Sermon for December 15 from Luke 1 "Mary"

So…

Believing is hard!

We’ve certainly established that over the past two Sunday’s. As Jim Eggleton pointed out two weeks ago, and what I pointed out last week with Zechariah.

Joseph, as Jim told us, was trying to believe what was unbelievable.

His fiancé was pregnant, a reality that ended their engagement, and Joseph wanted to be kind to her even though this must have been a horrible shock to him, so made arrangements to send her away to a place where she could have the baby unnoticed, when an angel came to him in a dream and told him to believe that Mary’s pregnancy was God’s doing.

Unbelievable.

And as I said last week, Zechariah struggled to believe as well.

Doing his two week per year duty as a Levite he ended up in the Temple lighting the incense, when an angel appeared to him too. He told Zechariah a crazy unbelievable story about Zechariah and his wife having a baby even though Zechariah and Elizabeth may have been in their 80’s and Zechariah struggles to believe.

Because…

Believing is hard.

Anyone who suggests otherwise perhaps hasn’t really had to believe stuff that just made no sense.

As a kid I remember we were told that our government had decided to do the impossible. We were going to send people to the moon.

And as a nation, we were going to have to trust science, that even when it made mistakes, was ultimately going to enable us to be the first, if not the only, nation to put people on a dark rocky object 239,000 miles away from us, a trip 30x farther than a trip around the globe.

It was unreasonable. It was unbelievable. It was impossible.

And then it happened.

Believing is hard, which is why even now there are folks in our world who insist the moon landing and moon walks are a fabrication, because they struggle to believe what seems impossible.

But then there’s Mary…

An angel came to Mary, a young women, already in an arranged future marriage contract, and told her that she was about to become pregnant with God’s child.

You understand that getting pregnant in these circumstances would set aside the engagement and cause severe financial penalties. This was bad, about as bad as it could get.

And yet Mary, unlike any of us in similar circumstances I think, believed. But she had a question.

Now I’ve always wondered why Zechariah’s question and Mary’s were handled so differently by the angels sent to visit them. I have suggestion, though it may not satisfy some of us who are a bit more skeptical.

But I think Zechariah’s question was one based on the assumption of impossibility.

He knew the biology. He knew how Elizabeth would have become pregnant. They had tried. It hadn’t worked and in Zechariah’s mind that ship had sailed. They were past that. Biology had happened and fertility was no longer possible.

Of course, nothing is impossible to God, and Zechariah knew that, but Zechariah ventured that all this all seemed just not going to happen.

Zechariah couldn’t believe.

But Mary’s question, if you will indulge me was different. It was based on possibility, not impossibility. It wasn’t, “no way this is going to happen”. It was rather it was “how?”

She’s asks, “But how can this happen when I am not married.” It’s not a question based in skepticism, but a question of curiosity, of process, of “don’t you need a husband and a wife, just asking”.

It’s believing we could land men on the moon, just absolutely unaware of how that was even possible… no matter what Jules Verne wrote in those amazing books.

It is the same believing we are invited to participate in every Christmas, to believe that God could and would and did and does love us so much that he would send a son, not as a conquering king, but as a small helpless child, revered by Magi, and chased by a mad King, sung to by angelic choirs, and greeted by of all possibilities shepherds.

The boy who grew up as a good kosher son of a carpenter and his wife until one day, at the riverside he was baptized by John.

It is a crazy story.

It is in so many ways an unbelievable one.

But it is one which we can doubt, or as Mary did, one we can believe.

And I hope and pray that today it is the latter.

“Believe”!

Amen!

Sermon for December 8

So…

Doubters, gonna doubt!

As Jim Eggleton pointed out last week (and God bless Jim and Elizabeth and Candy and Edgar and Marilyn for preaching while I was in the hospital and home mending) doubters gonna doubt.

There are those in our communities, maybe even in our families - that doubt the Christmas story or at least some parts of it. They doubt perhaps that Christmas was in December. Or they doubt that the stable was in a field all off by itself. They may even doubt there were angels.

And the truth is, some of those doubts may have merit. Biblical scholars admit they are not at all sure that Jesus was born in December. The bible doesn’t say.

And the lonely stable? Well again, all the bible says was that Jesus was born and laid in a manger! Where the manger was, well that’s not clear.

But doubts about the Christmas story are nothing to afraid of. As Jim pointed out the Christmas story is all about believing what on the surface is unbelievable, that God sent his son to be with us.

So, as Jim said, “believe”!

But I’d like to add that doubt has always been part of the Christmas story!

Doubt isn’t always a bad thing, because doubt means that you are thinking hard about something and trying to make sense of what sometimes makes no sense, at least to you.

Back in seminary we talked about antinomy’s, two perfectly reasonable ideas that are on the surface contradictory. Like the idea that a baby born in Bethlehem 2000 years ago can somehow be our savior today! But of course, that where Jim’s, “believe” comes into play.

The Christmas story begins, of course, well before Christmas. It begins with the reminders in the Old Testament prophets that God was going to send a Messiah, a new leader, a King like David, at some point.

There would be one who would come who could set people free from their sins, something the Mosaic Law had made clear was impossible under human effort.

The story continued, rising and falling in the background of scripture like the breathing of a contented infant, until Elizabeth’s husband Zechariah was doing his turn in the Temple.

So, if you thought the Christmas story actually began when Mary and Joseph found out they were going to have a baby, nope.

It goes a lot further back, back to when the children of Israel, the progeny of Jacob left Egypt, and formed into tribes named after Jacob’s and Joseph’s sons, including Levi, the tribe given cities, not land as their inheritance; and with them the responsibility for the Tabernacle and then the Temple, and the worship of God.

From Levi came the Levites, the priests and the High Priests, and the responsibility for the sacrifices and ritual in the Temple, like filling and lighting up the incense burner in the Holy Place that by its smoke would forever symbolize the rising of the people’s prayers to God.

And Zechariah a Levite, on his two-week stint once a year to be at the Temple, was chosen by a throw of the dice to be the one that day to go and do that holy duty.

In many ways Zechariah reminds me of our Deacons, setting up the communion table each month. Doing their duty, a little humbled, and perhaps a little afraid that somehow, they would mess up the table.

So intensely focused on the job at hand that the thought of God suddenly showing up in the form of an angel is not even remotely in their heads.

But then God did, sending an angel to let Zechariah know what was about to happen!

He and his wife would have a son, and name him John, and that he would be like Elijah to the coming Messiah, and all this, when Zechariah and Elizabeth were old!

It was a lot to take in, and a lot to believe. Zechariah struggled. And Zechariah doubted!

It was too hard to believe. It made no sense. Why would God do this, now?

But isn’t that just the way God works. Not in straight lines, but jubilantly coloring outside the box.

The challenge is to overcome your doubts and believe.

Zechariah struggled, and God gave him the gift of silence, or maybe that was for Elizabeth!

In any case, in nine months the silence would be broken, and this once doubting dad would announce this forerunner of the Messiah by declaring, “His name is John!”

Don’t be afraid to doubt. God can handle all the doubts you could ever muster.

And then “Believe”!


Amen!