Fourth Sunday of Advent Year B 2009

4 Advent B 08
Christmas Sunday
December 21, 2008

2 Sam 7:1-11, 16 (NRSV)
1 Now when the king was settled in his house, and the LORD had given him rest from all his enemies around him, 2 the king said to the prophet Nathan, "See now, I am living in a house of cedar, but the ark of God stays in a tent." 3 Nathan said to the king, "Go, do all that you have in mind; for the LORD is with you."
4 But that same night the word of the LORD came to Nathan: 5 Go and tell my servant David: Thus says the LORD: Are you the one to build me a house to live in? 6 I have not lived in a house since the day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt to this day, but I have been moving about in a tent and a tabernacle. 7 Wherever I have moved about among all the people of Israel, did I ever speak a word with any of the tribal leaders of Israel, whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, saying, "Why have you not built me a house of cedar?" 8 Now therefore thus you shall say to my servant David: Thus says the LORD of hosts: I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep to be prince over my people Israel; 9 and I have been with you wherever you went, and have cut off all your enemies from before you; and I will make for you a great name, like the name of the great ones of the earth. 10 And I will appoint a place for my people Israel and will plant them, so that they may live in their own place, and be disturbed no more; and evildoers shall afflict them no more, as formerly, 11 from the time that I appointed judges over my people Israel; and I will give you rest from all your enemies. Moreover the LORD declares to you that the LORD will make you a house.
16 Your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me; your throne shall be established forever.

Luke 1:46-55 (NRSV)
46 And Mary said,
"My soul magnifies the Lord,
47 and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
48 for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.
Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
49 for the Mighty One has done great things for me,
and holy is his name.
50 His mercy is for those who fear him
from generation to generation.
51 He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
52 He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
53 he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.
54 He has helped his servant Israel,
in remembrance of his mercy,
55 according to the promise he made to our ancestors,
to Abraham and to his descendants forever."

Romans 16:25-27 (NRSV)
25 Now to God who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the proclamation of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages 26 but is now disclosed, and through the prophetic writings is made known to all the Gentiles, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith-- 27 to the only wise God, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever! Amen.

Luke 1:26-38 (NRSV)
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.

I Get to Help

"Who wants to be Mary?"

Christian Coon, a pastor, tells the story of the time his music director asked a group of seven-, eight- and nine-year-old girls this question… as children from the church gathered for their first Christmas pageant rehearsal. A handful of would-be Marys eagerly raised their hands, each wanting the chance to stand up front with a (probably uncomfortable) young Joseph and hold the baby-doll Jesus.

After a bit of deliberation, the director chose a second-grader named Sophie. Sophie's eyes opened wide behind her glasses, and she whispered in joyful disbelief, "Me?"

The greatest revelation of my own spiritual life was that God almost always comes in the form of ordinary human beings. I remember this was a little bit of a disappointment to me. I had been brought up to believe that God only came in times of great distress and difficulty and that he came doing only miracles, like parting the Red Sea or making it rain frogs. The realm of God, I thought, was only the supernatural or the inexplicable. Everything normal and reasonable was under our jurisdiction and God didn’t concern himself with any of it.

Moreover, I thought that God was invisible, impossible to encounter in any kind of personal, ordinary way. When going to church the few times I went as a kid, I always thought God was out there somewhere and we were down here talking about all those things he used to do years ago but doesn’t do anymore. The only time we’d finally meet him would be when we died.

Of course, all these things are true about God; he does do miraculous things, and he is not visible in the same way other things in creation are visible. He has acted in different ways at different times. And we will encounter him in heaven when we die.

But I never realized that the vast majority of my interactions with God would come about in the ordinary course of relating to other human beings. I never realized that a middle-aged Irishman named Bill, a guy many people regarded as a failure, would be the vessel of God coming to me and telling me exactly what I needed to hear when I was on the verge of destroying my life. I never realized that a gay pastor in the Upper West Side of New York would open my mind and heart to the truth about Jesus Christ. I never realized that my own wife would carry God’s presence and word to me, but she does it all the time.

Well, I wasn’t alone in my misunderstanding. Israel’s King David, out of very good motives, decided to build the greatest palace in the land for God to live in. But God responded to him (note he did it through a person, the prophet Nathan) by saying that God did not need a building to live in. He makes a covenant with David to make of David’s descendants “a house,” that is, a dynasty of rulers over Israel. In other words, God tells David that the house he wants to live in is made of human flesh and bone.

