Surprise! Surprise!
December 9, 2007
Luke 1:26-38
There are some surprises that are wonderful. A surprise birthday party! A surprise visit by a dear friend. A surprise check in the mail.
✵ Russian poet Boris Pasternak said, “Surprise is the greatest gift which life can grant us.”
✵ Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Life is a series of surprises, and would not be worth taking or keeping if it were not.”
Or we can take Jane Austen’s view, she claims, “surprises are foolish things. The pleasure is not enhanced and the inconvenience is often considerable.”
Keijo Kopra, was on his way home from work, when he was pulled over for driving 14 miles an hour over the speed limit. You would figure the fine would be around $120. But not in Finland where fines are based on the severity of the offense and your income. The officer wrote him a ticket for $14,500.
Enraged, the executive challenged the amount in court, and a judge lowered it to $9,000. But then the police mentioned that Mr. Kopra had received two previous speeding tickets in 1999 before the new system went into effect. Based on the income he had claimed at the time, each fine was $750. The judge was outraged and imposed additional fines of $38,000.
Surprise! Surprise!!
When we look at surprises, think about Mary. Mary was doing nothing that seemed extraordinary, she was living her life as she believed she should. Then the surprise came, and along with her surprise was the miraculous mixed in with the ordinary.
The annunciation of Jesus, to Mary is a declaration that is both beyond us, and yet within us. It’s at the same time greater than our life experiences and, yet, descriptive of the events that make up life. Into Mary’s common, everyday hopes and dreams, comes the incredible, the fantastic, and the surprisingly awesome call of God. And that call, shatters and changes Mary’s life . . . forever.
With the angel, Gabriel’s first words, the change begins, “Greetings, favored one, the Lord is with you.” Those words ended normalcy for Mary. Have you ever pictured Mary as that care free teenager?
Picture her, lost in the dreams of a young woman waiting to be married. She thinks about her upcoming marriage and the celebration the entire community would participate in. After all, she has Joseph, from the honored line of King David. She spends time writing in her journal Mrs. Yoseph ben Yacov (Joseph, son of Jacob). We can imagine her as she day dreams about Joseph, he’s good and righteous, but he’s good looking to . . . and we know the thrill within her, even the anxiety, as she anticipates their wedding day. She’s thought about baby names, and how they will announce this to family and friends. But first, they’ll wait a few years.
Then the angel of the Lord comes and declares, “The Lord is with you,” and her dreams collapse. . . and change. The angel says, “Mary, God has chosen you to bear a child, and the Lord declares “The Spirit of God will cause it.”
How do we even begin to imagine Mary’s confusion and fear. She must have wondered how will this happen? What will Joseph think? He knows the law. Will he believe me? I can’t be pregnant, this is so illegal . . . will he have me stoned. What am I going to do?
What about her family and friends? What about that wonderful celebration which was to be her marriage, her wedding dream? How can it happen now? And the angel simply says, “The Lord is with you. Fear not.”
Folks, who among us has not experienced the shattering of our dreams? The Scottish preacher James Stewart declared: “It is a queer, incalculable thing, this life. For a few, for a very few, does it work out in detail just as they planned. Sooner or later, one fact confronts every pilgrim on the road, the fact of the discipline of hopes denied and plans defeated.”
Hopes denied. Plans defeated. So it was with Mary. So it is with us. In one instance it’s a man or a woman who’s dreamed of having a family, but their path has taken them into the single life, with no family on the horizon. Or the person who’s dreamed of owning their own business and gave their energy and efforts to fulfill the dream only to lose it all. In another instance, it’s a young person who has dreamed of going to just that one college, and then is refused admittance. The dream of a career, which for reasons beyond your control can never take place. It’s the man or woman who dreamed and worked to have a marriage that would last a lifetime, only to suffer the pain of divorce. It’s the family who experiences the death of a child. It’s the hopes and dreams of growing old as husband and wife, only to have one become very sick, and suddenly you are a caretaker . . . and the intimacy and plans are shattered. We can all add to the list.
Sooner or later, we experience the surprise of - - hopes denied and plans defeated.
Yet when we look at Mary, we discover that the awesome call of God comes at precisely the right time. We look to Mary, and in our own lives we hear the whisper of angel’s wings and the voice that declares, “The Lord is with you.”
And suddenly our shattered dreams are remade . . . remade into a life which rests upon faith and hangs on through quiet obedience to the will of God.
