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Sermon - The Fourth Sunday in Advent (C) - 20th December 2009
St Alban's Anglican Church Epping 7, 8, 10 am
Readings: Micah 5:2-5a, The Song of Mary (Luke 1:46-56), Hebrews 10:5-10, Luke 1:39-45
The story is told that one day in heaven Jesus approached Peter, who, acting in his roll as admissions officer, was sitting at the pearly gates. Jesus complained about the quality of people Peter was admitting to heaven, noting how many of them were of significantly questionable reputation. Peter responded, "I know Lord, but what am I to do? They come to me here and I turn them away. So they go around to the backdoor, talk to your mother, and she lets them in."
Mary has acquired just such a reputation over the years. To the Medieval church, Mary was the approachable one, her Son, the coming judge of the living and the dead, more feared than revered in people's minds. Mary was the welcoming, understanding one, full of grace, to whom anyone could go for help, pleading that she beseech her son on their behalf. She was holy, because her son had been holy; might not her holiness have some benefit for us, just as his does? This, of course, is what caused the reformers to give up on Mary, returning the focus to her son. Since then, Mary has been something of an embarrassment to most Protestants, either because of the way in which the other Christian traditions have esteemed her as Queen of Heaven, Mother of God, or God Bearer, or, in this age of modernity, because of her self-professed virginity. Even our own Bishop made me remove mention of her name from the liturgy that I had prepared for St Aidan’s Festival last year. I could mention St Aidan and St Alban but not Mary!
How many of us have our fingers crossed when we confess, "Born of the Virgin Mary", or "incarnate of the Virgin Mary". Not knowing quite what to do with a virginal conception and birth, most Protestants have either made it a fundamental tenet of faith, which of course, it is not, or, limited by their conceptions of what is and is not possible in the physical world, have allowed science to trump theology. Consequently, most talk about Mary today focuses on the romantic and subjective, giving us the young, innocent, compliant greeting card girl whose life is caught up in a whirlwind called God, reducing the story to an example of faithfulness.
A theological look at this lesson reveals something startling: it's not about Mary. To be sure, without her, there would be no gospel, however that said, this story is far less about Mary than it is about God.
One New Testament scholar identifies three major themes within today's Gospel lesson. First, is the one the angel Gabriel announces as his parting words to the wondering and confused Mary: "Nothing will be impossible with God". These words spoken to Mary not only sum up the birth stories of both John the Baptist and of Jesus, but also invoke a remembrance of other occasions of impossibility in which God intervened, whether with the barren Abraham and Sarah, Hannah and Elkanah, or Zechariah and Elizabeth. None the less, each of those situations of barrenness was only improbable, improbable because at their ages and in their circumstances who would expect a child like Isaac, Samuel or John the Baptist? The birth Gabriel is announcing to Mary is not improbable, it is impossible: Mary is a virgin. That is beyond anyone's comprehension, no more plausible in the first century than the twenty-first, as Mary so openly testifies when she demurs: "How can this be, since I know no man?" The angel responds in much the same way the angel responded to disbelieving Abraham and Sarah, "Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?" It is a reminder that the God we worship and serve, the God about to be revealed in the babe soon taking shape in Mary's womb, is a God of power, power beyond any limitation that you and I might conceive.
This is not simply about God's power to do the impossible in Mary. This is about the impossible things God is going to do in and through this child. This conception is just the beginning of the impossible things Luke wants us to know that God has done in him: forgiving sin, healing the sick, restoring sight to the blind, strengthening the lame and raising the dead. All of that will be reported in this gospel Luke is writing. It will come to its climax with an even greater impossibility: the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, his appearance to his followers and his ascension into heaven.
Yet the impossibilities do not stop there. In Luke's second volume he will report that the same Spirit who conceived Jesus in Mary's womb will be the Spirit poured out on believers to conceive them as brothers and sisters of Jesus, to make them, like Mary, God-bearers. Here then is the first great theme of this lesson: with God nothing is impossible. Those who discredit this event and the truth behind it, because it is scientifically impossible miss the entire point Luke is making: we are not talking about a receptive virgin, we are not talking about what is plausible or scientifically possible, we are not talking gynaecology; this is theology: God talk. As another scholar has written, "This is the creed behind all other creeds”. For God, nothing is impossible. We must confess that daily, not simply at Christmas, not simply at Easter, but on every occasion of impossibility you and I encounter in life.
