Mary M1 Yes (18 Dec 2005)
Mary M1 Yes
(This sermon can be heard online at:
http://www.tenth.ca/audio.htm)
BI: We experience the birth of Christ in us by submitting to God’s call, without turning away or calculating…
Tom Wright is a respected Anglican minister and scholar in the UK.
Wright observes that if you ask a newspaper editor what will sell the most copies, the editor will say juicy stories about sex, famous people, and religion.
He says Pop diva’s love child is a good headline. Princess has an affair is better. Prime minister’s secret night with nun is best!
Thank God, the person called to record the birth of Jesus was not some newspaper editor pressured to sell as many copies as possible…
Thank God, he raised up Luke a physician and gifted historian, who to relate the greatest story ever told…
Please turn in your Bibles to Luke 1:
The Birth of Jesus Foretold
26In the sixth month (of Elizabeth’s pregnancy), God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, 27to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin's name was Mary. 28The angel went to her and said, "Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you."
29Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. 30But the angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. 31You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. 32He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, 33and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end."
34"How will this be," Mary asked the angel, "since I am a virgin?"
35The angel answered, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. 36Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be barren is in her sixth month. 37For nothing is impossible with God."
38"I am the Lord's servant," Mary answered. "May it be to me as you have said." Then the angel left her.
In this passage, we see the angel Gabriel coming to Mary.
When we hear the name Mary, many of us immediately associate that name with the
famed mother of Jesus… as the lofty one who has been described as the “Mother of God…” the one “full of grace.”
Or perhaps we think of a face portrayed in medieval art (show powerpoint slides) or on the cover of some magazine. Mary had donned the cover of more magazines than other woman in the history world... including the late Lady Di, the pop star Madonna, and more than Jennifer Aniston and Angelina Jolie combined…
But like most people in the world who are now famous, there was time when Mary was not famous at all.
There was a time when she was simply a 14 year girl from a poor family in Nazareth, a town of about small of about 1600-2000 inhabitants.
Like all poor peasant girls of time her, she would have been illiterate. What she would have know about the Scriptures she would have picked from hearing the Word of God read in the synagogue, not by reading it herself.
Given her social profile, we could predict that she was likely to marry humbly (someone from the working class, a blue collar person), have numerous poor children, never travel more than just a few kilometers from the place of her birth, and that she likely wouldn’t live a long life…
But, God comes to her…
Martin Luther, the great reformer of the church said, “God might have gone to Jerusalem and picked out Caiaphas’ the high priest’s daughter, who was fair, rich, clad in gold embroidered garments and attended by a host maids in waiting. But God preferred lowly maid from a poor town.”
God comes to her…
The first guests invited to the birth of Jesus were shepherds.
Shepherds in 1st century Palestine were on the bottom of the social ladder.
They smelled like sheep dung. They were considered so dishonest that their testimonies were not legally admissible in court. Some towns had laws banning shepherds from their city limits. Yet the invitation to the party day part of Jesus comes to them.
What the Christmas story tells us is that God loves to the come to humble, ordinary people…
I remember someone telling me, I killed myself researching that paper because I wanted it to be great, but I got a B- on it. I’m mediocre… I’m Joe ordinary…
God loves to come to ordinary people…
You don’t have to be rich or a Rev. or a Dr. or strikingly beautiful… for God to come to you…
God’s love does come to ordinary people… the Bible over and over shows how God’s love comes to the outsider, the invisible, the forgotten…
Oh, God also does call some of who are rich, powerful, and elite.
But, it seems he loves to come as Luke points out in his Gospel in those who are poor, humble, and on the margins.
Our Catholic sisters and brothers have coined the term God’ preferential option for the poor.
Why would God single out the poor and forgotten for special attention?
Perhaps it’s because they are more likely to receive God as God…
rather than to add God to their team as an administrative assistant or as the “help.”
“Successful” people are much more likely to see God as an instrument to help them achieve their goals, rather seeing themselves as an instrument to achieve God’s…
Humble, ordinary people are much more likely to see themselves as God’s servants and not vice verse…
So, God comes to this peasant girl named Mary…
And through the angel Gabriel and says "Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you."
29Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wonders what kind of greeting this might be.
Mary experiences this fear in the presence of God, and wonders what of greeting could mean…
Like Aslan the Lion and Christ figure of the C.S. Lewis’ the Lion, Witch, and Wardrobe, God is good, but not safe…
"Do not be afraid, Mary, Gabriel the angel says you have found favor with God. 31You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. 32He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High.
(Then the angel offers a paraphrase of 2 Samuel 7:8-16 saying). The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, 33and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end."
34"How will this be," Mary asked the angel, "since I am a virgin?"
35The angel answered, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God.
