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Grace, mercy and peace be to you …
With the Gospel reading we have for today, we could very well call this Mary’s Sunday. Not only do we have this reading … but her story is going to be acted out in today’s second service by our Sunday School children … And so, perhaps, as we have this chance, we should put her in the spotlight in our message this morning.
Now, you may recall that it had been some 450 years since God had last spoken through any prophet in Israel as Mary became of age for her role in God’s plan.
And there’s a subtle prophecy in that… It had been almost the same stretch of time that Israel had been in Egypt after the death of Jacob before God called Moses from the burning bush to deliver His people back then. A similar 400 or so span of silence, before God’s deliverance.
And so now, many, many hundreds of years after God’s deliverance through Moses: here was Mary, the pivotal figure in the deliverance of ALL people. In our reading, we see her mission given to her by God … but not through a burning bush this time … but by the Angel, Gabriel, who patiently explains her role in God’s mission … and even answers her concern about how it would happen.
The Angel even gives her a sign to show that God is truly behind all this … telling Mary that her formerly barren relative, Elizabeth, was now in her sixth month of carrying a child.
And if Mary didn’t catch the significance of that … the angel concluded: “For nothing is impossible with God.”
And now comes what we want to ponder a bit this morning… Mary’s reply to all this. She says: “I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.”
What faith. What humility … No fist pump … And No “but, but, but” … Just: “let it be unto me according to your word.”
Hearing the humility of her confession of faith in this might help us understand why the angel greeted her as “highly favored” by God.
But if we put Mary up on some sort of unreachable pedestal, what we have we done? We might as well have made her into an angel in her own right… And as some claim, perfect and without sin … something totally outside of our own human experience.
The truth is … the same Savior to whom she gave birth … who came to save us … also came to save her, for Mary was fully human …so that Jesus would receive His fully Human person-hood from her.
Had Mary been other than just like us… Jesus’ death on the cross would have only been effective for persons such as she, not the rest of humanity.
And so as Mary says those words for our pondering this morning:
“I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.”
she speaks just as you or I might, if we had been in her situation.
On one hand … she had just been addressed by an angel, something rare in all of the Scriptures. And she was told that she would be the bearer of the one foretold as of old … of whom the entire scriptural record spoke. That was indeed a message of unbelievable joy.
However, her current circumstances spoke a different message. She was betrothed but not married … and it would become quickly evident she was with child apart from having a husband. The Law of Moses spoke harshly to indiscretions that led to that result.
And so her betrothed husband would have legal grounds for a divorce even before the marriage took place. And who would believe her story? There were no witnesses to her angelic encounter. And since God had been silent for over 400 years … who would believe that God would now decide to break that silence by sending an angel to a young girl in the first place??
It would probably go down in the synagogue records as the most creative and imaginative story ever to be floated to try to explain an unintended pregnancy.
So, how did, how could, Mary face what was ahead with such confidence? Let’s argue that much may have been because of her age…
Often or most times we think we mature with age. That’s a human thing … older folks are just more “seasoned” by their experiences, they’ve learned from their mistakes … they’ve grown wiser over the years.
But as we’ve noted before … God often works the opposite of what we humanly think is right. On one occasion, we said that He is taking history backwards … bringing us back into the relationship he had with our first parents in paradise. And that heaven will be like Eden, only better.
Well, Jesus tell us in Matthew, Chapter 18, that unless we become like little children, we will never enter the kingdom of heaven. And if you bear with us, we believe that this encounter with Mary by the angel is an object lesson in that … a case in point.
But, let’s look at another such case-in-point first: the account of David and Goliath. David in that account was very young… they tried to put David into Saul’s armor and it dragged on the ground.
And yet, when we hear David speak … it is with great faith. And when he fearlessly goes into battle with the giant he knows for certain that he is not alone. And to God’s glory, David is triumphant.
In the Psalms, David also wrote this: … “like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me. (131:2)
What was he saying? Well, babes in arms tend pester the heck out of their mothers always, always wanting …
But a weaned child (a child of age 4 or 5 in David’s time) simply can stand quietly beside his or her mother trusting full well that mother will provide. And so that peace and that trust of that child, was how David’s soul was with God.
We can see that peace of soul not only in David, but also in Mary in our reading this morning as she, in quiet faith, says … “may it be to me according to your word.”
And so … we might be so bold conclude from this that aging can be an enemy of the faith. Jesus never said, “unless the whiskers of your soul touch the ground, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” … No he encouraged us to have the faith and trust of a child.
Like Young David … like young Mary. Trusting completely in the Lord’s care. And able to simply walk with Him by faith … not by sight.
So, as we enter this final week before our Christmas Celebration, this might be a point to ponder. We look and we see that child-like joy of anticipation in the children’s eyes this time of year … do we have that, too?
Well, we might argue … the children are getting the presents … but we’re going to have to figure out how to pay the credit card bill at the end of the month. We might say that the anticipation for children and adults this time of year has a different flavor…
And that may be true in the secular realm. But is the birth of our Savior any different for them, the children, than it is for us, some of us with long-whiskered souls?
No. And as we hear those words of the other angels this Christmas announcing the true impact of Jesus’ birth … peace between God and those who dwell on earth … can we have that same child-like trust for the days to come as these children have?
Can we, the ones who have to pay off the credit cards … look into the future with the same innocent trust as they?
Can we look into the Scriptures and hear God’s words through other messengers of His speaking to us of God’s promises … and say, in response… “May it be to me according to Your word?”
This week. Take a moment and make a list … and check it twice, if you need … a list of all the things that would hold you back from making that confession of Mary … that child-like confession of trust in the Lord’s promises of His undying love and His divine care for you.
Lay that list at His feet … and pray as David did: “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” And trust that promise of God… that Jesus came and died for the worry we may have for every item on that list...?
And then, God’s Spirit who lives in you will renew your youth like an eagle’s … and you will walk side-by-side with him and not grow weary.
So. As you look at the Christmas Star this Christmas … and know that as first one led the Wise Men to Jesus … God’s bright Star is now leading you home every day…as you live “all for Jesus.”
In Him.
Amen.
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