Lectionary Reflections
by Various Authors

Sermon Starter
Surprise, It's Christmas!
 
Luke 1:26-38 

The greatest thing about Christmas morning is the surprises. When else in life 
do you get to pile 10, 20, 30, 40 sometimes 50 surprises all together 
and sit for an hour enjoying each of them? One after another, surprise after surprise. 
Christmas Morning is wonderful in that way. I can remember still today the way 
I felt as a child, the amazement, the astonishment of Christmas morning.

Chuck Swindoll writes, "surprises come in many forms and guises: 
some good, some borderline amazing, some awful, some tragic, 
some hilarious. But there's one thing we can usually say -- 
surprises aren't boring." Surprises are woven through the very fabric 
of all our lives. They await each one of us at unexpected and unpredictable 
junctures.

I like the story about a professor who sat at his desk one evening working 
on the next day's lectures. His housekeeper had laid that days mail 
and papers at his desk and he began to shuffle through them discarding 
most to the wastebasket. He then noticed a magazine, which was not even 
addressed to him but delivered to his office by mistake. 
It fell open to an article titled "The Needs of the Congo Mission".

Casually he began to read when he was suddenly consumed by these words: 
"The need is great here. We have no one to work the northern province of Gabon 
in the central Congo. And it is my prayer as I write this article that God 
will lay His hand on one - one on whom, already, the Master's eyes have been cast - 
that he or she shall be called to this place to help us." Professor Albert Schweitzer 
closed the magazine and wrote in his diary: "My search is over." 
He gave himself to the Congo.

That little article, hidden in a periodical intended for someone else, 
was placed by accident in Schweitzer's mailbox. By chance he noticed the title. 
It leaped out at him. Chance? Nope. It was one of God's surprises.

This morning we focus on one of the greatest surprises that ever there was, 
the surprise that took place when an angel by the name of Gabriel appeared 
to a young teenager by the name of Mary. Gabriel piled one surprise upon another. 
Mary and Joseph's Christmas tree had more astonishing surprises 
than any couple on earth had ever experienced. Gabriel surprised 
Mary with the following…

 "The Lord is with you, do not be afraid." 
 "You will conceive in your womb, and bear a son." 
 "He will be called the Son of God."




This is the irrational season
When love blooms bright and wild.
Had Mary been filled with reason
There'd have been no room for the child.



Madeleine L’Engle, a wonderful teller of stories and spirited author writes:

There is also a legend that Mary was not the first young woman 
to whom the angel came. But she was the first one to say yes.
And how unsurprising it would be for a fourteen-year-old girl 
to refuse the angel. To be disbelieving. Or to say:
“Are you sure you mean—
but I’m unworthy—
I couldn’t anyhow—
I’d be afraid, No, no,
it’s inconceivable, you can’t be asking me—
I know it’s a great honor
but wouldn’t it upset them all,
both our families?
They’re very proper, you see.
Do I have to answer now?
I don’t want to say no—
it’s what every girl hopes for
even if she won’t admit it.
Bit I can’t commit myself to anything
this important without turning it over
in my mind for a while
and I should ask my parents
and I should ask my—
Let me have a few days to think it over.”
Sorrowfully, although he was not surprised
to have it happen again,
the angel returned to heaven. 

(from And It Was Good: Reflections on Beginnings, pp. 250-251)



Annunciation 
by Denise Levertov

We know the scene: the room, variously furnished, 
almost always a lectern, a book: always 
the tall lily. 
Arrived on solemn grandeur of great wings, 
the angelic ambassador, standing or hovering, 
whom she acknowledges, a guest. 
But we are told of meek obedience. No one mentions 
courage. 
The endendering Spirit 
did not enter her without consent. 
God waited. 
She was free 
to accept or to refuse, choice 
integral to humanness. 

Aren't there annunciations 
of one sort or another 
in most lives? 
Some unwillingly 
undertake great destinies, 
enact them in sullen pride, 
uncomprehending. 
More often 
those moments 
when roads of light and storm 
open from darkness in a man or woman, 
are turned away from 
in dread, in a wave of weakness, in despair 
and with relief. 
Ordinary lives continue. 
God does not smite them. 
But the gates close, the pathway vanishes. 

