Surprise!

Surprise!

Luke 1:26-38

Here’s what I’d like you to consider this morning:  God loves a good surprise.  The story of our ancestors in faith began when God made the most surprising choice imaginable—God chose to care about a bunch of slaves.  The only thing that they really knew how to do was make bricks.  No one cared about them.  They were the lowest of the low.  And yet…God sent Moses (a fugitive from the law, himself) to confront the most powerful man in the world with one demand:  “Set my people free!” I choose them!

This was a completely undeserved, unmerited act of grace on God’s behalf.  This was the captain in gym class taking the kid with no skills and no social standing first.  (At which point, the rest of the class says, “What?”)  This was the popular girl in class approaching the guy that hid in the corners and telling him, “I want to go to prom with you.”  This was the day when you met the person whom you would marry some day but all you knew right away was that it was amazing that they even gave you the time of day.  This was the day, three years later, when you stood and watched them approach you down that aisle and you thought to yourself, “I must be the luckiest person in the world!”

God can work through anyone.  God seems to particularly work through those whom everyone else considers to be cursed by God:  a sick person or a foreigner, a tax collector or some hick from the country, a bent over woman or a man possessed by more spirits than you could begin to count.  God almost never chooses the cool people or the good looking people or the articulate people, although I suspect God might well have tried plenty of times. They’re just too busy or just too full of themselves.  Instead, God is like the person who goes to the humane society and adopts the dog nobody wanted:  “Okay…you’re coming home with me.  Let’s go!”

Or course, the story we tell about that dog that is rescued is that he or she will be the best dog ever…because they are so grateful, right?  If God chooses you what else could you be but grateful, right?  The Bible, though, tells a more complicated story.  The spirit of this is caught in the early “Garden of Eden” story, when human beings are given paradise but that paradise is lost because even paradise itself is not enough.  The Bible tells us that almost as soon as the mud dried on the sandals of the ex-slaves, they began whining that the food wasn’t good enough, that there wasn’t enough water, and that Moses had been gone too long.  When God promised to be their God, they asked for a king and a temple.  When David went from being a shepherd to being a king, he had no problem doing whatever it took to justify making another man’s wife his own.  The disciples are eager to follow Jesus at first but finally end up arguing about who is the greatest disciple and ultimately abandon Jesus in his hour of greatest need.  It turns out that God loves a good surprise.  It also turns out that it doesn’t take long for us to go from being unbelievably grateful to be chosen at all to feeling utterly entitled to ask what God has done for us lately.

This should come as no surprise at all!  The kid who was “out” all of a sudden is “in” and what does he do?  He treats the other kids who are “out” terribly.  The kid who gets asked to the prom swiftly moves from being full of gratitude to being full of himself.  And somehow, so many of us move from being so grateful on our wedding day that this person could possibly love us to being so irritated a few years later that this person could possibly squeeze the toothpaste from the middle or some equally trivial “violation” of what we deserve.  Of course, more often than not we are better than that and no one should be judged by their worst moment but still…still…we are “this close” to living out that worst part of ourselves.  It’s not hard to be grateful.  It is hard to live gratefully.  It’s hard to stay humble and see what God has given us rather than walking around acting as if we deserve so much more.

So…God’s about to roll out the biggest surprise of all.  The thing is that not one of the thousands and thousands of people who studied Scripture so carefully across centuries seemed to remember how God worked.  Having moved from God chose us to God owes us, our ancestors expected to see God finally live up to the world’s expectations.  God’s going to give us a king the likes of which the world has never seen.  God’s going to give us a warrior who will help us overpower the most powerful armies in the world.  God’s going to give us a spirit-filled leader who will outshine the temple, itself.  God is finally going to come through, big times, for us!

(Before we get all smug about our ancestors’ expectations, we should ask ourselves, how many people still today are waiting for God to send us that mighty ruler or are waiting for God to reward us for being the chosen nation or are waiting for God to send us the better-than-ever-before spiritual guru to guide us all?  How many people are just walking through life getting less than they think they deserve who have no problem putting God’s name at the top of the list of those who owe them?)

So…drum roll please…it is time for God to act!  Two weeks ago, we heard God do something really surprising—actually make an appearance at the temple, via an angel/messenger, Gabriel.  Gabriel tells Zechariah that he and his wife, Elizabeth, although they are older than dirt, itself, are going to have a baby and that baby is going to become the man who paves the way for God’s new work in the world.  And what happens?  Zechariah is not having any of that!  Then, there is a reversal.  This local priest, who probably always had something to say is silenced and his wife, who probably kept pretty much to herself because that was the law, speaks up.  Hmmm….this sounds a little familiar.

