This sermon (Advent 2 year B) was delivered to St Oswald’s in Maybole,
Ayrshire, Scotland on the 7th December 2014 by Gordon McCulloch
(a Scottish Episcopal Church in the Dioceses of Glasgow and Dumfries).
Summary: We always know who Mary was, but forget that for a moment, and focus on her faith and her calling, and you will see how powerful and relevant that is to us today. Read on and enjoy!!!
Today’s reading is from Luke chapter 1, verses 26-1:38
26 In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, 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 conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him 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 Jacob’s descendants 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 on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called[a] 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 unable to conceive is in her sixth month.
37 For no word from God will ever fail.”
38 “I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled.” Then the angel left her.
Please be seated, and join me in a short prayer. "Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord our strength and our redeemer". Amen. (Psalms. 19:14)
Introduction
Today we take a look at Mary as a woman of faith, and not simply as the mother of our Lord; … in fact there are so many ways we can categories Mary because through church history, ... Mary, the mother of Jesus, ... has never been given her proper place due to the fact that we do not really know where to place Mary; … and we all know the controversy this has caused throughout the centuries. I certainly do not want to add to this, but we all know that it is so easy to take offense when discussing this topic.
Even in this church, there is a diversity of agreement as to who Mary actually is, but in the end it seams to boil down to our own personal believe; … and I for one can live with that but I do not want to upset anyone this morning, nor do I want to ram my beliefs down anybodies throat so I will refer to scripture rather than doctrine or hearsay, … believing in what God says in his word to be true.
So to make a start, … there are many people throughout history who want to make Mary divine, calling her the immaculate conception, sinless from birth, but this takes away all her human qualities, … which if you think about it, belittles her great achievements as a human being.
To others, more so in the outspoken Protestant churches, they take the opposing view and want to belittle Mary, in fact to completely ignore her, … and to some extent that was the way I was brought up.
Now I personally feel that we should neither worship nor ignore her, neither should we insult her because she is idolised, as we will soon hear from scripture that this was in no way her choosing, nor her fault.
Now we can all agree that God had to choose somebody, and he chose Mary for a great and significant task in the redemption of mankind, … she was the mother who gave birth to our Lord Jesus Christ; … end of.
… And we all agree that Mary successfully accomplished this special calling of God, … in spite of her many human failings, … and so, Mary’s wonderful faith in her God can teach us powerful lessons today if we will only but learn from her.
A few Christmases ago, I gave a sermon on why Mary was chosen for this great work, but today I want to share with you why this great Calling was carried out through Mary, and I want to draw your attention in particular to the faith of Mary which sustained her through this plan of God, … faith that God wants us to develop, and faith to see us through our earthly life.
From verse 26 we see that God took the initiative, (not Mary), to send the angel Gabriel with the words; "Hail thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee, and blessed art thou among women".
I was thinking about this, … and see if an angel presented himself to me and said that I was highly favoured or something similar, I would go, "yes, ... me Ok, … I don't care what it is, I am your man, lead on", ... ... but Mary response was completely different, as verse 29 goes on to say that Mary was, … "greatly troubled at this saying, and wondered what manner of greeting this might be". So from the words of Gabriel in verse 30, we learn that Mary’s initial respond is that of fear.
Now we could be forgiven for thinking this was a strange response, … and I suppose you had to be there to understand, … but as a young unmarried virgin, being engaged to a man named Joseph, who was a direct descendant of David, she saw instantly the consequences of this calling straight away, … and so to conceived and give birth out with the bounds of marriage, ... was severely punishable, … and this punishment would start with her being ostracised from the community.
This is the most plausible and commonly accepted explanation, however when we study the text, we see that this is not the only explanation, because Mary at this stage still did not know what God was really asking of her to do.
Another explanation is given by the Roman Catholics who teach that Mary’s response is due to her being "divinely elected by God", being "full of favour", … and that she will be able to "confer favour", … being "a fountain to dispense" grace.
Regardless, we can agree that Mary is agitated by the words of the angel because, of her lowly station in life because verse 48 says, "For he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden ...", ... and the term low estate here almost means "slave-girl" ... which somehow seems fitting of God.
Mary therefore felt that such a greeting of respect, was unworthy of her ordinary standing, … and this then dismisses the theory that she was the "divine election of God", … where she will be the source to "confer favour" or the "fountain to dispense" grace, because there is no evidence anywhere in the scriptures that Mary was so divinely elected.
So something somewhere is wrong, but it has generally been argued and agreed that this misinterpretation of the verse is due to the ambiguous translation of the Vulgate, which rendered "highly favoured" as "gratiae plena", (which means "full of grace").
And this is where the Protestants rejected the Catholic Mari-ology of Mary because:
1. This verse in ancient Greek does not have this meaning of the "divine election of God", and …
2. The phrase, "The Lord is with you" in verse 28 is a further indication that Mary is just a human vessel to receive, ... and certainly not a "fountain to dispense" grace, and ...
3. Mary, throughout her life, never acted as a person to "confer favour", rather Mary was of very humble birth and acted with humility.
So it is here that we draw our first conclusion, that the attitude of Mary is one that we all should adopt, ..., … yes Mary had fear, and humility, but she also had faith, and it was this faith acting through humility that spurned her on to great things. How many times have I said this, … however with this humility, there is also a sense of fear.
And like humility, this type of fear is not a weakness, because when we accept the Lord’s call this fear is needed in the sense to drive us towards Him, … and make us willing to do the work he has chosen us to do, … and also to sustain this work until he directs us otherwise. (Notice I did not say stop, because the Lord always has a use for us).
