Mary: Bringing God into the World(25 Dec 2005)
Mary M2
Bringing God into the World
(This sermon can be heard on line at:
http://www.tenth.ca/audio.htm)
Simon Birch… scene…
I remember sitting in our kitchen as a child with my siblings and radio program was playing.
The host was inviting listeners to call in and respond some to a random personal questions about the listener (usually, the listener calls and asks a question to a guest on a program, this show reversed the format and invited listener to call answer a personal question.)
So, we persuaded our youngest sister Hana (she must have been about 11 or 12 years old then to phone in). She calls and gets on the air and the host asks her, “If you could be any person in history who would you want to be? She covers up the phone and asks us what should I say, George Washington? And my brother say Mary, Mary mother of Jesus… My sister… I’d want to be marry mother of Jesus.
Of course, none of us can be Mary mother of Jesus, there’s just one of her.
Many of us wouldn’t her particular assignment.
But, each of us, by following Mary’s example, can become people who bring God into the world.
This morning as look at Mary’s we’re going to see how we can become people who bring God into the world.
If you have your Bibles please turn to Luke 2
The Birth of Jesus
1In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. 2(This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) 3And everyone went to his own town to register.
4So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. 5He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. 6While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, 7and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.
The Shepherds and the Angels
8And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. 9An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. 10But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. 11Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. 12This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger."
13Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,
14"Glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests."
15When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, "Let's go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about."
16So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. 17When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, 18and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. 19But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. 20The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.
Perhaps you have heard the claim that Catholics have tended to overemphasize Mary, if that is true, it may also be the case that Protestants have underemphasized her.
Mary after all is the woman whose labor brings God into the world.
And Mary serves as a model of how we can become people who bring God into our world.
Why does Mary become the “mother of God?”
Some people have pointed out the fact that Mary was an illiterate peasant girl chosen by God is a sure sign of God’s free and merciful choosing.
True…
But the angel Gabriel also says to Mary in Luke 1, vs. 30 you have found favor with God.
At various points in Scripture we hear about certain people finding favor with God: Noah, Joseph, Daniel, Ruth, Esther, Mary…
None were perfect but each walked humbly before God.
There’s a connection between finding favor with God and walking humbly before God.
In Micah 6:8 the prophet says what Lord requires of us is to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God.
Mary walks humbly before God…and finds favor with God…
In Mary’s song in Luke 1 she sings about how God has been mindful of the humble state of his servant and has done great things for her… she sings about how God’s mercy extends to those who fear and reverence God, but that he scatters the proud.
If we want to become people who bring God into the world, we’ll walk humbly before God…
Cherokee chiefs would say to their young braves, why do you spend time worrying? Don’t you know that you are being driven by great winds across the sky? Don’t you know that you’re part of a much bigger pattern? But you’re not in control of it, any more than you would be of great winds. You and I are a small part of a much bigger mystery.
(scene from Gladiator).
If we like Mary, realize that we are not the primary reality in the universe, but that we are part of a much bigger pattern that is being woven by God… and like Mary “surrender and let go” and allow the winds of God to direct our lives… we will become people who bring God’s breath the world…
2nd we see that Mary contemplates. Mary is humble and she contemplates…
In chapter 1 when Gabriel says to Mary Greetings you who are highly favored, the Lord is with you. The text tells us that Mary was troubled and she wondered what kind of greeting this might be….
In vs. 19 we read that Mary ponders these things….
When Jesus was 12 and he went missing, Jesus said, didn’t you know I had to be in father’s house and Luke tells us that Mary treasured these things in her heart…
Part of the way we bring God into the world is simply by becoming aware of God… part of the way become aware of God is by slowing down and simplifying our lives…
Thomas Merton says, there is a pervasive form of contemporary violence, and that is activism and overwork. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of this innate violence.
To be so multi-tasked and busy is to do violence to our souls.
