Sermon Luke 1: 26-45, Advent 1 November 29, 2015 Sermon Title: The Journey of Mary & Elizabeth Luke 1:26-45 HPMF ALL: And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord. Narrator: 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 Gabriel: Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you. Narrator: 29 But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. Gabriel: 30 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. Narrator: 34 Mary said to the angel, Mary: How can this be, since I am a virgin? 35 Gabriel: 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. Mary: Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word. Narrator: Then the angel departed from her. 39 In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, 40 where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. 41 When Elizabeth heard Mary s greeting, the child leapt in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit 42 and exclaimed with a loud cry, ELIZABETH: Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. 43 And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? 44 For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leapt for joy. All: 45 And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.
This week we begin our Advent journey together, four weeks of preparing ourselves to welcome, once again, the birth of Christ into our world; a time of preparing ourselves to celebrate again the incarnation, God with us, God s Spirit active in the life and ministry of Jesus. Even though each year we prepare again to hear the Christmas story, the trouble with having heard these Christmas stories over and over again is that we all know how it turns out. There is no way to recapture that initial shock of the news: that God is coming in the flesh to show us what real life and real love look like. This year during our four weeks of Advent we are going to look at the main characters in this great Christmas story and the different journeys that this shocking news put each one on the different ways they all journeyed to Bethlehem to see that, in fact, nothing will be impossible for God. We begin that exploration today with Mary. I think we can safely say that no one s life is more affected by the birth of Jesus than Mary s, whose changes include life and body.
Mary we have quite different views of her across the Christians spectrum: Some of us pray to her. Others ignore her on principle. Some call her a victim of divine coercion. Others call her, "Theotokos," the Mother of God. For some, she represents a troubling model of dutiful femininity ever sinless, ever the virgin, ever a mother. For still others, she is a strong prophet a young girl who fearlessly announced the arrival of God's kingdom to earth. It is to this Mary who we turn our attention to this morning, this young woman who would bear God to the world who would use her body to smuggle the love of God into the world. Typically, what we read for today is separated out into two different sections, the first being what is called in Christian tradition the annunciation, where Gabriel comes to Mary to tell her of the Divine plan for a miraculous conception. The second part being what is called the visitation, where Mary goes to visit her relative Elizabeth who is also pregnant. But when I reading these stories together, what stood out to me was that final line that Elizabeth says to Mary, the line we read twice in our scripture reading, Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord. Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord. Mary believed that God actually spoke to her. Mary believed that God was going to do something that had never been done. Maybe it is because Mary is young, maybe she was naive, maybe she was just one of those people who always thought the best of people, maybe she was one who believed another way was possible whatever it was, she believed the angel, she believed the word of God that came to her she believed and the world was never the same. We sometimes reflect on how remarkable it was that Mary said yes, that she was willing to say those famous words, Here am I, a servant of the Lord. We find it amazing that
Mary, knowing what this would mean for her, consented. Tradition tells us that Mary was perhaps thirteen or fourteen, and in first century Jewish culture, a girl who became pregnant out of wedlock faced grave danger. At the very least, she became an object of widespread scorn. At the worst as in contemporary cultures which practice honor killings she risked being stoned to death by the very villagers who raised her. To say "yes" in this instance was to give herself over to scandal and ostracism. It was to put everything her reputation, her marriage, her very life on the line. And so, we sometimes focus on this, that she said yes to God knowing all of this. We should be amazed at her yes, but to me what seems even more amazing than her yes it what had to come before that, before she could utter her Here I am to Gabriel she had to first believe that this was real she had to first be open to the impossible she had to first believe that God had for some reason chosen her to be part of God s mission in the world she had to first allow herself to hope that God was doing a new thing. Probably that I am so amazed in her ability to be open to God s movement in her life says a lot more about me than about Mary it says more about my own moments of skepticism and
uncertainty, I think. I don t relate very well to this Mary (these two paintings above), this sort of classic subservient Mary who gladly follows along who seems to have no trouble believing this Mary who is praying and reading her Bible when Gabriel bursts into the room. But this Mary makes some sense to me: this Mary (by Botticelli) who is backing away from Gabriel, who seemingly wants no part of what this angel is there to do or say. And this Mary who, in fear, has moved to the wall moving as far as she can get from the celestial disturbance from this being who has invaded her space uninvited, with a message she was not seeking or asking for.
And this Mary (from the 1300s) who seems not only perplexed but upset, almost irritated at the words of Gabriel, as she too leans away him and his words. And this Mary (by Henry Tanner from the late 1800s) who seems uncertain what to think, what to believe, uncertain how to react I can relate to this Mary, to the perplexity on her face. In these depictions we see Mary s struggle to believe. We see her fear, that she truly needed to hear those words, Do not be afraid. We see her confusion and her perplexity. We see her resistance, a bit of the emotion that might be behind her words, How can this be? And still, some how she is able to journey from confusion to belief; from resistance to participant with what God is doing.
