Pilgrimage ~ Sermon (Habakkuk and Luke)

This is the sermon for the service via which we will bring and end to our congregational life tomorrow afternoon:

 

 

If your childhood was anything like mine, then perhaps many decades ago you spent some time during this week making Pilgrim pictures, or writing Pilgrim reports.  I can remember a first grade project that involved making houses and a stockade fence out of corrugated cardboard packaging ~ our version of a replica of Plimouth Plantation, the Pilgrim settlement in what was to become the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

In grade school, we talked a lot about the Pilgrims, whose first Thanksgiving feast we’ll celebrate this week with turkey and football -- but I don’t recall any discussion of what the term “pilgrim” meant.  I don’t think we ever talked about what a pilgrimage was ~ what sort of journey a pilgrimage might be, or why the completion of a pilgrimage might be an occasion for gratitude.

Today, perhaps, we have a better idea of what pilgrimage entails.  “A journey to a sacred destination,” or so the dictionary tells us.  Any sort of journey at all ~ that’s another definition.  The journey through life, or the journey of faith ~ those are the sorts of pilgrimage we’re thinking about today.

Sometimes it’s easier to understand what a pilgrimage is, or what a pilgrim is, by thinking about what they are not.  A pilgrimage is not a vacation, with a vacation’s focus and fun and sports and sightseeing and relaxing.   A pilgrim is not a tourist, not someone watching from the outside, taking pictures and sampling food and music, but never really engaging with the place or people being visited.

A pilgrim – a pilgrim is what the people of Boulevard Church have become.  A pilgrim is a brave and bold seeker.  A pilgrim is a courageous traveler toward the future.  A pilgrim recognizes when the time has come to let go of the past and allow God to shape a new journey.  And let me tell you, the people of Boulevard have been honed into true descendants of the people who stepped aboard that tiny Mayflower boat in their willingness to look ahead rather than back.

Today, we gather to contemplate the pilgrimage through our lives of faith, the journey that has led us to this place, and is soon to lead us away.  What are the hallmarks of such a journey?

The people we encounter and befriend, surely.  The events, both great and small, through which our identities as pilgrims are forged.  The rituals we create, the music we sing, the food we eat ~ all mark us as a pilgrim people.

A pilgrimage is also marked by events we would not seek of our own volition.  The events which make us who we are, the times which challenge us and call us to rise to occasions we would rather avoid – those are often the unexpected, unwanted, and way too difficult events. 

And here we are, called to look for God and to give thanks for God’s provision and friendship along the way, even when the way seems hazardous and dark and empty.  Even when we find ourselves at those junctures where what we really want is to turn back.

Our first reading today, from the almost unheard of prophet Habakkuk, emerges out of just such a time.

I know this passage only because some years ago, during a particularly low period in my own life, a friend shared it with me, saying that it had meant a lot to him during a tough time in his own life.  And I thought of it immediately when I began to consider this day, and how we are struggling to praise God and offer our words of thanksgiving when we are so challenged by the loss of this congregation. 

Habakkuk writes from the midst of a time of total desolation: no blossoms, no fruit, no produce, no food, no flock or herd ~ and yet, he says, “I will rejoice in the Lord.”

I don’t know whether you have ever witnessed such complete devastation. But a lot you may be feeling it today. Why are we having a service of celebration and gratitude? We are losing our faith home.  We are embarking upon a time of disorientation, having to walk into unfamiliar places with no recognizable landmarks.    And we’re supposed to talk about rejoicing?  And exultation?

  The Bible – and here’s one of the great things about the Bible, and about our faith as reflected in the Bible – the Bible is counterintuitive on these subjects.  It tells us to respond in exactly the opposite way from that we’re inclined to. 

It’s true that the Bible makes plenty of room for sorrow, and lament, as we talked about in this congregation a couple of weeks ago.  It gives us volumes of words of lament.  But in the end, the Bible says: Rejoice.  Exult. Give thanks. And you will grow in ways you cannot imagine growing, and love in ways you cannot imagine loving.

Your congregation is disbanded?  Your belongings are given away? Your connection to the neighborhood is broken? Your friends are scattered?  Exult in the God of your salvation!

