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Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
Our stories also begin in connection with the past, but they also begin in our courage to live out our dreams and even bring our pain and confusion before God. And sometimes our stories begin when we have just enough trust to say yes to something that seems impossible. Now on the second Sunday of Advent, we continue our Advent series called Approach. And in this series, we'll look at four snapshots in the Jesus story that give us a glimpse of Jesus before his public ministry. Last week, Jeremy explored how the story of Jesus and in particular, the promise of Emmanuel, God with us, is rooted in the prophetic imagery of Isaiah.
Speaker 1:If you enjoy deep dives into source criticism, check that sermon out. It is great. No, seriously. What I found really helpful is the distinction that Jeremy made, that Emmanuel, or God with us, is the name of God that reflects divine posture toward everyone and everything created. It is not a war cry to put on your banner or a slogan to prove you are on the right side.
Speaker 1:God with us is about hope, that God is deeply committed to the world and is consistently present within it. Now this week, we look into events and people surrounding Jesus' birth. But before we dive in, let us pray. God of all grace, of old stories and new beginnings, of life everlasting and life as we live it now in this moment. Here we are on the second Sunday of Advent, Sunday of peace, longing for more peace in our lives and in the life of the world, waiting for your arrival to become more real for us this season, and listening to ancient stories, hoping that somehow they meet us today.
Speaker 1:Would you remind us today that you never withhold your peace from us? That your peace finds us in quiet moments and loud Christmas parties, in our grief, and even in our wishing for this year to be over. Your peace comes to us in good conversations and new dreams. May we be open to receive your peace whenever it finds us. And may we trust that the good we can offer, no matter how small, is part of your grace and peace filling the earth.
Speaker 1:Amen. Right. Today, we are in the gospel of Luke, and the actual birth of Jesus gets just one verse in Luke, like half a sentence. And Mary gave birth to her firstborn, a son. That's it.
Speaker 1:I mean, clearly, it was a man writing this. Right? But joking aside, I kind of appreciate what Luke does here. He captures this moment in a beautiful way because the simplicity of the description protects the sacredness of the moment of bringing new life into the world. And to be fair to Luke, his gospel is often called a gospel of women because he is intentional about including women's voices and experiences of God.
Speaker 1:And where there are babies, there are women. So today, we will look at Mary and Elizabeth, and especially at Mary's journey from that earth shaking moment when she learns about her upcoming pregnancy to her finding peace with the part she needs to play in God's story. Our outline for today is this. How stories begin. Listening, discerning, and trust.
Speaker 1:So let's start in Luke one twenty six. In the six months of Elizabeth's pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin's name was Mary. Now Luke is a careful narrator who likes to locate us in the story. Here, in just two verses, we get the timing of the events in the six months of Elizabeth's pregnancy.
Speaker 1:Elizabeth is a much older relative of Mary who is pregnant with John the Baptist. There'll be more on Elizabeth a little later. Then we get the name of the messenger, Angel Gabriel, one of the seven archangels in later Jewish tradition responsible for delivering messages and revelations from God. Then we get the place, Nazareth. Luke calls it Polis City, which is a bit of an exaggeration.
Speaker 1:It was actually a small village of a few 100 people on the outskirts of the Roman Empire. And then we get the names. Joseph, through whom Luke will trace Jesus' lineage to king David. And we get Mary, a virgin pledged to be married to him. And pledged here is a legal language.
Speaker 1:It means that Mary and Joseph are not living together yet, but their union is official. It can only be broken through a divorce. Now before unpacking these details a bit more, a couple of words on why we even have the story in this gospel. The gospel of Mark, for instance, begins with John the Baptist baptizing Jesus as an adult, and off we go into Jesus' ministry, death, and resurrection. But Luke carefully weaves together the parallel narratives of Elizabeth's and Mary's pregnancies, angelic visitations, prophecies surrounding Jesus, and even gives us a glimpse of Jesus as a 12 year old boy.
Speaker 1:The scholars agree that in the formation of the gospels, the stories of Jesus' birth were added to the gospels last. The early church was initially focused on the death and resurrection accounts because those were crucial to understanding salvation and who Jesus was. Then came the narratives about Jesus' ministry, his teachings and healings and miracles, and the stories that took shape last were the stories of Jesus' conception and birth, and even his preexistence as in the gospel of John. So what happened is that over time, the early church realized that Jesus did not just become the son of God and Messiah at the resurrection. He was actually the full revelation of the divine from the very beginning.
