once again a reworked message from many years ago... But new to HopeWhanagrei and also on the internet as an audiofile as well... here is the audio link
When I was growing up we
always knew Christmas was near when my mum would go to the hall cupboard and
open it. She would get a chair so she could reach the top shelf. She’d search
through the impossible amount of boxes and stuff stored up there. She would slowly
shuffle and lift down one box after another till she found the one she wanted.
A ragged batted box with a blue lid that had a plastic window in it. The box
would then be taken into the lounge and opened and the nativity scene inside
would be lifted out dusted off and carefully positioned in pride of place on
the mantle above the fire. This would happen even before the Christmas tree growing
in a pot out on the veranda was bought in from its near year round exile and neglect
and adorned with all the baubles and treasured decorations. It was our family
tradition, so amidst the tinsel and food, presents and festivities, hustle and
bustle we would be reminded of ‘the reason for the season’, the birth of Jesus.
God in person coming, as it says in John’s gospel, and tabernacling with us in
a very New Zealand Christmas Holiday way pitching his tent in our
neighbourhood.
When my mum died we
cleaned out her house and there in a different cupboard still impossibly packed
with boxes and boxes of precious memories was the batted blue box. Its plastic
window ripped and some of the figures looking somewhat worse for wear, I think
Mary had lost her head! The nativity
scene was beyond repair. It hurt to throw it out. But kris bought us a nativity
scene for our family, that we unpack every year, that has pride of place on our
coffee table at Christmas time… this year it even got taken out to the lawn at
Hope Tikipunga for a photoshoot for the poster for ‘carols on the grass’
Leading into Christmas
this year I want to invite you to join in my family tradition of unpacking the
nativity scene and placing it at the center of our thoughts. Unpacking it not
simply by taking the figures from out of a box and arranging them in a certain
way. But unpacking them on a theological level. In the sense that we look again
and afresh at each of the figures from that scene and look past the way they
have become very much stylised caricatures, more at home in children’s
paintings and the nostalgia of hallmark cards
that being real people in real life.
Unpacking them to see what they have to say to us as people of faith as we
too allow the one born at the stable to have a central role in our lives as he
did in theirs.
This week I want to
invite us to reflect on Mary, a woman of faith and courage. Maybe she is the
hardest figure for us to unpack because she has become a figure of deep
religious devotion and adoration. The cover story of a ‘Time’ magazine in march
2005 reported on the way that Mary was growing in importance even in protestant
circles. Despite this how she should be honoured has been a focus for division
and argument between various Christian traditions. This perhaps hides a lot of what she has for
us today.
The best sermon I ever
heard about Mary was from a 16 year old girl from our youth group at St John’s
in the City, Rotorua. Leslie was a gifted speaker and when I had asked here to
speak on Mary all I had given her as a starter for the talk was well Mary would
be a girl about your age, and Leslie really related to it. You see Mary was a
young woman possibly no more than in her mid-teens. Leslie talked of the
feelings of fear and uncertainty, at the angels message and the great amount of
trust and faith it took to answer” I am the LORD’s Servant. May your word to me
be fulfilled”.
Mary came from a lowly
place. She lived in a small town in a small unimportant province in occupied
Israel. In her society she had little importance, position or status. In fact
even Luke, who of the gospel writers is most prepared to use women’s
remembrances and perspectives, starts not by naming her but referring to the
name, lineage and occupation of the man she is betrothed to. She would have
been a virtuous Jewish girl and we can see from her song recorded in Luke that
she had a deep faith. Like most Jewish men and women of her time she would have
been praying for the coming of the messiah to deliver Israel.
In Phillip Yancy’s
book “the Jesus I never Knew” he reflects that in religious art Mary
is always shown as accepting the angels visitation like it was a benediction
but this does not reflect the gospel narrative. It tells us that she was
troubled by the angel’s message.
She is troubled at the
angels affirmation that God is with her and that he has blessed her greatly.
The angel goes on to tell her that she will become pregnant and have a son and
name him Yeshua or as we know him by the Greek equivalent Jesus. The angel
tells her that this child will be the messiah taking on David’s throne and
reigning forever. This does nothing to alleviate her troubled mind and she asks
how it is possible for her to have a son, as she is a virgin. We only think
that it is our skeptical age of science that would see such a thing as
impossible, but Mary grasp on human biology is sufficient that she knows what
the angel is saying is not possible.
The angel says that
this will happen by a miracle, God’s power would rest on her. The angel then
points to another pending miraculous birth, Mary’s relative Elizabeth who was
barren and deemed too old to have a child is now six months pregnant and the angel
concludes ‘there is nothing that God cannot do’: Which is by the way a good
definition of a miracle. This is a unique God moment where like the
resurrection God steps in and exerts his creative power, it is the seed of new
creation, that will fall to the ground and die and produce an abundant harvest.
Mary’s reply shows her
faith she says, “I am the Lord’s servant, may it happen to me as you have
said”. AS her relative Elizabeth will say to her how blessed you are to believe
that the Lord’s message to you will come true. Mary continues to show her faith
in her song, known as ‘The Magnificat’ that points to the profound effects that
this child will have and God’s goodness to his people. She has been described,
as being the first disciple, declaring the Kingdom of God her son would usher
in. Her song sets the tone of an Upside down kingdom which is good news
for the poor and recovery of sight of the blind, release to the captives and a
declaration of the acceptable year of the LORD.
