Romans 16:25-27 | Luke 1:26-38
Jeremy Richards
There are some biblical stories that we know by heart. We’ve heard them so many times we could recite them in our sleep. And of those biblical stories that we know so well, none are better known than the Christmas stories. In the Western world at least, many people who don’t even identify as Christian and who have very little first-hand experience with the Church still know the story of the full inn, the baby Jesus born in a manger, the shepherds, the angels, and the wise men from the East.
There are a number of…challenges…that arise from our familiarity with the Christmas stories. Like, for instance, that there are Christmas stories and not just one Christmas story. What we call the Christmas story is really a collection of multiple stories, or at the very least multiple scenes within one larger story. But when we think of Christmas, we often think of one mashed up, cohesive picture. We basically think of the nativity scene: Mary, Joseph, Jesus, donkeys, sheep, angels, shepherds, and wise men all together in one place at the same time.
But the truth is, the Christmas story, as we see this morning, begins before the full inn or the manger, and even before Mary’s pregnancy. And it extends beyond that blessed night when God entered the world as a screaming baby. The wise men, the magi, aren’t thought to have arrived until somewhere between 13 days to 2 years after Jesus’ birth.
And in addition to all of that, we see the Christmas story as one smooth, cohesive narrative. But the truth is, to make the story fit together, we’re pulling from two different Gospels – Matthew and Luke – that don’t entirely agree on the details. And this may surprise you, but Mark and John have no account of Jesus’ birth at all.
But why does all this matter? What am I getting at? Well, when we become so familiar with these stories, and when we mash them up and see them as one cohesive whole, it becomes hard to read any one story, or one scene, just for what it is. Without realizing it, we fill in all the gaps and holes with what we already know, even if it isn’t actually present in the passage.
In today’s reading from Luke, when the angel Gabriel appears to Mary, our minds are already jumping ahead to the first Christmas, to the nativity scene I described earlier, and we miss what Gabriel actually says. Or, more accurately, we miss what Gabriel doesn’t say. And the truth is, there’s a whole lot Gabriel doesn’t say. In fact, if we look again (and we will in just a second), we might even say that Gabriel (God?) misleads Mary. He hardly gives her the full story.
Here’s what Gabriel does say. Try to hear it with Mary’s ears, a young, unmarried Jewish woman, probably in her early teens, who has no doubt grown up believing in and hoping for the coming of the Messiah who will be a great king in the line of David, who will save Israel not so much from sin as from oppression. David and his son Solomon had been great kings in a very literal, worldly sense of the word – they won wars, amassed wealth, and maintained the freedom and dominance of Israel during their reigns. While there were prophecies that implied the Messiah would also be a spiritual leader to some extent, the Israelites primarily expected the Messiah to bring about literal, political liberation from literal, political oppressors – in Jesus’ day Rome (in the past, the Babylonians and the Greeks). That’s what Mary and the rest of Israel were expecting. Now listen to what Gabriel tells Mary about the child who will be born to her:
· He will be great
· He will be called Son of the Most High
· The Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David
· He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.
So, what do you think Mary thinks when she hears this? It sounds like Jesus is going to be a “great”, powerful, successful king, like David was. Like, a literal king. It also sounds like he’s never going to die, because he’ll reign forever.
Now, think about what you know about Jesus’ life. Is that really an accurate summary? What’s missing? There are a few minor things Gabriel either forgot or intentionally left out. What are they?
· Being born in a barn
· Having the current king, Herod, try to kill him, and Mary, Jesus, and Joseph becoming refugees in Egypt
· Jesus (and presumably Mary too) remaining poor his entire life
· Him never actually becoming a literal king, never sitting on a throne
· His betrayal and abandonment by all his friends
· His arrest and torture
· And, probably the biggest thing of all…his violent death!
So, some pretty significant details were left out.
Now, of course, we, in retrospect, interpret Gabriel’s message in a different way. With the benefit of hindsight, we know that Gabriel was telling the truth, it just looks different than you’d expect if you only had his original message to go off. Jesus is a king, but a king unlike worldly kings. Jesus did die, but he rose again and so he does reign forever, and there will be no end to his kingdom. Of course he is great, of course he is the Son of God, but again, he isn’t great in the way the world understands greatness, and he doesn’t look or act the way most people would think the Son of God would look and act. When we read this story every Christmas, we interpret Gabriel’s message looking back through the lens of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. We hear Gabriel’s announcement, and we fill in all the gaps, because we know the story. Mary didn’t have that benefit. Mary just heard she was going to give birth to a great king who would rule forever. It seems like Gabriel kind of skirted around some important truths, doesn’t it? Gabriel took Emily Dickenson’s advice and told the truth but told it slant.
At the risk of being struck by lightning, I have to say that this kind of does seem to be God’s way, doesn’t it? Whether it’s Abraham and Sarah being promised that they’d parent a great nation, only to spend the vast majority of their life childless, and only, eventually, having one child together (Abraham did also have Ishmael with Hagar), or the Israelites being freed from Egypt only to wander around in the desert until all but two of that generation died off, or God telling David his kingdom would never end only to have it…end…until Jesus reestablished it, but, again in a very different sense, God often makes promises that technically come true, but they often require pain and struggle that isn’t explicitly stated in the beginning, and they often come about in ways the recipients wouldn’t expect, and maybe wouldn’t sign up for had they gotten the full picture.
Now, to save myself from the impending lighting that’s bound to strike me any minute, I’m not saying that God is untrustworthy, that God is like some shady businessperson pulling a bait-and-switch. God gave the people of Israel, God gave Mary, and God gives us certain promises, visions, and callings that are ultimately full of hope, joy, and meaning. They are worth following. But they will also require pain, struggle, and sacrifice. What we often need, in the beginning, is a vision of the end goal, a picture of the fulfilled promise, so that we can step forward in faith, and so that we can weather the storms of opposition that will surely come.
