A man named Melchizedek…

Old school. When I think about “old school” I think about a lot of things…  a lot of people, a lot of ideas.

But rather than any sports or entertainment figure, I tend to think of the three women who had the most influence on me in my youth.

My mom, her mother Nan, and her mother Nanny. My mom was a young mother (like both of her female ascendants), but the way in which those two stepped up and stepped into the gaps played a huge part in the man I am today, and thus the people my own children will become.

Seeing through a screen, darkly

A few days ago I was waiting in line at a local grocery store when I noticed an acquaintance standing adjacent to me, also waiting in line. I attempted to strike up a conversation, as it appeared we would be waiting for quite a while, but every time I asked a question or offered a prompt I received a one-word response. Not wishing to be rude, I left her be, as she was rather engrossed in an intense game of Words With Friends on her iPhone and could not be bothered.

But after a minute or so, a signal from my own smartphone alerted me that someone had mentioned me on Twitter.

“Just saw @MatthewProsser at the store, he’s really tall,” the message said, and it was posted by the woman standing right next to me in line.

“You can’t go home again…”

The great advantage of being a political moderate is having the safe vantage point from which to lampoon the excess and foibles of either end of the spectrum. I’m able to lambast the wild-eyed right-wing kooks and fuzzy-headed left-wing flakes with impunity.

Both parties (and their earnest followers) are still only sharpening their blades for the oncoming 2012 presidential election, and no party has had such keen or constant practice as the Republican Party. Indeed, it seems, the presidential candidates for the “Grand Ol’ Party” have been running against our incumbent Commander In Chief since before Beyoncé belted out “At Last” during the inauguration.

Even so, one has to wonder just how well that’s worked out for them so far.

On personal accountability and responsibility…

So I’m sitting back in a dentist’s chair, while a good-natured and well-meaning dental hygienist scrapes at my teeth with an assortment of sharp and pointed instruments that send brilliant explosions of painful irritation up my spine through the neural network that was created to instinctively warn me of immediate danger.

As each interminable minute passes, I begin to gradually despise the woman. Internally a great stream of cursing invective rages behind my calm facial expression. Though my mouth remains quite open throughout, I respond to her inquiries with only one-word or brief responses.

ONE Faith

On January 24, President Obama is scheduled to give the State of the Union address.  This is an annual speech before the joint Congress in which the President outlines what happened in the previous year while expressing his desires and expectations for the New Year.  This speech is traditionally one of hope and anticipation, of announcing new policy and trying to build support for programs the president wants to start.  At my previous church our pastor would annually give a “State of the Church” address in which he essentially did the same thing, celebrating the past while looking ahead to the coming year.

Today I would like to offer a “Year in Review” of sorts.  We have completed our first calendar year as a church.  Looking back over 2011 I think we have some exciting things we can celebrate.  We had a great spring semester last year.  We started the year off well and developed some great momentum leading into the summer.  On the strength of an excellent Disciple Now weekend and our first Easter as a church we saw some amazing numbers of people in our building.  As we developed a bit of a sense of identity, I think we developed some excitement for the potential of our little church.

We joined with New Birth Fellowship on Stone Road in an event called iServe.  We’ve participated in three iServe events so far with wonderful success.  We’re starting to see other churches in the community catch the vision and want to join together in a true community effort to see the name of Jesus made great in this city.  After a somewhat sluggish summer where I believe we lost a bit of momentum, we responded this past fall with a bit of re-focusing on what it is God would have us do.

As we look forward into 2012 and beyond, I wonder who it is that God would have us become.  In the past months we’ve looked at what a church is and who it represents, trying to become more focused in our efforts to expand the Kingdom.  We are messengers of God’s love.  We are the light that shines into the darkness.  We are the holy nation and royal priesthood that Peter talks about, destined to show the world who God is.  God’s desire for his people has always been the same.  He is looking for a people who will announce his Kingdom and his presence to a world in need of a Savior.

If we want the message of Christ to get to the people of this community through iServe and other events, we must first take a step of faith and be willing to be Jesus followers.  We must be willing to live like we say we believe.  I’ve mentioned this before:  if we say we believe the Bible, then it ought to change how we live.  The problem is that we either don’t know what the Bible says or we can’t agree about what it says, which brings me to my first point today.

