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Friday, December 11, 2009
MARY’S CALL TO BE GOD’S SERVANT AND OUR CALL
Third Sunday of Advent
By Rev. Dr. Harvey C. Martz
Luke 1:26-38 New Revised Standard Version
26 In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, 27 to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin's name was Mary. 28 And he came to her and said, "Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you." 29 But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. 30 The angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. 31 And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. 32 He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. 33 He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end." 34 Mary said to the angel, "How can this be, since I am a virgin?" 35 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 holy; he will be called Son of God. 36 And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. 37 For nothing will be impossible with God." 38 Then Mary said, "Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word." Then the angel departed from her.
When we read the stories of the first Christmas, we read a lot about angels.
In Matthew’s version of the Christmas story an angel appears in a dream to Joseph to tell Joseph not to be afraid to marry Mary. (By the way, the birth story in Matthew is told from Joseph’s point of view while the birth story in Luke’s gospel is told more from Mary’s point of view-and they are different.)
A little later in Matthew’s gospel, Joseph has another dream where an angel tells him to leave immediately for Egypt, right after the birth of Christ, because King Herod is about to slaughter all the male babies in Bethlehem to keep any new child from rivaling him for his throne.
In the gospel of Luke, from which we just read, an angel comes to Mary to announce her pregnancy. The pictures about this scene are called the pictures of Annunciation and angels, of course, appear to the shepherds in their fields watching over their flocks by night.
I thought you might want to hear about angels for a moment from the point of view of some Sunday school children ages five through eight. These explanations were sent to me this week by St. Andrew member Larry McLaughlin.
Five year old Gregory writes, “I only know the names of two angels, Hark and Harold.”
Nine year old Matthew: It’s not easy to become an angel. First you die. Then you go to heaven and there’s still the flight training to go through. And then you got to agree to wear those angel clothes!
From Henry, age 8: My guardian angel helps me with math, but he’s not much good for science.
From six year old Jack: Angels don’t eat but they drink milk from Holy Cows.
From ten year old Reagan: Angels have a lot to do and they keep very busy. If you lose a tooth, an angel comes through your window and leaves money under your pillow. Then when it gets cold, angels go south for the winter.
Finally, from nine year old Antonio: All angels are girls because they got to wear dresses and boys don’t go for that!
It’s interesting to see some of the portrayals in Christian art of what angels look like, and what this annunciation scene, of Gabriel coming to Mary with this important announcement, looked like. The annunciation passage must have been the subject of hundreds or even thousands of paintings and sculptures over the centuries. I want to show you two of my favorites this morning.
The first is a sculpture in the garden of the church in Nazareth called the Church of the Annunciation, which is supposedly built over the site of where Mary lived, and where the angel Gabriel appeared to her. We see this every time we go to Israel and I like the “non churchy” look of this sculpture. What I see in this piece of art is Mary taking the posture of what she actually says in the gospel story: “Who, me? Surely you don’t mean me!!”
My other favorite portrayal of this Bible scene is from a painting by Renaissance artist Botticelli who you may know, if you have studied art history, from his most famous depictions of women in paintings like the Allegory of Spring and the Birth of Venus.
Botticelli is the most true to the story we heard from Luke because the first thing Mary does when she hears the news about becoming pregnant with the messiah is to question and even to resist!! And, Botticelli shows us a Mary with her hand in front of the angel’s face saying, “Wait a minute, how can this be?”
There is not a great deal of information about Mary in the Bible. She was probably a fourteen or fifteen year old young woman. That was the typical age to become engaged or married. She was from a humble family, and that is how she describes herself in her song/poem when she is with her cousin Elizabeth. We get some mixed versions of what she understood about Jesus. She is portrayed, just a few verses later in Luke’s gospel, pondering all these things in her heart right after the shepherds have left the manger scene. She is portrayed with Jesus in John’s gospel at a wedding in Cana giving him advice about the scarcity of wine at the banquet.
On the other hand, in the Gospel of Mark, she seems to misunderstand the mission and ministry of her son and comes to him along with her other sons while he is teaching in Capernaum to take him home because they think Jesus is a little “out of touch.”
There is not a lot in the Bible about her and much of what we have heard is from the tradition of the church which is more than what scripture tells us and which sometimes contains some misunderstandings.
My friend Jim Harnish, pastor of a large Methodist congregation in Florida, tells in one of his books about the two twelve year old boys who were walking with each other down Fifth Avenue in New York at Christmas time. One was headed toward the synagogue and the other was headed toward St Patrick’s Cathedral. The first boy who was on his way to his synagogue told his friend, with some pride, “You know of course, that Jesus was a Jew.”
The second boy, not to be outdone, replied, “Yes, but his mother was a Catholic.”
Mary was Jewish, also, of course, but the joke underlines some of the different understandings of Mary over the centuries; she is emphasized more strongly in the Orthodox and Roman Catholic traditions than she is in Protestant faith because there is more focus in Protestantism on what we can learn from Scripture than from the traditions of the church. And, as we said, Mary does not have as large a role in the Bible itself as she has had in the traditions over the centuries.
