FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, ATLANTA, GEORGIA

By Rev. Craig N. Goodrich, Associate Pastor/
Administration/Executive Director 

December 6, 2009 

wwwww.come

WONDERING HOW IT HAPPENED

Scripture:  Matthew 1:18-25; Luke 1:26-38

In case you are wondering about the sermon title today and the five “w’s,” they represent the four Sundays of Advent and Christmas Eve, each sermon beginning with a “w.” Today’s sermon contains a question and is entitled “Wondering How it Happened.”

Advent. It is the time in the church year when we prepare our hearts for Christmas and for the coming of the Savior this year. But it is also a time in which we remember not only that Christ has come and Christ has risen, but that at the end of time Christ will come again. We don’t talk or think very much about the Second Coming, though our window on Peachtree St. (the one behind you) portrays this event, Jesus again in clouds of glory.

So Advent reminds us that Jesus has come and he will come again. Advent also reminds us that our lives here are not what they will finally be, that there is a world to come and a “life everlasting.” Advent reminds us that we were never intended to be insulated from pain or suffering, that we will not achieve perfection in this life and that the great longings of our hearts which are so deep, especially at Christmas, will not be fulfilled this side of heaven.

If all this is a bit sobering, perhaps it provides a good counterbalance to our harried pace leading up to Christmas and all that goes with it. It is so easy to get wrapped up in preparing for Christmas, isn’t it? Our expectations run so high as we seek to produce a perfect Christmas. We think, maybe this year, we will get it just right. What is it about Christmas?

Maybe it goes back to our childhoods. We look back and if we have been fortunate, we remember the magic of a childhood Christmas. How well I remember it, growing up with my mom and dad and two brothers in our little community of Woodacres (even the name sounds idyllic doesn’t it?). I recall the excitement of presents under the tree (stockings could be opened before mom and dad got up), the possibility of snow, the family including grandparents all gathered for turkey and stuffing, mashed potatoes, creamed onions and green peas (which I didn’t like so much). It was wonderful! It was safe, secure, comfortable, in the bosom of family.

What are your memories? And looking forward, what are your plans, your hopes and dreams for Christmas this year? Most of us I suspect are longing for a Christmas of security and safety and love and belonging, seeking to recreate or experience again the childhood wonder of it all. Well, I hope it happens for you, but don’t be surprised if you can’t quite get there.

And I wonder. I wonder if we may be asking the wrong question and if we are investing too much in our plans?

Maybe we need to ask ourselves a more risky question, such as this one, “Where is God in all of this? Where is God in our Advent and Christmas plans?” Or to turn it around and ask an even riskier question, “Where are we in God’s plans?”

Remember what happened to Joseph and Mary? They had big plans, probably a lot like ours, but God’s plan of salvation was even bigger. Their Advent, their season of waiting, was anything but safe and secure.

The gospel lessons this morning show a young couple, betrothed to be married. Under Jewish law there was a betrothal period prior to the actual marriage which was when the husband took his wife to his home, and the marriage was consummated. Under the law if the betrothed woman became pregnant, the man had the right to bring her to court or he could choose to divorce her quietly.

It’s fascinating isn’t it? Did you notice that Matthew’s gospel lesson is written entirely from Joseph’s perspective, and Luke’s is written from Mary’s perspective? In Matthew, when Joseph discovers that Mary is pregnant, he assumes it is by another man, so he resolves to divorce her quietly – the compassionate and just thing to do. But then something happens. He has a dream and in the dream an angel comes to him and tells him “do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife,” this pregnancy is actually by the Holy Spirit and will result in a son. You are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.

Now here is the amazing thing, Joseph did exactly that!

Can you imagine? He defied the law and his own fear and shame and stuck with Mary all the way and when the child was born he named him Jesus.

Joseph at great personal risk did as he was commanded by the angel. He obeyed.

But what about Mary? What was she thinking and feeling? After all, she was the one who had to carry the baby.

For her story, we go the gospel of Luke. The text tells us that the angel Gabriel appears to her, exclaiming, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you!” Rather than these being comforting words, Mary is afraid and perplexed. So Gabriel continues, “Do not be afraid for you have found favor with God and will conceive in your womb and bear a son and you will name him Jesus and he will be great… the Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever and of his kingdom there will be no end.”

But this only makes it more confusing and perplexing, so Mary says “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” Good question, don’t you think? I love the way one preacher put it, “If you think you have problems with the virgin birth, that’s nothing compared to Mary’s problems with it!” (Craig Barnes).

How can this be? How can this be? Mary knew about the birds and the bees.

The angel Gabriel responds, “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.” And then to encourage her, and to give her proof, Gabriel says, “and now your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son [this would be John the Baptist] and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.”

So there it is. What if you were Mary? What would you do? What would you be thinking? How can this be?! How will I ever to explain this to my family? And to Joseph? Nobody will buy it, nobody will understand. Oh no, you don’t. This is too much for me. Can’t you try the next house? There is another virgin just around the corner!

But Mary responds simply, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be to me, according to your word.”

Barbara Brown Taylor describes Mary’s remarkable faith and obedience this way:

“Mary’s trust [that God is with her] is really all she has. What she does not have is a sonogram, or a husband, or an affidavit from the Holy Spirit that says ‘The child is really mine. Now leave the poor girl alone.’ All she has is her unreasonable willingness to believe that the God who has chosen her will be part of whatever happens next.” (Home By Another Way at page 18).

