Sermon: Advent 4

Birth through Growth
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Advent 4, Year B (RCL)
Luke 1:26-38

The angel Gabriel came and said to her, “Nothing will be impossible with God.” Then Mary replied, saying, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”

Throughout history, the church has portrayed Mary, the mother of Jesus, as a woman of deep faith with an unwavering willingness to follow God’s path for her life. When the angel of the Lord comes upon her, she simply replies, ‘Here I am, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.’ A few lines later in the Gospel of Luke, Mary greets her pregnant cousin Elizabeth, and in so doing, John the Baptist jumps in Elizabeth’s womb. Elizabeth then praises Mary for her great faith, and Mary, in response, sings the ‘Magnificat’, or the Song of Mary, which among other things touts her own great faith and willingness to give birth to the Christ child. Mary sings aloud, ‘My soul magnifies the Lord… My spirit rejoices in God my savior… From henceforth, all generations shall call me blessed… For he that is mighty has magnified me.’ Through her joyous song, Mary’s faith in magnifying the Lord, in rejoicing in God, is clear. Through her charismatic canticle, Mary’s willingness to follow and magnify God through all generations is announced to the world for all to hear.

Yet in our Gospel for today, it is also worth noting that, while eventually strong in faith and firm in her following of the Spirit, Mary began her journey in a place of both panicked fear and insecure doubt. When greeted by the angel Gabriel, she is perplexed, confused, she ponders, she fears, she’s lost in the unknown of the moment. Is this really an angel of the Lord? Will this thing hurt me? What will happen next? Am I safe? Then, after approaching her fear, when told by the messenger of her calling in life, she doubts, she sees what she is not, she becomes what she lacks, she questions herself and what she can do, who she can become. ‘I am only a virgin’, she thinks. ‘I am only a young girl’ ‘I’m not rich.’ ‘I’m not powerful.’ ‘I can’t do it.’ ‘I don’t have the strength and the skills.’ ‘How could this angel of the Lord have picked me?’ ‘He must have the wrong young maiden.’ Before ever having the voice to sing out her Magnificat to the world, Mary was shrouded in fear and doubt. Before ever living into her calling as the Mother of God, Mary first had to live through the doubts and fears which come with being a child of creation.

So how do we get from Mary the young virgin, filled with fear and doubt, to Mary the Mother of God, filled with faith and confidence in God’s call to her? Take a second to notice in today’s Gospel reading what comes before Mary’s willingness to follow, before her willingness to let go and to let God. The angel Gabriel says to her, “Nothing will be impossible with God.” He doesn’t say that ‘nothing is impossible for God’; he isn’t saying the God can do everything. What he says to Mary is that ‘nothing is impossible with God’, meaning that God can do anything as long as God has us, and that we can do anything as long as we have God. God isn’t doing it ‘for’ us and we aren’t doing it ‘for’ God. No, God is doing it ‘with’ us and we, we are doing it ‘with’ God. It is only once Mary comes to realize that God truly needs her and that, in turn, she truly needs God, it is only then that Mary exclaims, “Here am I… let it be with me according to your word.” Or in other words, ‘Here I am, let me do your will, that our wills may be tied up together in a common purpose, in a common life.’ Later in the Gospels, as Jesus gives his Sermon on the Mount, he prays to his Father in heaven with words that echo Mary’s words in today’s Gospel. He prays, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.”

In the end, Mary became a woman both of deep faith and great confidence in God’s call to her not because she was perfect, but because she was willing and able, with God’s help, to face her fears and her own self-doubt. She was able to overcome her fear of the angel Gabriel by surrendering to him. She was able to overcome her self-doubt by handing it over to God. Once she was able to let go and let God, only then was she able to give birth to the Christ child; to God in our world. As John the Baptist put it in speaking of his role in relation to Jesus’ role, he said, ‘He must increase, but I must decrease.’ It was only once Mary was able to fully decrease, to fully give her fear and her doubt over to God, it was only then that God was able to increase, to blossom and to flourish and to grow within her.

We too, like Mary, must face our fears and our self-doubts if we are to give birth to the God which lives at the heart of each and every one of us. Like with Mary, God sends messengers to each and every one of us, asking us not to fear, encouraging us to believe in ourselves, telling us again and again that ‘nothing will be impossible with God.’ Everyday, God fills us with these messages, hoping that we like Mary will respond, ‘Here am I… let it be with me according to your word.’ Everyday, God hopes that we will choose to give birth to the goodness and love which is within each and every one of us. Everyday, God dreams that yes, we will acknowledge our own humanity, but so too, that we won’t wallow there, but that we’ll come to recognize our own divinity as well. Every Christmas, Jesus Christ is born yet again into the world, not as the first century Jew we read about in the Gospels, but through those who dare to hope, who dare to believe in God’s call to them, even in the face of fear and even in the darkness of doubt.

This Christmas, God will be born into our world, not in some storied stable somewhere, but in and through our hearts and our actions. God will take our fear and transform it into faith. God will take our doubt and turn it into a doorway leading to our destiny. God will do all of these things because ‘nothing is impossible with God… with God.’ In order for us to see this happen, we must take the next step with God… with God. We must be willing to decrease so that God may increase. We, like Mary, must take all of our fears, all of our guilt, all of our shame, all of our garbage, all of our mistakes, all of our flaws, all of our sins, all of it, we must take all of it and hand it over to God. We must free ourselves from our past in order to move ahead into our future. And we don’t need to be perfect. For we aren’t perfect, and neither was Mary. And we never will be. We just need to be faithful. We need to keep trying, keep handing it over to God, keep striving to live our lives according to God’s word, keep asking that God’s will be done so that God’s kingdom will come. This Christmas, God will be born into our world, not in some storied stable somewhere, but in and through our hearts and our actions. Amen.