Edge of the Arrival

Luke 1:26-38

December 22, 2024 • Mount Pleasant UMC

It was 6:30 a.m. and he was washing dishes at a homeless shelter. Another man was working alongside him in the kitchen and struck up a conversation. “Have you always enjoyed working with the homeless?” The dishwasher, who was an affluent attorney in his other life, smiled. “Who told you I enjoyed working with the homeless? You ever had a conversation with any of these guys? They’re in a mess. One of ‘em broke into my car yesterday while I was in here washing his dirty dishes.” His co-worker sort of stopped and turned toward him. “But there you are, at this hour of the morning. How did you decide to be part of this ministry?” The dishwasher smiled again. “I didn’t get to decide,” he said. “Jesus insisted. Put me here whether I liked it or not.” The other man knowingly called it “God’s rambunctious call” (Willimon, Heaven and Earth, pg. 108). Sometimes that call comes whether we like it or not, whether we think we are ready or not. The call to obey comes, and it’s up to us to answer it or not. And no one knew that better than Mary, the mother of Jesus.

Today is the fourth Sunday of Advent, and in just a couple of days we’re going to be celebrating the birth of Jesus and the beginning of the Christmas season. We stand on the edge of the arrival, but it’s still Advent and God is still on the way. We began this season by remembering that Jesus is coming again, and then we spent the last two weeks with the one who prepared people for his first arrival, John the Baptist. This morning, our Advent journey takes us to a small nondescript village in Nazareth, a town insignificant enough to not even be included in any list of towns from the histories of the day. It is far better known today than it was then, and it’s much larger today as well. Most historians think first century Nazareth had a population between one hundred and four hundred (cf. Hamilton, The Journey, pg. 15), small enough that everyone knew everyone else and everyone’s business. And among that population was a young woman named Miriam. We know her as Mary (cf. McKnight, Luke, pg. 15).

Mary was very young, probably around thirteen years old, and likely from a poor, uneducated family. Most people in Nazareth were that way, living in the shadow of the nearby wealthy town of Sepphoris. It’s very possible that Mary’s family might have even been servants in one of the affluent homes just across the valley. Nazareth was basically a bedroom community for those who worked in Sepphoris (cf. Hamilton 21). Because life expectancy was low, girls were married at what we would consider a very young age, a process which began with betrothal (1:27). We might call this step being “engaged” except that there were far more legal obligations to betrothal than there is to our modern engagement. Betrothal was the beginning of a year-long period during which the man and woman were considered a couple but they were not yet living together. At the end of that year there would be a formal ceremony and the marriage would be consummated (cf. Hamilton 22). So Mary is somewhere in that year, not yet fully married but still obligated to Joseph. And that’s when the angel Gabriel shows up.

Six months ago, Gabriel visited Zechariah, the husband of Mary’s relative Elizabeth, while he was in the Temple in Jerusalem. Gabriel then had announced a miraculous birth to this couple who were well past the normal age of childbearing. Now, he shows up to this young girl in a nowhere town, and prepares to give her even better news. First of all, though, he has to get her past being in the presence of an angel. Unlike most of the times when an angel shows up, he doesn’t start with “don’t be afraid.” He gets to that later but instead, he tells her something that, I think, might have scared her more than his actual presence: “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you” (1:28). Now why would that scare her? We think of being “favored” by God as a good thing, a pleasant thing. But the people considered most “favored” by God in the past, the prophets, were often rejected by the people around them. To be favored is to be used by God, to be sure, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to be smooth sailing. I think of Mother Teresa, who once said, “I know God will not give me anything I can’t handle. I just wish that He didn't trust me so much.” To be favored doesn’t guarantee an easy life. Mary is about to find that out.

So she encounters an angel, Gabriel, and he tells her she’s favored. Then he tells her not to be afraid, which is understandable when you hear what comes next. The task he has for her is frightening in so many ways. First of all, he says, “You will conceive and give birth to a son.” Okay, there’s a problem there. Mary isn’t married. She’s a virgin. And if she gets pregnant before she and Joseph have been publicly married, there will be a lot of questions, a lot of shame, a lot of ridicule, a lot of gossip in a small town like Nazareth. She will be considered to be an adulterer, and if the baby isn’t Joseph’s he’s going to make sure people know that he’s innocent. Mary could even be killed for her perceived sin; the Jewish law allowed for a woman who was legally betrothed but found to be pregnant to be stoned to death (cf. Deuteronomy 22:23-24; Hamilton 29). And then there’s the whole idea of conception of a baby in a woman who, as she herself says, is a virgin. Maybe they didn’t know all the science then that we know now, but they knew it took a man and a woman coming together to create a new life. That’s why Mary asks, “How will this be?” (1:34). That’s not a faithless question (cf. Card, Luke: The Gospel of Amazement, pg. 39). She genuinely wants to know.

