December 19, 1999

Pastor David G. Mullen

Luke 1:26-38

Wendover, Nevada. A tiny dot in the vast desert of eastern Nevada. When I first drove into town, back in 1967, coming from Wisconsin, heading out to California for my internship, Wendover was nothing more than a couple of rundown gas stations, shabby casinos, tough customers, and a haphazard arrangement trailer homes scattered like tossed beer bottles on the upsweep of the desert. The kind of place, as a friend once remarked, where it looks people’s cars broke down and they decided to stay!

In honor of the place I’ve paraphrased a Christmas carol this way, "O little town of Wendover, where people often cry, no coins they keep and they never sleep, while big rigs roar on by." Now it’s more respectable, with a freeway exit off I-80, modern gas stations, houses, and at least one new large casino, glowing with "everlasting light" in the desert night like an overdone Christmas neighborhood. But still, driving by in the night, out in the middle of what most people would call, "nowhere," the desolation that makes you wonder about Wendover: does God know anything about this place?

Does God know anything about this place? What if Wendover were a symbol for the whole world? Then asking, "Does God know anything about this place" feels more edgey. Every X Files program begins, "The truth is out there." But if the truth is God, God, it seems remains invisible behind the billions of light years of space, and heaven hidden behind the light curtain of the primal Big Bang. In a world that is conscious of such immensity, some suggest that it is no mere coincidence angels are once again popular. Angels bridge the immensities of time and space, and their existence suggests that if God is billions of light years away busy with the birthing of primal galaxies, at least God knows we exist, and even cares! And that’s something terribly important for many people. Angels in fact are so popular now that there’s a whole angel industry, with books, angel cards, even movies and a popular TV show, "Touched by an Angel." If there’s a way to retail angels, someone has found it. We all should have invested in angel stock about ten years ago.

So now maybe more people are willing take seriously that an angel named Gabriel came to Mary. Maybe the visit happened in a dream or a vision. If so, we can perhaps relate to some extent. We all dream, and sometimes we have what are known as "big dreams." Some of you may remember that some time ago I shared a dream that I had at four years of age. Rising up out a vast desert floor was a conical mountain, and at the top of the mountain was the face of Christ, glowing in golden light. That’s it. Yet for me it was so powerful it brought me eventually into the ordained ministry. Which brings this narrative to 1967, and me driving to California in my beat up red Ford Fairlane 500. After surviving the Salt Lake desert, I was astonished to see the mountain of my dream rising up out of the Nevada desert. It’s called Pilot Peak, about 30 miles north and a bit west of–guess what--Wendover.

What I didn’t mention earlier is that in the dream there was a spiral road around the mountain. With a spiral you keep coming back to the same side of the mountain but at a different level. But here’s the thing. For all these years, in fact, until three days ago, I had always assumed that the spiral road was about the path up the mountain to heaven and the glorious presence of Christ. Then, working on the sermon, I realized I had the trip the wrong way. The spiral road was not for me to go up the mountain, but rather, having seen Christ, to go down, down, down, to the desert floor to the Wendover of humanity that this planet represents in the universe.

And here’s the point many who are in love with angels miss. The goal of the angel’s visit was not to provide Mary with an inspiring spiritual moment, but rather to tell her God was giving her a mission to bear God into the worried Wendover world. The angel message means, God does know we exist. And God will be "Emmanuel" "God with us" down in the desert.

"God with us!" According to St. Matthew, Jesus once gave his disciples the Sermon on the Mount, but he was telling them about life down on the plain, where the people lived, and the blessed where the poor in spirit, the meek, the ones longing for the world to feel right again. In Luke’s gospel, Jesus gives almost the same sermon, but he’s already down on the plains. The spiral road on the mountain in my dream is a sign of the Christian life as being one not one of solitude mountain glory, but down in the plains with a Wendover humanity--that desert world of the soul where people live like their cars broke down and they’re stuck in hell on earth.

"Does God know anything about this place?" And our answer as the Church is and must be, Yes! For "God so loved the world that he gave his only son…" How? We know the Christmas story, know about Mary and Jesus. But how does this birth, this divine presence, happen now?

There was a reason for the way our gospel was proclaimed today–Frank "type cast" as the angel Gabriel, and you the church as Mary. For every service is like the angel Gabriel standing before us sent by the Holy Spirit and saying, "You are Mary and you are blessed! God cares for you." And every celebration of Holy Communion is the angel’s word of reassurance, "The Lord is with you! Don’t be afraid, because God is pleased with you." And at the end of every liturgy, as we get ready to go back out to the world, the angel leaves us with "Go in peace, serve the Lord!" And do you know that means? This: like Mary, every church’s mission is to give birth to Christ.

Give birth to Christ?! How can this be? The angel says, "Nothing is impossible for God."

And now for the rest of the story of Wendover, God has blessed you with the Christ, O little town of Wendover. I know, because yesterday I called and talked to the former and first Mayor of Wendover, Donna Hanson, wife of retired pastor Lloyd Hanson. Are there any churches in Wendover? I asked. Yes, there are, she said. There are several. One in particular intrigued her. There is a Roman Catholic community that’s been there for decades, served by two compassionate, very capable nuns, who are like mothers to the town.

The courageous and caring little Christian communities of Wendover played a role in the birthing of a new sense of community. New homes, a high school, medical care, supermarkets, all have come into town. The point is, like Mary, we accept the travail of birthing Christ, so that when others begin to hear the angels sing of Emmanuel, God with us, and come to see if these things are true, we will have a Christ to show them. For where there are churches laboring to live the gospel, there Christ is being born into the world.

Nothing is impossible for God! The eternal Word takes on our flesh and blood in a Mary kind of church, where the faithful gather and agree, "We are the Lord’s servants. Let it happen as you have said." Let what happen? Let Christ be born into the world through us, a sign glowing in desert night, God does know we exist! Sing it, angels! Amen.