“BEARERS OF GOOD NEWS”
Text: Luke 1:26-38
Faith United
December 21, 2008
When I was little my favorite show was “Little House on the Prairie”
I watched it faithfully
and felt like I grew up with the Ingalls family
Even though I loved the show,
I hated Laura Ingalls
I didn’t admit this out loud
but she was just too good to be true
Whenever she did make mistakes, like punching Nellie Olson
on the playground
she always learned a lesson
and gave a little speech at the end
that was just way too wise for a girl her age
I didn’t fall for it
Mostly, I think, because I couldn’t live up to her example
I wanted to be like her, but I couldn’t be that good
Everybody loved Laura
All the adults in the story wished their kids could be as good as Laura
Just once I wanted her to really mess up
but she never did
And her family was also too good to be true
Truth be told, I wanted to be a part of the Ingalls family
even though I knew that Laura and I would never get along
But they were always happy
when they were unhappy, it wasn’t for very long
and then they cried and hugged
and everything was wonderful again
Everybody loved each other
everybody got along,
except Nellie, of course, but everybody hated her anyway,
and everybody was always pretty happy
Any crisis that came up was always taken care of
usually by Charles Ingalls
who tended to be the superman of Walnut Grove
Charles, or Pa, could take care of any problem, it seemed
and it always got teared up when he looked at his daughters
It was all too good to be true, nobody could live up to that
but it was a good show
And I tend to think of Mary that way, don’t you?
I mean, who can live up to Mary?
What do you think of when you think of Mary?
A statue in someone’s yard, with a blue robe
and her head covered,
a hand peacefully extended, reaching out to bless
the squirrels that run through the yard?
Or a Christmas card picture
where her face is glowing with holiness
and even though she had just given birth,
her hair is perfect, her makeup is not smeared
and she’s not even sweating….?
After Christmas, we Protestants don’t pay any attention to Mary
we might think of her again when Jesus dies
because we know how awful that must have been
But in the 30-some years between his birth and his death,
we don’t pay too much attention to Mary…
Who can relate?
I don’t know about you, but I rarely glow …
and I guarantee you, that if I had to give birth in a barn
full of animals in a strange town
because of some stupid decree by the government
I wouldn’t be feeling too holy
much less looking holy….
We sometimes accuse Catholics of thinking too much of Mary
while at the same time, Protestants hardly pay any attention to her at all
Which is a shame, because really,
she is a major player
No Mary, No Jesus….
If she said to that angel that night
“No way, I don’t know what you’re talking about
but if you don’t get out of here right away
I’m going to scream….”
Yeah, if she said that,
there’d be no Jesus
I know, if she had said no, God would have probably had a contingency plan
but we’ll never know that, will we?
I don’t think we really know what to do with Mary,
this too-good-to-be-true Mary
We’ve whitewashed her, I think
we’ve forgotten she was human
we’ve forgotten she was a teenager!!
We’ve forgotten, I think, that she lived on the poor side of town
where other folks didn’t go if they had to
She lived in Nazareth,
and as someone would say many years later,
“Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”
Mary was just a kid
I believe she was just an ordinary teenager
whatever that was in those days…
dreaming of being married someday
because she figured that was the way things went
she wouldn’t have much of a choice
Her parents would have worried about her choices
since being poor, there wasn’t much they could offer someone
seeking to marry her
They were nobody
Nobody spectacular,
nobody impressive
nobody that anybody gave a second glance to
Just people living their lives in a quiet corner
of some Podunk town
minding their own business
just trying to live a good life
and be faithful to God
Mary may have been a little precocious
she may have been smarter than other people her age
maybe, maybe not
But I think we’ve made her so unbelievable
that nobody can relate to her
so we just push her off into our box of Christmas decorations,
pull her out once a year
and put her safely away again for another 11 months
Church traditions vary on Mary
The Catholic tradition insists that she was a perpetual virgin
that she never slept with a man
and that the brothers and sisters of Jesus
that are referred to in the Gospels
were really his cousins
Protestants like us, don’t really think about it
nor do we really care if she was a normal human being
and conceived children with her husband
but all those glowing pictures of her
usually blue eyed with light brown hair or even blond hair
give us a vision of someone we can’t relate to
Too good to be true
But this middle eastern teenage girl,
who probably didn’t walk around with a halo of light on her head
or rosy cheeks and blue eyes,
was just hanging out in her bedroom one night
when this weird looking guy suddenly appears
I would imagine her first thought was how did he get in
and what would her parents say if they caught him there?
They’d never believe her that she didn’t know how he got in!
Anyway, while she’s thinking about this,
he says some weird things…
“Don’t be afraid, Mary, for God is impressed with you!”
Right…
And while he rambles on about the Son of the Most High God
and the throne of David,
I imagine she’s looking for a way to get around him
and run screaming from the room…
“Mary??” the man asks her, trying to refocus her attention
“How??” is all she can say…
“The Holy Spirit will come upon you,
and the power of the Most High will overshadow you….”
Well, what do you say to that?
Maybe she was so curious by now, that she calmed down
and stopped looking for an empty space to run through….
The Holy Spirit will come upon you,
and the power of the Most High will overshadow you….
I do remember back in seminary,
talking about the traditions surrounding the story
what is known as the Immaculate Conception
How was Jesus conceived?