There are those who have and continue to struggle with the idea of the virgin birth, the idea that Jesus was conceived in Mary’s womb without an earthly father. I do like the way Scot McKnight says it: “If God can become human, God can miraculously impregnate” (16). When Mary asks how it will happen, Gabriel says it this way: “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you” (1:35). And while there have been no lack of crass interpretations of that verse, what Gabriel is really saying is that God will be there to both provide a miracle and to protect Mary (cf. McKnight 16). The Holy Spirit will enable Mary to do and be more than she could be on her own, which is always what the Holy Spirit does, to this very day. When we human beings cooperate with the Spirit of God, we will find things happening that would be unthinkable in any other way (cf. Wright, Luke for Everyone, pgs. 10-11). That’s why Gabriel can say, “No word from God will ever fail” (1:7). But the question is—will we cooperate with what the Spirit wants to do? Or, more to the point in this story—will Mary cooperate with what God wants to do in and through her?

Once Gabriel answers Mary’s only question, a silence hangs in the air. God does not force Mary into his plan. He lays it out and waits for her response. As I’ve said many times, he will not force us into anything. He is a God whose primary characteristic is love, and love does not demand. Love offers and love comes alongside and love protects. Love does not force or coerce. So Gabriel waits as this teenager adjusts her mindset to a world that has suddenly changed radically.

In the translation we read this morning, Mary responds this way: “I am the Lord’s servant” (1:38). That’s the way we’re used to hearing it, but literally the text says, “Look! God’s slave!” It’s like she’s looking back at Gabriel and saying something like, “Look at me. What more do you want? I’m God’s slave and I will do whatever God wants.” I realize the word “slave” is not in fashion anymore, but that is literally what Mary says here. It’s not “servant” or even “handmaiden” as it’s sometimes translated. She is literally pledging herself to God as a slave, someone without any rights, without any hopes or dreams of her own, someone who is owned by another. She does not look for a loophole; she gives her entire self, body and soul (literally), to the purposes of God. “May your word to me be fulfilled” (1:38). “This is no passive surrender; this is an active acceptance of God’s redemption through her baby boy” (McKnight 16-17; Card 39). This is why Mary is sometimes called the first disciple. Even before the Son of God was born through her, she was saying “yes” to following him.

Several years ago, a church put out a casting call for a children’s Christmas pageant. The kids who showed up were excited about the possibility of being a shepherd or a wise man, even a sheep or a donkey. No one really wanted to be Joseph because he didn’t have any lines, but when the director asked who wanted to be Mary, every little girl’s hand shot up. Mary, after all, was the star of the show. Her part of the story was central to Christmas. When the pastor of the church heard about what had happened, he asked this question: “Do you think Mary wanted to be Mary?” With all that she faced in this very moment, do you think she really wanted a life of ridicule, scandal and potential punishment? Did she want to have a baby out of wedlock, or even potentially be a single mother (there was no guarantee at this point that Joseph would stick around)?

Some of you may be familiar with the stress scale which was developed to predict how certain life events would affect a person. The scale says if you have a score of over 300, you’re at a high risk for illness, so let’s put Mary through the stress scale. Here are some of the things she is dealing with leading up to the first Christmas:

• a pending marriage (50 points)
• a possible marriage separation (65 points)
• marital reconciliation (45 points)
• pregnancy (40 points)
• adding new family members (39 points)
• changes in their financial status (38 points)
• trouble with in-laws (29 points)
• change in living conditions (25 points)
• change in working conditions (20 points)
• changes in residence (20 points)

That adds up to 371 points. I think it’s safe to say Mary was under a huge amount of stress (Sorensen, The Wonder of It All, pgs. 54-55). All of her hopes and dreams for an ordinary life went out the window when Gabriel showed up. So, do you think Mary wanted to be Mary? Sure, with the advantage of two thousand years of history, we know how it all worked out, but at that moment Mary had no idea. Did Mary want to be Mary? Whether she did or not, we know what her response was: “May your word to me be fulfilled” (1:38). And it was (cf. Hamilton 30-31).

There’s one other piece to this story to notice, and that’s a very clear instruction Gabriel gives to Mary after he tells her she’s going to have a baby. Gabriel says, “You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus” (1:31). Jesus, or in Hebrew (which is the way Mary would have heard it) Yeshua. It’s the name the world had waited centuries to hear (cf. Card 39), the name by which all humankind can be saved (cf. Acts 4:12), the name that means “God saves.” Yeshua wasn’t an uncommon name in that day and in some cultures today it can still pop up often. It’s fascinating to me that Gabriel gave the privilege of naming the baby first to Mary; over in Matthew’s Gospel, he also tells Joseph to call the baby Jesus (cf. Matthew 1:21), but to give first responsibility to Mary was to break all cultural expectations. Mothers did not name babies; fathers did. And yet Mary is given that privilege, setting a precedent for the way her son will treat women, the way he will treat all people as equals, the way he will break manmade cultural expectations as he brings in the kingdom of God. His name will be Jesus, Yeshua, God saves. “Because he will save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21).

