Do You Have Anything To Declare?

This isn't the greatest picture, but this is from a fairly large print mounted on the wall in what used to be our dining room.  Since we never ate in there, we got rid of the table and chairs and other furniture and turned it into a Celtic room that still hardly gets used, but that's another story.  This particular print is in the style of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, influential Scottish architect and artist of the late 19th/early 20th century.  He and his artist/designer wife Mary Macdonald influenced the Art Nouveau movement, Arts and Crafts, and other European styles.  This original of this print is in A House for an Art Lover in Glasgow, a house furnished totally with the unique flavor of what came to be called the Glasgow Style.  I'm not quite sure who these women are supposed to be, but they look like angels to me, and so angels I will call them.

Someone new to the faith recently asked me if I believe in angels, and I told her that it depends on what you mean by that.  Chubby cherubs who look more like Cupid don't quite make the cut - I'm quite sure that nobody would need to be told "Be Not Afraid" if confronted by that sort of messenger!  On the other hand, the description in Isaiah is enough to convince you that angelic visitations would indeed be occasions for fear or at least a large dose of awe and wonder. At any rate, angels, however you understand them, are beings entrusted with carrying a message from God to people.  They do not exist to do their own thing; they exist to carry out the will of God.

In that sense, of course, we too are angels.  We have been entrusted with the responsibility of proclaiming the Word and all the good news that is wrapped up in the Incarnation of Jesus Christ.  When I preached on April 15, I entitled my sermon "Do You Have Anything To Declare?" as a way of making that point.  Comparing the experience of filling out a customs declaration to preaching a sermon with our lives as well as our lips, I spent some time encouraging the congregation to wrestle with the reality that the gospel is costly and that being a messenger of it will leave you with scars just as the Risen Christ still carried visible wounds on his body.   Given that, the injunction, "Be Not Afraid" seems to be almost laughable.  It's more like "Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid!"  Or is it?

I doubt any of us will look as ethereal and beautiful in our proclamation of the gospel as the angels in my print, but I do know that we do have a gospel to declare, a message of God's grace and love and a challenge to live a life that is conformed to that gospel, and I know that the Spirit breathes into us power and creativity and holy boldness.  Perhaps you will reflect on these things as you think on the nature of fear and faith, of doubt and discernment, and of life and love.  Faith is a gift of the Spirit, and in the name of the Risen Lord, we go forth boldly to share God's passionate love for us and for all creation.  Do you have anything to declare?  You do indeed!  Alleluia, and Amen!