Luke 1:26-38

12/07/08
Luke 1:26-38
Hudson UMC

As we continue in the season of Advent, it would do us well to be reminded of some of the stories that go along with the Christmas narrative. Many of us have heard the story over and over; some grew up hearing it every year in the church, others simply picked it up from the culture. We know that Christmas is incredibly important, but how often do we think about how significant the birth of Christ really is? I want to talk a bit about the Annunciation to Mary and raise some issues that will hopefully help you to better understand the Christmas season and appreciate the loving gift that God has given us in His Son.

When the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, he visited a young virgin named Mary. He began the conversation by saying, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” She was puzzled, and wondered what sort of greeting this might be. She was completely unprepared for what was coming. His message was somewhat different than she might have expected. You see, she might not have been surprised if the angel was going to tell her that the Messiah, the chosen one of God, was coming and to spread the news. He might have made promises to her about the nature of her firstborn son, like he had to Zechariah and Elizabeth and many others throughout history. What she was probably not prepared for was to be told that she was not only going to give birth to the Messiah, but that this Messiah was going to be the very Son of God, not merely a great and blessed human being. Further, since this was going to be God’s child and not Joseph’s child, and because it needed to be clear that the child had no human father at all, she was going to become pregnant through the Holy Spirit before she married her fiancé.

Now, I want to remind you of what Gabriel had said. He referred to her as “favored one”. Have you ever thought about what this might mean? What is going to happen to Mary because she is favored of God? Well, she will become the mother of Christ, the vessel that God used to bring salvation to the world, but what else does it mean? It means that Mary is going to be pregnant out of wedlock and if you remember the shame that went along with it fifty years ago, it was far worse. She would have been intensely shamed and called names by the rest of society. Her husband-to-be, Joseph, was legally allowed, and indeed encouraged to break off the engagement, which would have been as serious as divorce at the time. If this was not bad enough, she would be accused of adultery which was punishable by death under the laws that God Himself had given. Now, on top of that, think of the physical difficulties, being nine months pregnant, traveling a very long way on a donkey, and arriving at a new city where there is no hospitality. Does that sound “favorable” to you?

The thing we need to remember is that God knew all the hardships that would come about when He decided to include Mary in His plan in this way. None of this was hidden from Him, yet He still calls her “favored one”. The fact of the matter is that this is not even remotely what we would call “favor”, and yet God does not tell lies. I think that this is a challenge to make us rethink what it means to be “favored of God”. Does it mean that we will be financially prosperous? Does it mean that everyone will like us and we can just live a life like everyone else but better? Not if we believe that Mary was truly favored by God.

For two thousand years, we have used the Gospel to reinforce the status quo, to maintain power and to try to convince ourselves that, since we are Christians, we deserve better than other people and should have greater privileges because we are the “children of God” in a bigger sense than others are. The worst part of it is that we tend to do this by making an appeal to what “the Bible says”. The reason that this is bad is because this is not remotely what the Bible says, particularly not in the New Testament. Mary is “favored” and God shows it by making her an outcast, one despised by her relatives and pitied by all. What does Jesus say about true discipleship? He says things like “Blessed are you when people hate you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy,” and “If any want to become my followers, let them take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake for the gospel will save it.” The apostles aren’t any better. Peter says things like, “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that is taking place among you to test you as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you are sharing Christ’s sufferings, so that you may also be glad and shout for joy when his glory is revealed.” James says, “My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind consider it nothing but joy, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance.” Paul, the great early teacher of the church, adds his voice to those overturning our understanding of “favor” and “blessedness”. “For God has graciously granted you the privilege not only of believing in Christ, but of suffering for Him as well.”

What does this mean for us in the Advent and Christmas seasons? We celebrate the coming of God into the world in Jesus Christ. Do we believe that, in doing this, God has blessed us and made us favored? We are somewhat torn. We want to believe that God has blessed us, but we might not be too excited about the consequences of being one of God’s favored ones.

So, what does it mean to be favored by God? It clearly doesn’t seem to be the same thing as being favored by human beings because of all the hardship that it brings. So, is God a liar? Do the difficulties that come along with God’s favor transform it into disfavor? Did the hardships that Mary had to go through make her really “unfavored” rather than “favored”? I do not think so. Though Mary was ostracized from her family, though she was always viewed with suspicion, though people thought throughout Jesus’ life that he born of an adulterous relationship, she was still the one that God used to bring Jesus, the only hope of salvation, into the world.

