Luke 1:26-38 26 In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, 27 to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin s name was Mary. 28 And he came to her and said, Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you. 29 But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. 30 The angel said to her, Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. 31 And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. 32 He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. 33 He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end. 34 Mary said to the angel, How can this be, since I am a virgin? 35 The angel said to her, The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. 36 And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. 37 For nothing will be impossible with God. 38 Then Mary said, Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word. Then the angel departed from her. 1
12.21.2014 You Have Found Favor With God I often get asked, by people in the church and from people I meet even outside the church, where I m from. That s a question I was rarely, if ever, asked back in America. But because I am a foreigner here in Korea, that is often the first question that people ask when meeting me: Where are you from? I ve lived long enough now that I ve moved a few times, so I m not always sure how to answer. I was born in one of the smaller states in the United States, Connecticut (of the fifty states, Connecticut is the third smallest). Connecticut is where I grew up and went to college, and it is where all of my family live even now. So, often I will answer by saying, I m from Connecticut. I feel that s the most truthful answer, and I like being from Connecticut; it s a good state. Connecticut has history. It was one of the thirteen original colonies. It s home to Yale University. And Connecticut has the best men s and women s college basketball teams in the country. But most Koreans haven t heard of Connecticut. Sometimes they think I m saying Canada. Then I have to explain that, No, I don t play hockey, and that Connecticut is a small state right next to New York. When I say New York, then heads nod in recognition. Everyone has heard of New York. Sometimes, so I don t have to explain where Connecticut is, I tell people that I am from New York, which is partially true. After leaving Connecticut when I graduated college, I lived in New York City for eight years, and I worked there for seventeen years, as recently as 2010. Then again, I haven t actually lived in New York since 2003. From 2003 until coming to Korea in 2013, I lived in New Jersey. We still own a house there, which we are renting to a Korean couple, as a matter of fact. Ten years is a pretty long time to be in one place, long enough to consider yourself as being from that place. I could legitimately tell people that I am from New Jersey, and yet I never do. 2
New Jersey, especially northern New Jersey where our house is, lies in New York s shadow culturally and even literally. Living in New Jersey, so close to New York, is like living next to your smarter, richer, and better-looking older brother or sister. You re forever being compared to them and looking bad by comparison. New Jersey doesn t have much of an identity of its own at least not a positive one. When most Americans think of New Jersey they probably think of the Mafia because of the TV show The Sopranos. There are no cities that are major travel destinations in New Jersey. No one drives to New Jersey to see anything. New Jersey is the state that people drive through to get somewhere else, like New York to the north or Philadelphia to the south. Therefore, if people associate New Jersey with anything, it is likely the New Jersey Turnpike, the major highway that runs north-south through the state. Even people from New Jersey joke that they are not from this or that town but talk about what exit they re from. I live near exit 15A. Nazareth, the village where Mary is from, the village that will come to be Jesus hometown, even though he will be born in the more famous Bethlehem, was the New Jersey of its day. It was not a destination. It was not an important town. It is never mentioned in the Old Testament [SLIDE]. What Nazareth was most known for was its proximity to the highway, in this case a major trade route to Egypt. Like New Jersey, Nazareth was a place people passed through on their way to somewhere else. Yet, this is the place that God chooses as an earthly home. This is the place where God s salvation narrative for humanity begins, an insignificant village far from the big city in the middle of nowhere. That is not the only surprise in the story [SLIDE]. The one whom God chooses to begin this plan of salvation is a young woman of little means. She is not well known or highly regarded. She is not a queen or princess. She is not rich. She is not powerful. She is a common peasant girl from a nondescript part of greater Israel. Yet she is the one to whom the angel says, Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you. She is God s chosen. Through her the savior, long ago promised, will come. 3
What kind of madness is this? For it does look like madness for God to work such a magnificent plan through one of such humble circumstances. Mary herself thinks that the angel must be mistaken. As Luke writes, she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be (Lk. 1:29). Surely you must have the wrong Mary, the wrong town even, she is likely thinking. This is Nazareth, and I am a peasant. But the angel assures her [SLIDE], Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God (Lk. 1:30). I want to focus here for a moment, on these two ideas of fear and favor. Mary s initial reaction to her encounter with Gabriel is fear. This should not surprise us, for it is the same reaction that Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, had when he was also visited by an angel. In fact, Zechariah is beyond fear, he is terrified. As Luke records: 11 Then there appeared to him an angel of the Lord, standing at the right side of the altar of incense. 12 When Zechariah saw him, he was terrified; and fear overwhelmed him. 13 But the angel said to him, Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard (Lk. 1:11-13). The conceptions of John the Baptist and of Jesus are both announced by an angel whose presence instills fear. I don t know what it s like to be in the presence of an angel, but I imagine that it would probably be a bit frightening to be confronted with an otherworldly creature with wings and an aura, if they look anything like they ve been depicted in paintings. But I don t think it is the mere presence of the angel that causes Mary to be frightened. I realize the Bible doesn t often give us many details, but Luke is one of the exceptions. He has the historian s eye for detail, and he doesn t record Mary being fearful of the angel s appearance [SLIDE]. Instead, as Luke writes, she was much perplexed by his words (Lk. 1:29). It s what the angel says that causes Mary to be concerned. And what has the angel said up to this point? Only this, Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you (Lk. 1:28). That s all. 4
