Mary,
Mother of Our Lord
August
15, 2004
“Your
Will Be Done”
(4th
of 9 in a Sermon Series on the Lord’s Prayer)
by
John Christianson
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.
Romans 7:21-25
21 So I find it to be a law
that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. 22 For
I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, 23 but I see in my
members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the
law of sin that dwells in my members. 24 Wretched man that I am! Who
will rescue me from this body of death? 25 Thanks be to God through
Jesus Christ our Lord!
So then, with my mind I am a slave to the law of God, but with my flesh
I am a slave to the law of sin.
The
story of our Savior begins in Nazareth.
The Angel Gabriel comes to Mary – not a well educated noblewoman, as we
sometimes fantasize, but a simple uneducated peasant girl, untrained in social
graces, like Jim Thorpe standing in front of the King of Sweden at the
Stockholm Olympics. The King said,
“You, sir, are the greatest athlete in the world!” and simple Jim Thorpe said,
“Thanks, King.”
Well, the angel said, “Mary, the honor every Jewish
girl has coveted for two thousand years is yours. You will give birth to the
Messiah of the Lord.” Mary answered, "Here
am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word."
(Luke 1: 38) That is, “Your Will be done.”
On this day, Mary was an example of good works.
It was the first of two bookends around the Book of
Luke. This one was at the
beginning. The second one comes at the
end, the last prayer that Jesus breathed before they nailed him to the cross.
He prays, “Father, if you are willing,
remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done.” (Luke 22:42)
So the Book of Luke begins and ends with the prayer,
“Your will be done;” first by Mary, then by Jesus. Can anybody be surprised, then, that Jesus teaches US to pray the
same way: “Your will be done.”
We take a closer look today at the third petition of
the Lord’s Prayer: “Your will be
done.” It has one word in common with
the first two petitions. It contains
one of the most hated four letter words in the English language: the possessive
pronoun, “your”. We much prefer the two letter possessive
pronoun, “my”.
I heard that there was a child psychologist who
studied behavior in a toddler’s nursery. The big discovery was that the most
popular word in a toddler’s nursery is “mine”. Now, here’s the definition of the word
“mine” as used in a toddler’s nursery:
Mine means
l
I
have it, or
l
I
used to have it, or
l
I
want to have it.
Mine!
Mine! In that respect, toddlers
are just like we are.
The Olympics have begun. Men and women are out there
competing. They want desperately to win. We know that these are young men and
women who have given up years of their life so they can devote themselves to an
athletic contest. Sometimes they’ve
separated themselves from their families – their mothers and fathers, or in
some cases their spouses and children – and they’ve gone into strange places
like high elevations, and they’ve trained and they’ve trained and they’ve
trained, for one purpose. Not to
compete, but to win a medal!
It’s hard when they lose because they were
outperformed. It’s harder, when they
lose because of a judge’s decision. Remember the last Winter Olympics when we
saw one Korean skater throwing his nation’s flag on the ice because he was
disqualified in a race. A world class
sprinter at the last World Championship Meet refused to leave the track when a
judge disqualified him for a false start.
But at the opening ceremonies they all make a pledge
that they’ve stayed away from any performance enhancing drug (and we know that
too many of them are lying when they say that). They promise that they will abide by the rules and the decisions
of the judges. In other words, they are
told that they are to look at the judge and they are to say “your;” your judgment, your decision,
your power! That’s contrary to human
nature! I want my judgment, my
decision, and my power! I know how
things are supposed to be, and I want you to concur with me!
That’s one of the reasons why I strongly prefer the
newer translation of the Lord’s Prayer.
It goes back to the old Greek much better than the one we’re used
to. In the Greek, the word “your” is
emphasized. It is the last word in each of the petitions.
l
Hallowed
be the name of you;
l
Come,
the kingdom of you;
l
Be
done, the will of you.
Your, your, your!
I would love to do an improvement on the newer translation by putting
the same word at the beginning of
each of the first three articles. Then,
it would go like this:
l
your name be hallowed,
l
your kingdom come,
l
your will be done.
That would help us understand what’s important in
these petitions. What’s important is
that it’s God’s name! God’s
kingdom! God’s will! Not ours!
Remember the first story in Genesis? God places the man and the woman in the
garden, and, in effect, he said, “Repeat after me: ‘Your.’” And without
blinking, they said, “My.” And it’s
been the same problem ever since.
I find that I’m an awful lot like the apostle Paul
in today’s lesson – in his weakness.
There’s something in me that loves the will of God, that applauds the
will of God, that constantly sacrifices
my own well-being for the will of God, but then I turn around and discover it’s
not really God’s Will that I want – it is my own. So I pray, “God, your
will be done in this difficult situation – and in case you’re having a hard time
deciding what your will is, I have some really cool suggestions to make. You could really get things to work out
great if you just do it like this. Your
will be done, Lord.” Do we really
endorse God’s Will, or do we just pray for God to endorse our will.
It’s like Abraham Lincoln when he was visiting with
one of his generals during the Civil War.
We’re told that the general said, “Well, we’d better just pray that God
is on our side.” Lincoln looked at him
and said, “No, rather we should pray that we are on God’s side.”
Somebody once was talking to the great teacher, C.
S. Lewis, about how it could be that a good God would have some people spend
eternity in damnation and just some people spend eternity in blessedness. C. S. Lewis explained it like this. He said, “Well, there are two kinds of
people in the world: the people who say
to God, ‘Your will be done,’ and the people to whom God finally says, ‘Your will be done.’” This is why, every time we pray the Lord’s
Prayer, and we come to this particular phrase, we could stand at attention, get
every cell of our body at alert, and say, “Okay, here it comes. Here’s the one that God is really listening
to at this moment. Whose will? It’s his will that “everybody be saved and
come to the knowledge of the truth.” It
is his will that I stand at the foot of the cross above the Communion Altar,
and have all of this self-will, this selfishness washed away to the point where
less frequently I’ll say “My will be done.”
And more frequently will I be saying your will be done.
So we come
to receive communion or to hear God’s Word and to say from the heart:
“Our Father in Heaven,
-
your
name be hallowed,
-
your
kingdom come,
-
your
will be done,
-
on
earth as it is in heaven.”
Amen.
(Comments to John at john.christianson@comcast.net )
Lyndale
Lutheran
Maple Plain, MN