About a thousand years later, the angel Gabriel came to a thirteen or fourteen year-old virgin named Mary, in a backwater town on the fringes of the great Roman empire.

We know that Mary could not have been more than fourteen years old. Fourteen. In a sermon about this story, the great preacher Frederick Buechner wrote that Mary “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.”

Yet this was an announcement, not a question. Gabriel was not asking her what she thought, or whether she was willing. He told her, “This is going to happen.”

The answer the angel awaited from this thirteen year-old girl was not about whether she was willing to be the mother of God. She was going to be the mother of God whether she liked it or not. Gabriel was waiting for a different kind of answer, one for which God had been preparing Mary through all the generations of Israel.

We mustn’t forget that Mary was a Jew. She was the product of centuries of God’s special attention to her people. What she had experienced in her short life was what every Jew of her era would have experienced: regular study at the synagogue, daily prayer, frequent worship at the temple, all of which had been developed over many, many centuries. Nevertheless, the angel waited to hear what Mary had to say, and there were several ways it could have gone.

Have you ever been at a performance or a football game or a political rally when the tension has built to a tremendous pitch? When a silence falls, when everyone is absolutely still, waiting for the next crucial moment? When it all comes down to that one character’s decision, that one quarterback’s call, that one answer from the person powerful enough to make the right thing happen? Everyone watching holds their breath, and from the very depths of their spirit, the cry out, “Do it. Do it. Do the thing we need you to do!”

Someone once said that the whole host of heaven must have held its breath, waiting for Mary to answer.

It seems that the angel was waiting to hear if Mary was going to embrace her destiny or resist it. We have no idea what God would have done had Mary said, “Why have you done this to me? I hate you!,” a reaction that would perhaps have been understandable, or “I’ll only go along with this under the following conditions,” and then enumerated a list of things she wanted, or “Well, all right, I’ll go along with it, but I don’t like it one bit,” or “Go ahead and try, but I’m going to fight you every step of the way.”

But Mary said, "Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word."

In her sermon on this story, Barbara Brown Taylor said that "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. You can say no to your life, but you can rest assured that no angels will trouble you ever again. You can take part in a thrilling and dangerous scheme with no script and no guarantees. You can agree to smuggle God into the world inside your own body.”

Mary accepted her purpose, to carry God’s word in her womb. By the way, whenever you hear a person express concern about women being pastors, you might remind them that if a woman was good enough to bear the Word of God in her womb, she’s good enough to bear the Word of God in the pulpit.

The angel departed from her, apparently satisfied with the answer. We may imagine the host of heaven sighing in relief.

But the story wasn’t over. This thirteen year-old girl ran, yes, ran, to see her cousin Elizabeth, and as soon as she burst into the room, she also burst into song. Mary didn’t just accept what God was going to do in her, she rejoiced in it. “My soul gives glory to my God; my heart pours out its praise!” she sang.

She sang to her cousin in the words of her ancestor Hannah, words Mary had sung no doubt many times in synagogue and temple, but never realized would one day become her own song, right here and now.

Elizabeth, Elizabeth, she cries, God is going to do all that he has promised, God is going to change the world, God is going to bring down the mighty from their thrones, God is going to lift up the poor and the lowly, God is going to fill the bellies of the hungry and turn the rich and fat away empty. God is finally going to do it, Elizabeth!

And I get to help.

I get to help.

As the 14th century mystic, Meister Eckhart, wrote, “We are all meant to be mothers of God. What good is it to me if this eternal birth of the divine Son takes place unceasingly but does not take place within myself? And, what good is it to me if Mary is full of grace if 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? Then, then, is the fullness of time: When the Son of God is begotten in us.”

You don’t get to choose whether God is going to shower his grace upon the world. You don’t get to choose whether God will save the world or not. You don’t get to choose whether or not God is going to pour millions of gallons of grace over our heads day after day and year after year. You don’t get to choose whether or not God lifts up the poor or casts down the powerful. All these things are going to happen. The kingdom will come.

But the angel does have a question for you, something he needs to know.
Would you like to help?

Amen.