Speaker 1:So Luke wants his readers to know who Jesus is right from the start. But he also wants to connect the new story of Jesus with the stories of the past. That is why the gospel begins not with Mary's pregnancy, but with Elizabeth's. Zechariah and Elizabeth, the parents of John the Baptist, are meant to remind us of another couple, Abraham and Sarah, an old childless couple through whom the story of God's people begins. In Genesis, we'll learn that 90 year old Sarah gives birth to a son, and Abraham becomes the father of biblical Israel.
Speaker 1:And that miracle comes with a promise that through Abraham and his descendants, all people on earth will one day be blessed. Similarly, Zechariah and Elizabeth receive a promise of a long awaited child who is destined to become a great prophet and prepare a people for the Lord. And their story begins in the same place. In human terms, Elizabeth's pregnancy is impossible. And this is Luke signaling.
Speaker 1:Pay attention. Remember that story from the past where new life seemed unimaginable? Now look. God is going to do it again. One thing to remember though is that this new story is still set within a deeply Jewish imagination of the divine and human relationship.
Speaker 1:Walter Brueggemann, an Old Testament scholar, explores this in his book, Unsettling God. He points out that Christianity often does not pay enough attention to the idea of human beings as covenant partners with the divine. We tend to focus on fear driven obedience in our faith and forget that God actually calls us to all the complexity of partnership. Bruggemann writes that the human divine relationship invites a genuine interaction, one that is both self asserting and self abandoning. This partnership requires and expects us to bring our full humanity to it, where we have the courage to assert and the confidence to yield.
Speaker 1:The old stories of Israel were built on this kind of genuine interaction with God, and so is was the new story of Jesus. It needed the assertive prayers of Zechariah and Elizabeth for a child. And it needed Mary's confidence in God for her to say yes. But so is with our stories. Our stories also begin in connection with the past and our communities and our families, but they also begin in our courage to live out our dreams and even bring our pain and confusion before God.
Speaker 1:And sometimes our stories begin when we have just enough trust to say yes to something that seems impossible. Now, as we turn to Mary, I want to look at her story today through Bruggemann's three practices for living out our full humanity in this partnership with God. The practices are listening, discernment, and trust. So, let's start with listening in verse 28. The angel went to Mary and said, greetings, you who are highly favored.
Speaker 1:The Lord is with you. Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. But the angel said to her, do not be afraid, Mary. You have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus.
Speaker 1:He will be great and will be called the son of the most high. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over Jacob's descendants forever. His kingdom will never end. A couple of elements here that would be familiar to Luke's audience right from the bat. First, in the Greco Roman world, the birth of emperors and big heroes was often marked by divine signs and prophecies to legitimize their power, and usually linking them to a God from whom that power and authority derived.
Speaker 1:A listener familiar with the Hebrew scriptures would recognize here an Old Testament pattern for special birth announcements. It goes like this. An angel appears, the confusion of fear follows, a message is delivered, the recipient questions or resists, and finally, a sign of reassurance is given. Again, this is Luke saying, God is about to do something extraordinary. We are at the doorstep of change.
Speaker 1:But that change depends on a young woman in her late teens who is confused and terrified at this greeting that she just got. The angel reassures Mary not to fear. Like Noah in Genesis and Moses in Exodus, Mary has found favor with God. And this word favor here carries the meaning of both joy and grace. It is a joyful and grace filled thing that is about to happen to Mary.
Speaker 1:Now, quick note. In the Hebrew prophets, female barrenness, as in case of Elizabeth, symbolized not just personal but national tragedy. Jewish exile from the homeland, living under oppression, being powerless. And God given miraculous fertility and birth were a metaphor for a new life for the entire nation, a sign of the reversal of fortune. So Mary's joy in bearing a son will not be just for her.
Speaker 1:And this is probably true for all our children. They are never just for us. I resist this thought, but I think it's true. And perhaps it's true that God's grace in our lives in general is meant for the same thing. It is meant to flow outward to others.
