Nothing Will be Impossible With God

 

Scriptures: 2 Samuel 7:1-11; 16, Luke 1:26-38

 

It may seem as though we are working backwards these past two weeks.  The scripture passage we read today from Luke comes before the one we used last week, which was Mary’s visit to her cousin Elizabeth and Mary’s stirring song of praise (the Magnificat) which set the parameters for our imagined trek from Nazareth to Bethlehem.  (By the way, I realized after conversations at the coffee hour last week that I should have said a bit more about that visit – the baby in Elizabeth’s womb was actually John the Baptist, and he had come to her as a miracle child, for she had been barren for many years, as an angel appeared at the altar to her husband Zechariah.  When Jesus thus comes to John to be baptized when they are both adults they are related – both coming from the house and lineage of David.)

The passage that we read today is usually referred to as The Annunciation.  The angel Gabriel announces to Mary that she will be the mother of the Son of God.  She isn’t asked if she wants this honor.  She isn’t told what’s going to be in store for her.  She wasn’t given much of a chance to clear up her confusion.  Kate Huey puts it this way:

“And that brings us to how God is doing such wonderful and seemingly impossible things here in this story about Mary and an angel’s astonishing announcement.  We note that it isn’t called ‘The Request’ or ‘The Invitation’ but ‘The Annunciation.’  And we suppose that God could have chosen to save the world, to fulfill God’s promises of old all on God’s own; after all, nothing is impossible with God.  However, this humble but earth-shaking conversation tells us that God wants humanity to be part of the effort, even if it makes things much more complicated and even difficult (which it definitely does).”

Having been given this announcement of her special status, Mary then makes the visit to Elizabeth, and because of the baby John leaping in her womb Elizabeth sees how blessed Mary is and how the time is about to be fulfilled.  And so begins the sequence of events that will lead to the birth of Jesus.

Now let’s go back to that announcement.  It is a scene much depicted by artists down through the centuries.  Episcopal priest Barbara Brown Taylor in a meditation on The Annunciation talks about the artists who have taken up this theme:

“While their styles and colors have varied, Mary is always the picture of femininity, dressed in yards and yards of silk or brocade, her golden hair plaited like a crown around her head, her nails perfectly manicured.  She looks so composed that it is hard to remember she is just a girl who has had precious little experience with men, or angels, or the world.

“She is usually shown either spinning or reading at her prayer desk, absorbed in her work when out of nowhere comes this magnificent angel, as beautiful as she is, dressed like a papal emissary with a tiara on his head or a garland of flowers studded with flames.  In most pictures the feathers of his great, spread wings are white, but in at least one medieval painting they are the feathers of a peacock, all iridescent greens and blues.  In his hand he holds a lily, an olive branch, or a royal scepter – signs of the purity, peace, and authority he brings from above.

“Somewhere in the annunciation scene you can usually find a dove, a sign that what is happening is happening under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, but down below, everything depends on Mary.  Gabriel is not standing over her.  He is kneeling in front of the girl upon whose answer he, and God, and the whole creation depend.”

Taylor goes on though:  “But Mary did not really get to give an answer, did she?  The angel did not ask her if she would like to be the mother of God; he told her that God had been gracious to her, that she would bear a son, and that he would be the king of Israel forever. The angel did not ask her how that sounded to her and whether she would like to try out for the role. The Lord is with you, he told her, and Luke tells us that Mary was much perplexed by his words.”

Can you put yourself in her shoes?  How perplexed would you be if you were told you were going to be carrying the Son of God?  (Men, for the sake of this exercise imagine that you are being told you must adopt and bring up the one who is to become our Savior.)  She is not given a choice.  For most of us this would be off-putting at the very least if not indeed a deal-breaker.  We want to be in control of our own lives.  If given this kind of an opportunity, we’d at least want to have some input into the decision-making.  But no:  “And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus,” Gabriel tells her.  No wiggle room there.  No chance for qualms like, “But what if I don’t think I can really handle this?”

The thing that is most impressive to me about this lack of choice is how it propels Mary to an acceptance that leads to rejoicing:  “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word….. My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.”  That felt need for choice is a modern phenomenon; in the absence of seeming choice Mary actually chooses acceptance.  And in her acceptance she finds all of her purpose in being that she will ever need.  She doesn’t run away.  She doesn’t ask the angel to leave her alone.  No, she listens carefully and seeks to understand the meaning of what is happening to her.  This is the beginning of what Presbyterian minister Philip McLarty calls “a faithful response” – that is, “It allows for the fact that there’s so much more to God’s creation and God’s will for our lives than we can possibly ever know or fully comprehend.”

I want to deal here just for a moment with the idea of the “virgin birth” – this “impossible possibility”, to use Reinhold Niebuhr’s phrase.  The gospel writers are taking their cue from Isaiah 7:14 which, in the King James, says “Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.”  But the Hebrew word being translated here is almah, which simply means “young woman”, and indeed the NRSV translates Isaiah, “Look, the young woman is with child…..”  The point therefore is not to dwell on Mary’s sexual status – or lack thereof – or on the seemingly miraculous nature of the conception, but rather on Mary’s response.  Out of initial perplexity and incredulity grew that faithful response of acceptance and rejoicing which is Mary’s gift to us.  We can venerate Mary not because of her status but because of what she offers to us about how to live faithful lives.