Henri Nouwen says "When your eating, drinking, working, playing, speaking, or writing is no longer for the glory of God, you should stop it immediately, because when you no longer live for the glory of God, you begin to live for your own glory. Then you separate yourself from God and do yourself harm. Your main question should always be whether something is lived with or without God."…
My wife Sakiko has been taking drawing and painting… for its own sake and so that she will be enabled you to see, perceive…God in everything…
Is there something you can do in the coming year that will enable you to more fully contemplate God?
Or there is something you can stop to more fully contemplate God?
When the poet Southy was telling an elderly Quaker lady how he learned Portuguese grammar while he washed and something else while he dressed, how worked while he had breakfast and so… filling who whole day multi-tasking, the Quaker asked quietly, When do you have time to think?
As we, like Mary, become people who learn to dwell on God, our purpose as a child of God, we become those who bring God into the word…
Mary finds favor with God as one who walks humbly before God, as one who contemplates God, and as one who radical obeys…
When the angel Gabriel comes to her and says the Holy Spirit will come to you and the power of the most high will overshadow you, and you will give birth the Holy one, the one called son of God, Jesus…
Mary could have hesitated, turned away in fear…
After all the first pregnancy is always the scariest, to be pregnant outside of wedlock especially in her culture would have been scandalous….
But to bear the one who is the HOPE of the WORLD… that is out there….
Mary a 14 year illiterate peasant, who has never heard of the Christmas story, after all she is the Christmas the story—(a lead player in it)…
Because her humble, thoughtful and radical “yes” to God… “I am the Lord’s servant, May it be to me as you have said” she becomes the one who brings God into the world…
So we bring God to the world… as we walk humbly before, contemplate God, and radically obey we will become those who bring God into the world…
This past Tuesday we had our small group Christmas party… in a circle in our living room we talked about the new things we had experienced… some talked about how learning to sail or ski or paint, but everyone talked how God shaped them through this group… how they had learned to pray, to read the Bible and journal, learn anew how to forgive…
Sakiko in leaving the “safety” of her homeland, her secure job, family, language… to follow God’s call enable to become an instrument of God.
I have a friend who is a journalist who writes for Vancouver Magazine and other publications. Before beginning his spiritual pilgrimage, he was involved heavily party/drug scene here in the Vancouver and ended up being in a group one night where someone was killed in a drug related killing… Though innocent, he was a suspect and was put in a pre-trial holding prison… but in prison he began to take the first steps of spiritual journey…. When he got out he started coming to Tenth.
I was with him not ago to see in his temporary back in his temporary home “pre-trial” prison…and He told me had been drawn to God through his first experience in prison, but had after he had been set free he had experience some drifting from God…
He told God I was closer to you in prison than now, if takes going back to prison to be closer to you, send me back.
The very next day he was on assignment with the Vancouver Courier covering a drug dealing story on the Downtown East, to a better inside angle he bought 6 dollars or crack and was arrested and thrown into prison.
He told me say to you all be careful what you pray for! But he also told me, I’ve surrendered my life to God, I have had more time than the Bible to read the Bible and ponder God than ever before, and people are coming to me here for guidance…
This friend is has radically surrender to the call of God and he’s bringing God into the prison!
I known a pastor in LA Erwin who in Florida to speak at a youth conference and took his family along for working vacation.
One morning Erwin and his 10-year-old son Aaron walked down to the beach.
Although several hundred students were there, most seemed unaware of the physically disabled man who was awkwardly making his way out of the ocean water. The man was a double amputee with specialized crutches. As he attempted to navigate his way back up to the hotel, he fell. He pulled himself up again only to fall a second time. Erwin, pretending not to notice, directed Aaron in the opposite direction. He was fairly certain that his son, like most of the people on the beach, had not noticed the man. Erwin's son surprised him by saying, "I have to go help that man."
His son’s compassion moved him to act.
Aaron went down to help the man but was unable to lift him. Several people from the crowd came and worked as a team to get the man up to the hotel deck. Aaron walked back up to his father with tears in his eyes and said, "I couldn't help him. I wasn't strong enough."
"He couldn't see that no one would have helped the man if he hadn't taken initiative. He didn’t know he had brought the love of God into the world of that man."
When we walk humbly with God, when contemplate God, and when step in radical obedience, like Mary, we bring God into the world.
