Are you talking to me?
Luke 1:26-40
A college freshman wrote a letter to her parents after her second semester away from home. And it said,
Dear Mom and Dad,
Just thought I’d drop you a note to clue you in on my plans. I’ve fallen in love with a guy called Jim. He quit high school after grade eleven to get married. About a year ago he got a divorce. We’ve been going steady for two months and plan to get married in the fall. Until then, I’ve decided to move into his apartment (I think I might be pregnant). At any rate, I dropped out of school last week, although I’d like to finish college sometime in the future.
(On the next page the letter continued)
Mom and Dad, I just want you to know that everything I’ve written so far in this letter is false. NONE of it is true. But, Mom and Dad, it IS true that I got a C- in French and flunked my math class… and it IS true that I’m going to need some more money for my tuition payments.
This story illustrates how a change of perspective can be very helpful in finding proper meaning and view of a situation.
Perspective influences our actions, our reactions and sometimes even our lack of action.
Your perspective is shaped by the circumstances you are in, the experiences you’ve had in the past, and who you perceive yourself to be.
As we approach the Christmas season year after year each one of us have different perspectives on what Christmas is all about. To a large extent – year after year – our perspective of Christmas risks being affected more and more by what we see in our culture.
What is valuable and important is absorbed simply by exposure less than by choice.
For the majority of Americans, I believe that Christmas is about stuff and has almost no connection to God. And we are exposed to that worldview like hearing elevator music. It is there and it plays and we hum along without realizing what has happened or how that song or view got into our mind.
If my opinion is correct. I have a simple question, what is our culture celebrating at Christmas?
Is it a simple celebration a particular date range to spend savings or to show our feeling for our family and friends by giving presents?
Don’t get me wrong, I like presents. I enjoy a lot of what the world enjoys.
I just don’t understand the Christmas event without any connection to the original reason for the season.
For our culture the big news stories during the season are concerned about how important the day after thanksgiving and cyber Monday are for our economy.
-- Yes, I give my family gifts to help the economy, that warms my heart.
The Christmas Story is replaced by the importance of the Christmas Store.
Doing the right thing is about the economy and making ourselves feel good until the batteries wear out and the payments come due. Sometimes that “spirit of giving” flows over into extra giving for toys for tots or angle tree. Kids always can grab our hearts and after all it is only once a year….like the same kids don’t have needs in the other 11 months.
The worldly perspective is not void of doing real good and making a real difference, it is just limited in how far and how long it will go. The worldly Christmas perspective is starting to burn now, wither Christians or not, but will almost completely die right after January 1st.
But how do we (Christians) keep a "right" or “more lasting” perspective on Christmas and the Christmas Story when we have so much that influences us otherwise?
-- Today and for the next few weeks I want you to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes or at least look through their eyes at the situation. I want you to purposefully try to find a way to look at the Christmas story with a biblical character’s perspective.
So, today we are going to look at Mary’s perspective of the very beginning of the Christmas story. It comes from Luke 1:26-40 and I will only be quoting small sections. I hope you will read the whole section for yourself.
We will start with a video clip first which will hopefully establish the situation before the scripture we are using today.
----- CLIP CLIP CLIP Betrothal
When Luke opens his gospel, he starts with the story of Zachariah and the coming of John the Baptist.
By the time we get to Verse 26, Joseph and Mary are already betrothed, Married. We don’t know how she felt about the situation but we have no reason to think she was unhappy. So her original perspective is that of a girl coming of age and heading for a normal, and as safe as anyone can expect life.
She is a virgin, which means never been married and even more specific, she had never been with a man. No fooling around, probably never kissed anyone except family and then only on the cheek.
There was no such thing as dating in those days and boy-girl situations were very controlled.
She is married and still living in her parents home for at least 1 year. During that time she is preparing to setup housekeeping for her new home. While he is preparing a place to live and preparing to pay the dowry agreed upon in the betrothal contract.
This one year of separation is as an act or sign of purity. This was a covenant, a contract between the families. Should the parties change their minds or should the man or the woman be found impure. A divorce was required and penalties would have to be paid to the injured party.
I guess I like to imagine that Mary was happy and excited and looking forward to her home-taking day. The day when the groom came to her parent’s home and took her to the special honeymoon suite that he had prepared.
It would be an exciting time in any young ladies life.
I doubt that she was looking for any supernatural event to come along.
She was probably out on the road that day to get water from the well or some other chore. When suddenly her focus, her direction, her perspective of the future was changed by a man’s voice.
When she looks around, it is not a man at all. It was angel Gabriel, greeting her.
"Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you."
I wonder what the look on her face looked like? I wonder is she looked a round to see who else was close by.
I wonder if she thought --- Are you talking to me?
