4. Sunday in Advent, 12/18/2011

Sermon on Luke 1:26-38, by Hubert Beck

In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. And the virgin's name was Mary. And he came to her and said, "Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!" But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. And the angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end."

And Mary said to the angel, "How will this be, since I am a virgin?"

And the angel answered her, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy - the Son of God. And behold, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren. For nothing will be impossible with God." And Mary said, "Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word." And the angel departed from her.

(English Standard Version)

THE GOD OF THE IMPOSSIBLE

The Text Considered from the Outside In

Have you ever wondered what Mary was doing when Gabriel appeared to her? I certainly have. Was she just sitting on a stool looking out the window? Was she scrubbing the floor? Was she sewing a wedding garment to wear on the day of her marriage to Joseph? Was she drawing water at the village well? Was she preparing to go to the marketplace to purchase food for the evening meal?

What she was doing does not matter in the least, of course. But such imaginings have a significance about them, for God does not usually send an angel to interrupt our pious meditations in church or while having personal devotions. He is more likely to intercept us in the middle of the mundane, everyday actions of life. Where we least expect to find him, he finds us. God loves to unexpectedly interrupt our plans. Of course, virtually all interruptions are unexpected just as accidents are not planned. One hardly expects to be interrupted when one is about the routine tasks of life.

It was very likely there, though, in the middle of the ordinary, that Mary looked up and saw the angel. We are told his name was Gabriel. Who knows in what fashion he appeared to her? We generally picture a winged creature with light emanating from him or her, as the case may be, but an angel is, as you undoubtedly know, merely a messenger. She just looked up - and there he was! It was surely enough to frighten anybody, to have someone suddenly appear where one least expects him to be - literally an intruder! It is not surprising that she was "greatly troubled."

It was not at his appearing that we are told she was "greatly troubled," though. It was in his unexpected greeting, addressing her as "O favored one," and then adding, "the Lord is with you!" Few fourteen year old girls - at least not in our time - would hardly expect to be called a "favored one," by a stranger much less to be told that the Lord was with her. What could it mean? It is no surprise that she "tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be."

His next words did not help her sort this out, though. "You have found favor with God." That was a reason to not be afraid? It only deepened the confusion. Again we do not know what she was doing at the time of this appearance, so she may have been thinking godly thoughts, but it is more likely that she was thinking about far more commonplace things. She was probably not seeking any favor with God either, even though she may have considered things to be right between her and God. But this interloper into her life seemed to be suggesting a special kind of favor with which God was looking upon her. What was this "man" doing in her kitchen / living room / at the well anyway? We read these words in only a few moments, hardly taking time to consider what a distressing thing this must have been for Mary - which is why I am spending so much time now trying to "look into" this account.

And most certainly the last thing on her mind at the time was about having a child in the near future. So the next words he said surely must have astonished her beyond measure: "Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus."

Stop there for a moment. That she would one day conceive and bear a son was likely, for she was betrothed to a man named Joseph. Having a child was not beyond her imagination - but not just now! Nor was the name she was instructed to give him, Joshua, the Hebrew form of Jesus, an uncommon name, for Joshua was a great man in the history of Israel. Still ... she had not considered a name for her child, even though she had imagined herself to mother a child one day. By what right, though, did this stranger tell her what to name her child?

He just couldn't stop talking, though! He kept on like he owned the place - this place that Mary called home and where she was about her daily duties. "He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end." This surely brought her up still more short! It is important that we dig our heels deep into this story rather than just reading it over quickly in order to get to the next item of business in our service of worship! Not only did this unexpected and uninvited stranger tell her what to name the child that he said she would have, but he even laid out a future for the child - a future that no peasant girl would likely ever imagine for her child. What titles he projected for the child! "Son of the Most High." "One to sit on the throne of David." "A man to reign over the house of Jacob." And "forever," on top of all that! It was very likely more than the poor young maiden could take in, much less comprehend thoroughly. Surely her head was swimming! What could she say to all this?

"How will this be?" she asked, addressing first things first by noting "Since I am a virgin." The text reads as though all this took place in a rather placid and relaxed way - and we are not privileged to make the text say anything other than what it does say. Still ... could she have simply said these things without considerable perplexity, bewilderment and puzzlement in her heart and voice? True though her response was, it must have been an almost out-of-mind reaction, for too much was happening too fast for an ordinary person to take in - much less a young teen-aged woman who had had no inkling that any of this was about to happen.