Bringing God into the World
(This sermon can be heard on line at:
http://www.tenth.ca/audio.htm)
Simon Birch… scene…
I remember sitting in our kitchen as a child with my siblings and radio program was playing.
The host was inviting listeners to call in and respond some to a random personal questions about the listener (usually, the listener calls and asks a question to a guest on a program, this show reversed the format and invited listener to call answer a personal question.)
So, we persuaded our youngest sister Hana (she must have been about 11 or 12 years old then to phone in). She calls and gets on the air and the host asks her, “If you could be any person in history who would you want to be? She covers up the phone and asks us what should I say, George Washington? And my brother say Mary, Mary mother of Jesus… My sister… I’d want to be marry mother of Jesus.
Of course, none of us can be Mary mother of Jesus, there’s just one of her.
Many of us wouldn’t her particular assignment.
But, each of us, by following Mary’s example, can become people who bring God into the world.
This morning as look at Mary’s we’re going to see how we can become people who bring God into the world.
If you have your Bibles please turn to Luke 2
The Birth of Jesus
1In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. 2(This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) 3And everyone went to his own town to register.
4So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. 5He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. 6While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, 7and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.
The Shepherds and the Angels
8And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. 9An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. 10But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. 11Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. 12This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger."
13Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,
14"Glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests."
15When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, "Let's go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about."
16So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. 17When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, 18and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. 19But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. 20The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.
Perhaps you have heard the claim that Catholics have tended to overemphasize Mary, if that is true, it may also be the case that Protestants have underemphasized her.
Mary after all is the woman whose labor brings God into the world.
And Mary serves as a model of how we can become people who bring God into our world.
Why does Mary become the “mother of God?”
Some people have pointed out the fact that Mary was an illiterate peasant girl chosen by God is a sure sign of God’s free and merciful choosing.
True…
But the angel Gabriel also says to Mary in Luke 1, vs. 30 you have found favor with God.
At various points in Scripture we hear about certain people finding favor with God: Noah, Joseph, Daniel, Ruth, Esther, Mary…
None were perfect but each walked humbly before God.
There’s a connection between finding favor with God and walking humbly before God.
In Micah 6:8 the prophet says what Lord requires of us is to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God.
Mary walks humbly before God…and finds favor with God…
In Mary’s song in Luke 1 she sings about how God has been mindful of the humble state of his servant and has done great things for her… she sings about how God’s mercy extends to those who fear and reverence God, but that he scatters the proud.
If we want to become people who bring God into the world, we’ll walk humbly before God…
Cherokee chiefs would say to their young braves, why do you spend time worrying? Don’t you know that you are being driven by great winds across the sky? Don’t you know that you’re part of a much bigger pattern? But you’re not in control of it, any more than you would be of great winds. You and I are a small part of a much bigger mystery.
(scene from Gladiator).
If we like Mary, realize that we are not the primary reality in the universe, but that we are part of a much bigger pattern that is being woven by God… and like Mary “surrender and let go” and allow the winds of God to direct our lives… we will become people who bring God’s breath the world…
2nd we see that Mary contemplates. Mary is humble and she contemplates…
In chapter 1 when Gabriel says to Mary Greetings you who are highly favored, the Lord is with you. The text tells us that Mary was troubled and she wondered what kind of greeting this might be….
In vs. 19 we read that Mary ponders these things….
When Jesus was 12 and he went missing, Jesus said, didn’t you know I had to be in father’s house and Luke tells us that Mary treasured these things in her heart…
Part of the way we bring God into the world is simply by becoming aware of God… part of the way become aware of God is by slowing down and simplifying our lives…
Thomas Merton says, there is a pervasive form of contemporary violence, and that is activism and overwork. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of this innate violence.
To be so multi-tasked and busy is to do violence to our souls.
Henri Nouwen says "When your eating, drinking, working, playing, speaking, or writing is no longer for the glory of God, you should stop it immediately, because when you no longer live for the glory of God, you begin to live for your own glory. Then you separate yourself from God and do yourself harm. Your main question should always be whether something is lived with or without God."…
My wife Sakiko has been taking drawing and painting… for its own sake and so that she will be enabled you to see, perceive…God in everything…
Is there something you can do in the coming year that will enable you to more fully contemplate God?
