“God Interrupts”
“God Interrupts”
2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16 Psalm 89:1-4, 19-26 Luke 1:26-38
Year B, Fourth Sunday of Advent
December 24, 2023
Pastor Andy Kennaly, Sandpoint, Idaho
This morning we read of the angel, Gabriel, sent by God to deliver a message to Mary, a young woman engaged to Joseph. Gabriel uses familiar words, saying, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.”
On this Fourth Sunday of Advent we mention Peace as we light the fourth candle on the wreath. During worship there’s usually at least one reference to the phrase, “The Peace of Christ be with you.” The appropriate response is, “and also with you.” One half of the formula unites with the other half, and the sentiment is complete, inviting awareness of God’s peace. This peace is based on the presence of Christ that changes everything, so why settle for anything less? Yet even as the angel greets her, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you,” Mary doesn’t say, “and also with you.” Instead, Mary is perplexed, pondering.
On this Sunday of Advent as we focus on Peace, Mary is not experiencing peace. She’s troubled. Sure enough, the very next thing Gabriel says involves encouragement, confronts her experience of fear, her troubled heart, her perplexed mind, and offers peace. “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.” This is now the second time the angel has told Mary that she is favored by God, that the Lord is with her, that she doesn’t need to fear. Gabriel hasn’t even gotten to the message yet, the part about her having a child. She’s not ready for that news, that invitation. First, she needs to be receptive, to trust. Mary is “much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be.” Mary is doing inner work as her soul opens and grows.
One dynamic at work is the tension or paradox between Mary being favored, very special and unique, blessed by God, and yet also ordinary, “lowly” as she calls it. In her conversation with her older cousin, Elizabeth, and in some, but not all, translations of the passage we read from Luke as Gabriel greets Mary, one phrase that comes around is how Mary is “blessed among women.” Again, she is blessed, but she is one of all women, she’s among women, and not above or separate from the rest of us human beings. In that sense, Mary is more archetypal, that her experience is an indicator, a pointer to what we can experience also in our soul as people blessed by God.
The story blooms as God reveals her blessedness.
But just as Mary needs to decide that the angel’s greeting is acceptable and accurate and received by her heart and soul, that God is with her and she has favor, so we too, by extension, need to look inside and decide if God is with us, if we are blessed, even favored, if the peace of Christ embraces us even in the frailties of our humanity, what Mary calls, “lowliness.” It’s very important that we allow the angel’s greeting to stir our hearts, perplex our mind because our thinking won’t confirm what only our soul is equipped to embrace.
In church the term “soul” is used freely, yet this usage carries assumptions that are not always the case with most people. Recognizing that we have a soul is the first step. We have some part of us, deep inside, that knows who God is because God is there and has created, from eternity, this special core of who we are. The next step is allowing ourselves to recognize the presence of God in our own soul, and then, of inviting God’s action and activity in our lives.
All of this that we’ve talked about so far is like Act One in the drama of this passage. Act Two begins as Mary receives the message from Gabriel, hearing about having a child who will have a kingdom with no end, and yet Mary is not convinced and has questions. It’s like a classic narrative, the character going about life unaware, suddenly something unexpected happens that creates a situation that needs dealt with, and in this process there is tension, a conflict that needs resolved or overcome, and then there’s resolution, an outcome that would not have been possible without the disruption that changed life as we know it.
Act Two, and Mary has questions. “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” She’s young, she’s engaged. Rather than get into the mechanics of how this vision is enacted, Luke simply reports the angel saying that God will inspire the birth. They point to Elizabeth, Mary’s cousin, as an example of God doing amazing things that don’t always fit our perceptions of how things work.
“How can this be?” is a question that shows Mary at one plane of existence, and in her reality this conversation makes no sense and is frightening. In her question she adds a descriptor: “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” She is assigning an identity, an ego understanding of herself, and this, by default, has limitations. Act Two is about her transcending the limitations of the egocentric self, and God becomes the central actor; the one taking action in and through her life. Will she make this shift? Will she open herself to a higher plane of existence?
The world waits, holding our breath as we wonder what Mary will choose in this conversation that, so far, has been troubling, encouraging, invitational, and somewhat conditional: for all this to happen everyone mentioned has to do their part. Before we get to Act Three and the resolution, let’s set the stage through Henry David Thoreau, an American writer from the New England of the mid-1800’s, writing in one of his journals this short line from June 20th:
“Praise begins when things are seen partially. We begin to praise when we begin to see that a thing needs our assistance.” (The Heart of Thoreau’s Journals, Edited by Odell Shepard, Dover Publications, 1961, pg. 14).
Mary discovers that she is invited to give assistance, and her response is praise. That’s Act Three: Mary says, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word. Then the angel departed from her.”
Gabriel does more than deliver a message. This shared conversation in the heart of Mary brings her through confusion into active trust. It shares a vision of possibility, one that involves calling, an invitation to participate in God’s larger purposes, which is only possible through the heart of a servant, of one willing to give of themselves for the sake of another. This doesn’t just happen, but involves transformation. Mary recognizes this takes work on her part, and a degree of eagerness to be open to what God is doing. The invitation to participate in something that needs her assistance inspires praise.
Mary takes her place in the fullness of humanity in relationship with divinity, partnering to bring about reality, as spirit and matter merge in and through Christ. And as she sings, we too are invited to share in awe for God. Yet there is something that would help us take this leap of responding to this sacred invitation to birth Christ as co-creators with God, kind of like Mary does. And notice I say, “Like Mary does” rather than “Like Mary did.”
Which sounds better to you? To say, “Jesus was born around 2,000 years ago.” Or to say, “The birth of Jesus has ongoing truth that affects everything.” One approach is historic, and Jesus was born around 2,000 years ago as we put a particular event on a timeline. This involves chronology and thinking in terms of past, present, and future, which is linear and three-dimensional.
The other approach isn’t about clock time. To say the birth of Jesus has ongoing truth that affects everything is a qualitative statement that is free of time’s limitations. This is four-dimensional thinking in that it opens us to larger realities, such as truth, spiritual influence, the power of ongoing creativity, and the connection of all things as everything gets affected by the intensity introduced in the birth of Jesus. Chronos gives way to Kairos and time-freedom releases us from the boxes of three-dimensional thinking.
As we wrap up the season of Advent, and on the very same day turn around this evening to welcome the newborn Jesus for Christmas Eve, we hear story after story of God sending messengers, of people going about their lives when God interrupts with a message of transformation. Hope, love, joy, and peace are more than Advent themes to light candles with, they are pointers that indicate new realities that break old molds, that turn worldly ways on their head, that introduce new dimensions in thought, and free us from our own thinking, limited perspectives, and assumptions. The power of the birth of Jesus is ongoing. May we, like Mary, recognize what we’re being asked, what questions our world faces, and be honest in our sincere reply as we say, Yes, to God. Our troubled world awaits our yes. God interrupts, may we heed the call. And may God be glorified, now and always. Amen.