What sort of a text is this, anyway?  What kind of faith tells people that desolation and destruction is not the end?  What sort of faith says that what you see now is not what will always be?

I’ll tell you what the answer is: It’s the faith you see represented by your actions and decisions of the past several months.

It’s the faith that has challenged you to be good and faithful stewards of this beautiful building, honoring it as God’s gift to you and recognizing that, when you could no longer care for it, God was challenging you, not to cling to it as a museum but to respond faithfully by letting it go. 

It’s the faith that has inspired you, even as you were preparing for your own departure, to continue to serve this neighborhood, to continue to open and your doors and provide food and clothing and friendship for our neighbors.

It’s the faith that has supported you as you have continued to be church, worshipping and learning and caring and serving together, even as you were coming to acknowledge that the Spirit was pulling us back from the decline imminent in circumstances too burdensome for us, and leading us to flourish elsewhere.

It’s an Easter faith, a resurrection faith ~ the faith that makes itself known not only through Habakkuk’s courageous words, but through the words and acts of Jesus and his followers.

Our second reading today is the famous resurrection story from the Gospel of Luke, the story of the Road to Emmaus.  And guess what?  It also tells a story of desolation followed by a new story of energy and gratitude. It’s a story featuring dismayed and unhappy people, just like us.  People on a journey, just like us.    

Now, in case you don’t quite recall this famous story, let me bring you up to speed.  It’s Sunday afternoon, the third day after the crucifixion, and two of Jesus’ followers are headed out of town, headed from Jerusalem to Emmaus.  They encounter a stranger in the road – something that often happens in pilgrimage walks, I might add – and while we know that this stranger is Jesus, they don’t.  So they begin to rant and wail, telling this stranger about all the terrible things that have happened, about how mystified and heartbroken they are, about how all their hopes have been dashed.

They sound like us on our bad days.  And even when Jesus, without identifying himself,  tells them his story, tells them all about how his life reveals all that has been laid out for them in scripture, their frustration is not eased.  But their natural hospitality does break though, and they invite him to stop with them for the evening and to done with them.  And it is only then, only in the breaking of the bread, that their eyes are opened and they recognize him. It’s in the breaking of the bread that they understand: that in this earthly pilgrimage, despite, or even in the midst of, all of the change and upset and turmoil we experience, the risen Jesus appears, offering sustenance for the journey and hope for the future.  And making it possible for us not merely to go on, but to thrive, to flourish, to fulfill God’s dreams for us, and to respond in gratitude for all that we have been given and all that we are called to become.

Did you ever wonder what happened to those pilgrims on the road to Emmaus? I’ve been wondering about them this week, and – I think, I think that they became us.  I think that we are them.  They ate the bit of bread that Jesus offered them – just as we are about to do – and they were roused from their sorrow, their hearts were set on fire, and they went on their way.  They saw what we are called to see – that what we think is the end is not the end, that death does not have the final word and that sorrow is not our final destination. They went toward – toward Jerusalem, toward what would become the beginnings of the church, toward a future they could not have imagined.

We, too, in our gratitude for the presence of Jesus among us, strengthened by the meal he shares with us – we, too, are drawn to a future we do not know.  Seeds of hope have been planted among us and, while we may not see their full flowering, we are called to tend them so that they grow and flourish.  We are called to take the gifts we have discovered and honed here at Boulevard and share them on the pilgrim road, where we will sojourn with new travelers to new places. In the words of Oscar Romero, 20^th-century prophet to the people of South America: The Kingdom of God

 . . . is beyond our vision.  We accomplish in our lifetime only a fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work.  . . .  We are prophets of a future that is not our own.”

 

So: Go forth, dear Boulevard friends. Go forth and rejoice in the Lord, giving thanks for all that your life has been here. Remember your friends, remember our window and banners, remember your worship and your service in this place – remember all of it -- with thanksgiving and love.  But go forth and live into your calling as an Easter people, as a resurrection people, and as Emmaus pilgrims, in gratitude for the road behind, and for the road that opens ahead. Go forth as prophets of a future not your own, and walk straight into the love of God.  Amen.