She had been a child who played, ate, slept 
like any other child - but unlike others, 
wept only for pity, laughed 
in joy not triumph. 
Compassion and intelligence 
fused in her, indivisible. 
Called to a destiny more momenteous 
than any in all of Time, 
she did not quail, 
only asked 
a simple, "How can this be?' 
and gravely, courteously, 
took to heart the angel's reply, 
perceiving instantly 
the astounding ministry she was offered: 
to bear in her womb 
Infinite weight and lightness: to carry 
in hidden, finite inwardness, 
nine months of Eternity: to contain 
in slender vase of being, 
the sum of power - 
in narrow flesh, 
the sum of light. 
Then bring to birth, 
push out into air, a Man-child 
needing, like any other, 
milk and love - 
but who was God.



The Future of the World in the Hands of Girl
	
“She struck the angel Gabriel as hardly old enough to have a child
at all, let alone this child, but he’d been entrusted with a message to give
her, and he gave it. He told her what the child was to be named, and who he
was to be, and something about the mystery that was to come upon her. "You
mustn’t be afraid, Mary," he said. And as he said it, he only hoped she
wouldn’t notice that beneath the great, golden wings he himself was
trembling with fear to think that the whole future of creation hung now on
the answer of a girl.”

(by Frederick Buechner)



The whole world waits for Mary's answer
You have heard that you shall conceive and bear a Son; you have heard 
that you shall conceive, not of man, but of the Holy Spirit. 
The angel is waiting for your answer: it is time for him to return to the God 
who sent him. We too are waiting, O Lady, for the word of pity, 
even we who are overwhelmed in wretchedness by the sentence of damnation.

And behold, to you the price of our salvation is offered. If you consent, 
straightway we shall be freed. In the eternal Word of God were we all made, 
and lo! we die; by one little word of yours in answer shall we all be made alive.

Adam asks this of you, O loving Virgin, poor Adam, exiled as he is from paradise 
with all his poor wretched children. Abraham begs this of you, and David; 
this all the holy fathers implore, even your fathers, who themselves are dwelling 
in the valley of the shadow of death; this the whole world is waiting for, 
kneeling at your feet.

And rightly so, for on your lips is hanging the consolation of the wretched, 
the redemption of the captive, the speedy deliverance of all who otherwise are lost; 
in a word, the salvation of all Adam's children, of all your race.

Answer, O Virgin, answer the angel speedily; rather, through the angel, answer your Lord. 
Speak the word and receive the Word; offer what is yours, and conceive what is of God; 
give what is temporal, and embrace what is eternal.

Why delay? Why tremble? Believe, speak, receive! Let your humility put on boldness, 
and your modesty be clothed with trust. Not now should your virginal simplicity forget prudence! 
In this one thing alone, O prudent Virgin, fear not presumption; for although modesty 
that is silent is pleasing, more needful now is the loving-kindness of your word.

Open, O Blessed Virgin, your heart to faith' open your lips to speak; open your bosom 
to your maker. Behold! The Desired of all nations is outside, knocking at your door. 
Oh! If by your delay he should pass by, and again in sorrow you should have to begin 
to seek for him for whom your soul longs! Arise, then, run and open. Arise by faith, 
run by the devotion of your heart, open by your word.

And Mary said: "Behold the hand maid of the Lord: be it done o me according to your word".

(from St. Bernard)



Regarding the RC tradition (Hail, May, full of grace, the Lord is with Thee.  
Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus),  
Peter Gomes says:

"... as universal as is our respect and even affection for Mary, we children of 
the Reformation simply do not know what to do with Mary. ... It is not so much 
what we are to do with Mary as it is what God does with Mary. How is she used as 
an instrument of his purpose?

