December 20, 2020
St. John’s United Church of Christ, Union, Illinois
Luke 1:26-38
Frederick Buechner, a theologian and storyteller,
renders the scene with Mary from Gabriel’s point of view:
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 [Jesus – YHWH will Save], and [he told her] who [the child] was
to be, and something about the mystery that was to come upon her. “You mustn’t be afraid, Mary,” [the angel]
said. 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.[1]
OK, it’s up to you.
You have to bring the Savior into the world. Can you handle it?
Luke’s Gospel tells us how this teenager named Mary came to
understand her call to ministry. Her ministry was to be the person God called
her to be – both in and in spite of her own culture. She would be the
God-bearer.
She is to be a mother – something fairly normal for a young
woman of those times. She was to be
married. She wasn’t supposed to be
pregnant before she was married. So, she
starts out on precarious cultural footing.
Joseph wanted to leave her, until God gave him a talking to as well.
Who am I? Mary may have wondered. And God replied, “You are my favored one,
beloved and beautiful to me.” In truth,
Mary does not stand much chance for an identity apart from God. She is too young to have had time to achieve
much on which to base her identity. She
is too poor to purchase her place in society.
Add to this the fact that she is female, which means that even if she
did have accomplishments or social stature to her credit, they likely would
have gone unrecognized because of her gender.
All of this makes Mary a most unlikely candidate for helping God save
the world, which is precisely why God enlists her. Nothing about Mary suggests that she can be
who she is apart from God’s favor of her.[2]
None of us can do this alone. The real miracles, the really hard acts –
creating, saving, giving of good gifts – those can only come from God working
in us.
The Eastern Orthodox tradition calls Mary Theotokos, or “God-bearer,” because she quite
literally brought God into the world. In
the biblical witness, God seems especially fond of calling upon unlikely
suspects for such missions. Young people
– impetuous, inexperienced, improbable choices by all accounts – figure
prominently among God’s “chosen” in both the Hebrew Scriptures and the New
Testament. And while God does not ask
any of us to bring Christ into the world as literally as Mary did, God calls
each of us to become a God-bearer through whom God may enter the world again
and again.[3]
God works in the world through our hands, our voices, our
actions, and our relationships. What
gifts have you been given? What
opportunities have been presented to you?
Have you ever felt called? How
did you respond?
God’s message to Mary and to us has two parts – affirmation
and expectation. Because Mary is beloved
by God, because she has found favor in God’s eyes, God has a plan for her. It is an astonishing plan: never mind the
angel in the living room, never mind the impossible conception. This child will
grow up to be who he will be, and Mary will be witness to it all.[4]
Sounds like too much for such a young girl to handle,
especially all on her own. But she is
not really alone. Joseph does stay by
her side. Her cousin Elizabeth loves and
encourages her. And remember, this is
God’s miracle, not ours. God is with
her. That is the meaning of the name by
which Gabriel calls the child – Immanuel – God with us. God is with Mary, and God is with us through
all of the challenges of our life.
God’s salvation is coming with or without Mary’s help. But God does not seize Mary and take her by
force. God does not enter this girl, or
any of us, without our consent. After
all, we don’t know how many stops Gabriel made before he got to Mary’s
house. What sets Mary apart from the
rest of us is quite simple: she says yes, a yes that changes her life forever
and, because of her, the world in which she lives. The ministry and the mission do not end with
Mary’s transformation; they begin with it.[5]
And what happens when we say yes, when we fling open the
doors of our souls so that grace no longer needs to sneak in through the
cracks? The Holy Spirit rushes in “like
a mighty wind” and fills us, overshadows us, transforms us by forming Jesus
within us, restoring us to the image in whose likeness we were created.
We too bring God into the world. It’s a difficult task, it will be hard. Some may not like what you have to say –
unconditional love can be threatening to those who desire only power – they
might try to take your life. But you are
not alone. God was with Mary, God is
with us, and God will be with us always.
Amen.
[1]
Frederick Buechner, Peculiar Treasures: A
Biblical Who’s Who (San Francisco: Harper-San Francisco, 1979), 39.
[2]
Kenda Creasy Dean and Ron Foster, The
Godbearing Life: The Art of Soul Tending for Youth Ministry (Nashville:
Upper Room Books, 1998), 44.
[3] Ibid, 17-18.
[4] Ibid, 46.
[5] Ibid, 48.
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