And this fear is also necessary to keep us from being lazy, and wordily, and immoral.
And this is so true for us today, ... for the Lord to be with us, we too must have such fear and humility, and respect ... but we must also realize that God is not only the “great I am”, … “the Alpha and the Omega”, but also a God of love, … who sent his son to die for us, and to atone for the sins of the world.
And again for some reason Mary did have that realisation that God loved her because her fear did not drive her away from God; but towards him, and it kept her real close to him.
Yes Mary was from a low poor background: ... but God chose Mary for one of the most important acts of obedience in the bible, and that is because she loved him, and stayed close to him; in fact … that is a basic requirement really.
And with this, I can now give you what think is one of the most profound statement I have ever made in any sermon and that is this, …, …, …, ... the more we feel we are qualified to work for God, … the more un-useable, or unemployable we are to him, ... because through our own pride or strength, we are a complete liability to him.
I will repeat that, the more we feel we are qualified to work for God, … the more un-useable, or unemployable we are to him, ... because through our own pride or strength, we are a complete liability to him.
This is because we derive our strength from our own ability, … and not in the ability of God. … We draw on our own resources, and not on the resources of his almighty kingdom, ... and this is exactly what God has been trying to teach us all our lives; ... to trust him to get us through, …, to detach ourselves from ourselves, … and completely rely on him.
And yes this is much easier to say than do, and yes this teaching is totally against what we meet in this world, … but the Kingdom of God, is not of this world, but it is a kingdom where Jesus truly is King.
As usual I really need to listen to my own sermons to understand this, but if we are unaware of this fact, we will never attempt to draw on the resources of the Lord, …, and how do we do that, well as I said in my sermon two weeks ago, “when we are at our weakest, he in our lives is at his strongest”. The weaker we are in him, the stronger he is in us; and you will not hear that being promoted in any business or professional meeting.
And this is what happened to Mary, … through her humble station and lowly attitude towards God, … the angel tells her that she has been chosen by God to bring forth a son, … a mighty son who is to be called Jesus, a mighty son who will have the following three qualities:
1. First he will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, … the son of God himself.
2. Second, God will give him the throne of his father David, which means, (and I took ages to look this one up), but it means bluntly, God will give him the throne of the Kingdom of heaven itself.
3. And the third quality is his office or his authority, that he shall reign over the house of Jacob forever; and of his kingdom, there shall be no end.
With hindsight, it is obvious to us that this Son is our Lord Jesus Christ, … but Mary herself without our hindsight knew exactly who this son was to become, because Mary was already familiar with the Biblical prophecy of the Messiah, as were every other faithful Jew.
This announcement must have been overwhelming for Mary to take in, and I am sure that she did not realise the full implication for years to come; … but unlike Zacharias, she does did not doubt its truth.
And this brings us to our final conclusion and quite a frightful conclusion it is, because total submission to God’s call is always accomplished with some kind of sacrifice. None of us will be asked to face what Mary faced, but we may be asked to do something for the Lord, by the Lord, … and I said earlier on in this sermon that if an Angel was to approach me my answer would easily be yes, … but now after studying Mary’s story, … I too am showing a bit of fear and hesitancy as to what the Lord may want me to do, … and I hope you are hearing what I am saying; because you too by worshiping him, will also be asked to do something.
We never know what that is going to be, but I do know that not to be asked is infinity worse, … … but I take hope in knowing that the Lord will never ask us to doing anything we cannot bear, according to 1Corinthians 10:13.
When the angel announced that Mary’s child would be called "the Son of God," she responded in verse 38, "Let it be to me, according to your word". That is exactly the response God wants from us. I feel somehow that this is not the end of this particular sermon, but we will stop here for today and have a short prayer. Amen.
Let us pray
Father we thank you for Jesus, we thank you for sending your son to die for us all those years ago.
We thank you also for Mary, the perfect mother for our Lord, chosen and led by the Holy Spirit to rear Jesus for his ministry here on this earth.
And so Father we can take encouragement from Mary, … her attitude of faith towards this high calling, that we too maybe inspired from her, to be strong and successful in you, knowing that you are with us every step of the way.
Finally father, let us welcome the fear that was mentioned, instead of running from that fear, let us with this new insight welcome this fear, fear to respect you but fear to keep us close to you and your love; fear to encourage us to abide in you.
We ask in Jesus name, Amen.
Note to the reader:
If you have been blessed by this sermon, or any of my sermons, I would be greatly honoured to receive an e-mail from you saying so; I like so many others need encouragement.
I often feel that to deliver a sermon one time to my congregation is such a waste; where as many more could be blessed by its message, after all, it is not for my glory but for his. I would therefore like my sermons to bless more people, preferably internationally and not only in a small part, of a small country called Scotland.
Simply let me know where you are in the world … and any other information you may want to share or be prayed for. I would also take it as a compliment for you to use my sermons in order to bless others in his almighty name. I do not even need acknowledged, but he does, and I will receive a blessing directly from him.
Thank you for taking the time to read, and I wish you "all the best" as we say in Scotland … and I pray that your endeavours in the Lord are equally blessed. Yours in Christ, Gordon McCulloch, Scotland.
Compiled By: Gordon McCulloch (Worship Leader),
St Oswalds Episcopal Church,
Maybole. Ayrshire.
Scotland. UK
KA19 8KF
gccmcculloch @ aol.com
or E-Mail me through Sermon Central