 

Sermon Shorts (Luke)

A few weeks ago, my daughter and I went to one of our favorite events at the Cleveland Film Festival -  showing of short films: eight films of about eight to twenty minutes in a two-hour period. We love to watch the creativity condensed into those short explorations. I

I had been wanting to try something similar in a sermon, and the Emmaus text in combination for our congregation's need for a bit of a breather -- something a little different -- in a season of intensity -- seemed to create an opportune moment:

Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and talking with each other about all these things that had happened.  While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, 16 but their eyes were kept from recognizing him.  And he said to them, ‘What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?’ They stood still, looking sad.  Then one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answered him, ‘Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?’  He asked them, ‘What things?’ They replied, ‘The things about Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people,  and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him.  But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things took place.  Moreover, some women of our group astounded us. They were at the tomb early this morning, and when they did not find his body there, they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive.  Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said; but they did not see him.’  Then he said to them, ‘Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared!  Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?’  Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.

                                                                                                                                ~ Luke 24:13-27

Have any of you seen the movie The Way, in which Martin Sheen starred a few years ago?  In The Way, Martin Sheen’s character decides to walk the Camino de Santiago in place of his son, who attempted the walk and was killed in a fall on his first day out.

The Camino de Santiago – the Road of St. James – is a several-hundred mile roadway, or set of alternative roads across Spain, ending at the Cathedral of St. James, named for one of the twelve disciples of Jesus. It’s an ancient path of pilgrimage, followed for hundreds of years and increasingly popular as a spiritual journey for modern-day pilgrims.

When Martin Sheen begins to walk, he knows nothing of the Camino, and no one else on the road.  But as the movie unfolds, he and three other characters begin to travel together, talking, sharing life stories, and challenging each other to be community.  Slowly, the terrible burden of grief his character bears is transformed into a journey of discovery – of himself, and of the son he has lost.

And isn’t that what long walks so often do for us?  A walk is often a means of working things out.  A conversation during a walk is an opportunity to discover others.  Next Saturday, during our church retreat, we will walk – participating in the Lake Shore Ministries Prayer Walk if we are able, or walking here at church if we would find an outdoor walk difficult.  I’ve done many outdoor prayer walks with our neighboring churches, and always find new friendships and learn new things about our neighborhood. And I’ve even done an indoor walk – we were the hosts one month this past winter when the cold and the ice got the best of us, and a few of us walked through our church, looking our at our city and praying from different vantage points.

Our story today begins with a walk – an interesting walk, as the two people walking appear to be heading in the wrong direction—toward Emmaus, and away from Jerusalem.  Like Martin Sheen’s character in The Way, they are grief stricken – in their case, over the crucifixion of Jesus – but they are trying to get away.  They aren’t trying to work things out at all.

And then this stranger shows up and, after they relate the events of Jesus’s death to them, and tell him how their hopes have been dashed and their lives upended, he begins to explain the life and meaning of the messiah to them.  What irony – in trying to avoid working things out, they find themselves walking with the one person who can offer clarity and understanding. 

I urge all of you – take a walk this week. Take a walk and see what happens.  Walk in solitude and ponder your life.  Walk with a friend and have a conversation about a new topic.  Come to the retreat and join the prayer walk.  We, too, are part of this ancient story; we, too, are on the road to Emmaus, so often trying to walk away from that to which we are called.  Try walking toward it, whatever it is this week!

As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on.  But they urged him strongly, saying, ‘Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.’ So he went in to stay with them. When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight.

                                                                                                                                ~ Luke 24:28-31

I’ve got another movie for you – Babette’s Feast.

In this movie, a woman new to a town decides to take all of her lottery winnings and create a magnificent feast for her neighbors.  Unknown to them, she is a French chef of some renown, and the meal she creates is, truly, a grand feast.  It’s also a great gift of appreciation, in response to her having been taken in by two sisters in the village.

But the sisters are overly pious women who do not believe that they should indulge in the luxury of this meal. They decide to eat it but not comment on it.  However, another guest gushes his joy in the meal, and in the course of the meal, the other guests find new lives, new loves, and new joy of their own in Babette’s gift to them.

What happens when we break bread together?  I think we saw an example last week, when we gathered for a meal and conversation with the Beachland congregation.  We don’t know what will happen with that situation, but regardless of the outcome, new relationships are forming. 