In the story from Luke she is a young woman who thinks for herself but is also faithful and willing to be the servant of God. She has become for millions of people the feminine face of God and is an object of prayer for many, many people. And while we are showing artistic portrayals of Mary over the centuries of art history, we also need to look again at one of the most well known images of Mary that is striking for a couple of reasons. Michelangelo chose to portray an ageless Mary in his stunning sculpture of Mary holding the crucified Jesus. What is striking is that, for Michelangelo, she has aged hardly at all. She is still the young woman whom we just heard about in Luke’s account of the announcement that she will be the mother of the messiah.
By the way, we get another VERY human picture of Mary in the haunting song that Amy Grant wrote, “Breath of Heaven,” that is sung on our choir Christmas album by Elise Kish and Elizabeth Ann Rowlison. It is one of my two favorite pieces on the album.
I want to move a bit beyond the verses we just heard from the gospel to the next thing that Luke tells us about, and that is what Mary does when the angel leaves her. She goes to share this great news with someone very close to her, not her mother, but her older cousin Elizabeth who is also pregnant and will give birth to John the Baptizer.
What is amazing to me about this next part of the gospel is how Mary tells her cousin about the meaning of the birth of Christ. We call her song The Magnificat because of the way it begins, but it is a revolutionary statement that says, in the birth of the Christ child, God is taking a stand for the poor and the vulnerable and the least and the last, and God is standing against the powerful and influential who have not used their power to help others, who have only used their power for themselves!!
Listen to some of Mary’s words:
God has now scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts
God has now brought down the powerful from their thrones
God has lifted up the lowly
God has now filled the hungry with good things
And sent the rich away empty
God has helped God’s servant Israel and God has shown mercy.
Sometimes people have raised a question with me about why the church seems to be advocating for the least and the last and the left out and the vulnerable. The answer is that is what God does; that is what the Bible does; that is what Christ himself does, especially in the gospel of Luke. And, that is what we do and that is what God calls us to do.
Let’s conclude by talking about what God is calling us to do. The story of Mary being approached by the angel Gabriel is a “call story.” God is doing in Mary’s life what God does in the life of others in the Bible. God is interrupting her plans and God is calling her to take a new direction from what she thought. God is calling her to be God’s servant, and, as we said last week, that will mean some hard things and some inconvenient things. It will mean some sacrifice, and as old Simeon tells her in the temple, it will mean some pain. “This child will mean the destruction and salvation of many in Israel, he says to Mary in the temple, and sorrow like a sword will pierce your heart.”
Mary is being called from what she had thought her life would be into a new life. It happens with others in the Bible, and it still happens. This call to serve came to Abraham when he was 75 years old! He was called in Genesis 12 to leave family and home and to go to a new land. And Like Mary, he said yes. This is where God says to Abraham, “I will bless you so that you may be a blessing to others.”
God called Moses the murderer from tending sheep. God said I need you to help me liberate my people from bondage. And what did Moses say? He was more reluctant than Abraham and Mary. He had excuses-good reasons, he thought. He stuttered and didn’t talk well. His brother Aaron was a much better choice, he said to God, why don’t you take Aaron?? In the end he said yes, because God can be persuasive.
The same call came to the prophet Jonah when God asked Jonah to take God’s message of repentance and forgiveness to Jonah’s enemies in Nineveh, Assyria and Jonah’s response was more dramatic when he tried to escape God!
Mary’s story is a call story to be God’s servant, to be God’s person, God’s hands and feet. God has not stopped calling persons to be God’s hands and feet, and God calls each of us in the same way.
Where do you feel called? What is your calling from God? It might be your work; you might feel called to teach, to heal, be CEO, to imagine and work on a new product that will change people’s lives. Your calling might be the job you are doing or it might not. Your calling right now might be to be parent and nurturer. Your calling might be in the area of social justice and ethics and to help us care better for the earth.
Your calling might be what you are paid to do, or your paid job might be a necessary thing that you do so you can fulfill your true calling.
Where does your passion meet with the needs and opportunities of our world? That is one way to talk about our calling.
God still calls us to serve and to let our words and our deeds and our hands and our feet be the words and deeds and hands and feet of God in this world. Mary had a unique calling, but your calling is unique and important also.
Where do you feel that calling? To what role is God calling you? Mary said yes. She said, let it be. Let it be with me just as you have said. Mary said yes.
My friend Jim Harnish has written a new beatitude, a new series of blessings that we have placed on the front of your bulletin. We will say that together as we close today.
Blessed are those who live in active obedience to the way of love and peace revealed in Jesus Christ.
Blessed are those who listen to the God who looks with favor on lowly, ordinary servants and calls them to be part of God’s saving work in the world.
Blessed are those who trust in God who scatters the proud in the imagination of their hearts, who brings down the powerful from their thrones and lifts up the lowly; the God who fills the hungry with good things and sends the rich away empty.
Blessed are those who allow their lives to become a blessing.
Blessed are those who say yes.