Text: Luke 1:26-56

It happened on a Wednesday. In Galilee a very long time ago on some ordinary and unknown Wednesday, Joseph and his family representatives met with the fam­ily representatives of a young girl (13 or 14) named Merium - Mary to us. At that meeting a betrothal con­tract was signed. Such contracts for maidens, virgins if you please, were always drawn up on Wednesdays. Be­trothal contracts for widows became business for Thursdays. For young Mary now everything seemed so set, so final, so right, now that the contract was signed.

Mary and Joseph - very common names, particularly Mary.  Every family it seems had a Merium named after Moses' sister. Girls were not named after their fathers and grandfathers; that honor was reserved for sons. In fact, many girls were not named at all until they were several years old. Indeed it was common for a family to have more than one girl named Mary. Mary the elder and Mary the younger they were usually called. And so it was that on an ordinary Wednesday long, long ago an utterly ordinary. Mary was betrothed to an ordinary Jo­seph.

Joseph himself was no scholar. He was not a rabbi. He had no college degree, no B.A., M.A., or Ph.D. in clinical psychology or philosophy. No, Joseph was the industrial arts type - a carpenter. He and utterly ordi­nary Mary who looked like a hundred other nearly name­less, dark-eyed, olive-complexioned Marys were betrothed in a little backwoods town called Nazareth.

Perhaps Mary would have been perfectly happy to have been an ordinary Jewish wife and mother. But God interrupted this idyllic scene. He sent His angel Gabriel with

AN AMAZING ANNOUNCEMENT

The angel said to Mary:

"Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus."

"He will be great, and will be called the Son of Most High; and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; and of his kingdom there will be no end."

And Mary said to the angel, "How shall this be, since I have no husband?"

And the angel said to her, "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 called holy, the Son of God .... For with God nothing will be impossible" (Luke 1:31"-35, 37, RSV).

This message is amazing because of the nature of it. Just when we begin to learn enough about God's sys­tem of nature to understand its reliability, God, in the central event of all history, decides to supersede it. He proclaims an amazing announcement that

no law of physics can explain, that

no scientist can hypothesize, that

no computer can predict...

Quite beyond the boundaries of biology God an­nounces that the Son of the Most High will be born of a virgin!

It is an announcement so amazing, so supranatural and suprarational that ever since people, especially theologians, have been scurrying about trying to ferret out a natural explanation for it all. For we, especially the theologians, can no more tolerate something supra­rational than we can tolerate a roach in our soup.

It was an amazing announcement, but it was also

AN AMAZING ASSIGNMENT

How amazing that God chose utterly ordinary Mary. But it is not just her ordinariness that makes her a risky choice. Consider, for example, Mary's age - she is a 14-year-old kid. How in the world can God trust such an important role in cosmic redemption to a 14-year-old kid? You know what 14-year-old girls are like - they are giggly junior highers, they freak out over rock and roll singers, they are boy-crazy, they wear T-shirts with ab­surd sayings on them. Immaturity of the rankest sort! It looks like God could have found a devout, virginal type of woman of 35 or so. Sarah was nearly a hundred when she gave birth, wasn't she? Mary was a high risk and an amazing choice. How could she have even worked out her teenage identity crisis-probably didn't even know who she was yet.

If you don't believe me, ask the developmentalists. Ask Piaget, Kohlberg, Erickson. Ask James Fowler and George (prove anything) Gallup. Have they not proven that Mary at age 14 with her impoverished environment could only have a "stage 2" faith when a "stage 5" would be needed for such an assignment as this? Why, Mary could only have the faith of a child. Maybe that's why when Mary's son grew up and became a Rabbi He kept saying over and over that only those with childlike faith would ever see the kingdom of God.

It was indeed an amazing announcement, and an amazing assignment, but I am even more astonished at

MARY'S AMAZING ACCEPTANCE

At first Mary was "greatly troubled at the saying" and "considered in her mind" what all this meant (v. 29, RSV). Wouldn't you be "greatly troubled" and do some considering as well?

Mary was greatly troubled, but considering it seriously she responded with these amazing words: "Let it be to.me according to your word" (v. 38, RSV).

What was she agreeing to? At what cost would she say, "Let it be to me according to your word"? Just what did Mary put to risk in order to obey God?