In Babette’s Feast, the life of an entire village is restored. In communion on Sundays, our lives are restored.  On the journey to Emmaus, the disciples’ eyes are actually opened to Jesus when he breaks bread with them.

And so, I have another suggestion for you this week: Break bread with someone.  Go out and buy a loaf of really good bread – or perhaps you even bake your own – and share it with someone -- break it and ask: How is the goodness of God present to me in the ways in which I am nourished? In my friendships, in my marriage, in my family, in my work?  How does God come become present to me when I share a meal with someone else?

They said to each other, ‘Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?’  That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together.  They were saying, ‘The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!’ Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.

                                                                                                                                ~ Luke 24:32-35

What happens when your heart burns for Jesus?

We Presbyterians don’t like to talk that way, do we?  We are very uncomfortable with dramatic images like burning hearts, and we don’t like to talk about hearts aflame. We are, after all, the “frozen chosen” -- which means that we are pretty uncomfortable with the idea of being on fire for anyone or anything.

But look around and what sorts of things do you see people on fire for?  For those of you who were able to see the movie Selma: wasn’t Martin Luther King on fire for racial justice?  If we think about various causes – other forms of injustice, hunger, homelessness, health care – solutions emerge and take off when someone’s heart burns with a desire to see wrongs righted.

And here’s the thing about hearts on fire: they push us out into the world.   They entice us to care for others.  They motivate us to get moving.  Look at the Emmaus disciples – they turn around and head back to Jersualem, where the action is.  They stop running away and hiding out.  They stop complaining about what’s been lost and they stop looking to the past and to their dashed hopes – they embrace instead an uncertain future. 

They embrace the unknown.

We forget that, I think.  We know how the story works out – Jesus’s followers spread all over their world, and eventually all over the whole world, sharing the good news of the resurrection.  They create worshipping communities, they feed the hungry and care for the sick, and they seek to challenge the powers that be and to transform unjust structures . . .  and to change the world.

We know all that, and so we take it for granted. But the earliest disciples didn’t know what was coming.  They had no idea how the Holy Spirit was planning to move in their lives.    All they knew was that they had seen the risen Jesus, they had walked with him and eaten with him – and their hearts were burning.

What would that mean for you, for us, to live with hearts on fire for Jesus?

Would we risk more?

Would we be bolder and braver?

Would we be less tied to the past, less limited by the present, and more open to the future?

Would we be less jaded, and more filled with wonder?

Think about it.

Is your heart like a cold fireplace, a place where the remains of the past have been swept into a tidy pile in which the promise of the future has died?

Is your heart home to a few coals of hope, to the warmth of possibility, to a spark of creativity here, of innovation there?

Or is your heart on fire?  Could it be on fire?  Will it be on fire?

A heart of risk-taking, bold, courageous, awestruck fire?

What would it take for Jesus to set your heart on fire?

Amen.

A Simple, Elegant Equation (Christmas Eve Sermon)

A new movie came out a couple of months ago, a movie entitled The Theory of Everything.  The Theory of Everything tells the story of famous scientist Stephen Hawking – of his extraordinary career as a physicist, of his marriage family, and of his experience of life with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or what we often call Lou Gehrig’s disease, the degenerative neurological condition which over the course of his adult life has destroyed most of his physical capabilities.

As a brilliant young graduate student, Stephen Hawking began to explore the topic that would become his life’s work: Time. Does time have a beginning or does it not?  How does time work? As he himself explains it, Stephen Hawking wants to find the simple, elegant equation that explains – everything.

I’ve been thinking about this movie for weeks, and about this idea of a simple, elegant equation that explains everything.  As a physicist, Stephen Hawking’s  writes equations that look like math problems.  And if you’ve forgotten what an equation is – and I know that anyone here in high school is a lot closer to that definition that some of the rest of us! – an equation is an assertion that proclaims the equality of two quantity quantities.  For example, 2+2 = 4 -- one quantity is described as 2+2, and the other as 4, and they are equal.  That’s what most of us understand to be an equation. 

What on earth do equations have to do with Christmas?  (I'm sure you're wondering now how this happened ~ you came to a Christmas Eve service and landed in algebra class?)

Well, when Stephen Hawking, who is apparently not a person of faith, at least not in the conventional sense, does his work, he writes in the numbers and symbols of math and science.