Nothing is impossible with God…
Mary’s world is about to experience cataclysmic change…
And though she is troubled and afraid, she resists the temptation to turn away from God in her fear…
and she resists the temptation to calculate whether this work to her personal advantage…
When we sense God may be asking us to do something, sometimes we turn away in fear or we try to calculate whether following God’s call will serve our self-interest…
We run a cost-benefit analysis…
Sometimes we think if I say yes to God in this area, I may suffer in some way or if I follow God on this, I may miss out…
If I say yes to God, I may not be able to achieve this goal…
But we cannot come to God through a cost-benefit analysis…
Because we don’t know how our life will unfold with God in the picture…
we stand behind a veil a kind of ignorance when it comes to the future
and as Lewis points out God is good, but not tame…
Mary could have tried to calculate… and weigh this scenario worked in her self-interest…
Becoming pregnant outside of wedlock…. my mom will kill me…
People will gossip… my reputation will be ruined.
My finance Joe will not believe me…
He’ll ask for us to get a divorce (being betrothed in this culture, unlike ours was basically tantamount to marriage). In a small town being divorced will cause my marriage eligibility stock to sink, like a stone tossed into the Sea of Galilee…
Then if Mary could have envisioned the anxiety and frustration of having her son at 12 years of age go missing… calling 911 and then asking for his mug shot to appear on the milk cartoon as a missing child…
If she could imagine being a 48 year old mom and seeing her 33 year whipped and then nailed to a Roman cross and feeling a sword pierce her soul…
If she might well have said, I pass….
Thank you, but no thank you…
I’ll can’t deliver, but I can recommend someone else…
But, she says “I am the Lord’s servant… May it be to me as you have said…and the life of Jesus is birthed in her through the Holy Spirit and a the savior comes into the world…
But, if Mary would have said no… what would that have meant?
Would that have no meant no savior?
No. I don’t think so. God could have found someone else…
But as my mentor Leighton Ford says…
Would not the child still been born for the world?
But what would have been still-born in her? 2x
As we look at lives of people this past year like Abraham and Sarah and Naomi and Ruth we’ve seen that when we abandoned ourselves to the call of God, God leads us into places that unknown and unfamiliar and insecure, but it is in these places of vulnerability and loss where we experience God’s life most fully.
So may I ask us in this Christmas, we will calculate and do a cost-benefit analysis when God calls us… this season or in the coming year.
Will we choose “safety” but let the work of be “still born” in us?
Or like Mary, will say…
I am the Lord’s servant, may it be to me as you have said…
(This sermon can be heard online at:
http://www.tenth.ca/audio.htm)
BI: We experience the birth of Christ in us by submitting to God’s call, without turning away or calculating…
Tom Wright is a respected Anglican minister and scholar in the UK.
Wright observes that if you ask a newspaper editor what will sell the most copies, the editor will say juicy stories about sex, famous people, and religion.
He says Pop diva’s love child is a good headline. Princess has an affair is better. Prime minister’s secret night with nun is best!
Thank God, the person called to record the birth of Jesus was not some newspaper editor pressured to sell as many copies as possible…
Thank God, he raised up Luke a physician and gifted historian, who to relate the greatest story ever told…
Please turn in your Bibles to Luke 1:
The Birth of Jesus Foretold
26In the sixth month (of Elizabeth’s pregnancy), God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, 27to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin's name was Mary. 28The angel went to her and said, "Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you."
29Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. 30But the angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. 31You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. 32He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, 33and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end."
34"How will this be," Mary asked the angel, "since I am a virgin?"
35The angel answered, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. 36Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be barren is in her sixth month. 37For nothing is impossible with God."
38"I am the Lord's servant," Mary answered. "May it be to me as you have said." Then the angel left her.
In this passage, we see the angel Gabriel coming to Mary.
When we hear the name Mary, many of us immediately associate that name with the
famed mother of Jesus… as the lofty one who has been described as the “Mother of God…” the one “full of grace.”
Or perhaps we think of a face portrayed in medieval art (show powerpoint slides) or on the cover of some magazine. Mary had donned the cover of more magazines than other woman in the history world... including the late Lady Di, the pop star Madonna, and more than Jennifer Aniston and Angelina Jolie combined…
But like most people in the world who are now famous, there was time when Mary was not famous at all.
There was a time when she was simply a 14 year girl from a poor family in Nazareth, a town of about small of about 1600-2000 inhabitants.
Like all poor peasant girls of time her, she would have been illiterate. What she would have know about the Scriptures she would have picked from hearing the Word of God read in the synagogue, not by reading it herself.
Given her social profile, we could predict that she was likely to marry humbly (someone from the working class, a blue collar person), have numerous poor children, never travel more than just a few kilometers from the place of her birth, and that she likely wouldn’t live a long life…
But, God comes to her…
Martin Luther, the great reformer of the church said, “God might have gone to Jerusalem and picked out Caiaphas’ the high priest’s daughter, who was fair, rich, clad in gold embroidered garments and attended by a host maids in waiting. But God preferred lowly maid from a poor town.”
