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What is Growing Inside You?

The Very Reverend Sam G. Candler
The Cathedral of St. Philip
Atlanta, Georgia
21 December 2008
The Fourth Sunday of Advent

Do not be afraid ... for you have found favor with God.
And now, you will conceive … and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus.
Luke 1.30-31

Scientists tell me that, at any given moment, thousands of things are growing inside me. And they are growing inside you, too. Lots of those things are good; blood cells and bone cells, nerve endings, and tissues and organs that together make up this wondrous human body. Over five hundred species of bacteria also live inside us. In fact, there are ten times as many bacterial cells inside us than there are human cells! Most of the bacteria inside us are actually good. I don’t see them, but they are good!

But many of the things growing inside us are not so good. There are also viruses, germs, bad bacteria, even pathogens and toxic agents that would kill us if they were left to grow uncontrolled. Even the healthiest human body always contains thousands of viruses and germs that are not so healthy. This is a fact of life.

What keeps the human body healthy is that we feed the good elements. We feed the good bacteria and good cells. We pay attention to those unseen elements that are positive and life-giving. Great family therapists, like the late Edwin Friedman, tell us the same thing about families and social systems. At any given moment, every social structure or family system contains elements that are destructive. But the healthy social systems distinguish themselves from the ill and the hopeless. They give energy to hope and to independent life.

This same principle was illustrated in a story told long ago by the Cherokee Indians, who once inhabited this very land around us. In their parable, an old Cherokee grandfather is teaching his grandson about life.

"A fight is going on inside me," he says to the boy. "It is a terrible fight, between two wolves. One wolf is evil; he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego." But then, the grandfather continues, "The other wolf is good; he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. This same fight is going on inside you - and inside every other person, too."

The grandson thinks about it for a minute and then asks his grandfather, "Which wolf will win?" The old Cherokee replies simply, "The one I feed."

Right now, in our own time, many other things are growing inside us. Some of us have the germ of fear growing inside us. Perhaps the economic downturn has affected us, or it has affected people close to us; and we fear that perhaps we have experienced the worst yet. Or we fear something else about the future. Some of us have the germ of anxiety growing inside us. And that germ of anxiety, the demon of anxiety, has a lot to feed on during this time of year. We are anxious about gift-giving, or gift-buying. We are anxious about the right way to observe Christmas, or the right way to relate to our families.

Fear and anxiety are real, just as real as any pathogen or virus that may be physically growing inside our bodies right now. Fear and anxiety can grow. Fear and anxiety are like diseases; they can actually infect people around you. Even unseen, these germs can grow.

Christians believe in things seen and unseen, and we believe they can grow. On this Fourth Sunday of Advent, we have heard again the miraculous story of an annunciation of growth. To the Virgin Mary appears that wondrous angel, speaking words of wisdom and comfort, “Do not fear.” Those are almost always the first words of angels to human beings: “do not fear, do not fear.” They are words we all need to hear, from generation to generation.

Mary hears about something quite unseen. “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most high will overshadow you; the child to be born will be holy.” Mary is pregnant; she will have a child.

As a male, I do not know, nor will I ever know, what it is to have a living person physically growing inside me. I can only imagine that it is one of the most humbling experiences of humanity. That there is life inside us which comes from beyond us, is a humbling experience that exalts us to glory.

I will never know that experience physically. But I can know, and all of us can know, what it is like to have the living Christ growing spiritually inside us. The story of the Virgin Mary is not a story just for women. It is the story of how each of us is invited to allow something to grow inside us. That something is the living Christ.

We believe in things seen and unseen. We believe in the power of the Word every Sunday. What we see, every Sunday, is people walking forward to this altar to receive holy bread and wine. What we do not see literally, is that we are actually receiving Christ. This communion every week is not magic. Nor is it a vaccination or immunization. This reception of bread and wine is not a literal antidote, and it is not an anti-bacterial agent.

Because, after we have received the Word, and after we have received the body and blood of Christ, each of us still has agents of disease and illness in us. We still have germs and viruses and pathogens. But we also have something else. We have the presence of a more powerful agent, the agent of life and hope, the living Christ.

We receive Jesus in these weekly communions, and so we share something of the experience of the Virgin Mary. Every day is a new day. Every week is a new week. Every communion is a new chance to receive Christ. We are all new, we are all virgins, when we receive the fresh body and blood of Jesus Christ.

There are lots of things that can grow inside us: germs and bacteria and viruses. But the living Christ can also grow. The living Christ can also spread. The living Christ can also be contagious!

In this particular season of our society and culture and nation, it might be good to consider the human gestation period. It took nine months for Mary to conceive and grow the living Christ inside her. In our liturgical year, we will shrink that to four days! Just four days from today, the story of the conception, we will be celebrating the birth of Jesus!

But consider nine months. What if today, we might be conceiving something that will take nine months of silent, unseen, interior growth before it becomes self-sufficient? What is growing inside us that will be strong in nine months?  Where do you want your spiritual life to be nine months from now? Where do you want your family life to be nine months from now? Where do you want your financial and economic life to be nine months from now?

I am no financial expert, but, given all the estimates of our experts, I reckon that nine months is just about the average time it will take for our national economy to stabilize again, before it can function without major assistance -- before it is born again.

Today, on the shortest day of the year, when the light is dim and the night is longest, is the day we glimpse that something hopeful and life-giving has been conceived.

Today, when we struggle between antagonistic elements in our own bodies, we hear the voice saying, “Greetings, favored one! Do not be afraid! You have found favor with God!”

The living Christ is conceived in us today. When we hear that Word today, when we take communion today, may we receive the living Christ, the Christ of hope and life. We need that hope and life today, maybe like we have never needed it before. And the world needs that hope and life today, maybe like it has never needed it before.

There are many things that want to grow in us during the next nine months. There are germs of fear and viruses of anxiety. But, as of today, there is also the living Christ that wants to grow in us.

Let it be, in us. Let it grow, in us. Let the living Christ thrive in us according to the angel’s word.

AMEN.

The Very Reverend Samuel G. Candler
Dean of the Cathedral of St. Philip

Comments? Contact Dean Candler at: SCandler@stphilipscathedral.org

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