But what if he is actually overlooking the simple, elegant equation that explains everything? 

What if the simple, elegant equation that explains everything is the Christian proclamation, the Christmas message?  What if the simple, elegant equation that explains everything is this:

Jesus is the savior of the world. Jesus = savior.

What does that even mean?

What does savior mean?

We have a lot of different ways of thinking about Jesus as the savior of the world, but as Professor Joan Nuth reminds us, it helps ~ yes, it really does help! ~ to begin with the Greek and Latin words from which the word savior comes – words which mean:

To make whole.

To heal.

One who saves -- makes the broken whole.

One who saves--  heals the sick and the injured.

One who saves, in other words --  gives life.  Creates anew. 

It seems unlikely, doesn’t it?  That the Christmas story could be the story by which all things cracked and smashed are made whole, the story by which all trauma is healed, the story which relates the beginning of a grand new creation, a new heaven and a new earth, a re-creation of the lush, flourishing garden of vitality and peace in which we got our start?

Yes, it seems unlikely that this story could tell us how God embraces the world.

The setting? An apparently arbitrary time on a speck of land on a very small planet in a vast universe of galaxies.

The cast of characters?

 

A man and a woman on the road, relying on visions and dreams for their sustenance while they are caughtup in that most bureaucratic of human enterprises – a taxing authority!

 

A baby – the most vulnerable of creatures, entirely dependent upon other human beings for nurturance and care.

 

Some shepherds and their sheep – the rough and tough guys and girls of their world, and their band of smelly, dull-witted animals.

 

And angels – all right, that might be a clue: something completely unexpected and entirely new is happening here.  But as far as the people are concerned?  They all look pretty ordinary.

And what about the context?  A world in profound need of healing, both then and now.

Then: Domination and oppression by a world power, slavery, poverty.  People who were lame and blind and ill, lepers and prostitutes and tax collectors – isolated and excluded and reviled.

Today: War and terrorism, Ebola, relations between black and white in turmoil, injustices and protests, people who are hurting and sick and angry, isolated and ignored.

It seems unlikely, that this story of a stable and a star, of people on the road and a baby delivered in a manger, unlikely that this story could have any impact on the vastness of human need. And yet, and yet --

Jesus is born to save, to make whole, to heal

By bringing together heaven and earth

God and humanity

Angels and shepherds

And by embracing the whole of human life: birth, death, great joy, unfathomable suffering ~

 

Jesus is the savior.

 

A simple, elegant equation? 

 

Let me tell you just one thing more about equations this time, about chemical equations.  Now for this I needed help, from my friend Michelle, who is a chemistry professor and a gifted spiritual writer, as well as from two friends who are chemistry teachers – one of them our own S.A. They explained to me that a chemical equation often requires a catalyst.   A chemical equation tells us how certain kinds and amounts of materials to which a specific catalyst is added result in certain products.

Michelle also pointed out to me last night that in a chemical equation, the materials we start with often bear no resemblance to the products  --  the results -- in the equation. 

 

For instance, hydrogen and oxygen are both gases and both highly flammable – and oxygen at high concentrations is poisonous to breathe! But let’s say that these gases, hydrogen and        oxygen – are our starting materials. 

 

Now add a catalyst -- a spark—and the product is not another gas, but water!  As michelle says: Pure, cool, wondrous water is formed.   

 

From gases, from something we cannot see, we get water – something we can hold and drink and bathe with and swim in, something tangible and refreshing -- and essential to our lives. 

 

Was that too much?  I’ll tell you the truth: it’s hard for me to think about.  Gases plus spark equals water. A mystery.

 

But – tonight – let’s try, just for tonight, to extend this idea of an equation in which we start with one kind of thing and end with another.  To a mystery more vast and more incomprehensible and – yes – more filled with joy than the mystery of H20.

For tonight, and for always, the equation is this:

 

A tiny baby, lying in slumber deep, and a human community in constant turmoil and pain – those are the materials with which we begin.

 

Love – that’s the catalyst.  God’s great love for all of us.

And the product? The product of baby plus humanity catalyzed by God’s love?

A whole, complete, healed, redeemed world.

 

The end product doesn’t look anything like the materials with which we start, and yet -- There it is: the simple, elegant equation: Jesus is the savior of the world.

