Worship on 12/18/2011

 

Surprises and Impossibilities

Luke 1:26-38

 

The world is filled with fear.  An alphabetical listing of them begins with Allium-phobia which is the fear of garlic, runs through Lachhano-phobia, the fear of vegetables, and continues all the way down the list to Zammi-phobia, what I consider a healthy fear of mole rats.  We skipped over the more likely ones:  ecclesi-phobia which speaks to our fear of church, and homile-phobia, the fear of sermons. In addition, The Wall Street Journal says that we are victims also of “the fear system of newscasters” who shout headlines at us just short of announcing the end of the world next Thursday.  With this in mind, think for a moment of an angel breaking through the night to announce to that thirteen year old peasant girl, “Have no fear, Mary!”  You gotta be kidding!

 

Mary had every reason to be afraid.

 

When we don’t understand something, we are tempted to throw up our hands and cry, “Impossible!”  There were a lot of impossibilities as far as Mary was concerned.  Would an unmarried teenager have been chosen by God for such an important task?  Impossible.  And Elizabeth, an old lady married to an old man – she’s part of the natal story, as well.  Impossible!  Even her husband had doubts, and he was struck speechless for the nine months of her pregnancy.  And could Mary have survived the community’s  disgusting rumors about her;  impossible!?

How bad was it? 

 

According to the ancient custom of her time and place, she might not even have ever met Joseph, the prospective husband who had been picked out for her.  In arranged marriages – and most marriages were arranged – families worked such things through a “match maker” who traveled from village to village taking names of potential matches.  Love had nothing to do with it, in the beginning.  It was all a matter of family and dowry.  Make sure the families are properly attested to for some generations back – meaning, make sure they are Jewish through and through – and let’s determine who owes whom what.  And an angel says to Mary, “Surprise!  You’re pregnant!”   Impossible!

 

What does this mean?  It means that the religious authorities – down to the local rabbi – could demand “death by stoning”.  It is not a pretty sight:  the village elders standing around an open pit and dropping man-sized boulders down upon a young girl until finally a fatal blow is inflicted. 

If the death penalty should not be demanded, it meant that Mary would be sent away from the village in disgrace with perhaps no more than two options:  she could be sold into slavery or she could sell herself into prostitution.  She would have to care for the child – whatever her choices – and he would be known as a “mauzer”, an untouchable.  He would not be allowed to go to the synagogue, and he would not be allowed to receive an education of any sort.  He would be ostracized. His life would be of one akin to that of a leper. 

 

Mary had every right to be afraid!

 

But, the Angel said, “The Lord is with you.”

 

Mary must have had the faith of a saint, even at that early age.  As far as she knew, she was all alone.  She didn’t know that Joseph was on Gabriel’s visitation list that night, too.  She only knew that she had to make a decision – a life altering decision!  Talk about being under pressure:  how about being asked to become the surrogate mother of God?

 

Someone has posed the question – Do you think Mary was the first young girl Gabriel asked?  Or was she the third or forth young girl on the list – all of whom before her had said “No!”  Did God have a “plan B”?  Or, was Mary recognized by the heavenly host as somebody very special, the one God chose because God knew the heart of this peasant girl?  So, when Gabriel said, “The Lord is with you”, was this all the assurance Mary needed?

 

James Russell Lowell was a statesmen who served his country as Ambassador to Spain and then England in the 1880’s.  At that time, there was constant danger of war’s eruption.  His faith drove him to write one of my favorite hymns.  These words reflect the situation of Mary, too:

          Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide,

          In the choice of faith or falsehood, for the good or evil side.

 

Then, the last line of verse four says,

 

          And behind the dim unknown, standeth God, watching over

          his own.

 

Statistics would tell us that we live in the safest nation in the safest generation of all world history, so why are we also the most fearful?  Perhaps we should commit to memory the words of Paul in his letter to the Romans, “We know that in everything, God works for good with those who love him…If God be for us, who can be against us?”

 

Gabriel said “With God, nothing is impossible”

 

Have you ever tried to solve one of those word puzzles in the Sunday newspaper only because you knew that, should you fail, the answers were on page sixteen?  If life’s answers were on page sixteen every Sunday, the week would not be so fearful, would it?  But, the answers are no more available to us than are the instructions for child rearing stamped on every baby’s bottom.  Life has to be lived forward, moment to moment, in hope. 

 

But, it helps when we know how the story ends.  We’ve read the Book, and right back there in the last pages of The Revelation to John, we discover that all God’s people are going to be standing with saints and angels singing glad hosannas, hallelujahs, and sprinkled liberally with “glory”!

 

Mary didn’t know this yet, but Mary had faith that God was indeed with her and that “with God, all things are possible”.

 

What a wonderful way to live.  Mary did not get this from the morning headlines.  She lived where Rome ruled, where Rome exacted tribute, where Rome’s word was the word of law, and if anybody transgressed the law, they risked severe punishment.  There was no reason for her even to believe God would be gracious unto her.  And every reason to doubt it!  Perhaps Mary could not have lived from one day to the next without believing in a gracious God who looked over her and his people, but she survived.  It was hope that nourished her!

 

We live in a different world, a world that does not demand so much hope.  We have ample food, clean water, and border protection from our enemies.  As someone has written, “In previous times, people looked to heaven for all the good things of life, by and by;  we already have those things and do not need the vision of heaven any longer!” And this is truth, if all you wish for can be found in the multitude of catalogues that crowd your mailbox and the good things that flood your television commercials.  But, we are wise enough to know that all life cannot be bought or captured. We know that life is filled with surprises but that there are no impossibilities when we are with him who makes all things possible.