Ephesians 4:1-6

Paul makes a bold statement at the beginning of this chapter.  He urges the Ephesians to “walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called…”  We have been set apart to live out the grace of God.  We have been chosen to be a light in the darkness.  Now we have to live like it.  I think in our society we have a problem with this whole “chosen” thing.  I think we have a problem with being called to do anything.  After all, I’m the one who prayed to receive Christ.  I’m the one who walked down an aisle.  I chose God.  Without getting into an argument about predestination or free will let me just say this:  whether we were chosen or we chose or both happened in a mystical, supernatural salvation experience, there was a decision made and life is supposed to be different.  To me it is more like a marriage anyway.  I didn’t just choose Amanda and she didn’t just choose me.  We chose one another.  Because of this, our lives are different.  Neither one of us is out still trying to find someone to choose us.  We are “us” now.

In the same way, with God I am no longer “me” instead we are “us.”

Now, back to the calling.  We are exhorted by Paul to live in a manner that is worthy of our relationship with Christ.  Because of this relationship, there is a way we are supposed to live.  We’ll define that a little more specifically in a moment, but Paul starts by saying this:  “…with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”

You see, there is one faith.  There aren’t multiple faiths.  There isn’t your faith and her faith and that guy’s faith over there.  There is one faith.  There is faith in Jesus.  Beyond that, it’s all superfluous.  If that is the case, then, shouldn’t we be unified?  Aren’t there too many petty disagreements in the world anyway?  Don’t we spend too much time disagreeing?  There is one faith.

Paul says in verses 4-6:  “There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call—one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.”  We serve one God.  We are a body with many parts but we serve one God.  There is one reason that we are gathered here this morning and it’s because we serve one God.  We all go different ways after this service, to different homes and different jobs, but we serve one God.

Unity

I’ve got your back and you’ve got mine.  We might differ in opinion sometimes, but we serve one God, so we should be unified.  There is more that unites us than divides us.  These words have been spoken many times in political speeches and will likely be spoken again.  If politicians can say these words about the United States even with all the division that exists in our country, surely we can say the same thing about the church.  As we strive for more and more partnerships with churches in the community let this be our mantra.  There is more that unites us than divides us.  We represent the God of the Universe to those around us.  Let us do it in a unified manner.

So many people would say “I don’t want to go to that church because ____________ is there and I don’t like them.”  What a foolish thing to say.  Perhaps _____________ really isn’t a bad person but because they once did or said something stupid you don’t like them anymore.  What a foolish thing for us to not love a brother or sister in Christ.  There is only one God.  There is only one faith.

This begs the question then, if we are unified in one faith to one God, how do we define that faith?  What god are we serving?

We’ve just finished the Christmas season.  We spent 5 weeks talking about and celebrating the birth of Jesus, who we believe is the only Son of God, YHWH, the I AM, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of the Bible.  We believe in this God.

John 14:6

We live in an age where it seems like either people believe that everyone will go to Heaven anyway, or that one must earn his or her way into Heaven, doing enough good things to make it.  In the church it becomes even more muddled.  It seems that often people who aren’t living godly lives at all claim to know Christ because of a moment long ago when they were baptized.  There are men and women who assert their Christianity but don’t seem to be living in such a way as to back their claim.

Jesus says that he is the only way.  If we believe this, it ought to change not only how we live our lives, but how we engage other people.  Perhaps there ought to be an urgency in how we live.  Perhaps we ought to seek out opportunities to share our faith with others.  Perhaps we ought to be a little more devoted to the cause of the Kingdom of God.  If there is only one way, perhaps we should lead people to the way.

This year we can plan all sorts of events.  There will be four iServe events scheduled on our calendar, one happening at the end of this month.  There is Disciple Now happening at the end of January.  Our students will go to camp this summer and there will be missions opportunities for our students and probably for our adults as well.  We’re looking at going back to Peru sometime in the summer.  Perhaps you are drawn to another part of the world or to another cause.

We must always be mindful that we represent one God.  We are citizens of one Kingdom.  We have one faith.

I could stand up here all morning and give you plans and lofty goals for what I want us to become as a church.  We typically run between 60 and 70 people on a Sunday morning and that’s good.  That’s better than a lot of churches in a lot of towns, but we’re not competing.  I could announce that I would like to fill this room up on such a consistent basis that we have to add services, and I do.  I could set a goal of having to move to a larger building by the end of the year and that would be wonderful, but that’s all beside the point.

