Mary

Advent 4B 12/21/14
Luke 1:26-38; 46b-55

God, our Savior, look with favor upon us, your lowly servants. Establish our households as you did the house of David. Bless our community though the gospel and the proclamation of Jesus Christ. Amen.

The Bible is full of many different types of literature.

Most of you probably know this already, but I want to make sure we’re all on the same page here.

The “good book” is actually a collection of many books. The words of the Bible were inspired by God, and recorded by humans. Even though we call the Bible “the Word of the Lord,” we recognize that those words were recorded of the course of several hundred years, by dozens of authors, in many different writing styles.

There are the letters of Paul, for example, and the genealogies in Chronicles. There are stories like Jonah and parables like the Good Samaritan and an entire book of poems we call the Psalms.

In today’s reading from Luke we have an example of one specific literary genre that shows up several times throughout the Bible. It’s kind of a unique style of writing. It is used only to describe God – or an angel of God – coming directly to a prophet, to commission that prophet to carry some message to the world.

This type of literature is called a call narrative.

You might be familiar with some of the call narratives of the Old Testament.

Isaiah saw the Lord seated in the temple, with six-winged seraphs around him, and he was frightened. When the Lord asked, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Isaiah answered, “Here am I, send me.”

God came to Samuel while he was sleeping, and Samuel thought that his mentor Eli was calling out to him. Finally Eli helped Samuel recognize that it was God speaking to him. The next time that God called “Samuel, Samuel!” the boy responded, “Speak for your servant is listening.”

Moses met God in a burning bush, in a story that most of us know well. God called to Moses out of the bush, and Moses replied, “Here I am.”

Nathan saw the Lord in a dream, in the story we heard today from Second Samuel. He had to go tell King David to change his plans, as a result of this conversation with God.

Each of these men were given a message from God, or a mission to carry out, once they stopped and listened to what God had to say.

        

Today’s Gospel reading, by contrast, tells the call story of a young woman.

The angel of God came to Mary, and, unlike all the men who encounter angels in the Bible, Mary doesn’t appear to be frightened.

Did you know that? Apparently angels are terrifying creatures, because the first thing they always say to people is “do not be afraid.”

         Why would they need to say that, unless they were scaring people?

But Mary doesn’t show fear; she is simply puzzled.

Who is this strange messenger who appeared out of nowhere? And why is he calling me “favored one”?

The angel moves on to the call portion of the interaction. God has a mission for Mary.

         Did you notice how the angel butters her up before he makes his request?

         You have found favor with God, Mary. You’re pretty amazing. God likes you a lot.

Yeah, ok… so what does God want?

Oh not much. God doesn’t ask Mary to confront a king or lead a nation of slaves to freedom. God doesn’t give Mary a message to preach to the people or ask her to leave her homeland for a foreign country.

God’s request of Mary is much simpler many of the requests that were made of Old Testament prophets.

All that God asks of Mary is for her to have a baby.

OK, maybe that’s not such a small thing after all!

Becoming a parent might sound simpler than liberating thousands of slaves, but for the person who’s doing it, it’s not any easier.

Having a baby is life-changing. There’s no turning back once a child enters your life.

And Mary already had a pretty good life to look forward to. She had a supportive family, as we know from her visit to her cousin Elizabeth right after the angel left her. Mary was engaged to a man with the means to provide for their family, and from all accounts he was a pretty great guy. In a society in which women were dependent upon men for shelter and protection, that’s about the best that a woman could hope for!

Having this baby – having God’s baby – could put all this at risk for her. Would her fiancé still marry her? Would her family still support her? Choosing to have a baby is not really a decision that can easily be made in a vacuum.

Actually, that’s another way in which Mary was very different from other women in her society. They didn’t get to choose whether or not they had a baby. There weren’t birth control options or in vitro fertilization or other means of family planning, like there are today.

Today, women are usually able to make the choice of whether to have children or not. And they tend to make that choice with the support of their families – if they have a husband, he’s on board with the idea of parenting. If there’s no significant other in the picture, the woman probably has parents or siblings or some kind of support network that can help her raise the child.

So Mary was facing an entirely new decision – have a child or no? And she was doing so without being able to consult with her fiancé or family before responding.

We come now to the point in the call narrative in which the prophet responds to the call of God.

To me, this is one of the most fascinating pieces of the story.

I can’t help but notice that we are never able to hear the tone of voice of the prophet responding to God’s call.

This is obvious in some of the Old Testament narratives – Isaiah is alone in the Temple with these creatures he finds terrifying. So when God asks, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” – does Isaiah respond, “Here I am!!! Send me!!!”

         Or does he look around and say, “um… I'm the only one here. I guess I can go…”?

Mary gives a prophet’s response to the angel’s request: “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”

But does she say, “Yes! I can’t wait to do what God asks of me! I hope this all happens soon!”

Or does she say, “Well, you came to me so it sounds like I don’t have much choice in the matter. Since I have faith in God, I guess I can put my life into his hands…”?