The summons to Mary, for that is what it was, was no different from the summons 
to Moses, Abraham Isaiah, and Jeremiah (and Sarah, and Elizabeth) ... They all 
found themselves surprised by the call of God; they all found themselves 
annoyed, not so much at their own unworthiness for such a high calling, for that 
would come later, but annoyed at the more practical level of inconvenience.  
(They all) had other things to do, important, urgent things, the fulfillment of 
their own destinies, the carrying forth of their own lives, choices, options, 
and challenges.  ... 'She was greatly  troubled at the saying, and considered in 
her mind what sort of greeting this might be.'

'Why me?'  'Why now?'  Why Mary?'  What had she done to deserve this 
distinction?  Is there some particular virtue or worthy quality in her life that 
commends her to the attention of God?  The angel says simply, 'Hail, O favored 
one' ... the salutation tells the tale ... for the angel means to say to her 
that she is chosen not because of her special grace and quality but rather that 
she is full of grace and filled with favor because she is chosen by the will of 
God. ... When God chooses you, you are chosen.  Just as there was no particular 
reason for God to choose Israel as his peculiar people, there was no reason, at 
least known to us, to choose Mary as the mother of Jesus. ... to be God means 
never having to explain why ...

Modern feminists criticize the church's exaltation of Mary, for they believe 
that it exalts those qualities of quiet submission and obedience that they 
themselves see as so negative and destructive of the spirit of women and the 
true teachings of the church.  Strange to say, I am sympathetic to this 
criticism, for it does indeed suggest that a mindless obedience and submission 
to a powerful will is all that it takes for faithfulness in the church, and it 
would appear to make of passivity a virtue.

I am not persuaded, however, that Mary's obedience to the will of God is any 
more demeaning than Christ's obedience to the will of God in the Garden, when he 
says 'Not my will, but thine be done.'  Is it too paradoxical to say in this 
case that there is strength in submission?  We cannot pretend to know Mary's 
thoughts, which are, in fact, irrelevant.  What is of importance here is Mary's 
action, and of even more importance, God's action.  The power that God has now 
given her she takes to do and to be what God would have her do and become.  She 
affirms the promise that is within her, and that is no more 'submissive,' in the 
pejorative sense, than it is for Bach to write the music that he was given to 
write, for Rembrandt to paint with the gift that was given to him, or for Mother 
Teresa to do the work she was called to do.  

(In many cases) what we would give for a clue as to what God's will is for us, 
and what we would do if we knew clearly what our gift was and how we would use 
it.  It is not resignation, not dumb, blind submission to fulfill your destiny; 
it is the grace of God that allows you to do so, the wonderful gift of knowing 
your place in the universe, and of fulfilling it.  Mary was a free woman because 
in the course of that strange and cosmic conversation with God's ambassador she 
discovered who she was, what her destiny was to be, and how she would fulfill it 
... it was ... a willingness to discover how God could and would use her life in 
fulfillment of the divine plan of which she was so vital a part.  ... She became 
what she was meant to be: the gifted one of God.  

The one who first received the grace of God becomes the means whereby the grace 
of God is made flesh in the world.  She is for us the means of the incarnation, 
not an accident of history but the human expression of God's willing choice (to 
become one of us).  ... She shows us that it is possible for us to be gifted 
ones with her, the bearers of Christ in our world, and that in us as in her, 
God's will is made manifest.  Such an opportunity and so great a gift we dare 
not deny."



This text has been my mantra through
a lot of years and a lot of dark places, including an excrutiating divorce
after 22 years of marriage.  I use it often in preaching and in Council
meetings - and now I just refer to it as "Luke 1:37" and people know what I
mean.  The wording IS important, I believe, and the double negative that the
sermon Lawrence offered us lays that out wonderfully well.  However, I like
and use the NRSV translation ("Nothing will be impossible with God.") for
several reasons.

It's not so convoluted as the "all things are not impossible," yet it
retains the double negative sense. It also lives into the future with the "will be."
And it uses the phrase "with God" and not "for God" (which is the wording of
some of the other texts noted), and this reminds me that "nothing will be
impossible" ONLY "with God" (not just on my own) AND that I have a part to
play/responsibility in this impossible possibility.