Who are you going to be in 2012?

It’s easy to bemoan the condition of our society.  It’s a simple thing to announce our plans and to set goals and try to reach them.  All it takes is a little discipline and hard work.  But what does it mean for us that Jesus is the only way?  What does it mean for us to live in unity?  Let me say it this way and then try to unpack what I mean.  What if we lived in a life-giving sort of way?

I think that most of us are in a life-taking mode.  What I mean by that is we want as much life as we can possibly muster.  We upgrade and super-size our ways to a “better life” trying to either out-do our neighbors or ourselves.  We believe in Jesus’ claim to bring us “abundant life” but we think that means making life as big and as fun as we possibly can.  Our plans, our goals, our successes are all for us.  In this, we take as much life for ourselves while leaving very little for anyone else.

What if our default was to give life?  What if in every situation we thought of others first?  What if we lived in such a way that other people were edified and we gave more than we took?  Jesus came so that we might have life.  He came to give life away.  If we are to follow him, perhaps that should be how we live as well.  We talked about Advent Conspiracy some this Christmas.  What if that was our default, not only for Christmas, but for life?

If this was the way we approached every relationship, every situation, then it redefines everything.  If this is the way we approached life, then even times of solitude and vacation are for the benefit of others.  If I am concerned for your welfare and how I treat you, then I must seek down times and times to recharge.  I used to lead a disciple now group every year for my friend Paul Mints.  One thing he did that was differently than a lot of other ministers was send the students home on Saturday night.  They would only spend Friday night at their host home.  His reason has stuck with me for all these years.  He said that sometimes the most holy thing one can do is to go to sleep.  We all need times to recharge and refresh.  Jesus himself would do that.

What if we lived in such a way as to give life to others?  Would that change the way you talked to people?  Would that change the way you thought about people?  Think about the person in the world you like the least.  What if you treated them differently?  What if you tried to be a life-bringer to them?  Would this attitude change how you interacted with the world?  If we are going to live in the Kingdom, we must be life-bringers.  If we are going to be disciples of Jesus, we must live the way he showed us to live, meeting people’s needs, befriending the friendless, touching the untouchable, eating with sinners.

James tells us that true religion is taking care of widows and orphans.  How are we at that?  One thing I want to start this coming year is an orphan care ministry.  Last January we heard Chase Bowers deliver a message about caring for orphans.  God has a heart for orphans.  He had compassion on us when we had no heavenly father and he wants us to have compassion on those with no earthly father.  Kay Warren once said that God didn’t adopt us because he needed children, but because we needed a Father.  We have a missions table available at the back of the room.  There are ways you can interact with the whole world.  You can go to Peru.  You can go to Brazil.  You can go wherever you want.  But in whatever you do, seek to be a life-bringer.

As we come to the end of the beginning, I want us all to think about what God would have us do.  What stirs your affection for Jesus?  In what ways can you be involved in reaching other people with the love of God?  Maybe you are supposed to take on responsibility at Cornerstone.  Maybe you are supposed to join us here, working with us to reach the community around us.  Maybe you need to be working with one of our age-based ministries like our student ministry or our children.  Luke needs help right now getting host homes for Disciple Now.  Maybe you can do that.  Cassie and April need help organizing our children’s ministry.  We must do a good job with that.  We need small group facilitators and hosts.  Maybe you can do that.  Remember, we are unified in our love for Jesus.  There is nothing else.

We’re going to be handing out sheets that have a place for you to make a commitment for what you are going to do this year.  I find that when I write down my goals, I tend to remember them better.  There is a place for you to write down your 2012 goals for yourself and tear it off to put on your refrigerator or bathroom mirror or wherever.  There is also a section above that where you can write your goals and give them to us.  Put them in the offering basket as it comes by if you wish.  This is not required nor is it something we are going to hound you about, but I’ve also discovered that when someone else knows my goals, I am more likely to remember them and work toward them.  If you would like to make that commitment known to us so we can pray with you through it, please drop it in the offering basket.

I want your life to be transformed by Jesus.  Maybe you’ve not taken even the first step in that journey.  I wish you would.  Beyond giving me eternal salvation, knowing Jesus has changed the way I view life.  It’s not about me.  I hope it never becomes about me.  In fact, when it begins to become about me I tend to get depressed because a life about me isn’t a life worth living.  There are people here who can help you take the first steps into a new life.  Tim and I are available during the second set of worship.  Use this time to spend a moment with the Spirit, asking what he would have you do.