She wasn't given much time to gather her wits, though. The messenger of God was as calm as could be while she was trying to gather her wits about her. That which was confusing to the young woman was simple as could be for the angel: "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy - the Son of God." What was so hard about all this? It was God's work, after all! The only thing God asked for was for her to be a recipient of that which he offered. No, that was not really so. He didn't ask her about anything. The angel told her what this was all about and what God was doing through her. Some interpreters of this text suggest that she "had a say" in whether this would happen or not - that, after due consideration, she could have said "no" - but the text does not really give us leeway to say this. The angel did not question her willingness. He told her what God willed for her.

He went further, in fact, suggesting that, if she found all this hard to believe, she surely had heard - or would soon hear about - another act of God equally marvelous. He told of Elizabeth, a contemporary "Sarah" who had conceived a child in her old age - a child that nobody thought possible inasmuch as she was considered one who could not have a child - a "barren woman," as the text puts it. Mary's attention was thereby drawn to still another "impossible" situation as evidence that what the angel, for surely by now it had become evident to her that she was speaking to more than just another human, had said was possible. She could go and see that evidence for herself - which she did "with haste." (v. 39)

All this showed that "nothing will be impossible with God," Gabriel said to Mary. So what could she say?

She just said, "Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word." Was it a simple acquiescence - a mere "OK"? Very possibly. But it was probably still more aggressive - a way of saying, "I place myself into the hands of the Lord in accord with what you have told me. May what you have said become the reality of my life." That was more than an OK. It was a willing acceptance of what was clearly a most unlikely - and an even risky - action of God in and through her very body.

The Text Considered from the Inside Out

She had to know, after all, that, in those very words of acquiescence, she was placing herself into high jeopardy before her betrothed, before her parents, before her synagogue, before her community. How could any of them understand what she, herself, could not really understand? The "impossible" was becoming possible in her womb. Only she and God (and maybe a bunch of angels!) knew what was really happening! It was a "secret" that could not long remain secret in the eyes of everyone else.

She still could not have understood how "impossible" that possibility would work out in weeks, months, and even years ahead. She surely did not have even the slightest anticipation of another angel of the Lord appearing to Joseph in the days immediately following this, authenticating this unexpected visit of Gabriel (The corps of angel was certainly kept busy during this time between notifying Zechariah of the birth of John the Baptizer on through filling the skies on the day of Jesus' birth and up to the warning to Jesus' parents to flee into Egypt for the sake of the child's safety!)

Nor could Mary foresee Simeon's forewarning shortly after Jesus' birth that "a sword will pierce through your own soul also" as the Spirit led Simeon to see the future of Jesus as one who was "appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed." (Luke 2:34, 35) She hardly had the cross in mind when she opened her womb to the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit, but Simeon saw what she could not yet see - the time when she would stand with tears flowing down her cheeks thirty some odd years later, a "sword piercing through her own soul also."

Mary's assent to the angel's message seems on the surface to be so simple: "Let it be to me according to your word." Do we not all resonate in some way or another with words like these - at least at first blush? Are we not all of one mind as we gather here to have the Lord's will done among and through us? We even pray so: "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." With what ease we say those words, hardly knowing for what we pray. For Mary a lifetime still lay ahead of her - many times of joy and gladness, undoubtedly, as she watched the child to be born of her grow "in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man," (Luke 2:52) but also with wonder, with perplexity, with distress and frustration, and ultimately with a sadness that is hard to put into words as she stood under the cross of the man into whom this child would grow. If the words of the angel seemed beyond understanding at the time to which today's Gospel reading points us, that which followed would become even more difficult to understand once he broke out of the silence of some thirty years and entered the public scene when he was baptized by John in the river Jordan.

Can we not relate to this text at precisely this point, though? Do we not earnestly wish to place ourselves at the disposal of God's will, only to discover that this will of God not only leads to joy and gladness, but also into the dark valleys of life where one cries out in desperation to God for deliverance? To put our lives at the disposal of the Jesus a-borning in Mary is to go with him to Gethsemane where he cried out of the depths of his sorrow, "Not my will, but yours be done." (Luke 22:42) We also cry out with him when nails of anguish are pounded into our lives, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Mark 15:34) Walking with him is by no means a bed of roses! Is our life under God not one that calls for the utmost commitment, trusting him to care for us, while at the same time it calls for "a sword to pierce through our own souls also"? Our lives daily drown and die under the weight of our sins. It was for those sins, however, that the nails were pounded, piercing this man's hands and feet on the cross. And when we die to our sins with him, we do so in order to make room for the new life he brought forth in his resurrection. Life in Christ is never an easy journey - but it is the most glorious life imaginable!.

