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Current Sermons Archived Sermons "Do You Hear What I Hear?" January 15, 2006 An Incomplete Feast December 25, 2005 The Third Gift December 24, 2005 Nothing will be impossible with God December 18, 2005 Redeeming Holiday Cheer December 11, 2005 Comfort, comfort my people … December 4, 2005 Advent begins in the dark… November 27, 2005 Thanksgiving Day November 24, 2005 It's All About Respect November 20, 2005 The world is a better place because ... November 13, 2005 Holy Baptism and Festal Eucharist November 6, 2005 Promise and Presence October 30, 2005 This is Only A Test October 23, 2005 Made in the Image of God October 16, 2005 Finding Our Way October 9, 2005 Our Lives Are Based On A True Story October 2, 2005 It Is God Working In You September 23, 2005 Whatever Happened to our Security? September 11, 2005 Put on the Armor of Light September 4, 2005 Giftedness and Identity August 21, 2005 What about Respect? August 14, 2005 Dean Lane's Final Sermon July 31, 2005		Sermon Nothing will be impossible with God The Venerable Richard I. Cluett 2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16; Romans 16:25-27; Luke 1:26-38 Advent 4 B December 18, 2005 One of the reminders that these lessons bring home to me - again - today, is that there is nothing Romantic about the Incarnation. We tend to wrap up the love story of God and humanity with warm music and mist as if it were a romantic film. Something like the movie and music of Irving Berlin’s White Christmas or the Home Coming of John Boy on the Walton’s Christmas show. But the Incarnation had nothing to do with Romanticism and everything to do with a Love so deep, so encompassing, so real that it passes human comprehension and changes the meaning of being human. Our culture and the media which manufacture it tell our children that Christmas is a magica l time and they present all kinds of magical-moment-images to construct the magical view of buying-and-getting that have come to define our cultural Christmases – culturally called Holidays. But the Incarnation has nothing to do with magic and everything to do with the Mystery of how God comes into human life to demonstrate a Love so deep, so encompassing, so real that it passes human comprehension, and to show what can happen when the power of that love is put to use for God’s purpose. The dailyness of our lives can seduce us into fantasizing about the Incarnation. We can put all kinds of personal hopes, dreams, wants, and needs into this story. But the Incarnation has nothing to do with wishful fantasy and everything to do with Truth, the truth about reality: the truth about life, the truth about God, the truth about power – real truth, real world, real power. Love, not romanticism. Mystery, not magic. Truth, not fantasy. Even though the story of the Incarnation involves such wonderful elements as angels, and a young girl, and an over-shadowing Spirit, and courage, and beautiful poetry, and the birth of a child, it is the story of the real God coming into very real human life. The reality of God is now found in the reality of human life. A lot of us stop short of, or sell short, this truth that puts us in the presence and power of God in the very real lives we, and the rest of the world, live. One of the purposes of this Advent season is for the church to provide a time when the presence of God can feel powerfully part of the world and the experience of believers. To remind us that God is in this very real life we live, the life the world lives. And that Life itself was irrevocably changed in the Incarnation – the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus born of Mary. Do our lives reflect the powerful truth of the Incarnation, or the powerful fabrication of the world? What has happened to the clear voices of the angels of God who spoke to Elizabeth and Zechariah, and Mary and Joseph and the shepherds, and to us? What has happened to the power of the Incarnation that once moved the cosmos and also can move us so deeply at Christmas time? What has happened to the almost palpable presence of God in this life which is so strong in scripture, and sometimes is in Advent and over Christmas, and on Epiphany; the feeling that God truly is in and around and through and available and powerful! …And that there is reason to hope and believe and trust and work. Do you feel the power of God working in you, in the church, in the world strongly today? Is God's calling of you to faith, to ministry, to faithfulness, to purpose as clear and strong and obvious as it once was? When were you last greeted by an angel? Is it possible that an Angel of the Lord has come, is coming, will come, could come to you? What angels do is remind us of who we are, remind us of the truth, remind us of the reality in which we live, remind us of the God and future to which we are called. The Incarnation is about power and presence, the power and presence of God in the world. The actor's in the biblical drama are the people we read about, and God, and ourselves. There is a historical distance between us and the biblical figures, but not an existential one. Their life and our life are one. Their God and our God are one. God comes. Angels greet. Jesus calls – and all creation await our response. Most adults I know have experienced a time in their lives when the Call of God was once clear and strong. – a call to faith, a call to a vocation or profession, a call to rise to an occasion, or some other. Most adults I know remembe the experience of call; but we don't live in it as a continuing reality. It's faded or been moved to a compartment of memory that treasures moments in the past, been colored over by romanticism, or magic, or fantasy, or been forgotten completely. And the power of the world has moved other priorities into its place. Mary’s story – which is also Jesu’ story and God’s story – is also everyone’s story. Angles do come, still, with messages from God that something important is waiting to be birthed in us. This time, too, is pregnant with possibility. We have heard that “Nothing will be impossible with God.” I recently met a woman named Cebilla – at least that’s as close as English can get to her Swazi name that has 5 clicks in it. She was a young maiden, a schoolgirl in a town in Swaziland when she had a moment of revelation, an epiphany, when she knew that her role in life was not to be a mother and raise a family. God’s angel messenger called her to care for other children orphaned by AIDS and to help them care for their dying parents. She became a nurse, eventually building a whole new way for caring for the tens of thousands of Swazi people sick and dying with AIDS – that is called the Home Hospice Program funded and it is supported by us in this diocese and by the United Nations – and a new family/clan/village based program of caring for the children they left behind. These programs utilized the best of the tradition and culture of the Swazi people. Eventually the angel returned and called her to a deeper and more dangerous engagement and contest with the powers of the African culture that enabled this killing of her people. Cebilla is now the Southern Africa Representative from the International Commission on the role and status of Women. Her work, her ministry, her call, her life’s work is now to help overturn the ancient and traditional subservient role and place of women in her society. She has learned – she has received the message – that the ability of women to say No to men without fear of rape or beating or abandonment is the key to ending the scourge of AIDS among her people – in her society. Love, not romanticism. Mystery, not magic. Truth, not fantasy. No greater love, no deeper awareness of the mystery of life, no greater truth – all evidence of the power of God to change a life – to change Life, itself. Nothing will be impossible with God. Do you know the calypso carol that goes, “Hark, now hear the angels sing, listen to what they say…”? I, too, say to you, listen. The angel of God might be near with a message about what God is birthing in you today. On this Sunday we hear that God will do this thing with Mary – which makes everything else possible.