We’re going to close with one last passage of scripture.

Exodus 2:23-25

The second half of the book of Genesis is the story of Joseph and how he came to power in Egypt and saved the Hebrew people from death because of famine.  At the end of Genesis Joseph dies.  A new Pharaoh comes into the picture not long after and begins to oppress the Hebrew people.  Verses 23-25 of chapter 2 tell us what happened then.  “Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God.”

God always hears the cry of the oppressed.  God is a merciful and generous God who is in the business of rescue.  He can rescue you.  Whether you are completely lost and in need of a Savior or simply struggling to find your way through a difficult time, God hears the cry of the oppressed.  As we start a new year, I wonder if we will give God the opportunity to impress us.  Will we give him the chance to show us what he can do?  So often we try so hard to build castles for ourselves when God wants us to build his Kingdom.  I wonder if we would let him do that.  “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.”  If this church is going to truly be a light in a darkened world, God must be the one who builds it.  We are just laborers who work under the instruction and authority of the Master Builder.

May we long for God.  May we cry out to him.  May we be life-bringers.

Advent 2.4

Surprisingly, this was one of the harder messages I’ve ever written.  After all, this is the message about Jesus’ birth.  We all know the story; it should be an easy sell.  I should be able to write this message in my sleep.  It was a shockingly hard thing to do, though.

Perhaps when I explain, however, it will be clearer.  What I tried to accomplish in the previous three weeks was to make the characters a bit more human.  We read about people in the Bible and think all kinds of things.  We think they were somehow better than we are that perhaps they really did have a glowing halo around their heads and they were magically filled with thoughts of God all the time.  What I really wanted to do was show them for who they were, people who were commissioned by God to complete a job and who responded faithfully and obediently.

With Jesus, though, the story is different.  After all, he was simply born.  The story of Jesus actually takes place before and after his birth, the birth simply being the conduit through which Jesus came to earth as a man.  In fact, much of his story of his birth is seen in the Old Testament prophecies and in speculation about what might have taken place in Heaven for Jesus to humbly put aside his glory in order to come to earth.

I want to open today with a passage of scripture in Luke 2.  We’ve talked over the last few weeks about several characters involved in the story of the first Christmas.  Today I want us to look at the reason for the story at all.  His name is Jesus.

Luke 2:1-7

Jesus was born in humble circumstances, to humble parents, and was first celebrated by humble people.  The circumstances of his birth could not have been more other than his position of glory that he left.  Paul tells us in Philippians 2 that the humility of Jesus was such that even though he was God, and didn’t need to prove anything, he condescended to come to earth.

I was reading Donald Miller’s Searching For God Knows What earlier this week and in a stroke of serendipity came across a brief discussion about this very thing.  Miller remarked how amazing it was that Jesus in his infinite glory decided to forgo that glory for a time in order that we might be saved.

You see, it’s impossible to talk about the birth of Jesus without speaking to why he came in the first place.  Jesus came so that we might have life.  He says it in so many words in John 10.  He came that we might have abundant life.  But even in his birth he set an example of humility for us to follow.

Joseph and Mary went to Bethlehem from Nazareth, because they were called there to a census.  Caesar wanted a count of “all the world.”  Joseph was of the lineage of David, who came from Bethlehem, so that is where he had to go to be registered.  If you thought filling out census forms last year was tedious, imagine what it was like having to travel to another city and stand in line just so you could be counted so you would have to pay more in taxes.  To top it off your fiancée is very pregnant; so pregnant in fact that she goes into labor because of the trip.

It’s interesting at this point because we like to make up drama and tension to help us tell stories.  Verse 7 says that Mary “laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.”  I think we like to paint a picture of Joseph and Mary wearily going from inn to inn, house to house, trying to find lodging, only to be turned away.  Luke says “there was no place for them in the inn.”  (emphasis mine)  Perhaps this was the only inn in Bethlehem.  At any rate, Joseph and Mary found what they could in which to lay newborn Jesus.

