Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church
6th December 2015
Luke 1:26-38
Luke 1:46-55
1 Samuel 2:1-10
From religious icons to school nativity plays,
the
image of Mary is familiar to people of all generations
throughout
the world.
At the heart of many Christian beliefs
and
with a major role in Islam,
she is arguably the most famous,
and
certainly the most revered,
woman
ever to have lived.
So, who is this woman?
Star
of a million Christmas Cards…
·
Holy Mary, Mother of Jesus
·
The Madonna
·
The theotikos
·
composer of the magnificat
The number of ways you will hear Mary described
is almost endless,
and
in the midst of all these notable titles
we can so easily lose
the reality of the situation:
·
Mary the poverty-stricken,
·
Mary the unmarried mother
·
Mary the refugee
·
Mary the child bride
Mary was an ordinary Jewish girl
not
born into a high family
and
with no special privileges that we know of.
As far as we are aware,
she
had nothing about her
which
marked her out as different from anyone else.
In many cultures,
the
one who is to be the mother of the King
is
prepared from early childhood to take up that role.
But when God chose to send his son to earth
to
be born as a human being
he chose an ordinary, run of the mill,
uneducated young girl,
to
be the mother of the saviour of the world.
Mary was quietly getting on with her life,
fulfilling
society’s expectations and requirements;
she
was engaged to Joseph
and
waiting to start her married life with him.
When all of a sudden
it
all starts to go wrong…
The way Luke tells the story, the angel Gabriel
appeared to her
telling
her that God had other plans for her life.
Now, I don’t propose to get into a great
discussion this morning,
surrounding
the historicity of the events in Luke’s story;
and I’m certainly not proposing to hit
tomorrow’s headlines
with
bold assertions from the pulpit concerning doubts about the virgin birth.
But I will simply note in passing,
that
Luke’s story enters the Jesus tradition quite late in its development,
and that both Paul and other earlier Christian
texts
have
a strong tradition of asserting Joseph’s paternity.
But for now, let’s meet Mary as Luke offers her
to us,
and
what a meeting it turns out to be.
And what a calling that turned out to be!!!
One minute her life was ticking along,
suitably
subject to the social expectations and mores of her culture,
and the next minute it had been turned upside down!
The angel may have told her not to be afraid,
but
she certainly had plenty of reasons
to
be, at the very least, seriously
concerned!
Have you ever had that feeling
when
all the negative possibilities mount up
one on top of another
until
you convince yourself
that
it is all going to go pear shaped!?
I don’t know if Mary did that kind of thing
but
if she did, she would have had plenty to worry about
First off, she was pregnant – enough of a worry
in itself;
even in today’s
modern medical world
pregnancy is far from risk-free,
and back then many mothers and
children
died in childbirth.
And not only was she pregnant, but she wasn’t
yet married
…
and she was going to have to explain to people
that
her fiancé wasn’t the father…
But before that, how was she going to tell him?
How
would Joseph react?
How would her parents react?
Who
on earth is going to believe her!?!?
What if Joseph called off the wedding?
she’d
be a single mother!
a far worse social stigma back then than it is
these days,
and
there were no social services to provide any income.
So, how would she feed herself and the child?
And even if Joseph could be persuaded to go
ahead with the wedding
they
were going to have no money at all!
Then there was the census coming up
when
she was going to have to travel to Bethlehem,
whilst
heavily pregnant.
And then, on top of all the practical worries,
there
were the prophecies…
indications from the start that her son
would die an early death
and that her own life would be tinged
with sadness…
The Mary we meet in Luke’s gospel
is
a young woman who certainly has good cause
to
have a few sleepless nights
trying
to get her head round all this lot.
But we’re also told that the call of God on her
life was strong;
and
that although, yes, this all has the tinge of the possibility of disaster,
it
also has the potential for so much promise of good
After all,
she’d
been visited by an angel,
hardly
a common occurrence, even in those days;
and
the angel had told her in no uncertain terms
that
the traumatic time ahead of her
was
in some mysterious way part of God’s working in the world.