Like all the great prophets before her, Mary does not start out by looking for some great new thing to do Mary does not begin by asking how can I totally throw a wrench into my life, or how can I feel completely uncomfortable and out of place in my own culture, she does not ask how can I, for the purposes of God and the good of all make my life more difficult? Like the prophets before her this does not seem to be something she is seeking or asking like Moses and Samuel and so many before her, she is confused, wondering why God is calling them wondering how this can be. And like those same prophets, she moves toward believing, toward being open to the possibility that God is doing something completely new. She does not know how it will end, all she has is her unreasonable willingness to believe that the God who has chosen her will be part of whatever happens next and that, apparently, is enough to make her say yes. Mary s story here made me think of some of the small steps in my own journey that have helped move me from skepticism to belief: About years ago or so I was helping plan worship for the Jr. High portion of the National Mennonite Youth Convention. Always during the week of convention we have to take offering so we had to try to plan offering for Junior High worship, which is usually just parents giving their kid a few bucks to throw in the offering. There were five of us at this little planning meeting and Curt Weaver, who is now the Youth Pastor at Portland Mennonite Church said, what if we try something crazy what if ahead of time we sent all of these junior-highers five dollars, and told them it was seed money and asked them to try to grow their five dollars into a larger amount and bring that to our offering time. To bring their money and their story of what they did, or tried to do.
And I probably backed away from Curt a little bit, thinking that this might be the first time in history that an offering would come up with a deficit, that we could lose money on our offering. But we tried it, Curt had a vision of what might be, of what could be. And at that offering time we heard story after story of kids who took up that challenge: three girls who pooled their money together to buy baking supplies and have a bake sale; one boy who bought soap and a sponge and had a car wash; another who bought gas for his parents lawn-mower and mowed some neighbors lawns for cash. That is just the smallest little thing, I know, but it helped me believe a little bit in the God who shows up in surprising ways of the God who lives in those we see as having few resources. When I was in seminary I had the chance to be a leader in a program for High Schoolers called!explore. It is a program where High school juniors and seniors spend a couple weeks of their summer at the seminary doing service, exploring theological questions, and trying different spiritual practices. Andy Brubacher-Kaethler who runs the program set up our days so that every day started with morning prayer and every day ended with evening prayer this was the rythtm of our weeks. And I am not talking about the type of prayers that we might have as sort of a token before a meeting or gathering, these were not two minute prayers or readings these were thirty to forty-five minutes of group prayer. Every day for two weeks with High Schoolers. And when I read the schedule I thought, what is this guy doing, this is going to be a train wreck. But slowly, day after day, you could feel those times of prayer become part of our life you could feel the youth growing and listening during those times. I could feel myself being
changed over time and by the end of those two weeks, almost every youth wrote that those morning and evening prayers were the highlights of their experience. Not a bolt of lightning, I know, not an angel stumbling through a window, but a time at a critical point in my life that helped me believe that perhaps God is still speaking in new and old ways that God might still be moving in ways I could not see. Without those smallest of stories that helped open me up just a bit to the God who is still at work, without those people who saw what I could not see, who could see something bigger was possible I don t think I would be here as a pastor. Small and important moments that continue to open us to believe that promises of God will be fulfilled. Hopefully you have been pondering a bit some of those places in your own life, people or experiences that helped open you up a bit further to the improbable those small (or large) moments when you were opened to the Spirit of God moving times when we too believed there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken by God. And so during this season of Advent, this season of hope in the face of so much turmoil, in this season of believing the improbable, let us remember Mary s journey who -Despite the long silence of the prophets was willing to believe that God could speak in a variety of ways even in angels -Despite the seeming endless violence and turmoil in the world around her was willing to believe that God was still at work -Despite the fact that she was just an ordinary person (not someone famous or well educated) was willing to believe that God had chosen her, was calling her to further God s mission in the world -Despite the fact that God had never done something quite like this before was willing to believe that God could always work in new and unimagined ways -Despite the fact that she was perplexed and afraid was willing to join with what God was calling her toward
-Despite the fact that she did not know what the ending would look like said, here I am, a servant of the Lord. Let it be according to your word. Here I am a servant of the Lord. Blessed is she who believed that there would be fulfillment of what was spoken to her by God. -Though we may often wonder where God is, and where Her prophets are today, may we like Mary be willing to believe that God can still speak into our lives in a variety of ways even angels -Despite the seeming endless violence and turmoil in the world around us, may we like Mary be willing to believe that God is still at work -And in the face of all that has happened just this past month (Paris, Syria, more and more shootings here in our country, continued acts of racism and fear) may we like Mary be willing to believe that God has chosen us, calling us to further God s mission of love, compassion and justice in the world -Despite the fact that God might be acting in completely new ways, with old structures and institutions breaking down may we be willing to believe that God can always work in new and unimagined ways -Despite the fact that we do now know what ending will look like, may we like Mary say, here I am, a servant of the Lord. Let it be according to your word. Here I am a servant of the Lord. Blessed are we who believe there will be fulfillment of what is spoken to us by God Blessed are we who believe there will be fulfillment of what is spoken to us by God. Amen. Sending Blessing And now as you go from this place, may the God who is still at work go with you opening us just a bit wider to hoping in a time of despair, to see what might be rather than what is; to perhaps believe what seems improbable that healing and hope might flow through us and into the world. Go in peace. Amen.