We spoke last week for just a moment about what was going on behind the scenes during Jesus’ birth.  If we could peel back the veil of time and space, if we could glimpse the throne of God and see what was taking place, I wonder what we would encounter.  The Father, Son, and Spirit pre-existed everything else.  They existed in perfect, loving relationship with one another, truly three persons in one being.  The doctrine of the Trinity is so foreign to us there are no words or metaphors that could possibly describe it.

Imagine, though, that in this perfect relationship there is realized a necessity for one of the persons to actually separate for a time from the other two.  The bond of the Spirit is the connection that keeps the three in communion with each other, but somehow the Son is required to leave the glory of Heaven and be born as a human.  We believe that life begins at conception, so that would mean that Jesus would have had to go through the whole gestation process.  He would have been helpless.  What’s more, if anything had happened to Mary, there was no other Son that the Father could have sent.  Even in John 3:16 we see the truth of this.  John says that because God loved the world so much he sent his “only begotten” Son.  There was no other Son because Jesus was the “only.”

The enemy is a crafty one.  While he is not privy to God’s plans, he knows that God is trying to save all of humanity.  He knows that God’s desire is that everyone would be saved.  Perhaps he didn’t know the details of the birth of Jesus, but he knew something was going to happen.  We have seven verses that tell us Jesus was born.  But then the angels couldn’t contain themselves and began to sing about Jesus to shepherds out in a field.  The simple fact that Jesus was born defeated the odds.  But Jesus was born.  The Son condescended to earth that he might save people from their sins.

John 1:9-14

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us…”  This is probably my favorite description about the birth of Jesus.  The Word became flesh.  That which spoke the world into being, the very word that created, became a part of that creation, became flesh.  God put on skin in the form of a baby.  The Son grew up like any other person grows up.  The Word became flesh and lived among his people.

How can you not love a God who would do something as radical as become a man?

John talks about Jesus as the Word and the true light.  He says that Jesus came to the world to enlighten everyone.  He came to save.  But the world would not see him for what he was.  John says that “he came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.”  There are all kinds of theories as to why they didn’t accept him, but they simply didn’t.

I’m supposed to be using my time today to talk about Jesus.  He is, after all, the reason there is a story at all.  Without Jesus, the rest of the characters in the story would have been living their lives much differently.  Joseph and Mary would have had a normal married life, would have had a family, and would have been saved the 2000 years of scrutiny they have faced.  But it’s hard to talk about Jesus in newborn form because he was simply born.  The miraculous thing he did was love enough to be born.  The song Levi and Jordan sang last week “Mary, Did You Know?” has a line in it that asks:  Did you know that the child you just delivered would soon deliver you?

The God of the universe, who created Joseph and Mary and knew them before they were born, would allow himself to be raised by this couple as their child.  This child would grow to be a man, perhaps with his parents never really understanding what it was he came to do.  “Save people from their sins” is a rather vague idea, after all.  The word “save” could mean so many things.

The fact was that Jesus came to die.  He came to be the sacrifice.  It’s impossible to remove Jesus’ death from his life because they are so intertwined.

Isaiah 28:16, 59:20

There is a wonderful book written by a man named T. H. White called The Once and Future King.  This is a tale about King Arthur, the fabled King of England who, it is told, will one day rule again as her king.  This book was basically a re-telling of much older British mythology.  In the title of the book and indeed in the telling of the story itself White alludes to, perhaps inadvertently, the impending return of a messianic figure, one who would restore England to her former glory.

Interestingly, when I read this book for the first time in high school, I was intrigued by the messianic metaphor seen in Arthur.  While this book is no allegory to the life of Jesus, it does raise some interesting similarities.

You see, there once was a king born in a town called Bethlehem.  His was named Jesus because he would rescue his people from their sins.  He was also called Immanuel because he was truly “God with us.”  Though he did not look like he was expected to look, make no mistake, he was The King.  And make no mistake, The King will return.

Isaiah prophesied that God would lay a stone in Zion, that it would be the Cornerstone.  It would be the foundation upon which everything else in his Kingdom would be built.  This would also be the Redeemer in chapter 59:20, the Redeemer who would save all those who turn from transgression.

As we close our series on Advent today I want us to be mindful of the King who was and will be again.  When Jesus came to earth he came as no one expected, even though there was prophecy that dealt specifically with his birth, life, and death.  He will come again someday and I would venture to guess that it will be as unexpected as his first coming.  Even though we have prophecy about what that will look like, there is no reason to believe we will get it right.  Most people missed him the first time around.