If Mary was like the other biblical prophets, she probably had some reservations about following God’s call.

But we already know that she wasn’t just like the other prophets – she wasn’t frightened of God’s messenger, for one thing.

So maybe she wasn’t afraid to say “yes” to this extraordinary request.

I don’t know whether Mary’s response was out of necessity – she was the only one around – or out of faith – she was truly willing to serve God’s purpose.

         In either case, she did say yes.

And by saying yes, Mary put her future on the line, for God, and for her unborn son, and for all of humanity.

We don’t know whether Mary was originally a willing or reluctant prophet… but we do know that by the time she was visiting Elizabeth, she had some pretty profound reflections on what this pregnancy would mean for her and for the world.

         We sang her song together today as the Psalm for worship.

Mary’s song is full of themes of reversal and upheaval of the known world order.

         Allow me to paraphrase.

God, I am just your lowly servant, but you have decided to bless me anyway.

If you choose to bless even a poor powerless woman like me, you are an even greater God than I ever imagined.

You will use your power to humble the proud and conceited people in the world.

You will take power away from world leaders and give it to the nameless and faceless people in society.

You will feed the hungry at the expense of the wealthy, and follow through on all your promises to your chosen people.

Mary may not have received a special message from God that she was supposed to deliver to God’s people, but when Mary said “yes” to God’s call, something changed within her. Mary realized the breadth and depth of God’s mercy, and she just had to share that news with the world.

Mary agreed to bear the Word of God through her womb, but she also bore God's words on her lips. 

And so, through Mary’s song, we have her interpretation of what the birth of Jesus means for humanity.

Mary praises God and gives thanks that God will reverse the balance of power in society.

This reversal of power will come from the most unlikely of places – from the baby who Mary carries inside herself.

This is almost too much to comprehend. But God asked people to perform prophetic actions throughout the course of history. Hosea married a prostitute. Isaiah went around naked and barefoot for three years. Ezekiel literally ate a scroll of Scripture.

         And Mary had a baby.

God called Mary in the same way that God had been calling prophets for generations.

And somehow, for some reason, Mary said “yes” to God’s call.

Because Mary agreed to be a prophet – to be the bearer of God’s Word – Jesus was able to be born, and the salvation of humanity was secured.

God became flesh and dwelt among us.

It turned the world upside down.

And it took a young woman saying “yes” to God’s call to make it happen.

In these last days before Christmas, let’s remember to give thanks for Mary, and her willingness to be a prophet of God. Mary helped bring the Word of God into the world.

I hope that, if any of us ever have the opportunity to serve as a prophet in the way that Nathan and Moses and Isaiah and Samuel did – and in the way that Mary did – that we would also have the courage to say “yes” to God’s call.

Amen.  

Prepare

Advent 3B, 12/14/14
John 1:6-8; 19-28
Isaiah 61:1-4; 8-11
1 Thessalonians 5:16-24; Psalm 126

Lord God, you have done great things for us. Restore our fortunes like water in the desert. Sanctify us and keep us blameless until the day of Christ’s coming. Amen.

When we meet a new person, there’s a series of questions we tend to ask them.

What’s your name?

What do you do?

Where are you from?

How do you know the person who invited us both to this event?

All of these questions are just slightly less subtle ways to figure out the answer to the one question that’s really driving our conversation: Who are you?

The priests and Levites were not subtle at all when they approached John in the Gospel reading today. They just came right out and asked, “Who are you?”

Instead of answering their question directly, John started off by telling them who he was not.

That would probably drive most of us crazy.

Who are you?

Well, I’m not that guy’s sister.

I’m not your boss.

I’m not the next candidate for president.

Those answers don’t actually have a lot of meaning. I could still be just about anyone – stating who I am not doesn’t really narrow down the field a whole lot.

But John the Baptist was smart. He knew what the priests and Levites were really after. By asking this question of John, the leaders were showing their hands. Their question was actually, are you going to cause us trouble?

To the political and religious authorities, any leader who can attract crowds of followers in the wilderness poses a real threat. The leaders were afraid that John was planning a coup. That’s why they asked him who he was – they were afraid he might be the Messiah.

According to traditional Jewish beliefs at the time, the Messiah would be a political leader who would overthrow the occupying government and create a new Israel like the one from the glory days of David and Solomon. Anyone holding a leadership position under the existing regime would be at risk, unless they joined forces with the Messiah and helped him achieve this vision of a new world.

John understood the fears of the priests and the Levites, so he answered their unasked question: No, I am not the Messiah.

The messengers from the Pharisees press John further, asking specific questions about other religious figures John might be.

They are very blunt – kind of like the get-to-know-you questions the nurse asks when you go in to see the doctor. How much do you weigh? Do you smoke or drink? Tell me about your sex life? If anyone other than a nurse were asking us these questions, we’d probably have a very rude response for them.

But John takes the blunt questions in stride and answers them honestly.

He replies, “no, I am not any of these things.”