For centuries,
theologians have thought about just how this came about
because they just can’t let it go
they want the details
how did this work?
and in the early church traditions,
there were some who seriously suggested
that the Holy Spirit entered Mary’s ear
when the Angel Gabriel whispered to her
that she would conceive
and that through her ear,
the Holy Spirit somehow got from there to her womb
and created Jesus…
So Mary was impregnated through her ear
I trust that this theory came about long before anyone
had much of a clue about anything
when it came to where babies come from…
The Church has always had a bit of a hard time
dealing with the mechanics of reproduction….
Fortunately, the through-the-ear theory didn’t last….
The Holy Spirit will come upon you…
and the power of the Most High will overshadow you…
These words are similar to the words at the very beginning of the Bible
when the earth was a formless void
and the darkness covered the deep
It said a wind or the spirit of God
swept over the face of the waters….
and creation began….
There was nothing, and then because of the wind of God
there was something
just a little spark, a little something
that grew and grew and unfolded into creation…
And so, it would seem
the Holy Spirit, again, is creating something new
something miraculous, something world-changing,
something too unbelievable for words
Only this time, God is using a human being
to bring forth the good news of God
God is using the body of a woman
as a temple of the Holy Spirit
as a natural, beautiful instrument of creation
to initiate the drama of salvation and hope
Not too shabby, huh?
Mary is just an ordinary human being used by God
to bring about extraordinary things
She didn’t glow anymore than the normal pregnant woman might glow
She wasn’t holier than holy
she was human and strong and wise beyond her years,
perhaps
But she didn’t disintegrate
when she is confronted by God in the form of a man
and told she would be blessed
She would be blessed with having a child out of wedlock
who would later be executed as a criminal
Fortunately, she didn’t get the whole story that night
when she was suppressing the urge to scream for help
If she knew what all was ahead of her
in the even that she said “yes,”
none of us would blame her for refusing the blessing
I like Mary
I’ve been paying more and more attention to her
through the years
as a woman of profound strength
She’s the first disciple of the child in her womb
She is an example of faith acted out in response
to the words of God
She would suffer a whole lot before the story is over
She would suffer humiliation, grief, powerlessness
being widowed at a young age
not knowing who exactly her oldest son was
Never knowing where he was, really
or what he was getting into
She watched him cross the line again and again
he always seemed to look for trouble
It made her heart nervous all the time
And then she suffered the worst humiliation of all
watching her son die as a common criminal
knowing he was innocent
feeling like God had abandoned them all
and turned his back on the whole world
How would she feel about God after that?
How could she trust God after that?
She, of all people, had a right to shake her fists at God
and complain that he’d not kept his side of the deal….
What did she expect, I wonder?
When her belly started to bloat over the coming weeks?
When she started to feel that sensation of a living person
growing inside of her?
What did she expect?
What do we expect?
I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately
how often it is our expectations that get us in trouble
We expect God to give us what we want
We expect, I think, that if we’re good, then God will give us a good life
free of tragedy, maybe
free of pain
We expect God to take care of all the horrible things in the world
What do we expect of other people?
Sometimes, I think, we have ideas of what other people should do
what they should be,
how they should act
and if they don’t, we get mad
Others should know what we need, and offer it
They should know why we’re mad and they should apologize
At Christmas, I think much of the sadness and depression that occurs
is because of expectations
We see images on TV of people who are happy because it’s Christmas
or families that all get along and are thrilled to be together
no problems, no fights, no resentments
And on TV, everyone has enough money to buy everything they want
they have perfectly decorated homes
lots of food, really nice clothing
and the people kind of glow around the table
But that’s not real life
and when real life doesn’t live up to our expectations,
we can cause ourselves a whole lot of grief
What do we expect?
I love Mary
because she’s real and she was alive
and she suffered deep, deep grief
and lived to tell about it
She experienced profound miracles in her life
but that didn’t shield her from experiencing the very real pain
that life often brings
I bet she got disappointed with God a lot over the years
as she worried over her son who wouldn’t let her keep an eye on him
who went and got himself killed
when it really could have been avoided
I bet at the foot of that Cross her hair wasn’t perfect
her makeup probably ran
as she wailed in grief at the horror and injustice
of the death of her innocent son
and I bet, too, that maybe she finally did glow just a little bit
when she experienced that last miracle that we know of
when her son showed up at the door
looking just as much alive and beautiful as ever
I bet if someone got to interview her in her old age
after the rest of the town went on with their lives
and forgot how special she was
I bet she would have said she had a good life
filled with it’s share of pain and grief and horror
but even as she contemplated her own inevitable death
she would take with her those memories
of the things that were just too good to be true
That strange night when an angel appeared to her
and her life was changed
when God chose to use her body as a landscape of creation
that would shake up the world
and never let it go
Meister Eckhart, a theologian that lived in the 14th century
once wrote that all of us are meant to be mothers of God
now, I guess some of you guys might not like that image
but I get his point
All of us, are meant to be bearers of good news
landscapes of creation
temples of God in which God can do crazy things, really
in which God gives us a choice
about whether or not we want to smuggle God into the world
inside our own bodies,
just like Mary did
What we expect
has a lot of power in what happens in our lives
Do we expect to see miracles happen?
Do we expect to be bearers of such miracles, wonderful good news?
Co-creators of God’s grace in the world?
Do we expect that we can be that special
or that surely it’s reserved for someone else more holy
someone that glows,
someone whose hair is always perfect?
This Christmas, look into the candlelight
and remember the Light of The World that just keeps coming
that flame that dances before our own eyes
teasing us, calling us to join in
and be bearers of light
be agents of miracles
to be quiet messengers
of a profound new creation
that is already unfolding as we speak and live
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