William H. Willimon - "Los Angeles" Christmas Eve Service (December 24, 1990)
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
- | 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 |