I've long since decided that the annunciation text is one of the most
important in all of scripture, for regardless of its "truth," here's the
announcement that an ordinary woman living an ordinary life can, by saying
"yes" to God and not turning down the opportunity God provides/the call God
makes on her, can be part of God's saving work in changing all of creation.
The ordinary made extraordinary, the lowly raised up, the power of One
working with The One - a thread woven all through all of scripture - hope
and grace and love...you name it, I think this story has it.

When I was going through candidacy, my African-American woman mentor asked
me to list all the calls made to women in the Bible.  I frankly couldn't
find any! - at least not calls such as those for men.  Even this text isn't
really a call - it's more of an order: "This is gonna happen."  My take has
been over the years to decide that even though it's a command, Mary chooses
to treat it as a call.  I hope she could have said, "No way!" - and I choose
to think that.  But she doesn't, and God provides the impossible way for it
all to be possible.  My own experience of my calling is that it can be
turned down, but not really - because it's really a matter of identity.



Consider the Impossible

This is a story of impossibilities. Consider the impossibilities Mary faced in this story: 
She is a virgin and pregnant-she is having a child while she is a virgin. Impossible! No way! 
Won't happen! Joseph has to follow through on the marriage after he discovers 
Mary is pregnant. Impossible! Mary must avoid being stoned to death 
when the neighbors hear the news. Impossible! 

Consider the impossibility Elizabeth faced. She was well past the childbearing age, 
and yet God says she is going to conceive and bear a child. This impossible news 
left old Zechariah speechless. Impossible! No way! Won't happen!

This is a story of biblical impossibilities. But, what are the impossibilities in our world? 
What would you label "impossible" in your life? Peace in our world. Impossible! No way! 
Won't happen! Christian values returning to our nation, morality becoming the norm? 
Impossible! Our church reaching our surrounding community and making our world different? 
Impossible! Restoring relationships, healing past hurts in our lives. A relative or friend 
entering a relationship with Christ. Breaking an addiction and overcoming past hurts 
and disappointments? Impossible! 

We find ourselves with the same troubled mind as Mary, wondering over the impossible (v. 29). 
We even ask the same question Mary asked, "How will this be?" (v. 34). To us it seems impossible! 
No way! Won't happen! The real question for people today is "How can the impossible become possible?"

(by Dwight Gunter from The Possible Impossible)



Speaking of a New Order

Men are strangely quiet in Luke's first chapter. Zechariah is silenced. Joseph says nothing at all. 
What is the gospel writer up to here? In the hush, our gaze is drawn toward two women -
cousins who rush to greet each other, females with wombs filled by miraculous cavorting babies, 
and spirits set afire by the living God. Pure hysteria. I imagine that Plato would have cringed 
at the rampant emotionalism of it all. And it's just getting started, for after the raucous reunion, 
after the cousins bump their rounded tummies, the women start to prophesy. 
They start to talk about how the world ought to be. They make claims about what God wants of us. 
Their talk is full of typical irrational stuff: you know, tyrants being thrown down; 
hungry people getting food. They protest social inequalities. They speak of a new order.

(by Scott Black Johnston from Head of Household?) 



Tranquility in the Midst of Turmoil

Two artists were commissioned to paint their conception of peace. A panel of distinguished judges 
would determine which artist had best captured the idea. The winner would get a rich commission. 
And after they had been painting for a long time, the judges assembled to view their work. 

The first artist unveiled his painting, and there was a beautiful, magnificent pastoral scene, 
with a farmer coming in after a hard day in the fields. His wife was cooking, 
his children were playing around the hearth, and all was at peace in this tranquil and beautiful farm. 

"That's it," said the judges, "but we'll look at the other rendering anyway." 
They removed the veil of the second painting. Instead of a tranquil, pastoral scene, 
there was a raging waterfall producing a mist which communicated hostility. 
But over on the side of the waterfall was a tiny branch of a tree growing out of a rock, 
and on the end of the branch was a bird's nest. And on the edge of the nest was a mother bird, 
singing her heart out in the midst of the turbulence around her. The judges thought for a moment, 
then said, "This is peace, tranquility and celebration in the midst of turmoil." 