That kind of a greeting would make me suspicious of the person giving it.
If I heard a similar greeting from a stranger, I might think salesman or someone that wants something from me.
However, this greeting offers Mary affirmation of a favored status with God. No description of her qualifications. No praise for her acts or faith, just a statement of favor from God.
Then she hears a list of things that don’t really seem to be in the form of a question.
“You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus.”
I don’t hear any room for discussion in that, do you?
Gabriel continues, “He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end."
Ok, so all that sounds like a good thing. But there is a lot of room for questions here.
I think that Mary’s perspective had to have her mind running wild with questions. But who is she to Question God?
Up until this moment her life had been pretty simple. A good girl that goes to synagogue on the Sabbath, probably in a close knit family. She is betrothed and looking forward to the vision of what her life is all about. A husband, children and home they build together. A simple and happy life without too many complications.
Her perspective would not be different than her friends and family members. Basically, She would have what mom and dad had.
However, this angel is describing something beyond imagination, something that did not match any of her plans or wildest ideas.
She takes what she knows, that a child comes from God when a man and woman get married and live together. And since she and Joseph don’t live together she asks the angel the obvious question, "How will this be, since I am a virgin?"
The angel answered, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.
Ok, that does not really answer the question for me. I doubt that it did much for her understanding either.
Maybe she was looking for something that would involve having a husband and how God was going to bless her marriage with children.
But, that answer did not sound exactly like what she might have expected.
I don’t think that Mary knew what to think or expect. She has an absolute authority figure standing right in front of her, so who is she to question what God is going to do? Or how God will do it?
But at some point she has to start wondering about what to expect.
Mary’s view of how her life was going just went out the window. The stable normal expectations were now uncertain.
I wonder if Mary felt a peace that everything would be all right. The tightly controlled environment and rules of the day had not gone any place.
What would everyone think of this news? Mom and Dad, the nosey neighbors. The rumor mill would really crank up on something like this.
How would Joseph react? That could be serious.
The angel had given her one extra piece of news. It seems that God really could do anything.
The angle had shared with her Old Aunt LIZ who lived in the hill country was expecting a baby in her OLD age.
Man that was news. Uncle Zachariah and aunt Elizabeth had been wanting children and now God was finally granting their prayer after years of righteous living.
Mary offers a remarkable response and I think it is a sign of a dramatic change in perspective.
"I am the Lord’s servant, may it be to me as you have said."
I already mentioned that I am not sure she really had a choice in this plan. We as Christians generally believe that God will never force our compliance.
However, if she did have a choice, it is not exactly clear. But she freely submits to God. She freely submits to the plan of God without excuses!
No but, God I can’t speak well, or I have a husband and this would not work well for me. She did not say she was too busy or that she would be embarrassed.
She did not say that this was not what SHE had planned.
She just says, “May it be as you a have said.”
Wow, this would be a perfect place for me to encourage all of you to step up to the plate and be like Mary.
But, I can’t. I can’t ask you to see this event form her situation.
I can ask you to consider what our Christmas, our lives and our world be like if we were willing to submit to God the way Mary does.
I see the work of the Holy Spirit already working in Mary. I see it giving her the faith to trust God enough to say it is going to be alright. That even though there are lots of cultural problems, that some how God will work it all out.
The same is possible for us. But, I can’t tell you when you have to say, Ok God, do what you want.
I can tell you that an experience like that will be a time in your life when you have to trust God completely because, everything in your world will change. And that are a lot of things that you could experience that you won’t like at the time. And on top of that, even if you have an angel tell you what God has planned, you will always have doubts and fears.
So Mary agrees but it seems a bit funny though. It seems that she “could” contain her excitement.
She did not tell anyone in town about this angel or the message. She packs up and heads to the hill country to see Elisabeth.
-- Did she need to think of a way to tell everyone?
CLIP CLIP CLIP Why Me?
From Mary’s perspective there are a lot more unanswered questions than answered. The situation must have looked dangerous and even life threatening.
How would your perspective be if your whole life suddenly changed directions…even if it was clearly by the will of God?
Would it be a good feeling to be used by God?
Would you be too focused on your personal perspective to notice the arrival of God?
In this busy world, where is our perspective as we begin the Christmas season?
Is it influenced by the day to day and year to year views of success and failure in this world or does it include a glimpse of the eternal, the divine?
Our culture does seem to hold on to the idea of seasonal giving and helping kids.
May they can even connect to the idea that the kids of today are like they used to be. Kids like them.
--- A God like us, isn’t that where our perspective should begin?
This year I hope that you will journey through this advent season and allow yourself to receive the gift of a new perspective. The perspective that the season is about people like us that changed their perspective to receive a God like us.
All Glory be to God!
Video clips from – The Nativity from 2006