And so we come to Christmas week. Mary had to wait nine months to get here, but we will celebrate the birth in just a couple of days. Some of us have all of our preparations done and others of us haven’t started. Some have the perfect gift wrapped and laying under the tree and others of us are hoping the gas station will have the perfect gift left on the shelves after the Christmas Eve service Tuesday evening. And many of us are probably somewhere in between. We have meals to prepare and maybe cards yet to send and plans to make for the after-Christmas shopping madness. We get so wrapped up in all the preparations and the trimmings and the music and the stuff that we often forget whose birthday it is we are celebrating. What if, on your birthday, those you love spent a lot of time getting ready to celebrate, spent a lot of money on gifts for each other, had a big dinner and family get togethers and they invited everyone except you? What if on your birthday you were completely ignored? Do you think maybe that’s a bit how Jesus often feels? We spend so much energy and time getting ready to celebrate his birthday and then we invite everyone except him, or we give gifts to everyone except him. Pastor Adam Hamilton puts it this way: “Christmas is not about how much you buy or what you eat or whom you visit. It is about your willingness to say, with Mary, ‘Here I am, Lord. Use me according to your will’” (31). So how will you respond to Jesus this Christmas? What gift will you give to him? The only gift he wants, friends, is your life given to him just like Mary did.

Each week of Advent has a specific word assigned to it. We add a different gift each Sunday: hope, peace, joy and this week, as we near the celebration of Christmas, we add love. The baby that is growing in Mary’s womb is the very embodiment of the love God has for humanity, for you and for me. John the disciple would later describe it this way: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (3:16). And we usually stop there, but the next verse is just as critical: “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him” (3:17). So often we have this image of God as a stern taskmaster, eternally displeased with us, mad at us, shaking his finger at us. But that kind of God would not come as a baby. That kind of God would not give us the gift of his son. That kind of God would just let us destroy ourselves in our own sin. The kind of God we usually picture in our own mind is not the God who is described and revealed in Scripture.

Granted, there are two sides to this love. It’s not about feelings. It’s a love that takes us and our actions seriously. God loves us just because we are; that is never in question. He created every person, and he loves every one of us, even those who don’t yet recognize that he loves them. God is love, John says (1 John 4:8); it’s who he is. But the other side of that love is he also takes sin seriously. He doesn’t overlook the ways we treat each other badly, or the ways we reject his love in our lives. We might not say it that way but when live and act in ways that are contrary to the way he designed life to be, we are rejecting him. When we walk in ways that are opposite of the way he has told us to walk, to live, we are rejecting him. And the other side of love is that he loves us enough to let us walk away, to let us reject him. That’s not his desire; it’s not his will. The Bible says it is God’s will that all will love him and will come to know him (cf. 1 Timothy 2:3-4). But love isn’t love if we’re forced into a relationship with God. That’s coercion, not love. God so loved the world that he gave us a gift, and I’ve been asking this question all throughout Advent: will you receive it? God so loved the world that he gave us his Son, who was born as a baby in a manger, who died on a cross and rose again to give us life. Will you receive it? Will you receive him?

There’s one more aspect to love on this fourth Sunday of Advent. Jesus called it his “new command” on the last night he was with the disciples, and he said it was the single most important way others would know that we are following him. This is what he told his disciples: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:34-35). He didn’t say people would know we follow Jesus by our church attendance or by how many Bible studies we go to. Those things are good and important, but they are not going to convince the world that we are his followers. He also didn’t say people would know we follow Jesus because of the spiritual t-shirts we wear or the fish decal we put on our car or the ways we distance ourselves from those we disagree with. He said the world will know we follow him by the way we love each other. Tertullian, an early church father, said that was true of the first Christians. People watched them live this faith out and then said, “See how they love one another!” And we’re not just talking about having warm feelings toward each other or “liking” someone’s Facebook post. No, Jesus said loving others was to be done in the way he loved us, and that love was most visibly demonstrated when he gave his life for each and every one of us. The baby who is in Mary’s womb came to love us with his whole life. We are to love each other the same, not by dying on a cross but by giving all we are for the sake of others. We live out Mary’s spirit: “I am the Lord’s servant, may your word to me be fulfilled.” That’s what love looks like, at Christmas and on every other day of the year. As we stand on the edge of the arrival of the baby in the manger, let’s not just stop there. Let’s follow him in loving our world, in loving the people in our world, giving our whole lives so that through him, because of him, the world might be changed. Let’s pray.