We need a little Christmas right now, but the little Christmas that we need is the courage 
that comes as the favor of God. We must remember that the Christian community has done its best 
when it has gone against the wind. 

(by William L. Self from Have I Got News for You!)



Expect Great Things

British missionary William Carey's famous quote, "Expect great things from God, attempt great things 
for God" is very meaningful to those who have received a special challenge or calling from God. 
Like Mary and Joseph, we may be called on at any time to walk a path for Him that has rarely, if ever, 
been walked before. We must teach our family not to fear "surprises from heaven," 
but to face them faithfully and obediently.

(by Ken Blackwood from Surprises from Heaven)



God's Grace at Work

Anne Lamott, author of the wonderful book Traveling Mercies tells of how in her church 
babies get passed around the moment they're brought into the sanctuary - everyone takes care 
of everyone else's babies. Every baby instantly has more parents and grandparents, 
aunts and uncles than he ever knew.

Imagine what that teaches children about Christian community! What they learn about love 
even as infants! For the adults everyone gets a chance to remember the miracle of birth, 
God's hand in our human being. 

If there is a heresy today it is that we're so preoccupied with other things that we fail to pay attention 
to the fact of God's spectacular grace at work in and through our humanity, 
God's miraculous unmerited love in evidence around us. God's Son born to bring us Second Birth 
while we labor under the assumption that we have to do it all ourselves. 

(by Peter Buehler from With God Nothing Is Impossible)



The New Age

Every year at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, there is displayed, beneath the great Christmas tree, 
a beautiful eighteenth century Neapolitan nativity scene. In many ways it is a very familiar scene. 
The usual characters are all there: shepherds roused from sleep by the voices of angels; 
the exotic wise men from the East seeking, as Auden once put it, "how to be human now"; 
Joseph; Mary; the babe -- all are there, each figure an artistic marvel of wood, clay, and paint. 
There is, however, something surprising about this scene, something unexpected here, 
easily missed by the causal observer. What is strange here is that the stable, and the shepherds, 
and the cradle are set, not in the expected small town of Bethlehem, but among the ruins 
of mighty Roman columns. The fragile manger is surrounded by broken and decaying columns. 
The artists knew the meaning of this event: The gospel, the birth of God's new age, 
was also the death of the old world.

Herods know in their souls what we perhaps have passed over too lightly: God's presence 
in the world means finally the end of their own power. They seek not to preserve the birth of God's new age, 
but to crush it. For Herod, the gospel is news too bad to be endured, for Mary, Joseph, 
and all the other characters it is news too good to miss.

(Adapted from Something Is About To Happen by Thomas G. Long, CSS Publishing)



Trust and Humility

Years ago, TIME magazine reported on a 2-foot-long, 40-pound package that arrived at the post office in Troy, 
Michigan, addressed to a Michael Achorn. The post office phoned Achorn's wife, 
Margaret, who cheerfully went to accept it. As she drove the package back to her office in Detroit, 
she began to worry. The box was from a well-known mail-order house, but the sender, 
Edward Achorn, was unknown to Margaret and her husband, despite the identical last name.

What if the thing was a bomb? Fearing the worse, Margaret telephoned postal authorities. 
The bomb squad soon arrived with eight squad cars and an armored truck. They took the suspected bomb 
in the armored truck to a remote tip of Belle Isle in the middle of the Detroit River. 
There they wrapped detonating cord around the package and, as they say in the bomb business, 
"opened it remotely."

When the debris settled, all that was left intact was the factory warranty for the contents: a $450 stereo 
AM-FM receiver and tape deck. Now the only mystery is who is Edward Achorn 
and why did he send Michael and Margaret such a nice Christmas present?