So there was a King and he will one day return.  We live in the in-between.  We live in the time period between times, the era in the middle.  What does this mean for us?  I read a quote several years ago and it struck me so much that I had to type it and print it out.  I hung it on the wall of my office while I was at Highland Park because I wanted to be reminded of its implications.  I don’t remember it completely, but I want to share the sentiment of it with you as we close today.

It was said:  We often speak of the second coming of Christ.  Most people have never heard about his first.

There is one week until Christmas day.  This is perhaps the most natural evangelistic season of the year.  What better time is there to tell people about King Jesus?  Why do we use it to perpetuate the capitalist system that tears us from our souls?  Why do we use it to cause more division among people?  Most people in the world don’t know Jesus.  Is this not the time to tell them?

Advent 2.3

Isaiah 7:14

The Lord himself will give you a sign.  The virgin will conceive and bear a son.  His name will be Immanuel.

I would love to spend time unpacking the implications of this prophecy for the original hearers, but that would take us from our goal this morning, which is to talk about the person of Mary, which is who this Messianic prophecy is about.  Isaiah, 700 years before Jesus would be born, predicted his birth.  Not only that, but he told us his name, “God with us.”

There are all kinds of thoughts a feelings about Mary as a person, which we will get into, but I want to think for a moment about the name we have, “God with us.”  Names used to mean something.  In Biblical times people chose names carefully, not because they were trendy or sounded cool, but because of what they meant.  The child’s name would be Immanuel.  The child’s name would not only be his name, but a representation of God’s physical return to earth.  Since the days of Adam and Eve God had not walked the earth.  He would appear in visions and dreams.  Certainly Moses saw something as God moved passed him, but in a literal sense, God had not walked the earth.  That would change.

God was coming here.  God was coming to earth.  God would be with us.

The virgin will conceive and bear a son.

Luke 1:26-38

There’s a wonderful discussion about the birth of John the Baptist in this chapter that we simply don’t have time to cover today, but I encourage you to read it.  There are so many miraculous things that happen in the pages of scripture that sometimes we overlook some of them.  Because the first chapter of Luke also deals with the birth of Jesus, I think we sometimes jump right over John, which is a mistake because the story of his birth is wonderful.

I was reading in a commentary while studying for this message and I was reminded that the Bible is always the story of God.  Whether we’re in the Old Testament talking about the nation of Israel, or in the New Testament talking about the church, the story is always about God.  We’ve been talking about the characters in the Christmas story.  Whether it’s the shepherds in the fields, Joseph, or Mary, however, the story is still about God.  With the shepherds it was how God announced the birth of his Son to regular people, foreshadowing the people with whom Jesus would spend most of his time.  Last week with Joseph we mentioned how God’s timing is impeccable.  He did things at exactly the right time in order to protect the infant Jesus and his family.

With Mary it’s similar.  The story is about Jesus.  The song says, “God sent his Son, they called him Jesus.  He came to love, heal, and forgive.”  God sent his Son.  Mary was the vessel chosen by God to bring Immanuel into the world.

Luke says that the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth.  Wouldn’t that have been a cool job?  In the previous two stories, we were simply told that an angel came.  Here we have the angel’s name.  I can’t possibly understand heavenly things and thinking about angels makes my head hurt because they are so other-worldly, but wouldn’t it have been cool to get that job?

“Gabriel”

“Yes, Lord.”

“I want you to go to Nazareth in Galilee.  Find a young girl named Mary.  She’s betrothed to a man named Joseph.  She’s a virgin.  Tell her that she’s going to give birth to my Son, Jesus.”

When Gabriel reached Mary, I imagine he could barely contain himself.  We’ve already seen the kind of fear angels inspire, think about an excited angel.  If you notice in scripture, he didn’t start with the words “Fear not.”  I wonder if he was too excited and forgot.  Instead he just shows up and begins with “Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!”

Max Lucado wrote a fictional account of Christmas called “Cosmic Christmas.”  In this short book he attempts to capture the atmosphere that must have been felt in Heaven and behind the scenes in the spiritual realm while the birth of Jesus took place.  We’re going to deal with some of this next week, so I don’t want to get too deep, but concerning Mary, can you imagine the esteem in which Gabriel held her?  She was going to give birth to the Savior of the world!  “Greetings, O favored one!”  She was the one.