The writers of the New Testament assure true Christians that they will suffer persecution for their faith. Why is that? Why in the world would people hate real Christians? We can all think of reasons why people would hate false Christians: they’re closed-minded and judgmental, they are self-righteous and gossip about other people. There is no shortage of reasons why people would not like people who are not truly following Jesus, but real Christians, real disciples, people who are really living Christlike lives? It is difficult to understand this because we all acknowledge Jesus as a really nice guy, who just wanted everyone to get along; it is increased because we have somehow convinced ourselves that this is a Christian nation, so we think that everything related to Jesus should command the utmost respect.

The fact of the matter is that there is someone referred to in the Scripture as the “prince of this world”, the devil, who has much more of an influence over how people think and live than we would ever like to admit. Christians live in rebellion to the prince of this world and refuse to do his will. Instead of being self-centered, Christians insist on being like God, centering our lives around others and considering them better than ourselves. We refuse to speak evil of people because we are acutely aware of our own sin. It is because of these things that the world hates real Christians. We are actively at war with the forces of evil in this world and the world knows it and will do whatever it can to stop us, by telling us that, in order to be “polite” we need to keep our religion to ourselves, that the cruelest thing any human being could ever do is imply that “how everyone else lives” is fundamentally sinful and ought to be renewed by the power of Christ, and other, sometimes even more insidious tactics. The world does not like Christians because we follow Christ, the same Christ who said, “The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify against it that its works are evil.”

In light of this, can there be any surprise among Christians that the world does not like Christians or the Christian way of life. The birth of Christ was the equivalent to D-Day in the war between Satan and the Triune God. It was the invasion into enemy territory to reclaim it and it turned the tables of the war. Once the allied forces landed at Normandy, it was only a matter of time before Europe was reclaimed; once God became flesh and invaded the territory of the “prince of this world”, the battle was already won. Those who do not love the Lord do not want to celebrate Christ’s birth, or indeed anything having to do with Christ. However, the celebration has already rooted itself into our American way of life and the retail business is counting on it. In response to this, our secular, consumer culture has retained the trappings of this joyful season, but emptied it of its core making it, for many people, the most depressing time of the year. So now we are left with fighting to celebrate what Christmas is actually meant to commemorate, rather than something else entirely.

The point of all this is not for me to go off on a rant about how secularized our culture has become but to be a challenge to see the favor of God in a new way. In the midst of countless preachers telling people that God’s greatest desire for all Christians is to become wealthy, I am telling you that God’s greatest desire is for us to become like Christ, even in all His humility, his love, and his willingness to lay His life down for His friends. Mary is a good example to consider. Mary was no fool, she knew exactly what it meant to become pregnant out of wedlock. She knew exactly how she would be treated, she knew the shame that she would be made to feel and the isolation that this would cause. And yet, even in spite of this, her response to the angel of the Lord is, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” She did not say “yes” idly, only to find out how hard it was going to be later on. She was knowingly, willingly, and joyfully saying, “God, receiving your blessing will turn my world upside down. I want you to make me an outcast, a pariah that the world will say should not even live. I want you to make my life extremely difficult and use me in such a way that I will be gossiped about and treated poorly, because you have something far greater than I can even imagine planned and you are going to use my hardships to deliver the world!” Paul did not write until after this, but Mary would have agreed with his claim, “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us.”

We are nearing ever closer to the time that we will celebrate the coming of God into our world. Out of all the ways that God could interact with us, He chose, in His divine wisdom, to come as a weeping wailing baby. Why did He do this? Martin Luther once said that God came as a baby because it is the only way that we would not be afraid of Him. God is saying to each of us today, just like He did to Mary, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” He might not do the same things in our lives that He did in hers, but it is still glorious and it will still bring hardships. Giving our lives to the resurrected Christ is not easy and might cause us to step back from some of the things of the world, but it is far greater. We are the favored of the Lord, let us give our thanks and praise and hold on tight, for it is a wild ride. Let us pray.

AMEN