We live in a cynical age -- an age of terrorists and corporate charlatans. Who can talk of angels 
and humble maidens and divine revelation in the same breath to such a generation? 
Yet, on such a foundation does our faith rest.

(by King Duncan from Collected Sermons, www.Sermons.com)



The Future of the World in the Hands of Girl

"She struck the angel Gabriel as hardly old enough to have a child at all, let alone this child, 
but he'd been entrusted with a message to give her, and he gave it. He told her 
what the child was to be named, and who he was to be, and something about the mystery 
that was to come upon her. "You mustn't be afraid, Mary," he said. And as he said it, 
he only hoped she wouldn't notice that beneath the great, golden wings he himself was trembling 
with fear to think that the whole future of creation hung now on the answer of a girl."

(by Frederick Buechner)



Bring Peace

Ultimately, we have just one moral duty: to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves, 
more and more peace, and to reflect it towards others. And the more peace there is in us, 
the more peace there will also be in our troubled world. 

(by Etty Hillesum who died in Auschwitz in 1943 at the age of 29. From An Interrupted Life, 
a compilation of her diaries and letters.) 



In the New Interpreter's Bible, Alan Culpepper says: "Mary had been chosen, 'favored', 
by God. But what a strange blessing. It brought with it none of the ideals or goals that so consume our 
daily striving. Today many assume that those whom God favors will enjoy the 
things we equate with a good life: social standing, wealth and health. Yet 
Mary, God's favored one, was blessed with having a child out of wedlock who 
would later be executed as a criminal. Acceptability, prosperity and comfort 
have never been the essence of God's blessing." 



God Values the Heart

One of the great delusions that goes with wealth, power and status is to think we are in control of our lives. 
The most difficult lesson for most people to realize is that God values the heart, not what we possess. 
Everything we have is on loan to us. We are only stewards of His possessions. 
He is really not interested in appearance, performance or status.

Barclay well said, "God does not choose a person for ease and comfort and selfish joy but for a task 
that will take all that head and heart and hand can bring to it. God chooses a man in order to use him." 
Someone said, "Jesus Christ came not to make life easy but to make men great."

(by Will Pounds from Gabriel Came by Today)



Christmas Surprises

Under a cultural-exchange program, Alan Abramsky and his family in Roanoke, Texas, 
were hosts to a rabbi from Russia at Christmas time. They decided to introduce him to a culinary treat 
that was probably not available in his country: They took him to their favorite Chinese restaurant.

Throughout the meal, the rabbi spoke excitedly about the wonders of North America in comparison 
to the bleak conditions in his homeland. When they had finished eating, 
the waiter brought the check and presented each of them with a small brass Christmas-tree 
ornament as a seasonal gift.

They all laughed when Abramsky's father pointed out that the ornaments were stamped 
"Made in India." But the laughter subsided when they saw that the rabbi was quietly crying. 
Concerned, Abramsky's father asked the rabbi if he was offended 
because he'd been given a gift for a Christian holiday.

He smiled, shook his head and said, "Nyet. I was shedding tears of joy to be in a wonderful country 
in which a Buddhist gives a Jew a Christmas gift made by a Hindu!" A time of miracles. A time for stories.

From time to time we hear someone say, "Wouldn't it be great if it could be Christmas all year long." 
Surprise! That was God's intent. That is why God invaded our planet and gave us the gift of God's Son. 
There is only one thing that stands in the way of celebrating Christmas all year long.

You and I.

(by King Duncan from Collected Sermons, www.Sermons.com)



Humor: Mary vs. Eve

One week a Sunday school teacher had just finished telling her class the Christmas story, 
how Mary and Joseph went to Bethlehem and how Jesus was born in a stable and laid in a manger. 
After telling the story the teacher asked, "Who do you think the most important woman in the Bible is?" 
Of course, the teacher was expecting one of the kids to say, "Mary." 
But instead, a little boy raised his hand and said, "Eve." So the teacher asked him 
why he thought Eve was the most important woman in the Bible.

And the little boy replied, "Well, they named two days of the year after Eve. You know, 
Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve."