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

Item Info

Title:

William H. Willimon - "Los Angeles" Christmas Eve Service (December 24, 1990)

Description:

Sermon start time: 00:05. Sermon end time: 13:00.
The preacher argues that angels are messengers of God, and that after the Gospel of Jesus, the church has become the God’s angels, called to serve their communities and carry with them God’s good news. (Abstract created by Duke Divinity School staff.)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4rj49934

Date:

December 24, 1990

Speaker:

Willimon, William H.

Liturgical Calendar:

Christmas

Biblical Book:

Luke

Chapter and Verse:

Luke 2:1-20

Subject:

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 CS-0519
ref8885_qu5
uachapelsermaud
duke:320292
dcrau001387
ark:/87924/r4rj49934
520d2426-1003-4519-8177-7886598398f1

Digital Collection:

Duke Chapel Recordings

Source Collection:

Duke University Chapel recordings, 1954-2005

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Language:

English

Location:

United States
North Carolina
Durham (N.C.)

Format:

Provenance:

The Duke University Chapel Recordings were transferred to the Duke University Archives beginning in 1970.

Rights:

Limited Re-Use

CC BY-NC 4.0

Rights Note:

This recording may contain 3rd party materials, such as music or readings that are therefore not covered by the Creative Commons license indicated here. For more information see https://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/research/citations-and-permissions.

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William H. Willimon - "Los Angeles" Christmas Eve Service (December 24, 1990)

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1. William H. Willimon - "Los Angeles" Christmas Eve Service (December 24, 1990)

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