But – before you get too excited about this fact, current religious and political leaders, listen to the rest of what John has to say. He might not be the Messiah, but the Messiah is on the way. The Messiah is coming soon, no doubt about it.

If you think that John is causing trouble now, just you wait until the real Messiah arrives. John isn’t even worthy to untie the thong of his sandal. The real trouble hasn’t even started yet.

Today’s Gospel lesson reminds us that Jesus was not just a warm fuzzy teacher who affirmed the way things were in the world and made people feel good about themselves.

Jesus challenged authority and promoted change and in general turned the world around him upside down.

Actually, more to the point, Jesus came into our upside-down world and made every effort possible to turn it right-side-up. For people who were used to the world as it was, Jesus’ coming was not very pleasant.

Jesus was God in human form. The very fact of his existence was revolutionary and rule-breaking, so it shouldn’t surprise us that his ministry was too.

We, on the other hand, are not God in human form.

We are more like John.

John is depicted in Christian art as pointing at Jesus.

There are certain signature elements that tell us who the characters are in religious paintings or sculptures or stained glass windows. Peter, for example, tends to be holding a set of keys, representing the keys to the kingdom. Paul is often holding a book because of all the writing he did.

John the Baptist is sometimes shown in Christian art looking wild and unwashed and wearing camel skin. But that’s not the telltale sign of a portrait of John. The artistic signature of John the Baptist is that he points to Jesus.

You’ll sometimes find paintings of a very young John standing next to Mary and the baby Jesus, and the only way to tell who that toddler is, is that he’s pointing at Jesus.

John was not the light of God coming into the world, but he was a witness to that light.

And so are we.

As followers of the Messiah, our job is to live lives that witness to the work of Jesus. We are to speak testimony on Jesus’ behalf, just like John.  

What would John the Baptist do?

That’s the question, or the challenge, for the life of a Christian who is anxiously awaiting the coming of the Messiah – and, of course, we all are awaiting the coming of the Messiah.

That’s what Advent is all about. It’s about waiting for the birth of a baby in a stable, but it’s also about waiting for the return of Christ at the end of time.

Our faith challenges us to prepare the way for Jesus    not just to be born on Christmas, but also to return again, next week or next year or in a thousand years.

Jesus is coming to the world again, and that is good news, but until he returns, we have our work cut out for us.

We ourselves are not the light, but we can point others to the light that is coming into the world.

The other piece of good news is that we have it easier than John did.

We don’t have to prepare the way for Jesus alone, or without guidance.

We’ve got a great example of how to prepare the way for Christ in the person of John the Baptist.

And we also have some instructions from the prophets in the Old Testament.

Look to the book of Isaiah.

This is the prophet who John cites when the priests and Levites ask him who he is.

The book of Isaiah gives us a lot of information about what the promised Messiah will be like, and also what will happen leading up to his arrival.

Often, in the Bible, when promises are being made, it’s God who’s making them.

That’s logical. The Bible is the Word of God for the people of God.

But the pages of the Bible also include promises that faithful people throughout history have made to God, of things that they will do or ways they will behave – basically, describing how they are going to put their faith into practice.

Today’s reading from Isaiah is one of these passages. The prophet is promising that, in response to God’s action in his life, he’ll do a whole bunch of things on God’s behalf. This is a description of the prophet being commissioned to go out into the world – not commanded. There is no negative if the prophet fails to follow through on any of these actions, except that he’ll feel bad about it.

So today, we are in the place of John the Baptist, and we are in the place of the prophet Isaiah.

Our role, as followers of Christ, is to prepare the way for his coming.

I know it sounds counter-intuitive – if we’re following Jesus, he’s already gone before us, so how can we prepare his way?

That’s the whole purpose of celebrating the birth of Jesus every year. We need to remember just how earth-shattering it was for God to enter the world as a human baby. And we need to remember that Jesus promised to return to earth again at the end of time.

         So we follow Jesus by preparing his way.

And we can do that by taking the advice of the prophet Isaiah.

bring good news to the oppressed,

bind up the brokenhearted,

proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners,

comfort all who mourn.

Some of those instructions are easy – comfort all who mourn? That comes naturally to most of us.

But the prophet’s promise to bring good news to the oppressed? That can be a lot harder to do. There often isn’t any good news for people who are oppressed. So do we lie? Or do we work to change the world so that people are no longer oppressed? What is the best way for us to follow the advice of Isaiah?

It’s not easy to be a prophet, and it’s not easy to prepare the way for Jesus. But that’s what our faith calls us to do. So we look to the example of John the Baptist.

There was a man sent by God whose name was John.

There was a congregation sent by God, the community of Cooksville Lutheran Church.

John was not the light, but he came as a witness to testify to the light.

We are not God, we don’t have a monopoly on the truth, we are not the savior of the world – but we can witness to what we know about God, and tell others about the work of Christ. When we do this, we prepare the way for Jesus.

The messengers asked John why he was doing ministry, anyway.

His answer is the same as ours. “Among you stands one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.”

Jesus is coming, so let’s light his way. 

Amen.