ABe Born In Us Today@

 ABe Born In Us Today@[i]

Polk City UMC

December 22, 2002

Mark Haverland

 

 

Luke 1:26‑38  In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin's name was Mary. And he came to her and said, "Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you." But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. The angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, 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." Mary said to the angel, "How can this be, since I am a virgin?" 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. 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. For nothing will be impossible with God." 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.

 

 

 


“Greg, I’d like you to be the chair of the Administrative Council.  It’s an important job and I think you can do it very well, if you choose.”  Long pause… “Okay, I’ll give it a shot.”

 

“Bob, I really need you to stay on another year as chair of the Pastor Parish Committee.  It’s a transition year:  continuity and experience will be very important.”   Long pause…. “Sure, I’ll stay with it.”

 

“Jim, I need someone to relieve Deanna as chair of the Finance Committee.  She’s done it a long time and wants out.  Besides we need some new blood on the Ad Council to help us through these next few challenging years.  I know you can make a great contribution.”  Long pause….  “Well, I guess I can help you out.”

 

“Tim, we’re kind of in a spot now without a chair of Trustees.  Would you be willing to step in and help get us through what will be a very hectic process of finishing off the building project.  You know this stuff really well and can be really helpful.”  Long pause….”Okay, I’m busier all the time over at the school with all our new projects, but I’ll see what I can do.”

 

“Deanna, I know you need a break and you’ve been doing this finance committee for a long time, but I really need someone who is reliable and conscientious to be the treasurer and pay the bills.”  Long pause….. “Sure, I do it all day at work, I can take an evening or so a week to keep the books.”

 

“Joan, you are the best person for the job of financial secretary.  It requires someone with deep commitment to the church and who has the respect and trust of the members.  Will you stay on another year?”  Long pause….. “Sure, Bill grouses some, but I’m pleased to be of service.”

 

“Jackie, I really need the help you give me with communion and worship planning.  Will you stay another year on these jobs?  Linda, Mary, Bill, Mary, Olga, Kim, Heidi, (have I left anyone out) please help make this church a strong witness for Jesus.”  Long pause…. “Sigh, well okay, if you can’t find anyone else, I’ll see what I can do.”

 

“Mary,” says the Angel Gabriel, “I need someone to have my babay – a son who is not your own, and who will grow up to save the world.”  Long pause….."Well, I had other plans, but, o well, what the heck, I’ll do it if you really want me to.”

 

What can Mary possibly mean to us?  A lot, if my experience at this church is any test.  She has been a role model for just about everyone here.   Mary is an insignificant, pregnant, unmarried teenage girl in a small village, in a remote part of a remote country until God selects her for a very special task.  What God does, of course, is to call Mary through the angel Gabriel to be the mother of God=s son, no small task for such narrow shoulders.  Now God=s call is never easy, but this call surprised, frightened and annoyed poor Mary.  Just like my call to each of you.  But she responded.  And so did you.

 

When I was a young pastor, some of the teenagers in the church asked me to speak to their Fellowship of Christian Athletes chapter about sex.  I think the church has some important messages about teenage sexuality and so I went recruiting a friend who worked at the Young Women=s Resource Center to help me and we held forth.  I remember during the course of the evening asking them what they would do if they were pregnant.  Whom would they talk to?  When I asked if they would tell their minister, they hooted with horror and derision at the thought of bringing this important dilemma to a pastor for guidance.  I was a bit hurt by this rejection, but I understand the fear, for the church has been a source of great guilt for young people who find themselves in roughly the situation that Mary finds herself as the Christmas story begins.  We who love the church need to work harder to be a place where young people can find support and loving assistance in times of need.

 


We, after all, find our origin in a remarkable story about God’s choosing a pregnant and unmarried teenage girl to be a very special person.  I don=t know what lies behind this story.  Was there a rumor about Jesus being suspiciously early in the married life of Mary and Joseph?  Was teenage pregnancy as common then as now?  Children born to unmarried women hardly shock us anymore since nowadays fully one third of all births are to unmarried women.  Maybe in those days this sort of problem presented itself fairly often as well.  The standard explanation for the virgin birth from biblical scholars is that the early church relished a story which said that Jesus was a very special person in his life, his death and even in his birth. Lots of famous people had fantastic birth stories.  The call to Mary was really no different from the summons to Moses, Abraham, Isaiah and Jeremiah.  God surprised all of them by calling them in the midst of rather ordinary lives.  They did not seek out the job God had in mind for them.  They did not even feel particularly worthy.  They had not prayed for the responsibility of being God=s agent.  So the call came as a surprise and it frightened them.  The job is dangerous, after all.  People get killed for doing God=s work.  None of us really wants God to come so close as to enlist us in his service.  We have other plans.  Moses, Abraham, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Mary, especially Mary, all had other things to do, important, urgent things to do – as, of course, do all of you.  Mary was a teenage girl, after all, dreaming of marriage to her boyfriend.  She looked forward to being a wife, mother, and housekeeper.  She wanted most of all to be like her mother and join the ranks of respectable women.  In short, she was like every other teenage girl in history.  But God had other plans.  Don’t you just hate it when that happens?