 

Jesus, that tiny baby, is born tonight, to make whole, to heal, to re-create, to make new. 

 

Jesus is the savior.

 

Merry Christmas.

Are We There Yet? (Advent 4 Sermon)

I preached from notes last week, so I don't have a complete sermon to post, nd the stories I used sounded better in the telling than they do in print ~but here are bits and pieces of it:

Are we there yet?
Anyone who's traveled with kids has heard that cry ~
And the adults often echo them.

What about Mary and Joseph?
In Bible study this week: instead of the lonely couple we usually imagine, we learned that they might have been members of a caravan ~
A caravan with all of its chaos might make you wonder: are we there yet?

Do you suppose that even if they were members of a caravan, Mary and Joseph felt alone?

You know how you can be in the middle of a crowd and still feel alone?
Think about it: they were responding to a call different from any call ever before heard by anyone.
Maybe they felt completely isolated, even in the middle of a caravan,

 I like to think of Mary and Joseph as pilgrims.

And what do pilgrims do?

Not travelers focused only on speed and destination.

Not tourists, remaining apart to view and record.
But deeply engaged, becoming part of the story ~
in this case, partnering with God to create the story

So maybe they weren't at all asking: when will we get there?

Maybe they were soaking up the sights and sounds of each day.
Maybe they were allowing themselves to be completely immersed in their adventure.
Maybe they were savoring each step in the journey - the mark of true pilgrims.

Have you ever said to yourself: pay attention - don't forget this moment?

There it is again, that advent command: Pay attention.

Do you suppose Mary and Joseph said those words to one another?

Pay attention - notice it all - remember - don't forget ~
The sky, air, light, people, animals . . .

That's what I hope for you these last days of Advent.
Don't settle for: are we there yet?
It's tempting ~
But don't settle.

Instead: keep awake - stay alert -  pay attention - be a pilgrim, not a speed traveler or a tourist.

Where is God for you in these last few days ?

Where is Jesus about to be born in your own life?
Where are hope, and light, and love becoming more visible in your own world?

Are we there yet?

I hope not quite.
We have four days left to anticipate and to keep watch.
Four days left to savor the coming of Christ ~
if you haven't quite gotten around to it yet, it's not too late

Look and listen with care.  Let it all soak in.  Let your hearts open.

Prepare the way of The Lord.

Here I Am - A Sermon for Advent 2

An intriguing cast of characters populates our Advent panorama.  Last week, we encountered Elizabeth and Zechariah, the aging couple about to become the parents of John the Baptist, the man who would one day herald the arrival of Jesus. This morning, we hear from John himself, grown to adulthood to cry out the words of the prophet Isaiah -- "Prepare the way of The Lord! Make his paths straight!" -- and we meet the young Mary, stunned by the appearance of the angel Gabriel in her life, and yet quickly responsive to the call from God he shares with her.

This past week, two groups met for our new Bible study and had an opportunity to consider together this event in Mary’s life.  An angel appears to this seemingly ordinary young woman, this young unmarried woman, living in a small town of no particular significance, and tells her that she is to bear God’s son into the world. We imagined the possibilities:

·         Was she inside or outside? What were her surroundings like?

·         How, in the small and crowded world in which she lived, did she happen to be alone?

·         What did it mean for a young, unmarried woman of her time, a person whose status was entirely dependent upon husband and children, to be confronted with a surprising pregnancy before her marriage?

·         What did her face look like when she heard this news?  What would yours look like if you received news like that?

·         How did she feel?  How would you feel?  “Perplexed” is the word our text gives us.  What about – also – surprise?  Fear?  Shock?
 

And we marveled at how quickly she moved from her astonishment at Gabriel’s announcement to acceptance of the honor bestowed upon her.  “Here am I,” she says, “the servant of the Lord.  “Let it be with me according to your word.”

Now that’s not how we would be likely to react, is it?  Imagine yourself having just received surprising news – shocking news, even – that is about to transform your entire life.  News that will cause everyone you to know be skeptical of your story.  News that will alter all of your relationships.  News that sets you on an entirely new and completely unexpected path.  How likely are you to say, “I will live in accord with your will, God?” As Pastor Dave pointed out in one of our classes this week, aren’t we more likely to say, “What about MY will? What about MY plans?”