Christians in the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, and most Lutheran churches refer to Mary as the Theotokos, which literally means Birthgiver of God.  We Protestants tend to downplay this title, but in so diminishing Mary’s role we may be throwing the baby out with the bathwater (pun somewhat intended).  We need to realize that she has a very significant role as the place where our savior resides.  Henry J. Langknecht, associate professor of homiletics at Trinity Lutheran Seminary, puts it this way:  “Mary was visited by Gabriel and called by God to find a place, to make a home for Jesus.  Her body was to be that place.  Her womb was to be the home of God.  Part of the mystery of the incarnation is that somehow the creator of every place and every home in the universe asked for and was granted a particular home in the womb of Mary of Nazareth.”

I was struck as I read through the materials for this week about how much this time of year is about home.  “There’s No Place Like Home for the Holidays;” “I’ll Be Home for Christmas;” “Home is Where the Heart Is.”  A major emphasis in the Christmas story is how Jesus has no place to go in order to be born, but perhaps a more significant emphasis should be placed on the home that Mary does give him – her own womb.  Her faithful acceptance of Gabriel’s announcement means that God will have a human home on earth.

And so it is with us.  Each day Christians are invited to live into Mary’s paradox of being the small place where the maker of all things can dwell.  As Henry Langknecht says, “Jesus lives in us as surely as we live in him….. Every time we provide a place, pour a drink, open a door, extend an invitation, ask someone to tell his or her story, make room or provide a home, Mary’s song becomes our song.”

It is therefore fitting that we have both our consciences and our consciousness expanded during this time of year about the homeless.  I was really pleased when Jessica brought to our attention that camp of homeless just off the 515 and solicited our help as a congregation in responding to them.  Quite possibly (and not just because of the weather) this is the single most difficult time of the year to find oneself to be homeless.

In the lectionary scripture that we read from 2 Samuel King David has repulsed the Philistine army and brought the Ark of the Covenant back with him to Jerusalem.  He is settling into his new house, feeling right at home as a king ought to feel, and so decides to build a house of cedar for God.  Initially, the prophet Nathan (who will prove to be a thorn in David’s side after he gets involved with Bathsheba) agrees and encourages David:  “’Go, do all that you have in mind; for the Lord is with you,’” he says.  But then “the word of the Lord” comes to Nathan, and he changes his tune.  God is content to reside in a tent or a tabernacle and to move among the people.  The house that the Lord wishes to be built is rather a house of descendents that will last forever.  The house of the Lord is a house of people.  Thus it is that the messiah comes to Mary, to the people, through the house and lineage of David.

We often like to think of ourselves as a pilgrim people – a people on the move who are not confined to this one place.  I like to think of the Christian life – and especially the life of a congregation – as a kind of systole and diastole:  the rhythmic relaxation and contraction of the heart chambers as the ventricles fill with blood which is then released back into the body.  We come together here in this church building – this church home – to have our hearts re-charged, renewed, filled once again – and then we go out into the world in order to release the blood of Christ into God’s body.  We move in-and-out, back-and-forth – both to find our home and to leave our home and then to find it again and then to leave it again…and on and on.  This is why God is telling Nathan to tell David that there can never be a permanent residing place for the Lord of Hosts.  God will always and ever be with all the people.

And yet…and yet….. Mary has made a home for our Lord.  Once again we are back in the theological category of paradox, for God has been given this human home even though God is always and ever with all the people.  And because we live in this paradox we have our own parts to play.  Barbara Brown Taylor, once again, has said that while the angel didn’t ask Mary for her assent, Mary does have a choice,  ”whether to say yes to it or no, whether to take hold of the unknown life the angel held out to her or whether to defend herself against it however she could.”  We have a similar choice in our own lives, Taylor says: “Like Mary, our choices often boil down to yes or no: yes, I will live this life that is being held out to me or no, I will not; yes, I will explore this unexpected turn of events, or no, I will not.”  You can say no to your life, Taylor says, “but you can rest assured that no angels will trouble you ever again.”

Kate Huey concludes her meditation on The Annunciation with these words, which may become ours on this week before Christmas:  “Trusting that all things are possible with God requires a leap of faith, not only for Mary but for us today.  And, like Mary, we will still have questions. William Brosend, for example, wonders, ‘If nothing will be impossible with God, why does so much in the lives of the parishioners seem such a mess?’  (That’s a very good question for us in our congregation after the trauma of this past week.)  He responds, ‘That nothing is impossible with God does not mean that God will do anything and everything.  On this Sunday it means that God will do this thing.  Which makes everything else possible.’”

How will you bear the baby – the Christ child – in your life this day?

Amen.

Dave Pomeroy

First Congregational Church/United Church of Christ
Las Vegas, NV
December 18, 2011