This child is one through whom "our eyes have seen God's salvation that he has prepared in the presence of all peoples." (Luke 2:30, 31) That saving work will lead the child of Mary's womb to another womb, the womb of a grave, into which he would take us also in our baptism. That grave, however, is the passageway to resurrection, to new life. Mary, whose soul would be pierced at the death of her son, would be filled with a joy beyond anything she could have imagined when Gabriel first visited her. And her joy is our joy also - the joy of a God-filled future where "the Son of the Most High ... will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end." What she did not understand when those words were first spoken will be understood by all of God's people into all eternity.

It is a participation in that death and resurrection that takes place when we take his body in the bread and his blood in the wine of the Eucharist. How easily - perhaps even thoughtlessly - we "take and eat; take and drink" that which required such a commitment to us that he would say to the Father in the garden, as Mary did in this moment of the angel's visitation, "Let it be to me according to your word." If it took a giant leap of courage for Mary to say these words, with how much more boldness did Jesus say these words. And all for us! And all for us!

Mary paved the way. Jesus walked the way. And we are called to walk the way of our lives with Jesus - the way of saying, in the midst of our earthly perils and trials, "Let it be to me according to your word."

The Text in our Lives

So what are we to take from this extended re-telling of the account of Gabriel's appearance to Mary?

One thing would be the recognition that God has something to say to us in the midst of our daily round of life. As we began with an imaginative wondering about the setting within which the angel appeared to Mary, so we do well to take from such an imaginative wondering a sense of the divine presence in all that we do. As little as Mary thought about such a presence until her eyes were suddenly opened to it through the angelic manifestation, so little do we ordinarily go about our life with a deep-seated thought about the imminence of God in all that we do and say. Only now and then is that nearness of God made as manifest as Gabriel's appearance to Mary. But it was only a "revelation" of that which is equally near at all times.

A second thing would be that, just as Mary willingly opened her life to that for which God wanted to use her, so we, too, are called to allow our lives to be the vessels of the Spirit's presence in the world. His word - "the Word that was made flesh and dwelt among us" (John 1:14) - has enlivened something in the womb of our hearts that is akin to the Word that was made flesh in the womb of Mary. As it led her to joy and awe, wonder and delight as she "treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart," (Luke 2:19) so we, too, do well to "treasure up all these things, pondering them in our hearts," saying to him who gives us such treasure to ponder, "Let it be to be according to your word." In the same moment, however, we are to recognize that "a sword will pierce our own souls also" as we walk with Jesus through the woes, dangers and hazards or our lives, remembering always at the same time that, on the far side of this journey through "little deaths" unnumbered during the days of our lives, there is always a resurrection to which we can look forward.

Which leads to the third and final thing that we recognize and take from this text: While we hear about Gabriel and Mary here, the real subject of this text is God, himself. It was God who had, from the time of sin's entrance into the world, been working out the scheme of salvation that was coming to its head through the womb of Mary. It was God who sent Gabriel to Mary with the announcement of a child that she had not in the least expected to have! It was God who named the child "Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins." (Matthew 1:21) It was God whose Spirit enlivened that egg in her womb by "overshadowing her." (Does not the very wording of Gabriel's announcement bring to mind the very first "overshadowing" of this Spirit upon the initial creation - and was this not a way of God's saying that ‘a new creation' was now in the making?) It was God whose Spirit also opened the heart of Mary to admit his enlivening Spirit into her womb. The words of our text are all about that which God had done and was doing through the visitation recorded here.

So it is with our lives! Our lives originated with God in both the physical and the spiritual sense. We are the work of his hands! Is this not, in itself, a wonder? From our beginning to our end, we belong to God. He with whom all things are possible has called us to hear his word as Mary was called to hear Gabriel's word - and to say, in response to that word, "Let it be to me according to your word" - so that those things in our lives over which it seems so impossible for us to prevail may be overcome by him in whom and through whom all things are possible.

"How shall this be, since I am a virgin?" Mary asked. The angel simply said, "Leave that to God. He will take care of it. It is enough for you to trust that the child to be born of you will change everything, ‘and of his kingdom there will be no end.'" We, who live in his kingdom, are to be content with that.

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Lutheran Pastor, Retired Hubert Beck

E-Mail: hbeck@austin.rr.com

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