But we see that Mary not
only had faith she also has courage. For Elizabeth there was great rejoicing
and praising God for her pregnancy and the birth of her son. Luke tells us her
neighbours and relatives rejoiced with her and celebrated the baby’s birth. In
Jewish custom the Village choir would gather and sing for the birth of a baby
boy, as this maybe was the coming of God’s promised messiah. But for Mary it
was a troubling time. She was a young girl only betrothed to Joseph and her she
was pregnant. Maybe the impact of that has been lost in our society today where
there are many teenage pregnancies but it was a great scandal. Her husband
Joseph could have easily publically rejected her, and she would have been
stoned for adultery. Matthew tells us he was going to give her a quite divorce
until the same angel visited him.
We are never told how
the grandparents reacted to this situation but perhaps from friend and family
dealing with similar situations you may guess some of the anguish they went
through. Despite all this Mary faces the situation with faith, trusting in God.
It may have been wise for Joseph to take Mary away from her home village for
the birth of the child, as she would not have to put up with the shame of not
having the rejoicing and support of everyone. It is rather ironic that the
village choir would not have come to sing for this particular birth because of
the stigma of the child’s possible illegitimacy. How could this be the messiah!
It fell to the angels to herald this child’s birth. She would have
had the child without the comfort of relatives, as a mere male it’s interesting
to note that when each of my children was born my mother in law appeared, God
bless her, and that was of great comfort to Kris. It took courage for Mary to
face all this alone, with Joseph, away
from her support structures.
Malcolm Muggeridge
questions whether it would have been much different today, with family planning
clinics offering convenient ways to fix mistakes that may bring embarrassment
to families. He says “it is point of fact, extremely improbable,
under existing conditions, that Jesus would have been permitted to be born at
all. Mary’s pregnancy, in poor circumstances, and with the father unknown,
would have been an obvious case for an abortion; and her talk of having conceived
as a result of the intervention of the Holy Spirit would have pointed to the
need for psychiatric treatment, and made the case for terminating her pregnancy
even stronger. Thus our generation, needing a saviour more, perhaps, than any
that has ever existed would be too humane to allow one to be born.” Maybe
the thing that would stop that is Mary’s faith and her courage.
Courage and faith
exemplify Mary throughout the gospel accounts. When she goes to the temple a
week after Jesus birth Simeon the one person in the Christmas story who seems
to be able to look beyond the child to see the shadow of the cross tells Mary
that a sword will pierce her soul she stores even these things in her heart. In
John’s gospel we see her prepared to approach Jesus about the wine problem at
the wedding in Canna, looking to her son to do something, even though his time
had not come. Maybe in a moment of doubt and confusion in Marks gospel it tells
us that she and Jesus brothers came to bring him home fearing that he had
become deranged, it took courage to question what she had stored in her heart. She
is a widow and had come to cope with the sorrow and pain of her husband dying
young… She is there at the cross, as her son is brutally and unjustly
crucified. She receives his kindness as Jesus asks his much beloved friend to
care for his most beloved mother. She is also there in the upper room at
Pentecost, knowing her son has risen from the dead and faithfully standing with
his disciples. In her old age she shares her story and what she had known and
experienced with Luke and it was included in the Gospel, along with a song that
would have become more and more poignant as time had gone on. This is the woman
of faith and courage that God chose to carry and nurture his only begotten son.
For us today there is
there are two things I want to draw from Mary.
It takes courage and
faith to allow God’s kingdom to be our priority. For example in Mary’s song it
tells us the good news of Jesus Christ will mean that the poor receive their
fill and the rich go away empty handed. We tend to want to think that the rich
are blessed, that we are blessed in this country with what we have, but the
gospel call on people who have much, is that much is expected. Jesus calls us
to side with the poor and the powerless in our world and it takes courage to go
against the flow of consumerism and materialism. It takes courage to speak up
and say that we follow a different set of values and truths when the situation
demands it. To sing Mary’s song, It takes faith and courage to be prepared to
act and live in a way that reflects Jesus, knowing the resistance we will face,
the possible scorn and being written off.
Secondly, we need to realize that God is able to use the humble and lowly to achieve great things
for him in our world and place. I once said in a sermon that Mary was just like
us, and boy did I get a tongue lashing from a fiery South American women with a
Catholic background, she had been taught that Mary was special and unique, she
had been exalted to her self being somehow the product of an immaculate
conception. But scripture does not substantiate that. It does affirm and
acknowledge that she is favoured amoungst all women, and I did and have said
today her faith and courage are amazing. However the fact that a young Jewish
girl of faith could be chosen to bear the son of God shows that we too who ever
we are, how lowly we are, can be used to achieve God’s plans and purposes in
the world if we will be prepared to respond with faith and courage to his call
on us, to follow and witness to Mary’s Son Jesus Christ, crucified and raised
to life again. We know that it is not an easy road, it is meet with suspicion
and disdain, it leads down a road where our hearts as well will be pierced, it
is the road that needs us to have the faith and the courage of Mary.
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