It’s incredible, isn’t it, that the Bible leaves Mary’s questions unanswered. After speaking with the angel, the road is no less ambiguous than before. There are no assurances given to Mary, that Joseph will understand and her family and friends will support her. All is left unanswered.
Mary was surprised by the angel’s visit. Who wouldn’t be? Yet, I marvel at Mary’s faith. She simply responds, “Let it be done to me as you have said.” In essence, she was saying, ‘Not my will, Lord, but thy will be done.’ It’s the quiet and firm resolve of faith.
As in Mary, so in us, it’s faith that can remake our lives when our dreams have been surprised and shattered. It’s the quiet trust in God’s presence that miracles occur out of hopes denied and plans defeated.
Oh, we can deny the call of God. We can grasp at our circumstances. We can ask 1001 questions. We can ask WHY? WHERE? HOW? all we want. We can cling to our own power. We can look to the heavens and shout out a cosmic “NO” to God. But then there’s no peace. There’s only the growing uneasiness within our heart and soul.
BUT, Mary’s way, Mary’s way is the way of healing. It’s Mary’s way, the way of faith that brings eternal peace when the winds of the maelstrom swirls around us, ready to swallow us. You see, it’s our trust in God that can empower us to make a stained glass window of beauty and grace, out of what seemed to be broken pieces of colored glass.
Friends, no matter what situation you find yourself in, we must hold onto Gabriel’s words as a reminder in our lives, “The Lord is with you.” It should come as no surprise, He loves you, He has great plans for you. So why should it surprise us when we experience God’s great presence.
Mary’s faith leads her from that awesome call of God which seemed to shatter her dreams as a young bride into the remaking of her life which is the hymn of joy we call The Magnificat. Luke records Mary’s words in verse 46, Mary proclaims,
"My soul glorifies the Lord 47 and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
48 for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant.
From now on all generations will call me blessed,
49for the Mighty One has done great things for me—holy is his name.
50His mercy extends to those who fear him, from generation to generation.
51 He has performed mighty deeds with his arm;
he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.
52 He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble.
53 He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty.
This does not sound like a woman who is hanging her head over shattered dreams, hopes defeated, and plans denied. Instead, this sounds like a woman who has changed and adapted her dreams, changed her plans, and recognized that her hopes have become new hopes, her dreams are new dreams, her plans are new plans. So she writes a hymn expressing her joy. Joy to the One who created the changes.
Dear sisters and brothers, there are those among us who sing this hymn of joy. There are those who are singing the same hymn as Mary. Some have found physical healing, others experienced emotional healing from wounds and scars. The greatest healing comes when we experience Christ. When we embrace the words of Gabriel, who declares, “The Lord is with you.”
Yes, friends, the Lord is with us. I don’t care what you have gone through in your life, well, of course, I do care, but what you have gone through is not so overwhelming that God can’t bring healing to you. I know people who have confronted affairs, alcoholism, pornography, anger, cold-heartedness, mistrust, and they have had the courage to trust in God’s plan, not your own, and because of your trust in God, you have become a new creation.
We have all been through the seasons of life when OUR dreams were shattered, OUR hopes - defeated and OUR plans - denied. The key word is OUR dreams, hopes and plans. Friends, God has plans for us that we don’t always understand, and may never have the chance to fully understand, yet, God has something so far above our comprehension to give to us, but
we must trust Him,
we must have faith in Him,
we must place our confidence in Him,
we must accept His plan for us, in fact,
we must embrace His plan for us,
and only when we embrace it, and say to the Lord, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word. Your will, Lord, not mine.”
Then we will sing a new song, and experience a new Christ, a Christ we never knew existed, but a Christ who is waiting for us to take that step.
The Bible is filled with annunciation stories, I have one, and so do you. Simply put, our annunciation is God’s call and our response to the call of Jesus. He is our Lord, our Leader, our Forgiver, our Shepherd.
Know that God will walk with you through anything and everything. When God calls you, He will never abandon you, instead He promises to be with you, every second of every day.
The wonder of the annunciation is that God has declared that the miraculous will come in the ordinary. God has shown us that which is so far beyond us is already emerging within us; for God has declared that which is far greater than you and I, it comes not as we expect, but it comes in the divine presence of the Christ.
Today, I invite you to join me in rediscovering the joy of our faith, through the joy of Mary, whose shattered dreams, whose hopes denied, whose plans defeated were remade by God for our salvation.
Surprises! Embrace the surprises of life, for God is there, you just need to open the wrapping paper a little more, and there God will be.
