Saying Yes

Written by Pastor Ed

To listen to Sunday's sermon, click on the link below:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/46934662/Dec%2018%20Sermon.mp3

Saying Yes

December 18, 2011  Advent 4

II Samuel 7: 1-11, 16

Luke 1: 26-38, 46-55

What do you expect God to do?  Or perhaps we could ask, “Do you expect God to do anything?”  For some, God is far away and we shouldn’t really expect too much from God.  For others, God is the giant favor dispenser in the sky and they expect that God will give them whatever they want.  For many, God is someone we ask for things, but in reality, we don’t really expect much to happen.

The people of the 1st century lived in a much different environment, for everyone expected something from their gods.  Every group, every tribe, had its own set of gods who looked after the daily life of the people bringing them crops in season, victory in war, and making the sun rise in the morning.  It wasn’t a lack of expectation, or of gods that was the issue at that time.  Perhaps a bigger issue was that expectations focused primarily on the here and now, everyday activities of the people. 

For the Children of Israel, the Jews of the day, there was a bigger expectation.  Drawing on the promises of Scripture as well as their own sense of God’s activity, they were looking for a Messiah.  Their prophets and teachers knew the promises of old, all the way back to David and beyond that someday a mighty ruler would arise, in the line of David, and overthrow the oppressors, just as God had delivered their ancestors from the Egyptians. 

For them this was a very real hope, for they lived under a new oppressor, the Roman Empire, that did not follow their God, and who exacted a great price for their occupation.  But the people of Israel could see something beyond their present reality.  They had a faith and belief in the promises of God, based on their own past experience, passed down to them both in the written Scriptures, and in the stories that were told, even if they couldn’t remember all the details. 

There is an ancient Hasidic tale that goes like this:

“When the great Rabbi Israel Baal Shem-Tov saw misfortune threatening the Jews it was his custom to go into a certain part of the forest to meditate.  There he would light a fire, say a special prayer, and the miracle would be accomplished and misfortune averted.

Later, when his disciple, the celebrated Magid of Mezritch, had occasion, for the same reason, to intercede with heaven, he would go to the same place in the forest and say: ‘Master of the universe, listen!  I do not know how to light the fire, but I am still able to say the prayers.’ And again the miracle would be accomplished.

Still later, Rabbi Moshe-Leib of Sasov, in order to save his people once more, would go into the forest and say, ‘I do not know how to light the fire, I do not know the prayer, but I know the place and this must be sufficient.’ It was sufficient and the miracle was accomplished.

Then it fell to Rabbi Israel of Rizhyn to overcome misfortune.  Sitting in his armchair, his head in his hands, he spoke to God, ‘I am unable to light the fire and I do not know the prayer; I cannot even find the place in the forest. All I can do is tell the story, and that must be sufficient.’ And it was sufficient. “ (from An Advent Sourcebook   Liturgy Training Publications, pg 82)

Like this tale, while many of the details of the promises had been lost, the stories of God’s actions in the past had not been lost, and the expectations and hopes remained alive.

So the first requisite is that there needs to be an expectation of God doing something.  And a hope for something beyond what the current reality is.  Rubem Alves said, “Hope is the presentiment that the imagination is more real, and reality less real, than we had thought.”  Mary’s song is built on that kind of hope, and follows in the long line of hopes for the future resident in prophets like Isaiah and Zechariah.  It is a belief that the present reality is not all there is.

Perhaps a more recent example would be Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech of 1963 which may not be as well known to you here in Canada, but which speak in biblical terms of a vision beyond the then reality of segregation in the Southern US.  He said:

“I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together."2

This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.

With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.”

Far too often, I fear, we are stuck in the present reality, and see little hope for the future.  One of the keys to a healthy congregation according to the book the Deacons are currently reading, is a sense of purpose and a vision for the future.  What are the expectations of what God might have is store for us for the future?  The author quotes a professor Leland Kaiser who says, “ If your line of vision is even with the floor, you can starve to death in a full pantry.”

Mary, along with the rest of her people were living in expectation that God would do something.  That the vision of the prophets would be fulfilled, and that God would act.

And then, when God did act, Mary was ready to say “yes.”  As one commentator noted, Mary did not answer the angel with the usual response given by others who had been called in such ways.  Moses, Isaiah, and many others had generally responded with a challenge, saying that somehow they were not worthy, or able.  But Mary’s response was simply, “How can this be?”  After all, God was not acting in the expected, anticipated way. 

But, when offered an explanation, Mary’s response was a simple “yes, may it be according to your will.”  And that’s something we don’t hear too often these days either.  Our responses to God’s action tends to be like one of the songs in an old musical revue entitled “For Heaven’s Sake” by Helen Kromer.  I know it’s old because I heard it when I was in high school at a national youth convention, but some of the songs have stuck with me over the years.  In one, entitled, “Use me, O Lord” the singer sings:

 

As soon as I’m out of college,

And pay all the debts I’ve carried

As soon as I’ve done my army stint,

As soon as I’ve gotten married:

 

I want you to use me, O Lord,

Use me, O Lord,

But NOT just now.

 

As soon as I get promoted

As soon as the house is built

As soon as my psychiatrist

Says that I’m freed of guilt

The song goes on throughout life, until the last verse when we hear:

As soon as I reach retirement,

As soon as they’re getting ahead;

As soon as I draw my pension,

Just as soon as I am dead!

I want you to use me, O Lord…

 

No, I don’t believe Mary knew what lay ahead for her, or her son, but she was willing, when the opportunity presented itself to say “yes” and become a part of the fulfillment of those dreams and expectations that her people had carried all those years. 

You see, living with an expectation of God’s activity is only half of the equation.  Having a dream of what the future could look like is only good if you are willing to step up and begin to live it out when God begins to act.  One of the things that makes Martin Luther King’s speech so powerful is that he was willing to begin to live it out, even at the cost of his own life.  And so Mary was willing to put herself in what must have seemed a rather awkward position.

For in choosing Mary, God was already beginning to fulfill that vision of a differently ordered world that the prophets spoke about, and Mary sang about.  God was already acting in unexpected ways, raising up the lowly.  It’s not surprising that the magi first went to Jerusalem, the center of power rather than to the little backwater village of Bethlehem.  Why would God act there?

And so God continues to act in and through us.  But we need an expectation that something can and will happen.  We need a vision of what the future might look like, apart from the current reality we see around us.  While we may look around and see conflict or decay;  while we might feel that the church has little purpose or even may be on its way out, we know that God has a mission for the church and that a day will come when God will be incarnate in the world through the church, just as God was incarnate in Jesus.

And then, when God comes to us and asks if we are ready to host Jesus among us – what will our response be?  When we are asked to step out in faith and begin to live out what that future vision looks like, how will we respond?  It doesn’t necessarily mean leaving home and going off to some foreign land – although it might.  But God is active right here and now, in our own neighbourhoods, where we work or go to school.  God is already at work and invites us to join in that mission.

Hopefully, like Mary, we will simply say, “Yes.”