The second theme this story reveals is that the God of the impossible is also the God of grace. In our subjective romanticism, we ponder the dilemma of the twelve to thirteen year old girl lying on her mat, staring into the face of Gabriel as she tries to comprehend what he is saying. Consequently, we miss the fact that this is not about Mary's ability to say "Let it be to me according to your word". This is about the grace of God entering human life. Gabriel's greeting to Mary reveals it: "Greetings, favoured one. The Lord is with you … You have found favour with God”. It slips by us in English, but the word behind "favour" and "favoured one" is the word for grace. It can equally be translated, "Greetings graced one …” Mary is being caught up in the drama of God's grace; she is graced, but once again, it's not about Mary. There is not one hint in the text as to why this should be. If there is something about Mary, we certainly don't know it from what Luke tells us here. All Luke tells us is that she is a virgin engaged to a man named Joseph, who is of the house of David. Beyond that, she is no different than anyone else in this room, at least in moral character or attribute. There is not one word here about virtue, worthiness, suitability or predisposition to faithfulness, not one word that would explain to us why God should choose her, imply that God did.
This, of course, is the point: God does choose to do things simply out of God's grace. God chose to create the world out of nothing, how’s that for impossible. Those who are troubled with the virgin birth need to spend more time conjuring creation, which God accomplished with a word. God chose Abraham and Sarah, simply as an act of God's grace. Had that choice depended upon integrity and virtue, God's choice for Abraham and Sarah would have been a poor one indeed. God chose David to be king out of grace and when David decided it was time to build a house for God, God said "No. You've too much blood on your hands for that. Rather, I will build a house for you": more grace! "I will raise up your son who shall build a house for my name and will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be a father to him and he shall be a son to me”, words which Luke echoes as Gabriel tells Mary who her child will be. This is about God's grace breaking into the world for everyone.
What does it mean to respond to such grace? Here is the third great theme we lose when we try to make this about Mary. We have so focused on the prosaic "Let it be to me", that we have missed the precondition to those words. Mary's first response is an acknowledgement: "I am the Lord's handmaid or slave". This is not a voluntary relationship dependent upon Mary's cooperation or volition. God has spoken, it is happening; can Mary do anything but embrace it? This is what it means to be the object of God's grace; it binds us. Could Mary do otherwise? Can we? God's grace descends upon us, captures us and binds us in a slavery that is perfect freedom. In Acts, Luke will later tell a story about another upon whom the grace of God descended, blinding him, halting his persecution of the church and binding him to an apostolic slavery which, in today's epistle lesson, Paul describes as "the obedience of faith”. Mary says, "yes”, in much the same way Paul does: "It is your word; let it come to be”.
Here is the final truth about all of this: it is about God's Word. The Word God spoke at the beginning through whom all things came into being is the Word being spoken over Mary to begin a new creation in her. It is that same Word that is spoken to you and me, the creative and gracious power of God, not only to cause things to come into being, but to give the gift of God's self to whom God chooses: each of us.
It's not about Mary. It's about God, for whom nothing is impossible, God who is first and foremost a God of Grace. God who chooses ordinary humans of all stature and circumstance to become slaves for and to God's own purposes, God who speaks and comes to birth in us as members of God's new creation. In this story her name happens to be Mary, but hers is not the only story being told here. It is your story; it is my story as well.
God has chosen each of us, favoured each of us, graced each of us and spoken God's Word to, over and in each of us. By the power of God's Spirit, God has descended upon us and conceived Christ in us. Like Mary, you and I are God bearers, an identity and vocation that brings with it extraordinary privileges, significant hardships and enormous burdens. The promise remains the same: no matter the hardships or impossibilities this graced vocation may bring in life, nothing is impossible for the One we serve and bear.
This sermon based upon one by The Rev. Dr. Fred R. Anderson, the Madison Avenue Pulpit, www.mapc.com