What Mary is fearful of, I believe, is not the angel s appearance. Rather, what she fears is the notion of what it means to be favored by God. In finding favor with God, Mary is given let s just say the rather unique task of bearing the savior of humanity in her womb while remaining a virgin! That s a tall order. She also has to be wondering what her soon-to-be husband Joseph will think of all of this. Luke doesn t do much more than mention Joseph, but Matthew records Joseph being upset when he learns that his virgin wife is pregnant. So upset is he over the potential scandal that he plans to leave her. As Matthew records, Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly (Mt. 1:19). So, for Mary, the fact that she has found favor with God means that she is set apart by God for the task of bringing the Son of God into the world [SLIDE]. In other words, God s favor is an anointing. It is a calling to a specific task, a task that will reveal God s grace to the world. As the angel tells her, You will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end (Lk. 1:31-33). While this passage is clearly about Mary, it is even more so about what God intends to do through Mary, for Mary is not the only one to have found favor with God [SLIDE]. The task that Mary has been summoned to means that we too have found favor with God. Through the child that Mary bears in her womb the entire world will be blessed. Through this child, Jesus Christ, we have all found favor with God. His birth is not some random event that happens for no reason. No, his birth is part of God s plan of salvation for all the world. But as was the case with Mary, the fact that we have found favor with God, that God has seen fit to bless us with Jesus Christ, to enter into the human world by becoming human, to show us the way to God through the life of Jesus Christ, all this means 5
that we too have been summoned. We too have found favor with God, which means that we have also been anointed to fulfill a specific task that God has blessed us with. Like Mary, the realization that God s favor carries with it responsibility may give us pause. Heck, it may scare us, because what God is calling us into may take us from the comfort of the familiar that we have grown accustomed to. In fact, I can almost guarantee that it will. The entrance of God into the world is profoundly disturbing. We thought we were doing just fine on our own, but then God enters the world and disrupts our little daydream. That sentiment is captured in a poem by the Irish poet William Butler Yeats. The poem is titled The Mother of God and it is about this passage. It speaks to the combination of fear and favor that Mary encounters [SLIDE]. The threefold terror of love; a fallen flare Through the hollow of an ear; Wings beating about the room; The terror of all terrors that I bore The Heavens in my womb. Had I not found content among the shows Every common woman knows, Chimney corner, garden walk, Or rocky cistern where we tread the clothes And gather all the talk? What is this flesh I purchased with my pains, This fallen star my milk sustains, This love that makes my heart's blood stop Or strikes a Sudden chill into my bones And bids my hair stand up? The songs that we are singing today also reflect the themes of fear and favor. After this sermon we will sing a song that begins with a question, What Child Is This? The writer of they hymn captures that sense of awe and wonder that follows God s 6
entrance into the world. What Child Is This? seeks to make sense of Christ s coming into the world. We may not be able to identify or express exactly what his birth means, but we know that things will never be the same. Then we will end with an even stronger statement of awe and wonder. The final hymn will demand silence from us. Ultimately, words cannot do justice to what God has done. The final hymn is titled Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence. Here is the opening verse [SLIDE]. Let all mortal flesh keep silence And with fear and trembling stand Ponder nothing earthly minded For with blessing in his hand Christ our God to earth descendeth Our full homage to demand Christ demands our homage, meaning our respect, our worship. But worship doesn t mean just coming to church, singing a few hymns, and listening to a sermon. Worship means living in obedience [SLIDE]. Not to the church. Not to a pastor. But to Christ. It means following Christ so that our lives reflect his obedience to God. As Christ was obedient to God all the way to the cross so are we called to obey God, which means emulating Christ. A very wise theologian wrote, What God wills for us and from us is Jesus himself. Obedience to God always means that we become and are continually obedient to Jesus. That is the very type of obedience that Mary demonstrates in response to God s calling upon her life. Here am I, the servant of the Lord, she says, let it be with me according to your word (Lk. 1:38). This is the last Sunday of Advent. Advent is a marvelously strange season in the life of the church. We celebrate and await the coming into the world of a child who would be born to a virgin. Impossible! What s more, this child would be divine, the Son of God! Even more impossible! And this child, although he would be a king, 7
would be born into poverty in a remote part of a land that had been conquered by a foreign power. Could it get any more impossible? Yes, yes it could. You see, this is where we come into the story. The angel Gabriel tells Mary that she has found favor with God. That is true, and what else is true is that through the birth of this child the angel is proclaiming to all of us, You have found favor with God. After all, Christ is born, lives, dies, and is resurrected for us. Christ s coming into the world means that God has favored us with his grace and love. And you know what receiving God s favor means. It is an invitation into something rich and strange. Obeying Christ, following his Spirit, will take us to some unexpected places, to places where we may even fear to go. As was the case with Mary, it may seem to ask the impossible of us. But the Season of Advent, and this passage in particular, remind us, nothing will be impossible with God. 8