4 Advent B      Luke 1:26-38            22 December 2002

Rev. Roger Haugen

 

Once upon a time there was a woman who hated children. She had been raised in a large family where there were constant fights between the parents, between parents and children, and among the children. She did not want to be any part of a family like that ever again in her life. Kids were noisy, obnoxious brats. They were messy, ungrateful, and dishonest. From the moment of conception till you finally got rid of them when you sent them off to college, they caused nothing but pain. And they fought with you for the rest of your life and broke your heart. Her friends who had children said that her picture of children was incomplete. They were also wonderful, even if they were often pesky brats. Her husband wanted children desperately, but she told him that he wanted them so much he should find himself another wife. Well, one day she found that something had gone wrong and she was pregnant. She instantly thought about having an abortion to get rid of the child before anyone found out about it. She hesitated. You ought to take a chance with the kid, one of her friends - the only to whom she had told the bad news advised her. She even went to see a doctor about an abortion, but then she changed her mind at the last minute and decided to take a chance. Every woman who becomes pregnant takes a chance, her friend said. Well, you know what happened. You'd think she'd invented motherhood! Moreover she was a very good mother and did not repeat the mistakes of the family in which she was raised. Her children adored her. Mary took a chance too, not utterly different from the one every mother takes. That is the nature of life, of responding to the kingdom, to seize the rich opportunities it offers us.  (Andrew Greeley)

 

There was a woman who suffered awful abuse as a child, (I mean awful in the worst possible sense of the word) Every year she is invited to her local high school, the high school from which she graduated, to speak to the health classes about her experiences. Every year students speak to her afterward who are being abused in some awful way and have been afraid to tell anyone. She listens and helps them reach out to find the help they need. She says going to that school and speaking to those students is the hardest thing she has ever had to do. But she goes back every year because for her it is part of what it means to have found favor with God. She is God's instrument of salvation for many suffering souls, probably more than she will ever know.                 (John Sumwalt)

 

Zion Lutheran has  favour with God and this year was asked to open its doors to the Empty Stocking Fund office.  For two months this has resulted in many people coming through our doors who previously walked by.  These are the poor, the unemployed, the working poor.   These are people who live in our neighbourhood coming to apply for a Christmas hamper.  Many had never been in a church before, and have little to do with people who do.  It has not been always easy.  Phones ring every day with people looking for help.  When people think of hampers, they think of Zion and come looking for help of other kinds as well. This past Sunday a man phoned looking for help with a medicine prescription that needed filling, and he called here because he had been here for a hamper application.  He was in a bad way and desperately needed his medicine, so we found him some help.  People who were only shadows walking by were becoming names and faces.  Anyone here during these past months met people in need and if we took a chance to listen, we heard their stories.  Often these stories were very painful, sometimes clouded by anger, sometimes by odours of alcohol.  Some were people possessing wonderful grace that forced us to reassess our opinions of people such as these.  For those who dared, took the chance to walk a moment with these people, it was a time of blessing. 

 

Life was unfolding for a young woman named Mary.  She was engaged, her life was unfolding before her.  Then one night it all threatened to come apart.  An angel came to her and said the unspeakable.  She is to become pregnant.  The angel’s introduction, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favour with God”, no doubt got lost in the rest of the message.  Now, today a teen pregnancy is still a situation one does not wish upon anyone, but then it meant the end of life as the girl knew it.  It could result in divorce, abandonment and possibly death by stoning in a very public way.  Yet Mary took a chance, accepted the message, placed her life in the hands of God, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”  We want to scream, “But do you know what you are getting into?”  Here is one blessed with a child out of wedlock who would later watch as her child is executed as a criminal.  Not exactly what we might imagine as blessing.  Yet Mary, one favoured by God, takes her place along side many others, favoured by God, who take the chance and open themselves to God working through them.  Many whose lives were certainly complicated and, at times, made very difficult.  There was Moses, who insisted he could not speak well, chosen to lead his people out of slavery.  Jeremiah, called to be a prophet in a nation gone astray, who responded “I don’t know how to speak … I’m too young.”  Jeremiah who was beaten and driven to the point of shaking a fist at God.  There was Isaiah who declared, “I am a man of unclean lips.”  There was Amos, the prophet who said, “I am only a farmer.” Abraham who gave up the comfort of retirement to head out across the unknown for a promised land with an old barren wife.  Let’s not forget Jonah, hot and cold in his life as a prophet, forced to spend time in the belly of a whale.  All had found favour with God and were asked to be instruments of God’s saving will for his people.  Each were willing to listen, to take a chance and all were blessed by God and were a blessing to all they enocuntered.

 

Acceptability, prosperity and comfort have never been the essence of God’s blessing.  But in all cases, those who were declared to have found favour with God, took a chance, chose to listen, were used by God.  Ordinary people willing to accept God’s claim upon their lives and great things were accomplished.  Imagine if Mary had refused to accept the news and jumped down a well as so many would have done.  Imagine if Moses had stayed tending the sheep.  Imagine if Abraham had decided to hang on to what he had, a tidy retirement package.  All were willing to enter the mystery, to allow something of God to be born in them, depend upon God who had declared them as ones who had found favour.  This is the story of faith.

 

There have been times in my ministry when I have been pushed into walking with people in the midst of unspeakable pain and suffering.  I do not want to take that walk, sometimes I want to check the sign out front to see if my name is still on the sign.  But I make the sign of the cross, pray a desperate prayer for help and plunge in.  We walk through their particular valley of the shadow of death and come out on the other side because Jesus who has declared to be present with us has indeed been there with us.  I leave those times exhausted but feeling blessed and supported in a most profound way. Something of God has been born in us that day.  My faith has been strengthened and I am ready the next time to say with Mary, in fear and trembling, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your will.”  I pray that I will be open to taking a chance again the next time and the time after that.

 

We read in Ephesians, “Now God who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel… “ and we can hear those words spoken to us, a declaration of being found in favour with God.  This is the favour we have been given.  How are we to respond?  Will our response be one of fear and hanging on to what we know and have, or will it be a response of faith, like Mary who laid her entire life at the disposal of God knowing that God would be faithful?  Will we take a chance on God?  Will we allow something great and wonderful to be “born in us today?”

 

What is God saying to you and to me?  Do we dare listen?  How will we respond?  God meets us where we don’t expect it and asks us to do things that we know are beyond our ability or comfort.  We are not promised comfort or acceptance but we are promised the blessing of God as one who has found favour with God.  We are promised that as God uses us, we are strengthened in our faith and equipped for ministry at other times and places.

 

As one writer puts it,

In a world that extols the virtues of planned, ordered living, the message of today’s gospel instructs us not to be afraid of God’s unexpected, surprising plans for our lives. In a world where we have much cause to be afraid; where human life seems all too cheap and becomes threatened by terrorism; God’s word speaks to us, “Do not be afraid.” As we look at our own personal lives or the lives of loved ones; we may respond with fear for the future and ask questions like: “Am I going to get sick? Am I going to recover from my illness? Am I ready to face and accept the worst? God answers: “Do not be afraid.”  (Garth Wehrfritz-Hansen)

 

The gospel hope spoken to Mary, to the prophets and to faithful people for generations is that as God showers favour upon us, God asks us to be a part of the wonderful creation and we can sing the words of the familiar carol,

        O Holy child of Bethlehem, descend to us we pray;

        Cast out our sin and enter in, be born in us today.

Amen.