God comes to her…
The first guests invited to the birth of Jesus were shepherds.
Shepherds in 1st century Palestine were on the bottom of the social ladder.
They smelled like sheep dung. They were considered so dishonest that their testimonies were not legally admissible in court. Some towns had laws banning shepherds from their city limits. Yet the invitation to the party day part of Jesus comes to them.
What the Christmas story tells us is that God loves to the come to humble, ordinary people…
I remember someone telling me, I killed myself researching that paper because I wanted it to be great, but I got a B- on it. I’m mediocre… I’m Joe ordinary…
God loves to come to ordinary people…
You don’t have to be rich or a Rev. or a Dr. or strikingly beautiful… for God to come to you…
God’s love does come to ordinary people… the Bible over and over shows how God’s love comes to the outsider, the invisible, the forgotten…
Oh, God also does call some of who are rich, powerful, and elite.
But, it seems he loves to come as Luke points out in his Gospel in those who are poor, humble, and on the margins.
Our Catholic sisters and brothers have coined the term God’ preferential option for the poor.
Why would God single out the poor and forgotten for special attention?
Perhaps it’s because they are more likely to receive God as God…
rather than to add God to their team as an administrative assistant or as the “help.”
“Successful” people are much more likely to see God as an instrument to help them achieve their goals, rather seeing themselves as an instrument to achieve God’s…
Humble, ordinary people are much more likely to see themselves as God’s servants and not vice verse…
So, God comes to this peasant girl named Mary…
And through the angel Gabriel and says "Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you."
29Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wonders what kind of greeting this might be.
Mary experiences this fear in the presence of God, and wonders what of greeting could mean…
Like Aslan the Lion and Christ figure of the C.S. Lewis’ the Lion, Witch, and Wardrobe, God is good, but not safe…
"Do not be afraid, Mary, Gabriel the angel says you have found favor with God. 31You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. 32He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High.
(Then the angel offers a paraphrase of 2 Samuel 7:8-16 saying). The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, 33and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end."
34"How will this be," Mary asked the angel, "since I am a virgin?"
35The angel answered, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God.
Nothing is impossible with God…
Mary’s world is about to experience cataclysmic change…
And though she is troubled and afraid, she resists the temptation to turn away from God in her fear…
and she resists the temptation to calculate whether this work to her personal advantage…
When we sense God may be asking us to do something, sometimes we turn away in fear or we try to calculate whether following God’s call will serve our self-interest…
We run a cost-benefit analysis…
Sometimes we think if I say yes to God in this area, I may suffer in some way or if I follow God on this, I may miss out…
If I say yes to God, I may not be able to achieve this goal…
But we cannot come to God through a cost-benefit analysis…
Because we don’t know how our life will unfold with God in the picture…
we stand behind a veil a kind of ignorance when it comes to the future
and as Lewis points out God is good, but not tame…
Mary could have tried to calculate… and weigh this scenario worked in her self-interest…
Becoming pregnant outside of wedlock…. my mom will kill me…
People will gossip… my reputation will be ruined.
My finance Joe will not believe me…
He’ll ask for us to get a divorce (being betrothed in this culture, unlike ours was basically tantamount to marriage). In a small town being divorced will cause my marriage eligibility stock to sink, like a stone tossed into the Sea of Galilee…
Then if Mary could have envisioned the anxiety and frustration of having her son at 12 years of age go missing… calling 911 and then asking for his mug shot to appear on the milk cartoon as a missing child…
If she could imagine being a 48 year old mom and seeing her 33 year whipped and then nailed to a Roman cross and feeling a sword pierce her soul…
If she might well have said, I pass….
Thank you, but no thank you…
I’ll can’t deliver, but I can recommend someone else…
But, she says “I am the Lord’s servant… May it be to me as you have said…and the life of Jesus is birthed in her through the Holy Spirit and a the savior comes into the world…
But, if Mary would have said no… what would that have meant?
Would that have no meant no savior?
No. I don’t think so. God could have found someone else…
But as my mentor Leighton Ford says…
Would not the child still been born for the world?
But what would have been still-born in her? 2x
As we look at lives of people this past year like Abraham and Sarah and Naomi and Ruth we’ve seen that when we abandoned ourselves to the call of God, God leads us into places that unknown and unfamiliar and insecure, but it is in these places of vulnerability and loss where we experience God’s life most fully.
So may I ask us in this Christmas, we will calculate and do a cost-benefit analysis when God calls us… this season or in the coming year.
Will we choose “safety” but let the work of be “still born” in us?
Or like Mary, will say…
I am the Lord’s servant, may it be to me as you have said…
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