I’m sure that Mary, as she watched her Son suffer and die on the cross, thought God had lied to her. Her Son would not, in fact, live forever, she must have assumed. I don’t know if she ever went so far as to wish that she had not said yes to God’s invitation, because I can’t imagine, as a parent, wishing your child was never born. But in the midst of Christ’s passion, maybe she got close to making that wish, wishing she had said no to that slick-tongued messenger Gabriel and his seemingly false promise. I’m sure she at least wished God had been more honest with her, that God had told her all the pain that would accompany her acceptance of Gabriel’s offer.
But also, after the resurrection, after hugging her son again after having held his cold, lifeless body only three days earlier, I’m sure she was filled with a joy the like of which no one else has ever or will ever experience. Acts 1 tells us that after Jesus’ ascension, his mother Mary is among the disciples who constantly devoted themselves to prayer. So her faith remained. If she was ever angry with God – and imagine at some point she was – she doesn’t stay that way. Ultimately, she sees that God has stayed true to God’s promise. It just ended up looking very different than what she had expected.
Many of us have felt called by God do one thing or another. Maybe it was a big, life-changing call, or maybe it was small and seemingly inconsequential, but it still demanded a decision and you chose to follow that call. Maybe it required you to leave a town, job, church, or friend group that you loved. Or maybe it required you to stay in a town, job, church, or friend group that you really didn’t love. Maybe you didn’t step out in faith, you leapt out in faith, excited for this new possibility, brimming with hope and optimism at all that lay ahead. Or maybe you stepped out slowly and cautiously, scared of what lay on the other side of this decision.
Whatever the case, whatever the extent to which this decision to follow God’s calling changed your life, I’m guessing that it didn’t take long for the obstacles to come, for reality to sneak in.
When we were living in North Carolina, we had good friends and Durham really was a pretty cool town, but we missed Portland so much. One summer we came back to Portland to visit, and the sun was out the whole time, and everyone was so excited to see us. We celebrated Brie’s birthday at Base Camp Brewery and our friends filled two outside tables. The food was amazing, the coffee was amazing, the beer was amazing. We couldn’t wait to move back.
And Portland is amazing. It’s definitely home for us. But life in Portland is not like a weeklong vacation in Portland. We can’t afford to eat out as much as we did that week. Our friends love us, but they’re not nearly as excited to see us when we live here. Also, it’s not summer all the time. It rains, like, 9 months out of the year. And maybe most of all, when we visited Portland we left all our responsibilities behind us, but when you move to a place, guess what, you’re not on vacation anymore. Your responsibilities follow you.
I know for a fact that some of us are in it right now. We followed a call, we believe God led us to the place we are in our lives, whatever it may be, and ya know what? It isn’t really going so well. The opportunities have dried up and it feels like we’re going nowhere, or we’re underappreciated, or the work is really, really hard, or we haven’t been able to form strong friendships and we feel alone. Whatever it might be, we think, why did you bring me to this place, God? Why didn’t you tell me it was going to be like this? This was not worth it. I wish I’d never said yes.
In these times, let’s look to Mary, who is in many ways our role model in the faith. (I’m all for us Protestants regaining some respect and admiration of Mary). Mary continued to follow Jesus throughout his ministry, which must have been hard, considering she was his mother. She nursed him, changed his poopy diapers, and weathered his two year old temper tantrums (something I’m currently very familiar with). She listened to his silly excuse at the wedding in Cana about it “not being his time yet” and said, “yes it is” and told the servants to do what he told them, which led to his first miracle. She remained faithful, even after that time she and her family showed up to get Jesus because, well truth be told, she did think he had kind of lost his mind, only to have him ignore her, denounce her, and say to a room full of strangers “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” then point to his disciples and say, “Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.” That must have been a painful moment for Mary. It must have felt like utter rejection from her first born child.
And then, later, most painful of all, when all those disciples who Jesus said were his mother instead of her, when they all ran away and abandoned him, she sat alone with the other Marys and watched her son die a horrible death on the cross.
Mary knows, maybe better than anyone, what it’s like to step out in faith with great hope and great trust and great optimism, only to have everything go wrong…or at least for it to feel that way. She knows what it’s like to question God, to be angry at God, to not only be disillusioned but to be deeply wounded by the call of God. “A sword will pierce your own soul,” Simeon tells her when she and Joseph and little baby Jesus meet him at the temple in Jerusalem.
And yet, of course, despite all this, we know that Gabriel didn’t lie (despite all the shade I’ve been throwing his way this morning). Everything that God promised did come to pass, just not the way Mary would’ve expected. In the end, it came out better than she ever could have imagined. And for 2,000 years and counting, she has indeed been considered by all Christians everywhere to be the “favored one.” She bore in her own body the Son of God, the salvation of the universe. She nursed the one who would in turn become the bread of life, the cup of salvation poured out for all of us. The pain, anguish, and sorrow in her life was overshadowed, consumed, eradicated by the joy of Christ’s resurrection. In the end, God proved Godself trustworthy.
“The Lord is with you,” Gabriel tells Mary. And this is true. And the Lord is with you, all of you. This is the promise of Christmas. This is what Jesus is: Emmanuel, God with us. Because Mary said yes, because she became the Theotokos, the God-bearer, we all can become God-bearers. Because Christ was borne in her, Christ is born in us.
God’s call to Mary was costly and painful, but I’m glad she said yes. God give us the strength to be like her, to say yes, to fight and struggle through the pain and death of our own hopes, aspirations, assumptions, and expectations only to see them resurrected not as our own, but as God’s. Because they always were God’s and not ours.
“Here we are, the servants of the Lord; let it be to us according to God’s word.”
Amen.