Sermon December 18, 2011

2 Samuel 7:1–11, 16

Luke 1:47–55

Romans 16:25–27

Luke 1:26–38

“God with Us”

During the Advent Season and during our celebration of Christmas, we can be convinced that the miracles of God are so overwhelming and extraordinary that we should celebrate them with grandiose gestures and extravagance. Yet what made the story of Jesus' birth unique in the ancient world and hopefully in our own, is the miracle of the ordinary.There were already stories of how emperors became sons of God born of virgins in grandiose settings, but this one changes the rules.

Christmas is not about extraordinariness. On the contrary if it is about any [one] thing, it’s about the power of the ordinary to effect God’s purposes. Mary was not chosen to be the mother of Jesus because she was special. She was chosen because she was the epitome of ordinary. A young girl of marriageable age, living an ordinary life in an ordinary town in an ordinary country. There were probably hundreds of other girls who could easily have taken Mary’s place. The fact that God chose her probably had more to do with factors beyond her control – being engaged to a descendant of David, having relatives who were old and barren and of a priestly family – than with any special qualities that she possessed.

This ordinariness is, however, what makes the Christmas story so extraordinary. How could a commoner like this give birth to a child that would be both the fulfillment of God’s promise of an eternal dynasty to David, and God’s Son?¹

About fifteen years ago, Joan Osborne recorded song called “One of Us.”

The words of the chorus:

What if God was one of us?
Just a slob like one of us?
Just a stranger on a bus, trying to make his
way home... ²

And that's the message of love this morning, that God becomes one of us—God lives in and with us through the ordinary miracle of conception, gestation and birth, a human being just like we are, like you are, like I am. And through the life of Jesus, is in each one of our lives like never before. And God works through us as ordinary human beings, not because we are unusually talented, graceful or important, but God works through us in ordinary ways.

God came to us in love, through the acceptance of a call by Mary, his mother and through the acceptance of Joseph, her betrothed husband who agreed to take her as his wife. Joseph goes against accepted custom and tradition as well. He stood with Mary, but that day, when Gabriel brought her the news, it seems that it was all up to her. God's messenger, in Greek—angel, came to her and offered her this purpose and mission for her life.

'There is a legend that Mary was not the first young woman to whom the angel came. But she was the first one to say yes.

And how unsurprising it would be for a fourteen-year-old girl to refuse the angel. To be disbelieving. Or to say:

“Are you sure you mean—

but I'm unworthy—

I couldn't anyhow—

I'd be afraid. No, no

it's inconceivable, you can't be asking me—

I know it's a great honour

but would it upset them all,

both our families?

They're very proper you see.

Do I have to answer now?

I don't want to say no—

it's what every girl hopes for

even if she won't admit it.

But I can't commit myself to anything

this important without turning it over

in my mind for a while

and I should ask my parents

and I should ask my—

Let me have a few days to think it over.”

Sorrowfully, although he was not surprised

to have it happen again,

the angel returned to heaven.'³

When the angel, God's messenger, came to Mary, her answer was shorter and much more accepting, but it was risky and made in in credible faith. “Then Mary said, ‘Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.’ Then the angel departed from her.”⁴

God is with us in our yeses and in our acceptance of God's vision for us. God is with us when we trust that the decisions we make together are God's will and when we recognize that God is accomplishing a new thing in the world today and every day.

In Mary's world and in Mary's time, the people of Israel had been seeking God's acts of change and renewal for awhile. And from time to time, the people found the strength to shout God's word of freedom and God's presence to the oppressor. At this time of year, the Jewish people also celebrate the festival of lights or Hanukkah when the Temple in Jerusalem was liberated from the Greeks who had polluted it. They rededicated the Holy place by burning a lamp for 8 days as the law required, though they had only 1 day's worth of oil. Over and over again, the people had had to take back what had been taken from them, from the Babylonians, from the Greeks and now they were occupied by the world power of the time, the Romans who allowed them to worship, but often used their own leaders to keep them powerless. It is into this world that the angel Gabriel brings the good news to Mary. When she knew that she would give birth to the one that will free them, she accepted the mission because that's what her people had been waiting for. Her people were the powerless of the land, the poor, the nameless and the ordinary.

It is theologically and spiritually significant that the Incarnation came to our poorest streets. That Jesus was born poor, later announces his mission at Nazareth as “bringing good news to the poor,” and finally tells us that how we treat “the least of these” is his measure of how we treat him and how he will judge us as the Son of God, radically defines the social context and meaning of the Incarnation of God in Christ. And it clearly reveals the real meaning of Christmas.

The other explicit message of the Incarnation is that Jesus the Christ’s arrival will mean “peace on earth, good will toward men.” He is “the mighty God, the everlasting Father, and the Prince of Peace.” Jesus later calls on his disciples to turn the other cheek, practice humility, walk the extra mile, put away their swords, love their neighbors — and even their enemies — and says that in his kingdom, it is the peacemakers who will be called the children of God. Christ will end our warring ways, bringing reconciliation to God and to one another.⁵

It is in the poor, the nameless and through the ordinary that God's vision was not lost or watered down as it had been in the relatively powerful who had more to lose. Mary isn't just at the prospect of becoming a mother—she is aware of God's continuing love for her people because God is finally sending—according to this messenger—the one for whom they have waited.

And the angel tells her that her kinswoman Elizabeth was also having a child, a son who would be the forerunner of the Messiah—also a part of the good news. It is when she sees Elizabeth's pregnancy and hears Elizabeth's words of blessing that she sings of God's work in her life—which is for all of her people. She has accepted the mission and in these words we hear what that mission will accomplish, what God with us will do with her “yes”.

God has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
God has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
   and lifted up the lowly;
God has filled the hungry with good things,
   and sent the rich away empty.
God has helped God's servant Israel,
   in remembrance of God's mercy,
according to the promise God made to our ancestors,
   to Abraham and to his descendants for ever.’⁶

She sings, not of a cute and cuddly babe, but of God's work being accomplished and God's life taking form in the world through her son by way of her acceptance of God's will for her life.

[This story is] filled with ordinary people who recognised what God was doing and joined the movement. If we will count ourselves among them, God’s Reign will be manifest that little bit more in our world – and all of those little bits will add up to a truly extraordinary change.⁷

That's what it takes—ordinary people doing bits and pieces, doing what God's messengers reveal in the vision God has given us. Let us follow Mary's example—accepting the mission and purpose we are given—with hope, in peace, with joy and knowing through it all that we are loved.

To the glory of God and the growing of God's holy realm. Amen.

1http://sacredise.com/blog/?p=1096

2“One of Us” Words and Music by Eric Bazilian

3Madeleine L'Engle, And It Was Good: Reflections on Beginnings (Wheaton Ill: Harold Shaw Publishers, 1983) pp. 250-51. Copyright © Crosswicks, 1983, Used by permission of WaterBrook Press, Colorado Springs, CO All rights reserved. In Resources for Preaching and Worship, Year B ed. by Hannah Ward and Jennifer Wild.

4Luke 1:38

5http://sojo.net/blogs/2011/12/15/real-war-christmas-fox-news#.TupVp-DjtHx.facebook

6Luke 1:51b-55

7http://sacredise.com/blog/?p=1096