The
theme for our series of talks at Breathing Space this Advent is “God is here”,
the message which underlies every other message angels bring. They represent
God to humankind. They are a reminder of his presence. Last week we thought
about what it might mean to remember that God is here in this place. This week
we are going to think about the God who is here in this time, in this moment,
now.
Our
two readings both told the story of people who had visits from angels;
unexpected, mysterious visits. In some ways they are very similar stories. Both
Abraham and Zechariah were old men at the time these stories happened, and
their wives, Sarah and Elizabeth, were childless. At the age of seventy Abraham
had been promised descendants more in number than the sand or stars in the sky,
that God would make a great nation out of him. It seemed too late even then, but
the decades passed and Sarah didn’t conceive. He fathered a child by her slave
Hagar – we’ll hear more of her next week – but that had ended up creating
bitter rivalry and making Sarah feel even worse than she already did. Now
Abraham was nearly a hundred years old, according to the Bible – perhaps an
exaggeration, but we get the point. He, and Sarah, were really way too old to
embark on parenthood together, by any logical reckoning. But God had other
ideas, and nine months after the visit we heard about in our reading, Isaac was
born. His name meant laughter, perhaps because the whole situation seemed so
ridiculous, perhaps because it meant that Sarah and Abraham – and God – had had
the last laugh in the end. The tribe of Abraham eventually became the whole
Jewish nation and through them, indeed the earth has been blessed.
And
then there is Zechariah and Elizabeth, people who were, again, too old to have
children, but found themselves becoming parents anyway. They had long given up
hope – there had been no divine promises to them as there had been to Abraham –
but God, in God’s time, gave them what they longed for, a son, who was to grow
up to be John the Baptist, the forerunner of the Messiah.
Abraham
and Zechariah were astonished, amazed, rendered speechless in Zechariah’s case,
when God turned up in their lives. Neither of them were expecting anything
special that day. Abraham was sitting under a tree in the shade. Zechariah was
doing his duty in the Temple, offering incense at the time of prayer. And yet,
at that moment, in that “now”, God came to them.
Human
beings have no choice but to live in time, one moment after another, but we
rarely find it easy to live in the “now”. We either hanker for the past, or
wish our lives away hoping for something better in the future. It is hard for
us to believe that this moment, the moment we are in, has its own purpose, its
own blessing, that God might come to us in it.
We
may feel, like Abraham and Sarah, Zechariah and Elizabeth, that we are too old
for God to do anything meaningful with us, that we have missed the boat. We may
feel too young to be much use. We may feel that we are just in too much of a
mess right now for God to turn up in our lives, that we’re not ready for him,
or, conversely, that we are getting along fine on our own at the moment, thanks,
and don’t need him. But these stories remind us that God comes to us when God
comes to us, in his time, with his purpose, that every moment can be blessed,
every day can be holy, that the angels of God can appear when we expect them
least, if we open our eyes to their presence.
In
the silence today, let’s think back over the day that has gone, then, and look
for the angels’ footprints in it, the moments when God showed up, with his
message of love and life, and ask for his grace to recognise the holiness of “now”.
Amen
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