Well, what are we to do with these accounts of Joseph and Mary and the Holy Spirit? What do they mean for you and for me today?

From a theological standpoint, we understand that the stories show that Jesus was fully human, the incarnation, God in the flesh. We affirm their importance in the Apostles Creed when each week we say of Jesus that he “conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary.” And we know that both Matthew and Luke were intent on connecting Jesus through Joseph to the Davidic line of kingship and to show that Jesus is the long awaited Messiah.

But how did it happen? The only answer we are given is that it happened by the mysterious activity of the Holy Spirit. And it happened through the faithfulness of Joseph and Mary who believed God and obeyed even at great cost to themselves.

And we know the rest of the story. How they got to Bethlehem and the manger with all the animals, no room at the inn. How they fled to Egypt and then how Mary watched as her son grew and gave himself to proclaiming the kingdom then died as a criminal on the cross for the whole world, and for you and me.

Joseph and Mary as it says in our Purpose Statement were “Open to the Spirit.” And they obeyed. It was not a safe obedience. It was risky. They were afraid, but trusted in the promise of the angel, “For nothing will be impossible with God.”

Well, what about us? What about you and me as we approach this Christmas? Are you open to the Spirit? Are there places in your life where you need to listen and obey, even at some risk? Where obeying may upset your ideas and ideals about comfort and security and maybe even your idea of your perfect Christmas?

Or to put it another way, where is the Holy Spirit calling you? What is your part in God’s great plan? What needs to be conceived in you?

You see, God’s intention, even at Christmas, is not to give us our wish of a comfortable secure life in which all our needs are met and we are fulfilled. No, God’s intent is to call us beyond ourselves, even to places of risk and sacrifice, so that we might be used for God’s purposes, for the building of the kingdom. In this service is true life. Remember it was Jesus, born of Mary who said, “For those who want to save their life will lose it and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” (Matthew 16:25)

Gregg Levoy, a free lance writer, wrote a book about ten years ago entitled Callings: Finding and Following an Authentic Life, Three Rivers Press, New York (1999). In it he examines the nature of callings and says among other things that following a calling almost always involves risk and fear and sacrifice, but that these are overshadowed by the positive compelling of love. He tells of meeting a woman named Alita Henri who for 35 years with her husband was a foster parent to over 550 children. Listen:

The oldest was eighteen, the youngest a few months. They stayed for a week at the shortest and twenty-two years at the longest, and at one point twenty-five children lived at Henri’s Children’s Ranch at the end of a long, winding dirt road outside Tuolumne City in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas. Each child also had an animal, something of his or her own to care for and be loved by unconditionally. So there were also goats, guinea pigs, cats, dogs, birds, chickens, and sheep.

Alita’s first foster child was Wiley, a neighbor boy of alcoholic parents who was fixing to run away to Arizona to become a cowboy. He was really headed for San Quentin when Alita asked his parole officer if Wiley could move in with her and her kids. It was all off the cuff—no money or even permission from the state. Alita just saw something in the boy that no one else could see. “He wasn’t a bad boy. Just a boy in a bad situation.”

So was one of the next children Alita took on. Social workers found Stevie hiding under a table in his parents’ house in San Francisco, biting and snarling like a dog. “They said he was mentally deranged. They said he has ‘intents to kill.’ My God, he was two years old.” This time the authorities went to Alita and said that if she couldn’t help him, no one could. “And let me tell you, I had to chip all the emotional scars off that little boy, he was so hardened. When I picked him up in my arms, he was like a board. But when one of those social workers came back a month later, he was a real little boy, not an animal, and two years later he was adopted.”

What other people insisted would take months or years, or couldn’t be done at all with the children, usually took Alita a few days. “It was love. They knew I loved ‘em. I was never too big to say “I love you.’ And I loved ‘em like they were mine. If I couldn’t feel like they were mine, I couldn’t do anything with ‘em. And the kids did what I asked. I never said something more than once or twice. In the beginning, every one of them would test me out, see if I’d stick with ‘em when they did their worst, and when I did, they felt safe. I was made for children. I’m like a Pied Piper. I seem to draw children to me. When I go to schools, kids run up to me and just ask to be held.”

The first time I met Alita, I understood why children respond to her that way. I got hugged three times and kissed twice, was fed lunch and cookies, and saw in her eyes the reason for her success with children: complete acceptance.

Her love is not even remotely possessive, either, which has helped her cope with the need to surrender on roughly 550 occasions, because Alita has not been permitted to know where any of the children went after they left her care. I once asked her whether all that caring for so many children and their menageries, and all that letting go, felt like too much of a sacrifice. “Sacrifice?” she said, as if I’d offended her by the question. “No! It’s been the greatest privilege of my life.” (Pages 282-283).

Not a sacrifice! Not a sacrifice… but a privilege!

You see, that’s the way it will be. That’s the way it will be for you and for me when we open our lives to the compelling love and power of the Holy Spirit. And that’s the way it will be when we say with Mary, “Here I am, a servant of the Lord. Let it be to me according to your word.”

So there is just one last question…What are we waiting for?!

Thanks Be to God! Alleluia! Amen.