Speaker 1:So Jesus, Mary is told, will be called the son of the most high, one of Luke's favorite names for God, which sets Yahweh apart from other gods. And Jesus will be the one in whom all the hopes of the Jewish people for a legitimate king in the line of David will come true. This king will finally bring liberation to the people of Israel. Now, was this promise declared? It's Mary's turn to respond.
Speaker 1:And she asks a very practical question. How will this be? Mary asked the angel, since I am a virgin. The angel answered, the holy spirit will come on you, and the power of the most high will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the son of God.
Speaker 1:Even Elizabeth, your relative, is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her six months. For no word from God will ever fail. I am the Lord's servant, Mary answered. May your word to me be fulfilled. Then the angel left her.
Speaker 1:Now, Mary's question here literally reads as, how can this be? For I have not had an intimate relationship with a man. And we are not going to dive into the doctrine of the virgin birth here, but I would like to make a couple of observations. First is the language of the holy spirit as the utmost creative power of God. The verbs coming down upon and overshadowing have no sexual connotation in Greek.
Speaker 1:But they convey the sense of God's creative and generative power that brings life into being. The movement and power of the Holy Spirit are actually central to Luke's theology. The Holy Spirit is what carries the story of salvation forward. It is the Holy Spirit who facilitates Jesus' incarnation. The Holy Spirit is at work in the resurrection, and the Holy Spirit fills the disciples on Pentecost releasing the church into the world.
Speaker 1:Now second for me, the focus here is not so much on Mary's body and the house of the incarnation as it is on her making a decision to engage in this divine human partnership. In the Greco Roman myths of heroes that were born of gods and mortal women, the gods would often seduce or force or deceive women. And Luke shows us here that this god is not like Zeus. There is no deception or trickery, but there's actually a profound divine vulnerability. All of God's sovereignty in the world will not trample a human heart.
Speaker 1:And Mary holds no power in that culture and society. She's female, she's young, she's poor, she belongs to a colonized and oppressed people group. But she is the one who is given the power of response in this story. And if Mary has doubts about what is possible, the angel gives her a sign, Elizabeth's pregnancy. And he gives her the same promise that the founders of her people, Abraham and Sarah, received from God in their doubts.
Speaker 1:Nothing is impossible with God. Mary says yes. Mary says yes to God's vision of the world transformed. And she courageously offers her whole self to the vision. One thing though that doesn't get much mention is that Mary says yes in a way that is not just an intellectual agreement with a great idea.
Speaker 1:She says yes to the earthy and messy work of motherhood, The very practical and incarnational reality of loving and caring for another human being. She will push the baby out of her body. She will feed him and cradle him and lose sleep for months. She will teach Jesus and raise him in the face of her community. And she will walk with her son to that cross.
Speaker 1:And just like with Mary, our listening to God and our own yes in those moments of encounter, more often than not, would take a lifetime to live out. And just like Mary, we cannot do that alone. So Mary packs up and hurries to see Elizabeth. Mary stays with Elizabeth for three months, and I see this time for her as a time of discernment where she lets her encounter with the angel catch up with her. It is her time to grow into her decision and find peace with what's ahead for her.
Speaker 1:And, yes, Mary goes to Elizabeth to confirm the signs she received from the angel, but she is also seeking the support of an older woman, a mentor, a friend, someone with whom she can share her questions and process her commitment. Speaking about different ways of knowing, modern psychology distinguishes between separate knowing and connected knowing. Separate knowing is when we take an idea or a concept out of its context and study it to arrive at an objective truth. It is a type of knowing that is more detached and analytical. Now, connected knowing is when we want to understand a thing or an idea within its context.
Speaker 1:It is a type of knowing that integrates emotions and other perspectives and seeks to uncover connections. In many ways, connected knowing is close to the biblical tradition of wisdom. Researchers Emily and Amelia Nagoski write that one of the deepest outcomes for us when we engage in connected knowing is that through connection with others, we come to connect with and understand our own internal experiences and develop our own identities. And that was very true for my faith journey. When I was baptized at 17, it was one of those big, deeply meaningful spiritual experiences in my life.
Speaker 1:But then, not much happened until a year later, when I joined a Christian student group where I could discern with others what being a follower of Christ actually meant for me. And I can say that being part of that community at that age was probably way more instrumental in my life than that individual spiritual experience that I had. So I believe that Mary here is seeking wisdom through connection. We're not giving any details about the conversations Elizabeth and Mary had during Mary's stay. But Luke tells us that when Elizabeth first sees Mary, she is filled with the Holy Spirit.
