Sermon for CATM – “Advent 1 – The Promise of a Son” - November 29, 2009
Play Video: Psalm 130
What are you waiting for? What do you long for? In your heart of hearts, what yearning within you most commonly rises to the surface? Our longings are part of what defines us and defines our lives. Our yearnings speak to our deepest needs that still need to be met.
Our Scripture passages today speak of waiting, of hope, of anticipation. This ‘waiting’ has a deeply personal meaning of course. The passage we’re about to look at is about Mary, and in Mary’s case this waiting, this anticipation was both very personal and at the same time it expressed the longing of her people, Israel.
And for Israel, a people who historically had known the regular, direct intervention of God through the Exodus, through many miraculous and many human stories we find in the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible.
Through the prophets through whom God regularly spoke; to this people who knew the abiding presence of God had come a staggering, deafening silence and seeming absence.
Nothing. For 400 years. Nothing. 16 generations of silence. 16 generations of oppression under one overbearing authority after another. And except for a period perhaps 150 years before Jesus was born when the Macabees rose up and threw off the yoke of the oppressor of the day for some parts of Israel, there was little or no sign of movement.
In the canon of Scripture there is silence between the prophetic book of Malachi and this remarkable moment in a small town in Nazareth, when an angel speaks to a young girl who has recently been engaged.
This is the first time God has spoken for 400 years. This is the beginning of the end of longing. This is the start of our advent story, the first hint at what would become known to us as The Incarnation.
LEt’s stand and read together Luke 1:26-38:
Luke 1:26 In the sixth month, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, 27 to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. 28 The angel went to her and said, "Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you." 29 Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. 30 But the angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. 31 You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. 32 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, 33 and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end." 34 "How will this be," Mary asked the angel, "since I am a virgin?" 35 The angel answered, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. 36 Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be barren is in her sixth month. 37 For nothing is impossible with God." 38 "I am the Lord’s servant," Mary answered. "May it be to me as you have said." Then the angel left her.
There is so much here that speaks to human longing and divine response that it’s not really possible to unpack all of it in the short time we have today. But we’ll do our best.
Let’s try to put ourselves in Mary’s place for a moment. She’s young, she’s innocent, she had a predictable and prescribed life ahead of her. She is a member of an oppressed people.
She is part of a rich faith community and would have been connected to a synagogue whose people had perhaps grown weary of waiting. Her faith’s tradition spoke of God’s intervention in Egypt and of God’s abiding presence as shepherd, law-giver and deliverer.
But there was no sign of intervention. There was little sign of God, really, in terms of anything supernatural. God had been contented to be visible only to those who had eyes of faith. Great displays of divine power and authority rarely had had the effect you would expect. Something the human heart was strangely unmoved by such displays.
There was no visible manifestation of God, no Red sea crossing, no snake-in-the-desert, no plagues unleashed this time against Israel’s oppressors.
And to Mary, this young virgin, an angel appears, gives greetings…greetings of the type usually reserved for royalty actually. “Greetings, you who are highly favoured”.
This is quite the compliment actually, and would not have been something to which Mary was accustomed, at all. “Favoured? Me?”, was likely Mary’s internal response. Then the angel stated: “The Lord is with you”.
Now you wouldn’t think that would be all that hard for Mary to hear. But the Scripture records that Mary does not take this lightly, but instead she is seriously troubled. Other translations help us out here.
They say she was perplexed, disturbed, confused…shaken. She is troubled at the angel’s words and she wondered at his words. She wondered what could be behind a greeting like that. Nice enough greeting on the one hand. Toooo nice on the other hand, especially from an angel. This is freaking her out.
The angel recognizes that Mary is shaken and speaks directly to her. You need to remember that angels are representatives of God, emissaries of the Almighty One. They speak His words directly and precisely.
So Gabriel speaks directly to her and says: “Fear not!” “Do not be afraid”. That of course is Mary’s response. She is terrified.
She doesn’t know what is going on, but what she does know is that it’s weird, it’s uncomfortable and it’s making her very nervous, very afraid.
“Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God”. Mary is called by name. Who she is matters to God. And who she is, is one whose life is about to be forever changed.
“Don’t be afraid!” Now these few words of comfort may have begun to allay some of her concerns about what exactly was going on in this most unexpected of encounters. But there were still all kinds of unanswered questions.
And the answers, rather than easing the shock of this meeting with the angel, deepened the mystery and thickened the plot in an alarming direction.
The angel says: “31 You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. 32 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, 33 and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end."
Again, put yourself in Mary’s shoes. She is being told the impossible, that she is going to be ‘with child’, and it is accompanied only by news that’s so outlandish, so preposterous, so good that Mary is reduced to a response that just grasps at the one part of the angel’s message that she can get her brain around: “How can this be since I am a virgin?”
She’s been told that her son will be the Son of the most high God. She’s been told that He will be royalty, a royalty that re-establishes the throne of David in Israel. She’s been told that her son, her son that she JUST discovered was going to exist, is going to reign forever in an everlasting Kingdom.
This is no letter in the mail from Publisher’s Clearing House saying you’ve won a million dollars. This is no email from the Embassy in Cairo telling you your email has been selected for a mega-million-dollar lottery. This is no fraud.
This is no wishful thinking. These are the words of God delivered through the mouth of an angel standing right smack before Mary’s eyes.
