The text of Pastor Karel’s sermon is below:
Remembering that God loved us First Luke 1:39-58
The angel says to Mary, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” She was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be.
I, too, wondered about this greeting. What does it mean to be favored by God? You would think that you would be blessed by God, protected, loved, live a life of comfort and ease. Live a perfect life. You would certainly expect that for Mary, knowing now who she is. But that’s not how Mary’s experience worked out at all. The favor of God turned out to affect her life in many challenging and difficult ways.
Mary was a simple peasant girl, probably around 15, who was engaged to be Joseph’s wife. Her life was moving along as any 15-year-old girl’s life would’ve been back then. But now everything was in jeopardy. She had become pregnant before she was married. This wasn’t the only thing that was difficult for Mary being “the favored one,” her whole life being shadowed.
It is kind of ironic that it says in Scripture that “the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be the son of God.” It sounds like amazing news, but to Mary, being overshadowed in her life ended up that she faced many challenges very traumatic circumstances.
It started out with her pregnancy. Being pregnant before being married would have brought her great shame in her culture. She would’ve been looked down upon by all the people in her village. It’s why she left town to go visit her cousin Elizabeth. She was looking for support, someone who would understand.
Then Joseph took her, still very pregnant, away from her home village on a donkey to a place where many people had gathered, There was no place for them to even lay their heads, except where they kept the animals for the Inn. That’s where she ended up having her child.
Though Angels, shepherds, and wise men visited, the circumstances must have been very difficult for her. On top of that, immediately after the birth of her son, the little family had to leave for Egypt, a foreign country, because their very lives were threatened by King Herod.
We don’t hear a lot about Mary as the mother of Jesus. But what we do know, it must have been difficult for her. On the way back from Jerusalem, Jesus at the age of 12 went off on his own. After three days of searching for him, they found him in the Temple. Having a 12-year-old disappear, and going his own way was another hardship Luke 2:48 When his parents saw him they were astonished; and his mother said to him, “Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.”
But he admonished them saying Luke 2:49 “Why were you searching for me? Do you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” Jesus must have been a handful and a worry for Mary. A little later she must’ve heard about his good friend John, that he was beheaded for his preaching. It must have been very difficult and challenging to be the mother of Jesus.
The next we hear is when the family tries to intervene when Jesus seems to be going off the deep end, challenging the powers that be by the way he lived his life and what he taught. When they went to pull him out of the house where he was again saying dangerous things, they heard the people inside saying Luke 8:20-21 “Your mother and your brothers are standing outside, wanting to see you.” 21 But (Jesus) said to them, “My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.” It must have been very difficult and challenging to be mother of Jesus.
The last we hear about his mother is that she is standing close to the cross on which her son is crucified. The final horror. But she learned that in the end his love for her was truly from God, for John 19:26-27 26 When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, “Woman, here is your son.” 27 Then he said to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.
Though Jesus life ended with that awful week in Jerusalem when he was accused, tortured and eventually crucified right before her own eyes, something was happening, and all this was bound up in that phrase “the favor of God”. And it was something Mary sang about. I wonder if in the back of her mind she remembered the song she sang, at his birth, about the prophecy of Isaiah, about what Jesus would do
Her song it is known as the Magnificat. It is one of joy realizing what Jesus meant for the world. “Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name.
His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty.”
It turns out that God’s Favor, being the Theotokos, the bearer of God’s son is that she has been given the opportunity to join, to become a partner in God’s work. At first Mary wonders if it is possible. How can this be? For she knows what she is facing in her life. The angel assures her “that nothing will be impossible with God”
Even though Mary knows what her journey with God would be like in the near term, and wonders and is perplexed about what her future will look like, she nevertheless says “here I am, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”
Today we are wondering what our lives will look like. We are celebrating this season of Advent of God being born is us today,
But then there is the reality of what is happening around us, what’s happening in the world, the division in our country, the sickness and death which we as a nation as a world are facing because of the pandemic, the isolation, the economic devastation. Worse yet are the divisions laid bare by the pandemic, that those who are poor, those who have jobs of service in the hospitality businesses, that those who are on the lower rungs of society, that those who are a people of color, are disproportionately affected, in fact their very lives are in jeopardy even without being sick.