It was at this point that Gabriel noticed she was a bit troubled.  Either she looked confused or she was cowering in a corner.  Whatever the situation, though, Gabriel noticed and then said, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.  And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.”

Then she spoke up and said, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?”

Last week when talking about Joseph, we mentioned how scripture stated that he was an honorable man.  It seems that when God chooses to use a person, he judges their character.  Were they perfect people?  By no means.  Were they sinful?  Of course.  But God used them because of their character.  Joseph was an honorable, faithful man.  Mary was innocent and pure.  Beyond that, though, she was humble.  In verse 35 we hear the angel tell her how this miraculous conception would take place.  God would make it happen.

There is a beautiful juxtaposition of the births of John the Baptist and Jesus.  They were both miraculous.  I think that’s why Luke chose to write about both in this one chapter.  John’s mother and father were old.  They had given up on the opportunity to have children.  Elizabeth was considered barren.  But God intervened.  It was so shocking that Zechariah, her husband, questioned the angel who told him.  Because of his lack of faith, he was unable to speak until the child was born.

It seems that the Bible is about God and his work among us.  God intervened and a child was born to Elizabeth.  His name was John.  He came to prepare the way for Jesus.  He came to call the nation of Israel to repentance so they might be able to accept their Savior for who he was.  God intervened.

Isn’t that the way he always does things?  God intervenes.  Perhaps things aren’t going well and then something miraculous happens that makes things better.  Perhaps someone is living life within their own power and something tragic happens to draw them back to God.  God intervenes.

An old woman became pregnant, but as shocking and unexpected as that was, it was at least plausible.  She had a husband.  It was unexpected and shocking, but sometimes strange things like that happen.  What was less likely, however, was that a virgin would become pregnant.  In fact, it couldn’t happen.  There was no way.  There are some natural laws that always work, after all.  A virgin can’t become pregnant.  It’s not possible.  Unless God intervenes.

A virgin was going to become pregnant.  What was unthinkable would happen, but no one was going to believe it.  It wasn’t going to be understood and like so many things that people can’t understand, it was going to be explained away.  Firstly it was going to be explained away by Joseph.  He was going to make the assumption that everyone else would and, because he was honorable, was simply going to not marry her.  He was going to put her away quietly, but not draw any undue attention to her.

It was going to be misunderstood by her parents, who would be ashamed because their daughter was going to be caught pregnant out of wedlock.  I’m not a parent, but I’ve worked with enough parents to know that you never think it’s going to be your child.  It’s not going to be your child that gets caught with drugs.  It’s not going to be your child that’s pregnant or the father of some girl’s child.  It’s not going to be your child.  For Mary’s parents, it was their child.  They didn’t understand.

It was going to be explained away by neighbors and friends.  Of course they knew what happened.  Maybe they thought Mary wouldn’t want to marry Joseph so she rebelled.  She got back at him and her parents before they were married so she wouldn’t have to marry him.  She refused to accept societal norms and just had to be her own person.  Teenagers always think they know best, after all.  Society wasn’t going to understand.  Then, when Mary ran off to her relative, Elizabeth, they all knew why.

Do you ever wonder what went through Mary’s mind at this point?  She was young, don’t forget.  It was like it had just been yesterday that she had been playing with her friends.  She probably didn’t plan her life this way.  Like most little girls, perhaps she imagined the man she would marry.  Maybe she thought about who he would be, what kind of life they would have together.  It’s safe to assume she never imagined this.

I wonder what went through Mary’s mind.  This was a lot to take in.  It’s sometimes hard to grasp context and length of conversations in scripture sometimes.  This is 13 verses.  It doesn’t really take us that long to read it.  I wonder if the conversation was just a couple of minutes long or if it took a while.  Just thinking about the amount of information Mary had to process is staggering.  I wonder what she thought about.  Her response in verse 38, though, is what is amazing.

“Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.”

This past Tuesday night, after our small group, it was discovered that we have a Kinect for the Xbox.  This is an attachment that uses infrared and photographic technology to allow you to use your body as a controller.  You don’t have to hold anything, you simply move and the sensors pick up your movement and translate that onto the screen.  It’s really quite amazing.