Speaker 1:And she breaks into a prophecy about Mary's pregnancy even before Mary says a thing. And then Elizabeth concludes with this blessing. Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her. And I think in affirming Mary's faith Elizabeth offers Mary a profound gift. It is beautiful and really really powerful to have our own faith to be reflected back to us.
Speaker 1:Especially when it comes from a mentor or a trusted friend who can say, I see you, and I see this gift in you, and I see where you can take it. So I am deeply convinced that a lot of our discernment needs to happen in community, with people who can affirm and support us and who want to bless us. In our connection, our faith finds room to grow and freely move between this personal experience and communal practice. Now, in her blessing, Elizabeth specifically points out Mary's faith. The Greek word she uses for believe refers to deep personal trust in God.
Speaker 1:A trust that Mary then expresses in her song of praise. We find the song in Luke one forty six to 56. In the Christian tradition, it is known as the Magnificat, named after its opening words in Latin, my soul magnifies the Lord. And this song, when you read it, sounds almost like a creed or a psalm. And it is quite possible that Luke may have reworked an existing hymn to make it Mary's personal expression of faith.
Speaker 1:But it is also meant to reflect the shared trust of her whole community, a people waiting for God's salvation to come in very practical and tangible concrete ways. In her song, Mary anchors her trust in what she knows to be true about God. That God is faithful and fully committed to the healing of the world even when the circumstances around us suggest otherwise. She sings that her spirit rejoices in God, her savior, because God has been mindful of her humble state. But very quickly, this divine mercy expands to all who are powerless and oppressed.
Speaker 1:For Mary and her people, God's peace in the world is about justice. She sings, God has performed mighty deeds with his arm. God has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts. God has brought down rulers from their thrones, but has lifted up the humble. God has filled the hungry with good things, but has sent the rich away empty.
Speaker 1:God has helped his servant Israel, remembering to be merciful to Abraham and his descendants forever, just as he promised our ancestors. At the end of her song, Mary recalls God's promise to Abraham in Genesis 12 that we have already heard today. Through Abraham, all people on earth would be blessed because salvation was never meant for one person, even a highly favored one. And salvation was never meant for one nation. There's no exclusivity to God's peace and God's embrace.
Speaker 1:So here stands Mary, carrying new life within her and holding on to the promise of a world transformed by God's love. She names what God has done in the past. And because of that, she trusts that no word from God will fail in the future. She feels the reality of God's presence right in her body, but she cannot yet see where this story will go. What she has is trust.
Speaker 1:Trust that God is reliable and faithful and that divine grace always finds new, unexpected, beautiful ways to pour into the world. And this is our advent too. Like Mary, we are waiting and longing for so much change in the world. And like Mary, we make peace with what God has entrusted to us here and now. We pray for healing and justice to come, and we work to bring healing and justice right where we are, in our families, in our relationships, in our communities.
Speaker 1:We wait for unexpected grace, but we also look for signs how grace is already here. So as you journey through Advent this year, may your waiting be filled with listening and discernment and profound trust that God is near. Let us pray. Loving God, navigating the holiday season sometimes can be really hard, especially when we find ourselves caught between the excitement and anticipation of change, and then the fear of the unknown. So we pray that in the moments of anxiety, we will have people around us who will remind us of your faithfulness and goodness.
Speaker 1:And in the moments of confusion, we will have people who will help us hear our own thoughts. And in the moments of hope, we pray that we will have people to share this hope with. This Advent season, may we be mindful of all the ways you invite us to be present to you and to each other. And may this be our extension of your peace into the world. In the name of Christ who loves us, we pray.
Speaker 1:Amen.
Speaker 2:Hey, Jeremy here, and thanks for listening to our podcast. If you're intrigued by the work that we're doing here at Commons, you can head to our website, commons.church, for more information. You can find us on all of the socials commonschurch. You can subscribe to our YouTube channel where we are posting content regularly for the community. You can also join our Discord server.
Speaker 2:Head to commons.churchdiscord for the invite, and there you will find the community having all kinds of conversations about how we can encourage each other to follow the way of Jesus. We would love to hear from you. Anyway, thanks for tuning in. Have a great week. We'll talk to you soon.