Or there is something you can stop to more fully contemplate God?
When the poet Southy was telling an elderly Quaker lady how he learned Portuguese grammar while he washed and something else while he dressed, how worked while he had breakfast and so… filling who whole day multi-tasking, the Quaker asked quietly, When do you have time to think?
As we, like Mary, become people who learn to dwell on God, our purpose as a child of God, we become those who bring God into the word…
Mary finds favor with God as one who walks humbly before God, as one who contemplates God, and as one who radical obeys…
When the angel Gabriel comes to her and says the Holy Spirit will come to you and the power of the most high will overshadow you, and you will give birth the Holy one, the one called son of God, Jesus…
Mary could have hesitated, turned away in fear…
After all the first pregnancy is always the scariest, to be pregnant outside of wedlock especially in her culture would have been scandalous….
But to bear the one who is the HOPE of the WORLD… that is out there….
Mary a 14 year illiterate peasant, who has never heard of the Christmas story, after all she is the Christmas the story—(a lead player in it)…
Because her humble, thoughtful and radical “yes” to God… “I am the Lord’s servant, May it be to me as you have said” she becomes the one who brings God into the world…
So we bring God to the world… as we walk humbly before, contemplate God, and radically obey we will become those who bring God into the world…
This past Tuesday we had our small group Christmas party… in a circle in our living room we talked about the new things we had experienced… some talked about how learning to sail or ski or paint, but everyone talked how God shaped them through this group… how they had learned to pray, to read the Bible and journal, learn anew how to forgive…
Sakiko in leaving the “safety” of her homeland, her secure job, family, language… to follow God’s call enable to become an instrument of God.
I have a friend who is a journalist who writes for Vancouver Magazine and other publications. Before beginning his spiritual pilgrimage, he was involved heavily party/drug scene here in the Vancouver and ended up being in a group one night where someone was killed in a drug related killing… Though innocent, he was a suspect and was put in a pre-trial holding prison… but in prison he began to take the first steps of spiritual journey…. When he got out he started coming to Tenth.
I was with him not ago to see in his temporary back in his temporary home “pre-trial” prison…and He told me had been drawn to God through his first experience in prison, but had after he had been set free he had experience some drifting from God…
He told God I was closer to you in prison than now, if takes going back to prison to be closer to you, send me back.
The very next day he was on assignment with the Vancouver Courier covering a drug dealing story on the Downtown East, to a better inside angle he bought 6 dollars or crack and was arrested and thrown into prison.
He told me say to you all be careful what you pray for! But he also told me, I’ve surrendered my life to God, I have had more time than the Bible to read the Bible and ponder God than ever before, and people are coming to me here for guidance…
This friend is has radically surrender to the call of God and he’s bringing God into the prison!
I known a pastor in LA Erwin who in Florida to speak at a youth conference and took his family along for working vacation.
One morning Erwin and his 10-year-old son Aaron walked down to the beach.
Although several hundred students were there, most seemed unaware of the physically disabled man who was awkwardly making his way out of the ocean water. The man was a double amputee with specialized crutches. As he attempted to navigate his way back up to the hotel, he fell. He pulled himself up again only to fall a second time. Erwin, pretending not to notice, directed Aaron in the opposite direction. He was fairly certain that his son, like most of the people on the beach, had not noticed the man. Erwin's son surprised him by saying, "I have to go help that man."
His son’s compassion moved him to act.
Aaron went down to help the man but was unable to lift him. Several people from the crowd came and worked as a team to get the man up to the hotel deck. Aaron walked back up to his father with tears in his eyes and said, "I couldn't help him. I wasn't strong enough."
"He couldn't see that no one would have helped the man if he hadn't taken initiative. He didn’t know he had brought the love of God into the world of that man."
When we walk humbly with God, when contemplate God, and when step in radical obedience, like Mary, we bring God into the world.
posted by Shigematsu at 4:06 PM
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