57 | |
| on Earth know, like Mary and Joseph, | 6:00 | |
| the shepherds, me, you, | 6:04 | |
| let us know that the great God | 6:08 | |
| way up there cares about us. | 6:10 | |
| And God has work for us to do down here. | 6:13 | |
| They are ministering spirits sent forth to serve. | 6:18 | |
| Edmund Spenser in his "Faerie Queene" says, | 6:25 | |
| "And is there care in heaven, and is there love? | 6:29 | |
| "Oh, the exceeding grace of the highest God | 6:33 | |
| "who loves His creatures so | 6:36 | |
| "that blessed angels He sent to and fro." | 6:40 | |
| 34 books of the Bible speak about angels | 6:46 | |
| and their work. | 6:49 | |
| And so it was that one of these angeloi, | 6:51 | |
| one of these angels, one of these messengers, | 6:53 | |
| showed up in Galilee to tell Mary and then Joseph | 6:56 | |
| that God had big plans for them. | 7:00 | |
| And when Mary met the angel Gabriel, | 7:04 | |
| the Bible says that she said not, | 7:06 | |
| "I've always heard of 'em, | 7:10 | |
| I never thought I would see one." | 7:12 | |
| She said, "What does this message mean?" | 7:15 | |
| And after Mary thought about Gabriel's message | 7:20 | |
| from God for a while, she then said, | 7:23 | |
| "I am the servant of the Lord." | 7:27 | |
| I want you to think about what Mary said. | 7:31 | |
| "I am the servant of the Lord." | 7:34 | |
| 'Cause after the angel got finished with Mary, | 7:37 | |
| a whole throng of angels appeared | 7:40 | |
| to the shepherds out in the fields. | 7:42 | |
| And the angels told the shepherds, | 7:44 | |
| "Go to Bethlehem, there you'll find | 7:46 | |
| "the baby in a manger, who is," | 7:47 | |
| according to our first hymn tonight, | 7:50 | |
| regem angelorum, the king of all the angels, | 7:52 | |
| the messenger of all the messengers. | 7:56 | |
| And the shepherds did as they were told by these angels. | 8:01 | |
| They're messengers. | 8:04 | |
| And then the Bible says the shepherds left Bethlehem | 8:06 | |
| and they went and told everybody else | 8:09 | |
| what they had seen and heard at the manger. | 8:11 | |
| So that by the end of the story, | 8:15 | |
| the people who had received messages | 8:19 | |
| from God's messengers become God's messengers. | 8:21 | |
| Mary, who was addressed by one of God's servants, | 8:29 | |
| becomes God's servant. | 8:32 | |
| The shepherds, who heard the angels' | 8:36 | |
| glad tidings of great joy, | 8:38 | |
| become the messengers of glad tidings. | 8:41 | |
| And I think that's why you don't hear very much | 8:47 | |
| of the angels after Christmas and Bethlehem. | 8:49 | |
| Because after that, God gives the angels a break. | 8:53 | |
| 'Cause God doesn't need heavenly messengers so much | 8:57 | |
| now that God had got earthly messengers, | 9:00 | |
| like Mary and the shepherds, | 9:03 | |
| and you and me. | 9:07 | |
| The baby in Bethlehem's manger is a messenger, | 9:10 | |
| a sign, a sign that that great almighty distant God | 9:16 | |
| up there loves us, | 9:20 | |
| and has got work for us to do down here. | 9:23 | |
| So you don't hear very much from the angels | 9:28 | |
| until later, after the baby Jesus has grown up | 9:30 | |
| and preached and taught and healed | 9:35 | |
| and gotten into trouble and been arrested | 9:37 | |
| and crucified and died. | 9:40 | |
| And when a group of women go out to the cemetery | 9:44 | |
| on Easter morning, do you know the story, | 9:47 | |
| to visit his grave, they are met by who? | 9:51 | |
| An angel, a messenger. | 9:54 | |
| Who tells them Jesus isn't there, he's raised. | 9:57 | |
| And in case they missed the point | 10:02 | |
| up at Bethlehem, the angel says to the women, | 10:03 | |
| "Now you, go, tell." | 10:06 | |
| And then the angel disappears. | 10:11 | |
| Because now God doesn't need angels | 10:15 | |
| to go and tell of his love and power. | 10:17 | |
| God's got us. | 10:19 | |
| The whole church, spread out this holy night | 10:22 | |
| across the whole world, from Durham to New Delhi, | 10:26 | |
| is God's Los Angelos, | 10:30 | |
| God's messengers sent out to go and tell. | 10:34 | |
| In a town where I once lived, | 10:42 | |
| across the tracks, off the main road, | 10:45 | |
| there was a shanty town, | 10:48 | |
| where our town hid its misery and its poverty. | 10:51 | |
| Three dozen, about, little poor, cold, miserable, | 10:56 | |
| tar-papered shacks clustered together there. | 11:02 | |
| And none of them had running water or electricity. | 11:07 | |
| Not many of us went down that dirt road | 11:11 | |
| that led to that place of wretchedness. | 11:14 | |
| We had heard what went on down there | 11:18 | |
| during troubled Saturday nights. | 11:19 | |
| It wasn't a place that we would go. | 11:22 | |
| But there was one person | 11:27 | |
| from our well-manicured town that went down there | 11:28 | |
| every single week, every week. | 11:31 | |
| She gathered clothes and food for these people. | 11:34 | |
| And she would drive her old Ford | 11:39 | |
| down that dusty road a couple of times a week | 11:41 | |
| to take mothers and their babies to the doctor. | 11:44 | |
| And on Christmas Eve, she was never with us in church. | 11:48 | |
| She was always down over there. | 11:51 | |
| She did not rest until everybody that lived | 11:54 | |
| in that poor place had had Christmas. | 11:58 | |
| And when she died, people from down there | 12:04 | |
| came to town for her funeral. | 12:07 | |
| And when they spoke of her, | 12:11 | |
| they did not call her by the name | 12:13 | |
| by which we knew her, Addie Smith Jones. | 12:16 | |
| They called her by the name | 12:21 | |
| by which they knew her, | 12:23 | |
| the White Angel. | 12:27 | |
| If tonight you get a message from God, | 12:32 | |
| the great high God, some clear signal | 12:36 | |
| of God's love for you and God's will | 12:40 | |
| for the world, some sign wrapped in swaddling clothes | 12:42 | |
| and lying in a manger, | 12:48 | |
| then go, tell, | 12:51 | |
| 'cause you are los angelos. | 12:53 | |
| Amen. | 12:59 |
