As I studied the scripture for Sunday, two reflections from others were the inspiration for my sermon.
The first was taken from Madeline L'Engle’s book, The Irrational Season:
This is the irrational season
When love blooms bright and wild;
Had Mary been filled with reason,
There'd have been no room for the child.
The reflection that a reasonable person would have said, “Thanks, but no thanks” to God was very intriguing to me. Are we often being called by God to act in our world and for all the right reasons say, “Sorry, this isn’t a good time”?
The second reflection, I noted in my previous blog was from a sermon by Meister Eckhart, a Christian mystic, theologian and preacher from the 13th century. In one of his Christmas sermons, Eckhart speaks of the virgin birth as something that happens within us. That is, the story of the virgin birth is the story of Christ being born within us through the union of the Spirit of God with our flesh. For one, like myself, who has difficulty with a strictly historical interpretion of the Christmas story; the story of Jesus' birth as not just in the past, but about an internal birth in us in the present, speaks to me. My prayer is that it will speak to you.
Here are some of my notes form my sermon.
How many of you like surprises?
I guess it depends on the surprise doesn’t it?
The Bible is full of God's…surprises, in hindsight we call them blessings, but more often than not, in the midst of it, I wonder how often we see God’s call as blessing.
Can you think of a single instance in the scripture when God's call comes at a convenient time or fits easily into somebody's routine?
God’s call comes….
Change your ways! Change your mind! Change your plans!
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God sends Abraham and Sarah into a strange land on a thin promise.
God meets ill-tempered, tongue-tied Moses out in the wilderness, makes him go back to the last place he wants to go to face the last person he wants to face with the last message he wants to stutter before the mighty Pharaoh.
God calls Ruth to leave her homeland to anoint as the greatest King, save one, Israel would ever have and makes an everlasting covenant with him.
God calls Jeremiah, who says, "Hey, I'm just a kid," but God says, "Hey, I can use kids, too."
Jesus shows the Pharisees that God loves prostitutes and tax collectors just as much as priests and Bible teachers, and calls a rugged crew of fishermen and marginalized women to be his closest followers.
The Spirit shows the apostles in Jerusalem that the gospel includes the Gentiles just as much as the Jews – and Samaritans, and women, and eunuchs, and even Roman prison guards!
God keeps making these disturbing, surprising calls which break the rules, change our minds,
and push us in new, unexpected directions.
Perhaps the most surprising, the most disturbing call in the Bible…comes to Mary.
Scholars tell us Mary would have been young, as young as twelve or fourteen years old when the angel appeared to her. Think of that! A child of a woman, from a poor priestly family. Her life already mapped out for her. With an arranged marriage, the custom of the day, soon she will leave her parents and move in with him.
Suddenly an angel is calling her name! With a surprise from God, that disturbs
everything she has planned, everything she has expected, all of her young Jewish girl dreams. She must rethink all her values…loyalties….commitments…ideals.
She has to tell her parents…her rabbi…Joseph! "How can this be?" Mary asks, as we ask when God calls us to something we didn't expect or don't want to do, or worst of all, don't believe in.
Ruth Fox, a Benedictine nun, argues that too often we picture Mary as a perfectly manicured, wealthy European Renaissance woman, like all the paintings, and statues and Christmas cards. She says we need to picture her as a sturdy young Palestinian peasant, strong enough to walk the rugged hills of Galilee, carry heavy jars of water from the well, give birth in a barn.
Or for those of you who have gone on one of the mission trips to Nicaragua, think of her as a young girl walking miles for water or to school.
Or think of those young girls in Kenya, that Mary Walker talked to us about last Sunday. Escaping from genital mutilation and forced early marriage.
Not the most likely candidate to bear the Son of God, birthing the savior into the world?
Those young girls are just like Mary…only human.
Just like the thousands of other Jewish girls across the countryside at Mary’s time, nothing special, not a saint, not exceptionally gifted, not theologically trained, not wealthy, not powerful, not even noticed by the world, and yet - she, of all people, is called by God.
"How can this be?" Mary asks, and we must wonder the same thing…when God calls us to be the means by which the love of Christ is born into this world.
We are only human, after all. Men and women, partnered and single, young and old - ordinary people all, ordinary like the ordinary people God calls again and again and again in the Bible.
"How can this be?" Mary asks, and we ask the same when we think about the scandal of the incarnation, that God entered the world through the flesh of Mary in the flesh of Jesus. It is ridiculous. It is absurd. How can this be?
But this is what we believe.
God entered the world - and still enters the world - through ordinary flesh and blood.
What did the disciples say when Jesus started telling them about the cross?
"How can this be?" asked the hierarchy when Martin Luther said the church had become over-institutionalized and needed to recover grace and faith at the heart of the gospel.
And God is still making these strange calls in our own time.
"How can this be?" asked preachers and elders when women presented themselves for ordination.
"How can this be?" they asked when Martin Luther King said the church needed to be at the center of the civil rights movement.
"How can this be?" asks many, when others say that God's spirit has been poured equally on all of God’s people.
God's disturbing call keeps doing new things, coming into the world to spread the love around, move us one step closer to the dream God has for us all.
"How can this be?" Mary asks.
"How can this be?" Well, it cannot be, it will not be unless Mary says "yes."
God's call catches us by surprise, disturbs our plans, and changes everything.
We want to say, "You must have the wrong person. You can't use me."
We want to say, "Maybe later, when I'm ready, when I'm a better person, when I've finished what I want to do."
But God uses human instruments to accomplish the Divine purposes.
God uses ordinary flesh and blood, yours and mine, "earthen vessels," Paul calls them.
Think about it. What if Mary had said, "No? Not me."
Or: "Maybe later when I'm older."
But what did Mary say?
"Let it be to me according to your word."
The most outrageous…naïve…courageous words in the Bible and good news for all of us. "Let it be to me according to your word."
It doesn't make sense. It disturbs all her plans, begs for trouble.
But, as Madeline L'Engle writes,
This is the irrational season
When love blooms bright and wild;
Had Mary been filled with reason,
There'd have been no room for the child.
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