Anyway, this was discovered and it was suggested that it might be fun to play.  One of the games we bought to play was a dancing game.  I know what you’re thinking.  You’re thinking, “of course you bought a dance game.”  When you think about me, I know you think, “He’s got moves.”  Well I don’t.  I know that’s shocking to you, but I am not a dancer.  No, the dancer in the family is Amanda.  She’s always loved to dance and tries hard to make me a dancer, so we bought this game.  I like competition, so she thinks that if she can get me to compete with her, maybe I’ll like to dance.  Maybe so.

So we put in the game.  It turns out that there’s a song that Trent Cayce knew quite well.  He challenged Luke to a dance battle, but Luke didn’t know that Trent knew the dance.  I promise there’s a point to this story.  Unbeknown to Luke, Trent is prepared for the dance battle.  He went first.  We all watched mesmerized at Trent’s graceful moves.  He nailed the dance.  It was a sight to behold.  Then Luke’s turn came up.  In light of the knowledge he now had, he didn’t want to compete anymore.  Why?  He didn’t want to be embarrassed by not being able to do the dance like Trent.

Now this is a funny story with little meaning in the scope of human life, but I think it illustrates a universal truth about us as people.  We don’t like to be embarrassed.  We don’t like to be thought less of.  We don’t like to be made fun of.  If a dance battle was enough for Luke to back down, what does that say about Mary?  I’m not bringing this up at all to make fun of Luke.  I certainly would not have wanted to compete against Trent in a dance battle, maybe pick-up sticks or something, but definitely not a dance battle.

When I think about Mary, though, I marvel at her humble acceptance of what God was doing in her.  Perhaps we can imagine the scorn she faced.  Perhaps we can imagine the scandal.  But unlike situations we can imagine, none of this was her fault.  None of it was even true.  Beyond thinking of herself as a victim, however, she told Gabriel, “let it be as you say.”  She accepted the scorn.  She accepted the scandal.

How often do we simply accept life?  Last week we mentioned how life doesn’t always look the way we expect it to.  Things do always work out like we think they will.  We can either bemoan the fact the life is hard or we can embrace life for what it is and strive to be faithful with whatever we’re given.  Is life fair?  Of course not.  Life isn’t remotely fair.  One of my dad’s favorite things to say to us when we thought something wasn’t fair was “into every rain a little life must fall.”  My dad is clever like that.  We can sit in a corner, close our eyes, plug our ears and say “go away, world, go away, world” or we can stand up and continue to be faithful.  Mary had no reason to be pregnant.  She was a virgin.  The scorn and the scandal weren’t her fault, but she accepted them because God had a bigger plan.  She trusted that she really was favored by God, that God really would use her.  I think this is why God chose to use her in the first place, because she was humble.

Galatians 4:4-5

I want to close this morning with this passage in Galatians.  Paul, speaking of being heirs of God, uses the birth of Jesus to illustrate his point.  Again, this brings us to the timing of God.  Verse 4 says “when the fullness of time had come.”  God does things when he’s ready to do them.  As a former music minister in traditional churches, I used to direct choirs.  There was a Christmas musical we did that had a song called “At the Right Time.”  The first verse was “at the time of God’s own choosing, he came.  When we the fight were losing, he came.  Long before we knew him, when we were lost in sin; at the right time, at the best time, he came.”

“When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son.”  This son was not born because of anything man did.  Instead it was born because God intervened in the life of a humble girl.

My question for you today is this:  when God intervenes in your life, what it your response?  When God shows up in unexpected ways, what do you do?  I’m afraid that sometimes we cry that life isn’t fair.  I’m afraid that sometimes we fight what God is trying to do.  I’m afraid that sometimes we run from God.  I’m afraid that sometimes we don’t respond very well.

Mary’s life didn’t go like she expected, but it was the right time.  Everything was right in that moment.  She was betrothed to an honorable man.  A tyrannical government was going to call for a census that would draw them to the right city.  A madman was going to drive them to Egypt.  As much as was wrong with that moment, everything was right.

The characters in the story sometimes get the most credit, and truly these characters were special.  The shepherds were special precisely because they were not special.  Joseph was an honorable man.  Mary was humble.  The truly remarkable one here, though, was God.  It was the right time.  He chose the right people.  Immanuel would come.  God would once again be with us.  His name would be Jesus because he would save the people from their sins.

As much as it didn’t make sense, it was the perfect time.  It is God’s story, after all.  He gets to tell it.