Nothing is Impossible with God

Imagine the improbability of it all.  A very young girl with no family heritage, no money, no connections and no reality show, is chosen by God to be Jesus’ mother.  Time and time again in the Hebrew Testament, we hear of nobody’s being called by God into God’s plan.  Mary is not unusual in this regard.  But in our story today, humble, unknown, nobody Mary becomes the mother of Jesus.  Now that is grace!

Will you pray with me?  “Dear God who chooses us all, we thank you for this old story that reminds us that none of us earns your favor.  We are all blessed by your grace alone.  Amen.”

Luke’s Gospel starts by telling the story of John the Baptist’s birth.  John’s parents are old—well beyond childbirth age.  Now John’s father Zechariah, who is a high-level Levitical Priest in the Temple, was married to Elizabeth, a relative of Mary.  Zechariah the important Jewish Priest did not believe the angel in Luke Chapter 1 who said that Elizabeth would bear a child.  This is impossible, he says, and he could not talk again until after John was born. The story of Zechariah and Elizabeth echos the story of Abraham and Sarah, with Sarah and Elizabeth both becoming pregnant in their very old age.  And then our passage today starts by saying that in Elizabeth’s sixth month of grandma pregnancy that the angel Gabriel visited her relative Mary, telling Mary she was to be Jesus’ mom.

And while Zechariah had rejected the angelic message, Mary fully believes Gabriel.  She is perplexed, but she presses forward believing Gabriel’s improbable prophecy involving her very own flesh and blood.  This 14 year-old girl just believes God’s prophecy at face value.  She knows enough to know she cannot become pregnant without knowing a man, and to this, Gabriel responds, well, God knows you.  That is enough.

Every year at this time, this passage invites us to imagine that we, too, can be mothers of Jesus.  The spirit of God nestles up to us and wants to birth the very Christ-presence in us.  And while our story today is about Mary having a baby, I really hear the story challenge us to imagine birthing Christ on this earth, now, here.  And even as we are invited to be Christ’s birthing mother, we are also the child who is born of God into the world: we are mystically both mother and babe, watching, wondering, wandering and waiting for a cold Christmas morn…

Now I fully realize some of us here will struggle being invited to be a mother, birthing something into the world.  We live in a culture where gender roles are firmly set, but consider for a moment that Mary was also asked to be a mother in an impossible situation, and she agreed to walk with God, impossible or not.  So asking each of us to consider birthing Christ is also impossible in the ways of the world, but completely possible for God.  Yes, Mary’s birthing of Jesus was a miracle, all births are miracles.  But so, too, is our birthing of Christ into our world.

God was very Open and Affirming of Mary.  I use Open and Affirming here in its full meaning, just like we do here at Spring Glen Church.  Open and Affirming means that God includes everyone in God’s plan of grace.  In Mary’s case, she was a nobody with nothing special to offer, and yet, in a gesture of Open and Affirming love, God invited Mary to birth Jesus.  God openly affirmed Mary as Jesus’ mom.  And so, also, God asks us to openly affirm those who are different than we are, all those nobody’s who are really important in God’s unfolding plan of grace.    In this case, a Jewish peasant-prophet named Jesus of Nazareth should have been born by an important Jewish woman with high stature and priestly connections—just like John the Baptist’s folks.  But, instead, Mary was just like you and me.  Nobody special.  And God openly affirmed her to be special in grace.

I also ponder this poor, lonely, scared little girl being visited by an angel and being told she would soon be pregnant, but with no earthly father.  From a realistic social standpoint, her life just ended.  If she became pregnant out of wedlock, she would be ineligible for a proper marriage.  If she became pregnant while engaged to Joseph, he certainly would know that she had been unfaithful to him.    What would we all think if a thirteen year-old girl told us that she had never known any man, even though she was obviously pregnant?  In our culture today, Mary would be laughed off the talk-show circuit, and called horrible names impugning her morality.  She would be barred from almost every respectable church, scorned and jeered at.    Pregnancy outside of marriage means moral failure and suspect character both then and now.  Poor young pregnant Mary would look to us like any poor unwed 8th grade mother... would we invite her in?

But, Mary agreed with Gabriel, saying “Here am I, the servant of the Lord. Let it be with me according to your word.”  Really?  Knowing she would be ostracized and ridiculed and spit upon and maybe even stoned to death, Mary agreed?  Yes.  Really.

So if God asks us to birth Christ into our lives, what do we say?  God asks us to birth love in wild abandon, to do justice, to seek mercy, and to walk humbly with our God, just as Mary was invited to do.  God asks us to follow the Christ-star, abandoning hate and revenge and seeking peace and compassion.  The God-presence who is always being re-born into the world asks us to be the present-presence of Christ, becoming pregnant living walking signposts of God’s grace and forgiveness.  God asks us to birth hope and peace and joy and love into the world—even a world where such things seem absolutely impossible.

So how many times have you birthed something new into your life?  I have changed careers a couple of times, moved all over the world.  Each new birth brought both excitement and fear, trembling and joy, or as our Gospel says today, pondering and perplexity.  As any change enters the final trimester, doubts, questions, wonderings all come alive.  “Am I doing the right thing?  Why don’t I just let the status quo be?  I’m comfortable here—why change?”  But once we have opened the door to change, just like Mary saying “let it be according to your word, God,” then the change grows within us, beginning a new life of its own.  Change in my life, and in your life, and in Mary’s life always comes with some pain, some joy, some complicated perplexity, some letting go of what was, and some tentative grasping of what might be.  How could Mary know the change that was incubating within her?  How can any of us fully know what God dreams for us?  But spiritual community accompanied Mary, and it accompanies us in every change that births into our lives.

So we can engage change and pregnant expectations because we do not walk alone.  Mary did not complete her pregnancy alone.  The spirit hovered over her, the spirit knew her, and comforted her.  Elizabeth visited her.  We are not alone on this impossible journey.  We have God and each other here in this marvelous place.  We walk with each other, caring, comforting, loving one another.  And when the days are darkest, when the pregnancy gets late, and the contractions of our troubled lives strangle the very breath from our bodies, we also walk with the eternal God who waits to birth love into the world through us.  When the pain becomes impossibly harsh, and the labored journey becomes too long, even then, God still walks with us, holding our soul gently, and whispering,  “Breathe: For nothing is impossible to God.”

[softly]  So, now, at the end of Advent, one thing remains. How do you respond when God asks you to birth Christ into the world?  Do you say no way like Zechariah, and in doing so, lose your voice in God’s plan.  Or, do you respond in the words of the 89th Psalm, “I will sing of your steadfast love, O Lord.  I declare that your steadfast love is established forever, your faithfulness is as firm as the heavens.” 

If you respond as the Psalmist, then you can declare, along with Mary, “For nothing is impossible to God… Here am I, the servant of the Lord. Let it be with me according to your word.”

[long pause]  And God’s people say, “Amen.”