A sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Christine Jerrett on December 16, 2019, with gratitude for the reflections of Walter Brueggemann, Stanley Hauerwas and Craig Barnes that informed this message.
Scriptures:
Micah 5: 2-5a
Luke 1: 26 – 55
What is your favourite Bible story?
I have been asking people that questions for a number of years now. What I have noticed is that people are having a harder and harder time answering it. It used to be that people would quickly say, ‘Noah’s Ark” or “David and Goliath” or Jonah and the Whale”. Then, there came a time when people struggled to name any story from the Bible at all.
I remember distinctly one baptism class, the parents did not know any Bible stories. Finally, one woman blurted out, “the Christmas story”. When I asked her, “Tell me about that story.” She said, “It’s about a baby?”
I hesitated to tell you that story because I did not want us simply to say, “Isn’t it terrible that people don’t know the Bible stories anymore?” I tell you that story because that is the context in which we are the Church now.
Most of us grew up in a world where the stories in the Bible played some role in shaping how we saw the world and how we lived our lives. How many of you know what I mean when I say, “The Good Samaritan”? How many of you have some sense that, when you see someone in need, the right thing to do is to stop and help them? At the very least, it occurs to you that that is what you should do. The story of the Good Samaritan — at least the way the church has told that story, shapes the way we see the world, the way we act in it.
The stories of the Bible no longer function that way for most people.
We all live by some script. That script shapes us: who we are, our identity; what we do, our mission or purpose in life. The script tells us what will make us happy and what will keep us safe. At least, that’s the promise that the script makes.
As I have been hosting this week’s gospel story in study and in prayer, I have been thinking about a script we often tell young people in our culture. It goes something like this: “You can be anything you want to be. Just reach for your own star; pursue your own dreams; set your own goals and don’t let anything stop you.”
Have you heard that script? It is meant to inspire young people. It is meant to encourage them to work hard to accomplish something wonderful; to become all that they can be. It intends to send them out into the world with the hope and passion they need to shape their lives the way they choose to shape them. “You choose your life.” That’s the promise the script makes.
Maybe it works for some people. I don’t know any of them. I do know people who are hustling really hard as they try to live into that script. For most people, that script just sets them adrift in a broken world that has lost its way. They keep making choices; they keep following their dreams . . . but their choices don’t work out the way they thought they would. Still believing the script, they choose something else: another career, another partner, another place to live, another group of friends. They keep hoping that the next choice will give them the life, the identity, that they want.
The problem is that all that choosing and chasing dreams and reaching for the stars is hard on the human soul. The script doesn’t make us happy or safe. It doesn’t give us what we need to become who we are created to be. It wears away at our sense of self. When we try to self-construct our lives by making choices, we don’t find our lives. We lose them. We lose our selves.
The Church offers an alternate script:
Not, “You can be anything you choose to be” but, “God has chosen you. God has a holy purpose for your life.”
Not, “Go out and work hard; pursue your dream; make your own life” but, “God gives you the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit gives you the strength and courage you will need to live into God’s good and holy purpose for you.”
The Church offers that script in the story of a young peasant girl in a small village in Galilee. Her name was Mary but the angel Gabriel tells her she is not just Mary. She is “Favoured One”. She is “Beautiful with God’s beauty”. She is a person in whose life the Lord God is present and at work. She is “the mother of Jesus, Holy Son of God.”
Mary did not choose to be Mary, the mother of Jesus. She received that life, that identity, as a gift from God. She received it, not by making choices but by being chosen; not by choosing her own destiny but by being given a good and holy destiny.
We tell this story year after year because what God has done for Mary anticipates and models what God does for you and for me. Whenever the Church baptizes someone, the Church proclaims, “You are God child. You are not alone in the universe. You are beautiful with God’s beaut. You are chosen and cared for and held in love and grace. You don’t have to try hard to make your life count for something. God has already made something of your life. You have a place in a great and wonderful story that began long before you got here and that will continue on long after you are gone.”
The best part of the story happens when God, ruler of the cosmos, commander of angel armies, creator of all that is, chose to become flesh. This God chose to ‘move into our neighbourhood and dwell among us, full of grace and truth’. Jesus lived his life healing the sick, feeding the hungry, drawing us toward God. The story ends wonderfully with God winning the victory over all the forces of evil so that wars come to an end and peace and justice cover the earth.
That’s the story that Mary and Joseph and Elizabeth and Zechariah and John all get caught up in. That’s the story you and I are in. That’s the story in which you and I have been given a significant, holy part to play. There is a mission to your life.
It all comes as a gift, as grace. The only choice you have to make is whether or not you will receive the gift. Will you receive God’s sacred, good work in your life?
Did you hear what Mary said when Gabriel gave her this message? She said, “How can this be?” “How can this be since I am a virgin?” There is always something that makes it hard for people to trust the story. Moses said, “You can’t mean me, God. I stutter too much.” Jeremiah said, “You can’t mean me, God. I am too young.” Isaiah said, “You can’t mean me. I am not good enough.”
What is your, “How can this be?”
What is your, “You can’t mean me, God.”
Whatever it is, it is not a big enough problem to keep God from pulling you into the story and giving your life within it. Your sense of inadequacy? it is just a call to prayer. It is a call to move deeper into your relationship with Jesus. It is a call back to the heart of God.
You say, “Yes” to that call as you take yourself God and you remain close to that place where you can hear the voice that call you, “My child, my beloved, beautiful with God’s beauty.” That’s the true script of your life.
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