First, she certainly risked family rejection and disapproval. She would have to bear the burden of bringing disgrace to the family. What would her brothers and sisters say? What would her parents think? Oh, you say, surely her par­ents would understand-they would believe her story. Perhaps, but they would believe her to about the same degree that you would believe your 14-year-old who turned up pregnant and said, "God did it."

Further, Mary risked public disapproval; in saying, "Let it be to me according to your word" she was accepting the assignment to be gossip bait in a small town. Notice the wording of Matt. 1:18, "she was found to be with child" (RSV). She agreed to the risks of being pregnant out of wedlock when that brought the bitterest sort of despising.

Scholem Asch, in his historical novel Mary says that the traditional wedding ceremony included the require­ment for the bride to sit in front of her father's house for parts of three days. She was to have her hair loosed, and she was to be dressed in white to signify her virgin­ity. There she sat to receive greetings and good wishes from one and all. But Mary was found to be with child, or, as they would have said in those days, she already had a baby beneath her heart. Do you suppose Mary went through with this? What kinds of greetings from pas­sersby would a pregnant girl dressed in bridal white re­ceive? If you were the parents, would you allow your pregnant teenager to sit as a spectacle before all, and pregnant, protest that she was pure? But that was the kind of risk that the troubled young Mary agreed to when she said, "Let it be according to your word." What an amazing acceptance.

But there was more risk. Surely as far as she knew when Mary accepted this amazing assignment she was saying a final good-bye to her fiancé. There goes her chance for love and marriage and family. Surely the just man Joseph would have nothing to do with her now. He could never understand. Would he not now cast her out like a loathsome leper?

There was this too - if her faith turned out to be fe­vered fantasy, with Joseph went her means of economic support. Wife and mother was about the only vocation offered in those days to utter1y ordinary Marys. Who would want her and her illegitimate child now?

But Mary's amazing acceptance meant a still greater risk than all this. Jewish law provided that a betrothed maiden being discovered to be with child by a third per­son was to be stoned to death. If she was a priest's daughter, she was to be burned to death. However, in later times this had been· mitigated to mere death by strangulation. But being willing to risk her very life to serve God Mary answered, "Let it be to me according to your word."

In short Mary jeopardized everything that really matters - family, reputation, love and marriage, financial security, and her own mortal life-in order to serve God.

I call that an amazing acceptance-I can think of no better example of complete consecration to God. Mary heard the amazing announcement, the amazing assign­ment, and in great faith made an. amazing acceptance and because of this she was able to participate in an

AMAZING ADORATION

Some Christians truly adore Mary. Most Protestants don't. Some do not even know how it came to be that her name is associated with a desperate fling of the pigskin in the waning seconds of the football game. Some do not even know why the "immaculate recep­tion" is a clever, though nearly sacrilegious, football phrase.

But in this part of the sermon I am not primarily con­cerned about the adoration that Mary received, but rather the amazing adoration of the Babe that Mary wit­nessed and pondered in her heart.

We observe who came to adore the Babe. The shep­herds, some Gentile foreigners (the wise men we call them), and two senior citizens at church, Simeon and Anna. And as we join Mary in pondering this in our hearts we learn that Divinity is always discovered by those who seem least likely to find it.

Where were the princes and kings, the rich and the noble-those important enough to greet the newborn king? Where were the high priests, the scribes, proph­ets, and Pharisees-those religious professionals who should have known enough to greet the Babe?

Fulton Sheen wrote:

Only two classes of people found the Babe: the shepherds and the Wise Men; the simple and the learned; those who knew that they knew nothing, and those who knew that they did not know everything. He is never seen arrogant; never by the man who thinks he knows. Not even God can tell the proud anything! Only the humble can find God! ("The Life of Christ," 55).

As we ponder this amazing adoration with Mary we also learn that: Divinity is always where you least expect to find it.

A donkey stall, a stable, the filthiest place in the wor1d - here Purity is born. No worldly mind would ever expect to find Divinity there. And to paraphrase Fulton Sheen again, No worldly mind would ever have sus­pected that He, from whose hands came planets and worlds, would one day have tiny baby hands, that He whose feet trod the everlasting hills would one day be too weak to walk, that He, the Eternal Word would one day be unable to speak even one word.