And so Mary, completely overwhelmed at this experience, grasps at and frames her initial response around the physiological impossibility of her being pregnant. “How will this be? Since I’m a virgin?”
“These are great, astounding words of incredible hope and promise, but here’s a teeny tiny wrinkle in your plan.
This is just not possible!’ Mary, a true citizen of planet earth, existing in real time and in a real place, knew that the scope of what the angel was saying was simply beyond possibility.
She wasn’t lacking in faith, she was simply living in the here and now and she understood how life works and how babies get made.
To her question, the Angel makes yet another alarming statement. This is not a typical day for the young Jewish girl. The angel says: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God.
The answer to Mary’s question about “how can this happen?” is “God will do it!”. God will move, His Holy Spirit will come upon you and His power will hover over you, “like a shining cloud” says the Amplified version. Impossibility is made possible through the reality and power of God.
What is physiologically impossible…Mary’s pregnancy, will happen by divine purpose. What is ontologically impossible or humanly impossible, that a human being could bear within her womb God’s own dear Son, will happen by divine design and power.
The Maker of heaven and earth, the Creator of all living things, the Lover of all human souls and the judge of history will find a home for a time in the tiny womb of a virgin. ONLY by a miracle of the highest order could this be accomplished.
And so Mary, a 14, 15 or 16 year old girl (we’re not quite sure of her age) is to give birth to the Hope of the nations. The everlasting God. The Lord of all creation.
The One who has existed for all time, before time began to be counted or countable, was to become a human. Male. Flesh and blood, just like you and just like me, though without sin.
And Mary was to be the God-bearer, the person, the blessed woman through whom the Son of God was to find His way to you and to me.
Now the angel understood Mary’s issue here. This is weird, guys. This is so far out-of-the-box that the box, normal reality, is left in the dust. You can’t even see the box anymore.
This situation just screams: “Behold! Something new is here!” We’re dealing with a completely new normal. Mary is dealing with a completely new situation, and she needs some help.
So the Angel points to another miracle God has recently performed: “V. 36 Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be barren is in her sixth month.
Point taken. In a short time Mary was to witness Elizabeth’s pregnancy, and all would be confirmed. Mary wasn’t alone in being the bearer of a miracle.
God never leaves us alone to figure out His calling all by ourselves. He ALWAYS calls us into community, and it’s in the midst of community that we move from shadow to light, from confusion to clarity, from despair to hope.
The next verse sums up the ultimate answer to Mary’s question: “How can this be?” It’s less to do with evidence, which is subject to the whims and biases and interpretation of the one who asks the question.
It’s less to do with ‘evidence’ and more to do with God Himself. The angel says: “For nothing is impossible with God”.
God is, and because He is, and because He is good, that which is impossible to us, that which is beyond our control, beyond our abilities or beyond our imagination is within God’s ability.
There are no limits to what God can do with a life, a life that says as Mary says on this life-changing occasion, “I am the Lord’s servant," Mary answered. "May it be to me as you have said”.
This is Mary’s “Yes Lord”. It could have been, it should be noted, her “No Lord”. Mary could have declined this offer. She was not forced or coerced.
We don’t know what a “No!” from Mary would have led to, but we don’t need to wonder. Mary recognized God’s voice, she yielded her life to God, she obeyed what was asked of her, and so she received God’s promises.
The Son of God did indeed enter personally into the story of humanity through Mary. His throne in heaven is, indeed, established for all time. He is great; His name is Jesus.
He is known as the Son of God. He has come to save His people from their sins, as other important passages we’ll look at this Advent season say. Hope HAS replaced despair, longings have been and are being fulfilled in Jesus.
Play: “The Waiting” Video (O Come O Come Emmanuel-Tangle.com) [Band comes up to front]
Last week a number of people who came to this service ended up all wet. They were baptized, a signal that each of them had said: “Yes God. I am your servant. Yes, I have received Jesus as my Lord and Saviour.
Yes, May your will be done in my life, Yes, may it be to me as You have said”. Each of them had experienced a miracle…the miracle of faith in the Son of God being birthed in their hearts, the miracle that each of them, having received Jesus as their Lord and Saviour, had been given the right to be the children of God.
So, let me ask you again the question I began with today: What are you waiting for? What do you long for? Do you yearn for a sense of purpose? Do you yearn to be forgiven?
Do you hope for the restoration of something that has been broken? Do you have a sense that the ultimate answer to your questions is bound up in Jesus? In the Spirit and life and teachings of the Son of God? If you do, I encourage you to forge ahead in your journey of discovery.
If you are already a follower of Jesus, let your “Yes” to God be a willingness to move deeper in your relationship with God; let your “Yes” to God be reflected in your choice to live as Jesus taught us to live: unselfishly, for the well-being of others, (through which you find, miraculously, your own well-being).
Let your “Yes” to God be reflected in a life of ever-increasing devotion and commitment to living an authentic, transparent and holy life before God and humanity.
If you are not yet a follower of Jesus, perhaps today is your day to say “Yes” to God. To give your life finally to Jesus so that he can take all that is wounded and broken in your life and bind up your wounds, and lead you to green pastures. Jesus is here.
He wants to touch your life, He wants to reach in. He’s doing that right now, by His Spirit.
No matter where you are in your walk with God, let us together take the step of saying afresh today to God: “Yes Lord. Yes Lord. Say it with me: “Yes Lord”.
[Band is up] Begin singing chorus of “Trading My Sorrows”: “Yes Lord, Yes.