But Mary says, “Let it be with me according to your word.  Here am I.”  Or, in words with which I’ve taken a bit of liberty, “Here I am.” 

“Here am I.  Here I am” – as we’re going to sing those words at the end of our service this morning.  These are the words of prophets.

Isaiah speaks them; the song we’re going to sing in based upon the words of the prophet in Isaiah 6:8, as he responds to God’s call: “I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’ And I said, ‘Here am I; send me!’”

Listen again to Mary: “Here am I.”

They are the words of Samuel, last of the judges and first of the prophets of Israel, when as a young boy he hears the voice of God calling in the night and, thinking that it is the elderly Eli calling for him in the dark, responds, “Here I am!”  And then, do you recall, that after Eli understands that God is calling, he instructs the young Samuel in how to respond, and Samuel does so, saying, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.” (I Samuel 3:1-20)

Listen again to Mary: “Here am I, the servant of the Lord.”

The words of a prophet.  The words of someone responding to God’s call to speak and to show God’s people how God is moving among them and how they are themselves called to respond.

And make no mistake about it: Mary is a prophet.   

In her words, and in her very body, Mary is engaged in the prophetic task: faithfully trusting in and responding to the call of God, showing what God is doing in the world, and modeling for us the way in which we, too, are called to answer God’s movement in our own lives.

Not sure?  Yes, she responds as Samuel did, and as Isaiah did: “Here I am.  I am your servant, Lord.” Yes, she carries the Son of God into the world.  But there is more, in words we did not read earlier but will hear now, in the words she speaks to her cousin Elizabeth.

Remember, the aging Elizabeth, is herself, also surprisingly, pregnant, awaiting the birth of the baby who will become John the Baptist.  Mary, quite naturally, upon learning that she, too, is most surprisingly pregnant, rushes to visit her cousin Elizabeth, who is delighted to receive her. And Mary says to Elizabeth – and I want you to listen carefully here -- Mary says:

[God’s] mercy is for those who fear God

   from generation to generation.

 God has shown strength with God’s arm;

   God has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.

God has brought down the powerful from their thrones,

   and lifted up the lowly;

God has filled the hungry with good things,

   and sent the rich away empty.

God  has helped God’s servant Israel,

   in remembrance of God’s mercy,

according to the promise God made to our ancestors,

   to Abraham and to his descendants for ever.’ (Luke 1:50-55)

Are these not also the words of a prophet?

There is a long prophetic tradition in the Old Testament, a tradition in which those called by God are called, not to predict to the future, as we today so often think of prophecy, but called to assure those in need, those who are poor and hungry and sick and disenfranchised, that God is laboring for them. And called to warn those who are powerful and wealthy and in political control that their ways are not God’s ways, and that their power will be toppled and their wealth destroyed -- in favor of God’s new creation in which all people are called into a kingdom of peace and love.

And is this not exactly what Mary says?  And does? 

Mary is not a simple peasant girl waylaid by an angel.  Mary is not a meek and mild young woman called to quiet submission to things as they are.  Mary is a woman of prophecy, a woman who proclaims through both her very being and through her words, that in her son,

·         God scatters the proud

·         God brings down the powerful

·         God lifts up the lowly

·         God fills the hungry

·         God sends the rich away empty

·         God fulfills God’s promises.
 

Friends, the world is in need of prophets today.

·         The world is in need of people who insist that the hungry be fed.

·         The world is in need of those who insist that the sick be made well and the injured be healed.

·         The world is in need of those who stand in the streets to cry out against injustice.

·         The world is in need of those who work tirelessly to reform our criminal justice system.

·         The world is in need of those who persist for peace, for an end to war, for an end to all forms of violence.

·         The world is in need of those who say. “Here I am, Lord.  Here I am, your servant. Let it be with me according to your will.”

This world is in need of prophets who say, with Mary:

·         Here: In this time and this place.

·         I: This person, me, this person you, my God, created with these gifts for this time and place.

·         Am: Right now, present tense, responding with what I have to give, to your call in this time and place.
 

“Here I am, the servant of the Lord.”

So says Mary. 

So, God asks, say we all.

Amen