No worldly mind would ever have suspected that OM­NIPOTENCE would be wrapped in swaddling clothes, that SALVATION would lie in a manger, that the bird who built the nest would be hatched there.

No one would ever have suspected that God breaking in upon human history would ever be so helpless and that is precisely why so many miss Him - Divinity is always where you least expect to find it (Sheen, 55-56).

Amazing, is it not. Paul M. Bassett in his book of Christmas sermons, Keep the Wonder, cites Martin Lu­ther's amazement at it all. Luther marvels that God came to us as a mere mewling, a puking Baby. _

As we ponder all of this with Mary we begin to get a clue about the way God does things. God's way is not the ways of the rich and famous - not the way of kings, and presidents, and armies, military parades, ICBMs, arms dealers, and secret police. God's way is not the way of the influence peddlers and the power brokers. Rather God's way is about loving, self-sacrificing, vul­nerability! The Son of the Most High came as a helpless, defenseless, puking Baby. As Rob Staples says - it was an "utterly uncomprehensible condescension" fueled by love and vulnerability.

You do understand that if Jesus came to this gen­eration He could not make His entrance on Malcom Forbes' new $450 million yacht, don't you?

You do see how much more fitting it was to invite the shepherds-who were watching the Temple flocks - ­animals destined for sacrifice - how much more fitting to send them to see the Real Lamb of God.

You see, don't you, that the last thing Mary and Jo­seph had to worry about was having their privacy inter­rupted by Robin Leach and the camera crew of "life­styles of the Rich and Famous"! You do see that human "pomp and circumstance" are mere nonsense syllables to God.

Another thing we learn as we ponder with Mary is that the real Christmas story is unswervingly subversive to a sinful world order. The Christmas story will sink Mr. Forbes' yacht. Listen to Mary ponder these things in her "Song" in Luke 1:46-56. She prophetically proclaims that in Christ we see that God has "scattered the proud," "put down the mighty," and "sent the rich away empty." St. Paul ponders this too and says, "God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong, God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are ..." (1 Cor. 1:27-28, RSV).

The rich, powerful, oppressive establishment will be brought down and the weak, the poor, the lowly, and the, least likely will be exalted. The very foundations of sinful human society are threatened by the Christmas story. The gospel of Christmas is diametrically opposed to the methods and purposes of the military industrial complex that runs this world. The Christmas reality calls into question the very foundations, the very givens of this age.

If, when, and to the extent that the church as institu­tion models herself after the example of kings, and ar­mies, military parades, executive orders and secret po­lice, influence and power brokers of the world - if, when, and to the extent that it does this it will find the gospel of Christmas unswervingly subversive to the Church herself. The power brokers and self-seekers in the church will be assuredly toppled not by carnal worldly weapons - but by humble, self-sacrificing, poured-out vulnerability. The terrible meek will get them.

Some preachers, impatient with a helpless, puking Baby of a Messiah, will remind us, "Remember Jesus will grow up and make demands." But that is to miss the point! Just by being a Baby - He makes the strongest kind of demand on us already. If you do not know that the Christmas is that after Tiny Tim cries out "God bless us every one" the very next day Bob Cratchet and his neighbors have to go back to work in a sweat shop!

The big threat to Christmas is not Rudolf the Red-­Nosed Reindeer, Santa Claus, or the commercializing of what goes on at JC Penneys. The big threat to Christ­mas is preachers who won't tell the subversive truth about Christmas - and laity who love to have it so, who think that if the poignant little stories make them cry they have really had a great Christmas!

But the gospel of Christmas is more than social com­mentary. It deals with personal salvation as well. And as we ponder with Mary we see what Mary surely saw: life takes on meaning primarily because of and in relationship to the Babe of Bethlehem. Without Christ nei­ther you, I, nor Mary would matter much.

Ponder this too. You have not yet really heard the gospel of Christmas if you do not see in the Babe of Bethlehem God's ultimate response to your rebellious and wicked sins. Look at the Babe in the manger and ponder this: that little vulnerable Baby is what God fi­nally decided to do about you, a sinner.

O come let us adore Him.