Luke 1:26-38

2 Samuel 7:1-16

Thanks to Brooke for sending me the picture that you find on the front of your bulletins from the Huffington Post. (December 14, 2011)  The picture is from a billboard that was erected in Auckland, New Zealand this past Tuesday by St. Matthew-in-the-City, a progressive Anglican Church well known for its provocative advertisements.

Reactions to the sign gathered by Auckland local television station 3 News included comments from locals that the sign was “really weird” and that it was “inappropriate to have outside a church.” However the pastors of the church defended the billboard, saying that it depicts a very real reaction.  “Regardless of any premonition, that discovery would have been shocking. Mary was unmarried, young, and poor. This pregnancy would shape her future,” the two pastors said in a joint statement.

On their church website, they further explain: it’s real.  Christmas is real.  It’s about a real pregnancy, a real mother and a real child.  It’s about real anxiety, courage and hope.   She was certainly not the first woman in this situation or the last.

It was the church’s intention to avoid the sentimental or trite and they wanted to spark people’s thought and conversation in the community.  They continue on the website: Although the make-believe of Christmas is enjoyable – with tinsel, Santa, reindeer, and carols – there are also some realities.  Many in our society are suffering: some through the lack of money, some through poor health, some through violence, and some through other hardships.  The joy of Christmas is muted by anxiety.

In an effort to engage people beyond their initial reaction to the sign, the church’s website invites readers to write their own captions for the image. (Look at the picture as you hear these.)

Some suggestions include:

• “God give me strength to accept the things I cannot change.”
• “HOLY MOTHER of GOD…oh…that’s right…it’s me…”
• “Yay, I hope it’s a girl”

The comments continue to roll and you can check them out at the website. We have included the address on the cover of your bulletin.

In our passage from Luke, the Common English Bible translates Mary’s reaction as “confused.”  Most women I’ve talked to are shocked and surprised to find out they are pregnant even when they are trying to become pregnant.  Getting the news from a heavenly being had to be more than confusing!  Eventually Mary’s response is “How can this be?”

How indeed! I invite each of us to think about the times that we have felt called by the divine to do something that was impossible.  My friend Jane, was a supervisory social worker at an agency where she did important work and actually made decent money (for a social worker.) She felt clearly called by God to quit her job and open a free medical clinic, out of nothing, with initially no resources and I don’t think ever, if much, salary. She did it.  The clinic made use of hundreds of skilled volunteer hours and served hundreds of people. Now Jane helps set up free clinics all over the nation.  How can this be?

A member of our congregation moved away from her abusive parents when she was an adult.  In their later years, when they started to become more frail, she clearly felt called by God to invite them to live near her.  She has cared for them in the midst of their decline and has even been given the grace to love them. How can this be?

I’m sure that if each of you think about it for a bit, you can think about the ways that you have felt the divine nudging you toward an opportunity that seems, on the face of it, completely impossible.  In faith, you take the small steps forward and find the courage to continue. How can this be?

This is the new CRAZY way that God is getting stuff done around here.  God finds ordinary people like us, like Mary…teenaged girl from Nowhere, Nazareth, and pitches a big plan. Then we, the once ordinary, newly named “O Favored One” get busy carrying out the plan. God uses ordinary people to do the extraordinary.

This is not the way that God got stuff done in Samuel.  (At least according to the writer of Samuel!) In our reading, we meet David when he is the king settled in his house.  The text says that the Lord had given him rest from all his enemies. So to find out how the King became settled in his house, you read back a few chapters in second Samuel to the stories about David and his troops marching on Jerusalem, after King Saul’s son Ishbaal was assassinated and beheaded.  After the head is presented to David then David had the messengers killed, and their hands and feet cut off. But then the group anointed David King. After gaining Jerusalem, David takes more concubines and more wives, then he has to kill all of the Philistines, and THEN he gets to settle in his house and have rest from his enemies. It’s a short rest. If you read on in second Samuel,  the wars and killings continue.

The gospel brings a huge new shift in how God is going about God’s work. Instead of kings that defeat huge people groups in battles to win the spoils and wear the crown, God brings a new ruler through an ordinary earthy way: the birth of a child. God chooses an unknown woman and through her a child is born, a child who brings hope and healing to the world.

This is a very simple sermon with a simple point.  God needs ordinary people like you and me to carry out God’s work in the world. That is how God changes the world. That is how the world becomes the realm of God…through us.  How have you heard God’s call to you?  What is it that God expects of you?

My sister and I were reflecting last evening on the life of her husband Carl who passed away seven weeks ago.  Some of you may have met Carl as he attended this service when they were in town.  While Carl was on hospice, thinking back on his own life, thinking about his death, he felt sad that he hadn’t done something great with his life.  I don’t know if he had hoped to make a Steve Jobs kind of mark on the world, perhaps we all hope for that.  But he wanted to do more.  Carl’s incredible passion was what we would describe as evangelism.  He would tell anyone anywhere about how he had experienced God’s great love, and how he hoped that they would as well. His passion for evangelism was invitational and infectious.  He loved to share the good news.  Cindy (my sister) told her husband that his greatest accomplishment, his most profound mark upon the world was that he was a wonderful husband and father. He put his family first. He spent a lot of time with his wife and his sons.  He was kind, loving, patient, and supportive.  Was Carl ordinary?  Absolutely.  He was one of those “fade into the background” kind of guys unless he was your dad or your husband.  His eldest son is now a wonderful husband and father as well. I’m sure the younger one will be as well.  Carl, an ordinary guy, answered the call of the divine to share the good news, and to be an excellent husband and attentive father.  Simple things. That is how God is getting stuff done these days.

All of us can move from “how can this be” to Mary’s final words: “let if be with me according to your Word, for as the text says: Nothing is impossible with God.