Advent Lutheran Church

"Mary's "Yes," Our "Yes""

            Grace and peace to you from God the Creator and the Lord Jesus.  Amen.

            What a defining moment!  Up to now, Mary has been an ordinary young woman with an ordinary plan: marry Joseph the carpenter, settle in with the neighbors in Nazareth, and raise a family.  That’s the plan. 

And then God shows up. 

            It’s an angel, actually, Gabriel by name, with a message from God: “Greetings, favored one!  The Lord is with you.”  Keep in mind, now, that if Mary is at the average age of marriage in her society at that time, Mary is 13 years old.  Nothing in her experience has prepared her for an appearance by an angel.  What can this mean?

Life can change on a dime.  We know this.  Your boss is waiting for you when you show up at work, and says, “Come into my office, now.”  The phone rings at 3 a.m.  A woman wakes up in the morning feeling a little sick to her stomach.  Like Mary, you ponder, you wonder.  What does this mean?  All that you know for sure is that the extraordinary is about to break into the ordinary. 

That’s when the angel weighs in with some reassurance: “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.  And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus.”  Now, Mary moves from pondering and considering to being completely overwhelmed; she is totally out of her element.  Even at 13 years of age she realizes that to bear a child out of wedlock can mean her death by stoning.  This makes absolutely no sense.  “How can this be?”

But the angel has an announcement, not a request.  God has a plan, not a proposal.  “Mary, you will conceive, you will bear a son, you will name him Jesus.”  Mary does not say, “You know, Mary, we’ve been thinking a lot about this up in heaven, and we think that this is the perfect time for the Savior of the World to be born and we were hoping that you would be willing to play a major role in this drama.  What do you think?”’

No, Mary doesn’t say that, because it’s a basic part of God’s nature to take charge of our lives, to take us places that we might not choose to go on our own, to give us gifts that we might not want, to take from us those things that we would rather hang onto, like our ordinary plans for an ordinary life.  So the angel tells Mary that the Holy Spirit will generate the new life within her, the same Holy Spirit that was present at the beginning of creation, the Spirit that turned chaos into life-giving beauty.  And that’s when Mary completes this defining moment; she says “yes.” 

And when Mary says, “yes,” she also says, “no.”  When Mary says “yes” to God, she says “no” to all that is ungodly in the world.  In the verses that follow this reading, we see what Mary says “no” to: she says “no” to the wealthy in their indifference to the suffering of the poor; she says “no” to the powerful abusing the weak; she says “no” to the arrogant parading their empty pride.  This is a 13-year-old girl speaking out for God in the world!  A defining moment, indeed!

Defining moments come to all of us, don’t they?  Certainly not as world-changing as Mary’s, but moments nonetheless when we can clarify our values, freshen our identities.  Meister Eckhart was a 14^th Century German theologian, and his words carry a very contemporary message for us: “We are all meant to be mothers of God.  What good is it to me, if this eternal birth of the divine Son takes place unceasingly but does not take place within me?  And, what good is it to me if Mary is full of grace if I am not also full of grace?  What good is it to me for the Creator to give birth to his Son if I do not also give birth to him in my time?  This, then, is the fullness of time: When the Son of God is begotten in us.”

What if we said, “Yes?”  What if we said, “Yes,” to the birth of Christ in our most intimate relationships?  What if we said “Yes” to the birth of Christ in our conversations about politics and about the economy? What if we said, “Yes,” to the birth of Christ in the midst of our own hard hearts that simply don’t want to forgive?

When we do that – when we say “yes” to the birth of Christ in us – the Holy Spirit fashions us for what God wants us to do.  It may take us where we don’t want to go, but that’s a blessing still, because that’s the way that Christ comes into the world now, through us.  So my prayer on this last Sunday in Advent is that God would guide you to “yes” – because that’s how Christ comes into the world now; it’s how the world awakens to the glory of God.  Amen.