She had an inner conviction that her child was
no ordinary baby,
and
this was something that went far beyond proud parent syndrome.
In some way, she came to believe that she was
carrying a child born of God,
one
who would bring salvation to his people.
And when the doubts came, she had the physical
evidence
of
her own pregnancy
to remind her that the angel’s promises hadn’t
just been a dream.
And when she went to visit her cousin Elizabeth,
in
the part of the story we skipped over this morning
her
status as one chosen by God was once again confirmed
as Elizabeth prophesied about Mary’s unborn
child
For Mary, this teenage mother
the
call of God on her life was far from straightforward!
The signs of promise were there
but
they were coupled with the potential for disaster.
And
this is so often the way when God calls us to follow him:
It’s never as straightforward as we
would like it to be.
Just because you have been miraculously called
and
chosen by God
doesn’t
mean that you won’t give birth in a stable,
and
end up on the run from a brutal dictator;
and
it doesn’t mean
that
you won’t live to see your child die early.
You see, there are no guarantees when we’re
chosen by God
that
things will go the way we want them to.
I had someone ask me this week if I believed
that
God heals people if they have enough faith.
And whether I believed that God brought release
to
those who were tormented by evil and doubt.
And I had to answer honestly;
yes
I believe God brings healing and wholeness,
yes
I believe God brings release from sin and oppression,
but I also see good Christians get sick and
die,
and
I see faithful followers of Christ become ensnared by the traps of sin.
There are no guarantees when we’re chosen by
God
that
things will go the way we want them to.
However, and this is where Mary’s story speaks
to us down the centuries;
if
we have been chosen by God
if
we have been called by God to be part of his
people,
then this means that we cannot help but
play our part
in
God’s plan for the salvation of the world
Think about the example of Mary
she
never chose to be the mother of Jesus
But
when God called her
in
spite of the potential problems
she
responded in faithful acceptance:
“Here am I, the
servant of the Lord:
let it be with me
according to your word”
And so it is that God similarly calls each one
of us
in
different ways to be part of his people,
to
be his children,
And this is God’s initiative
it
is not our doing!
The good news of this for us
is
that our part in God’s plan is not down to us being successful
it
is not down to us doing well
and
achieving things for God
We, with Mary, can only respond to God by
making ourselves available,
and
trusting our lives to God’s care.
I guess what I am saying
is
that the Christian life is often a big waiting game.
Which is no bad lesson to hear in Advent.
Mary, you see, was called by God;
she
came to believe that she had been chosen
to
play her part in the salvation of the world
But then she had to wait
She had to wait for her child to be born
She had to wait for
him to grow up
She had to wait while she saw him die
She had to wait while
he was buried in the ground
A lifetime of waiting, before she saw the truth
of
what had been promised to her
by
an angel in her teenage years.
A lifetime of pain and uncertainty…
And so we
wait…
We wait with Mary for the fulfilment of God’s
call on our lives
and
sometimes we wait for months
sometimes
we wait for years
sometimes
we wait for a lifetime
Advent is often described as the time of
waiting
the
period of preparation
for
Jesus’ coming into the world
And in a
very real sense,
our
whole lives are also a time waiting
and longing
we sense that God has his hand on us
We
know that he has chosen us
called
us to be his people
called
us to have a part in his plan for the world
But then so often we have to wait
And sometimes we try and fill the waiting with
our own activism
We
fill the silence of waiting
with
our own strenuous efforts
But ultimately it’s always going to be God who
acts – not me, not you
Mary’s miraculous pregnancy speaks of this
It’s not what humans do,
but
what God does,
that
means Jesus comes to us.
Jesus wasn’t born out of human efforts
- he was born because
God intervened into our situation
Jesus came into the world at God’s initiative.
This
is the message of the story of the virgin birth.
And yet we spend so much of our time
trying
to do things to make Jesus come
We sing our songs
quietly
/ loudly / old-style / new-style / whatever!
we invite our friends along to church, or we
try to…
and
we work so hard
at
this, that, and the other
All good stuff, I’m sure
But how much time do we spend waiting for God
to act?