What happens after that?  Gabriel makes another appearance, this time not to an average, everyday priest in a holy place but to a young girl in some podunk town.  It would be hard to get much more on the “outs” than this.  This was happening in the middle of nowhere.  Nothing good ever happened there!  And, whatever it was that was happening involved not only someone who was young but someone who was female: wrong location; wrong age bracket; wrong gender, as far as everyone was concerned, except apparently, God.  Again, though, if you’ve spent time studying such things and you haven’t grown jaded, let’s just say that this is the kind of moment that should “smack” of the presence of God.

So, Gabriel seals the deal with his first words:  “Greetings, favored one!  The Lord is with you!”  We’ve heard the story so many times that we can’t even hear how utterly shocking those words would have been.  Young women were treated as if they were invisible in that world.  Who in the world would choose her except the same God who had chosen their ancestors centuries before?  As if that’s not enough, Gabriel’s promise to her is that she’s going to have a son and that son is going to be God’s child and that child is going to be given the throne of David.  There will be no end to his kingdom and, by the way, he will be called the Son of God.  (I like to imagine at the end of all this if someone came up to Mary and asked, “Mary…how was your day?”)

It’s not hard to piece together what Mary must have been thinking.  “I’m engaged.  How am I ever going to explain this child to Joseph?  What if he leaves me?  What if he files charges against me?  What if my life is in danger?  Even if Joseph stays, how will I ever hold my head up and walk through the village—everyone can do the math.  What will people think of me?  What will the people whom I love most—my family—think of me?  How can I possibly do this?” These were all very real concerns for a woman in Mary’s world and all very human questions to ask.  And yet, Gabriel’s words must have been ringing in her ears:  “Do not be afraid!”

We should acknowledge the fears and concerns that had to be there for Mary because there are real fears and concerns for anyone who is standing in a moment of calling.  Here is a person in need.  Here is a wrong that I need to right.  Here is something that is untrue that I need to confront.  If I do this, though, it will cost me.  Am I ready to pay that price?  What I know that I’m being asked to do here may change me.  Am I willing to be changed or am I going to hold out for the calling of my choice, the one where I can do the right thing and it won’t cost me anything?

I believe Mary must have struggled in her own way.  However, it is clear that she didn’t struggle for long.  Instead, she set aside her plans.  She set aside her fears.  She looked the angel, Gabriel, straight in the eye and said the only thing that she could say, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord.  Let it be with me according to your word.”

We really should burn that moment into our memories.  A person who is from the middle of nowhere who is way too young to be wise and way too female in a chauvinistic world to matter…she is the one who brings the Gospel to life before she gives birth to the one who would live it for all the world to see.  Who understands how God works in this world?  Not a priest.  Not a Pharisee or a Sadducee.  Not a king or a judge or a prophet.  Nope!  This young woman understands two things:  she’s here to serve God; and God’s the one who makes the plans.  “Thy will be done.”  Mary’s son would teach that to his disciples and would pray it in the garden on his last night on this earth.  Mary would get it right first:  “Let it be with me according to your word.”

From that point on, Mary would be a living reminder to us all that a life of faith always includes both joy and heartbreak:  here’s a baby—a gift of God and such a joy—but born in the most humble of circumstances; here’s a visit to the temple—a great comfort—but mixed in is a warning that this child would break her heart; here’s Passover in Jerusalem—such a joy—but marked by the disappearance of her son, only to discover him at the temple; here’s the son’s next disappearance, off to see John, into a whirlwind of a ministry, on a journey that would lead her to heartbreak as she stood at the foot of his cross.  That woman you overlooked?  Look again…what’s glowing through here is the presence of God.

Before the child was born, before she started the journey to Bethlehem, Mary framed the promise of what was to come:  “My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my savior!”  Look closely at Mary and you’ll see God at work.  Why?  Because you will see a humble person, a “nobody,” whom God looked upon and said, “Have I got a job for you!”  How amazing is the God who can do something like that!  We need to remember who God is and has always been… God is merciful.  God brings the powerful down.  God makes the people who are full of themselves humble again.  God lifts up the lowly and feeds the hungry.  This is what God has always done.  This is what God is about to do again.  

May we all make our way to the stable with Mary and be humbled in the presence of God’s servant… May we all hear God’s calling and respond:  “Here I am…Thy will be done."