Readings for the Fourth Sunday of Advent (Year B)
This sermon was preached by Fr. Daniel London at the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer in San Rafael CA on December 24, 2017.
One of the first things I picked up from the Episcopal Church was saying “The Lord be with you,” a call-and-response practice mostly unknown to the evangelical communities within which I grew up. I love this salutation and have come to appreciate all of its variations. Although we, like most Episcopalians respond to the “Lord be with you” by saying “And also with you,” many other Episcopalians as well as Roman Catholics respond by saying “And with thy spirit.” At the church where I was confirmed in Pasadena (All Saints Pasadena), we would say “God dwells within you” and then respond “and also within you.” And last Sunday night, I took the youth group to see the new Star Wars film The Last Jedi and I am told that you can identify a Jedi as an Episcopalian if they respond to the phrase “May the Force be with You” by saying “And also with you.”
This ancient greeting is known as “Dominus Vobiscum” which is Latin for “The Lord be with you.” It became an official church salutation in the sixth century, when the Council of Braga [in Portugal] decreed that bishops and priests should salute the people with “Dominus Vobiscum” and the people respond, “Et cum spiritu tuo.”[1] Although its ecclesiastical use probably dates back to apostolic times, we will see that its use as a greeting is even older still.
Today’s Gospel describes the Annunciation of Our Lord Jesus Christ to the Blessed Virgin Mary, an event portrayed by countless artists, including Leonardo Da Vinci[2], Raphael, and El Greco. This event is so significant to the church that it actually has its own feast day, called “Lady Day” by the Church of England, and is appropriately celebrated nine months before Christmas Day, on March 25th. This important event begins when the Angel Gabriel shows up[3] and says to Mary, “The Lord be with you.” Mary’s response to this greeting is fascinating. The text says, “She was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be.” (Luke 1:29). Now I like to say that if Mary had grown up in the Episcopal Church, she would have been less bewildered by this greeting and would have responded, “And also with you” or “And with thy spirit.” Instead, she pondered what sort of greeting this might be. Now we use this greeting often, during the sursum corda at the beginning of the Eucharistic prayer, before praying the Collect of the Day and sometimes when we need to quiet a room full of Episcopalians. But I wonder how much of us actually consider the meaning of this greeting that we so often use and which has almost come to define us as Episcopalians and Anglicans. So on this Fourth Sunday of Advent, I invite us to ponder more deeply, along with Mary, what sort of greeting this might be, especially in light of the Annunciation.
Gabriel’s greeting in Greek is ὁ κύριος μετὰ σοῦ (ha kyrios meta soo), which translated literally is “The Lord with you,” The Lord “meta” you. Now prepositions in Greek are packed with multiple meanings. “Meta” can mean “beside, with, along with, after, among, or behind.” So it would not be too much of a stretch to translate the phrase as “The Lord is within you,” which would be especially appropriate for Mary since tradition understands the time of the Annunciation as the moment of conception, which is why Annunciation Day is celebrated nine months before Christmas Day. So we can understand this greeting (The Lord be with you) as a profound proclamation of the Incarnation. Gabriel continues, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. Behold, you will conceive in your womb, and bring forth a son, and will call his name ‘Jesus.’ He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High.”
Now it is a challenge for us to make sense of the Virgin birth in our post-Enlightenment age, but it helps to remember that the authors here are communicating a theological truth more than any scientific fact. Religious author Karen Armstrong calls theology a “species of poetry.”[4] When the Gospel authors wrote about the Virgin birth, they were using this “species of poetry” to proclaim the power of the Incarnation, which held a particular message for Mary and also holds a message for us. That message is that “God is with you. Furthermore, God is within you. And God is doing something inside of you right now. You might not feel it right now. In fact, you might feel confused right now (as Mary most likely did), but I want you to know that God is at work within you. And you will give birth to something beautiful, something that will change the world eternally for the better.”
That was the message for Mary and that is the message for us. And this message of the Incarnation is inherently proclaimed in the Dominus Vobiscum, in “The Lord be with you.” Every time we say this to one another we are making a bold assertion of the Presence of God here and now, among us and within us. We are proclaiming the Incarnation within each of us, in what the Collect calls “the mansions of our hearts.”
In this way, we share an important commonality with our Hindu brothers and sisters. Throughout this Advent season, we have been on an interfaith adventure, gleaning wisdom from Islam, Buddhism, and indigenous spiritualities. Today, I invite us to deepen our understanding of the Dominus Vobiscum greeting by seeing it in light of the Hindu greeting: Namaste. This greeting has become quite well known over the last several decades due to the popularity of yoga (hatha yoga). This ancient Sanskrit greeting, is composed of two words: “namah” which means “to bow or show adoration” and “te” which means “to you”; so it literally means “I bow to you.” However, in this context, the word “te” refers to the “atma” or the “atman,” which is the individual soul. One of the primary teachings in Hinduism, as articulated in the Upanishads, is that the atman (the individual soul that resides in each of us) is the Brahman, the universal soul, God. So God dwells within each of us; and when we say, “Namaste” we are saying, “I bow to the divinity within you.” Now as Christians, we are not pantheists who believe that everything is God. However, we are panentheists, which means we believe that God is in everything, especially in each of us, who are all made in God’s image.
In Hinduism, the Namaste greeting usually includes a hand posture known as the Anjali mudra, which looks like our traditional prayer posture, in which the palms of our hands touch next to the heart because the heart or the heart chakra is the mansion in which the atman dwells. And in our Collect this morning, we prayed that “Christ, at his coming, may find in us a mansion prepared for himself.” Ever since I prayed this prayer with you a year ago, I have continued to return to this image of the mansion, inviting us all to make room for others in the mansions of our hearts. It is by making room for others in our hearts that we are making more room for God, who has stamped his image on every human being.
The Redeemer community, which began in a physical mansion, remains a spiritual mansion with many rooms and Christ seeks to find a home in this mansion, in every room of this mansion. Again, as I have said, this does not mean that everyone who comes into this community (both the church and the preschool) has to be an Episcopalian or a Christian or even religious at all. What it does mean is that we collectively share a spirit of welcome that respects the dignity of every human being because every human being is made in the image of God and every human heart is potentially a mansion for Emmanuel.
By taking the promise of God’s incarnate Presence within us seriously, we allow God to grow something beautiful within us. And in doing so, we echo Mary’s whispered words of wisdom: “Let it be to me according to your Word.” In this way, we come to see our hearts as homes for the divine, as mansions for the One called Emmanuel, who is “God with you and God with me and God with us.”
[1] Catholic Encyclopedia http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02729a.htm, December 18, 2011.
[2] For a reflection on Leonardo Da Vinci’s painting at the Uffizi art gallery in Florence, see https://deforestlondon.wordpress.com/2009/03/
[3] The text says, “In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God…” (Luke 1:26). This refers to the sixth month after John’s conception, as in 1:36.
[4] Karen Armstrong, Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (NY: Random House, 2004), 248.
DANIEL DeFOREST LONDON 