I worry sometimes that we think of Jesus as
being a bit like Tinkerbell
who,
if you remember the story of Peter Pan
is
in danger of fading away
unless
all the children clap really hard.
And sometimes I think we do the equivalent of
clapping really hard
because
we think it’ll make Jesus more real to us.
So we fill our lives with spiritual activism
worship,
prayer, services, Bible-reading, social action,
political
engagement, caring for the homeless and the vulnerable,
and
so on, and so on, and so on…
As if by our
actions we can make Jesus more real
And yet, what it boils down to in the end, I
think,
is
how much we trust that Jesus is God become human flesh!
Do we trust that it is Jesus who saves us
that
it is him who chooses us
that
it is him who lifts us from the pit of our sinfulness?
Are we prepared to wait on the Lord,
trusting
that he is who he says he is?
and
will do what he says he will do?
Or will we spend so much time and energy
trying
to do all these things for ourselves
through
our strenuous efforts?
In our culture the emphasis is very much on us achieving things
We
are constantly told that if we work hard,
we
will be successful.
And we come to believe that this applies
regardless
of whatever goals we set ourselves.
So, if we want lots of money
–
we are told that we won’t achieve it without hard work
If we want power and status – hard work is
going to be the key
If we want a successful marriage
we
are always told that this is hard
work
My cousin lived in America for a while
and
one of the phrases he learned over there
was
a habit of paying someone a compliment
by
saying that they are “a hard worker”
It’s as if our value in life comes from what we
put in.
And the same lessons get transplanted into our
churches.
I’m sure you have heard it said “you get out
what you put in”
in
terms of how much people get out
of
the church they belong to…
I’ve
said it myself, on many occasions.
We come to believe that if we want to have a
church which is growing
because
people are coming to know Jesus Christ
then logic dictates that we have got to get out there
and
tell them about him!
We come to believe that if we want to have
a
successful and intimate relationship with God
we aren’t going to have this
without
spending time working at that relationship
And there is an element of truth in all of
these things
But in the midst of
all our doing,
it is easy to miss
what God does
God calls us – he chooses us to be his people
He
chooses us to have a part in the salvation of the world
But this is his doing
it
doesn’t stand or fall by our efforts
You see, the problem with the activist mindset
is
that if it’s down to us to do all
these things
if
the salvation of others totally depends on us
and our efforts to bring them into the
Kingdom
then when we fail – and we do fail!, all the
time!
it
becomes our fault
If everything hinges on us and what we do
then
when we do something wrong
we can convince ourselves that we have
stuffed up
God’s great plan for our lives
and
we then weigh ourselves down with guilt
and
a sense of failure
that
we have failed God
Let me say this:
This
view of God is too small.
God chooses US – as weak, fallen, sinful people
He
calls us to have a part in his plan for salvation of the world
This is GOD we are talking about here
he
is not going to expect us to do everything
we
aren’t called to carry the burden for the entire world
we
don’t have to pray, every day, for everything and everybody
we
don’t have to take responsibility for every non-Christian.
It is God who carries the burden of the world
on his shoulders,
it
is God who came to this world, who died for the salvation of the world,
and
who lives by his Spirit in the body of his people,
drawing
the world to God in love.
All of which means, we don’t have to!
And, like Mary,
once
God has called us
we
are already part of God’s plan for bringing all things to good,
and
our lives already have value, because of his choosing of us.
We don’t need to spend all our energy
desperately
trying to justify our existence
trying to prove our worth
trying to earn our place in God’s
kingdom
Because we, like Mary, have been chosen by God.
So, here in the midst of Advent
let
us join with Mary, waiting for God.
And here, in the midst of Advent,
let
us join our voices with that of Mary,
who sang of a world turned upside down,
not
through her own efforts
but
by the activity of God through her.
Let us join with Mary in singing of the
downfall of the haughty
and
the rich and the powerful,
let
us sing of the raising up of the meek
and
the poor and humble,
Mary sang the new world into being,
offering
her praise to the God who comes to us,
rather
than requiring us to come to him.
And so we wait with Mary,
for
the coming of the messiah.