 

AHow can this be?@ Mary asked.  And that is all she asked.  There are some more questions that she might also have asked.  Questions we would likely want answers to.  Will Joseph stick around?  Will my parents still love me?  Will my friends stand by me, or will I get dragged into town and stoned for being pregnant before being married?  Will the labor be hard?  Will there be someone there to help me when my time comes?  You say the child will be king of Israel, but what about me?  Will I survive his birth, not to mention his life?  What about me?  Is there any way for this baby not to bring so much grief?  Why me?  Why now?  God doesn’t answer such questions.  To be God means never having to explain why. It is the nature of our God to make something out of nothing; to take nowhere and make it somewhere, to take nobody and make her somebody.  The power of our God is the power to transform ordinary people into prophets.  The power of our God is to take a pregnant teenager and make her into the mother of God.  With our history in this regard, you would think that pregnant teenagers would seek us out, hoping for a similar transformation.  But we, I=m afraid, have forgotten the biblical lessons in this regard: God can shine light into even our darkest corners.

 

If such questions occurred to Mary, she did not ask them.  According to Luke, she listened as the angel told her the barest details about how it would all come to pass.  It was going to happen, that much seemed clear.  She had only to say yes to it or no.  She had to choose only whether to embrace the life God thrust upon her or to defend herself against it however she could.

 


There is a lot of talk these days about all the choices we have, and about how it is up to each of us to choose our own lives.  But more often than not, life seems to choose us.  Our best laid ten-year plans are interrupted by life=s own plans for us: by sudden illness and surprise babies, by aging parents and the economy.  I think it was John Lennon who said that life is what happens when you are making other plans.  Terrible things happen and wonderful things happen, but seldom do we know ahead of time exactly what will happen to us.  Like Mary, our choices often boil down to yes or no: yes, I will live this life that is being held out to me or no, I will not; yes, I will explore this unexpected turn of events or no, I will not.

 

If you decide to say no, you simply drop your eyes and refuse to look up until you know the angel has left the room.  Then you smooth your hair and go back to your spinning, or your reading, or whatever it was you were doing, and you pretend that nothing happened.  You can stay home on Sunday morning, as lots of folks do, to make sure that God doesn’t surprise you with a request for service, and, even more dangerous, that you don’t surprise yourself by saying yes.  Life is far safer, easier, cheaper, and more tranquil if you stay home and just say no.  Avert your eyes when God calls, that’s the easiest way out.   I’m in the midst of volunteering again as a conservator for a poor woman in a nursing home whose grown son is a loser and a mooch, and whose stepson is a selfish, callous crook.  As I drove over to the son’s house with some gift cards for food and gas, I thought, boy, I sure didn’t need one more thing to do I my life.  Why can’t I say no to God once in a while.

 

The news announced to Mary surprised, frightened and annoyed.  There was no delight, no joy, no lighthearted happiness.  Mary, the angel says, you will have a baby out of wedlock.  God wants that baby for his own.  And, incidentally, he will grow up to die a horrible death which you will watch all in order to save his people.  And Mary said Ayes@ -- but she did so with a heavy sigh. As we say during the rougher stretches on the backpack trip: If you can=t get out of it, you had better get into it.  This is what Mary did.  God seemed determined to use her and she acquiesced.

 

She said yes.  And so can we.  We can set our book down and listen to a strange creature=s strange idea.  We can decide to take part in a plan we did not choose, doing things we do not know how to do for reasons we do not entirely understand.  We can take part in a thrilling and dangerous scheme with no script and no guarantees.  We can agree to smuggle God into the world inside our own bodies.  We can play the hand God deals us, trying to find Jesus in cards it seems can=t possibly win.  We can step up and do the work God asks us to do.  You are ready or you wouldn’t be here.

 

Deciding to say yes does not mean that we are unafraid, by the way, it just means that we are not willing to let our fear keep us locked in our rooms.  So we say yes to the angel.  We say, AHere I am; let it be with me according to your word,@ and so saying we become one of Mary=s people, one more person who is willing to bear God into the world.

 

And this, I think, is the point of the story: AWe are all meant to be mothers of God.@ Meister Eckhart, a medieval mystic and theologian, said it best:  AWhat good is it to me,@ he said, Aif this eternal birth of the divine Son takes place unceasingly but does not take place within me?  And, what good is it to me if Mary is full of grace and I am not also full of grace?  What good is it to me for the Creator to give birth to his Son if I do not also give birth to him in my time and my culture?  This, then is the fullness of time: When the Son of God is begotten in us.@[ii]

 

O holy Child of Bethlehem, descend to us, we pray; cast out our sin, and enter in, be born in us today.


 

 



[i].thanks to Barbara Brown Taylor for her sermon entitled AAnnunciation,@ published in Pulpit Resource, Vol.27, No.  4, 1999.

[ii].Meditations with Meister Eckhart, Matthew Fox, ed.  And trans.  (Sante Fe, NM: Bear & Company, Inc. 1983) pp 74, 81.