Will we survive this time in our world? We are again faced with the wonderings in our hearts as Mary did when the angel came to her, when she discovered she was pregnant.
But we too can turn to the prophecies concerning Jesus, to events that have happened that can make us sing as Mary did. Prophecies that Isaiah spoke that Mary sings about.
Things that have happened when God was born in the hearts of others. We can sing as Mary did of times when deep divisions were overcome by the miracle of Jesus birth. We can sing as Mary did when we remember the miracle of the turning of the tides of racial apartheid occurred.
Remember that after 27 years of being imprisoned by the racist regime in South Africa of President De Klerk, Nelson Mandela was set free and became the first African President of South Africa, an unheard-of change of events. After years of slavery and injustice against black Americans, Martin Luther King Jr, became an icon of the possibility of racial justice which we are again being challenged with.
When we say “here I am, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word,” we feel from God whether it is to help someone, whether it is to forgive someone, whether it is to care for someone, whether it is to visit someone, whether it is to hold someone, when you are willing to allow the Holy Spirit, we feel the power of the Most High overshadow us, nothing will be impossible with God.
Most of us find it very difficult to believe that, especially in the divisive political climate we face. But we need to remember that our love occurs because God first loved us, that his love is more powerful even though we feel we are facing the worst circumstances.
As it says in 1 John 4:19 We love because he first loved us. Because of that love nothing will be impossible with God. God’s love is eternal, from the heavens, there when you where Psalm 139:15b when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
In the bloodiest part of World War 1, something happened that empowers our belief in the Advent of Jesus.
During World War I, even though the official political powers refused to call a truce for Christmas, the soldiers took matters into their own hands and brought about what eventually became known as the “Soldiers’ Truce.” British and German soldiers were locked in battle against each other, with each side hunkered down in soggy, cold trenches. Nothing but a barren no-man’s-land stood between them.
The orders on both sides were the same: if the least bit of movement was detected in the no-man’s-land, shoot to kill. Late on Christmas Eve, a British sentry was startled to hear singing coming from the German side.
It was a young German soldier singing, “Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht.” Immediately the British solider recognized the tune—”Silent Night.” At first, the British soldier began to hum along. Then he started to sing along with the English words.
As time went by, others on both sides began to unite their voices in singing other carols. When the sun began to rise on Christmas morning, signs were hoisted from the trenches on both sides. The one side raised a banner that proclaimed “Froeliche Weihnachten,” and the other side lifted a sign that declared “Merry Christmas.”
One by one the soldiers began to set down their rifles, and they climbed from the trenches. Stepping through the rusty barbed wire, soldiers from both sides met in the middle of the muddy no-man’s-land. They showed each other pictures of their families and girl friends. They exchanged gifts of cigarettes and candy. By the middle of the morning, when the officers became aware of what was taking place, they ordered their men to return to their own trenches, and the “Soldiers’ Truce” had come to an end.
But for those few brief hours on that Christmas Day, the love of the Prince of Peace ruled in the midst of that battlefield. Who notices the faithful servants of God, the people who do what’s right and good and caring? Who notices? God does. It may not seem like those who serve are winning, but they are. Christmas belongs to the few who live in wonder at the coming of Christ, and respond as servants, “Here am I, body and soul.”
No one who understands Christmas stays the same. If we believe that the love of God changes the world, then we’ll change the way we see our world. God’s way of love will become our way of seeing. The work of Christ’s hands will be continued in the work of our hands.
We’ll have compassion for all people—especially the ones that usually go unnoticed. We will care for the hungry, elderly, for those of color, pray for the hurting, and comfort the brokenhearted. We’ll live with a passion for what’s right in a world that’s mostly wrong.
The way to celebrate Christmas is to believe in the God who first loved us, who fills the hungry with good things and who turns it all upside down. God’s people discover that God’s ways are wonderfully peculiar. Because Christ has come, we are invited to walk out of step with the rhythms of the world.