Unforgettable Christmas, Pt. 2

This week we look at Mary getting the news that she would become pregnant with a child, and that child would be the Messiah.  Is that good news?  Bad news?  A little of both?  But with God, all of it works out...

This weeks message based on Luke 1:26-38 


This week is our second in the series, Unforgettable Christmas.  If you remember from last week, we looked at who Jesus is, He didn’t just come on the scene in the stable outside Bethlehem.  Jesus was before anything else was.  In the beginning, Jesus was already there.  

I don’t about you, for me, the greatest thing about Christmas is the surprises.  Especially Christmas morning.  When else in life do you get to pile 10, 20, even 30 surprises all together and sit for hours enjoying them? One after another, surprise after surprise. Christmas Morning is wonderful that way. I can still remember the way I felt as a child, the amazement, the sleeplessness, anxiously awaiting Christmas morning.

Chuck Swindoll writes, “surprises come in many forms: some good, some borderline amazing, some awful, some tragic, some hilarious. But there's one thing we can usually say -- surprises aren't boring.”  Surprises are a part of life.  Each of us will get our share of surprises – some good, and some not so good.  And the biggest surprises often usher in very unexpected and unpredictable changes in our lives.

I heard a story about a professor who sat at his desk one evening working on the next day's lectures. His housekeeper had laid the day's mail and papers at his desk and he began to shuffle through them, discarding most of them to the wastebasket.  He noticed a magazine, that wasn't even addressed to him but delivered to his office by mistake.  As he cast it aside on the desk, it tumbled just right and fell open to an article titled, The Needs of the Congo Mission.

So he began to read that article, and became mesmerized by it.  It said: “The need is great here. We have no one to work the northern province of Gabon in the central Congo. And it is my prayer as I write this article that God will lay His hand on one - one on whom, already, the Master's eyes have been cast - that he or she shall be called to this place to help us.”  That professor, Dr. Albert Schweitzer, closed the magazine and wrote in his diary:  “My search is over.” He gave himself to the mission in the Congo.  

That little article, hidden in a magazine actually intended for somebody else, placed in Schweitzer's mailbox by accident.  By chance it happened to fall open to that page.  It was pure chance he even noticed the title. But really, was it by chance?  Or was God calling him.  Was he just experiencing one of those big, life changing, surprises.

Most of us can admit having things happen to us that at the time appeared to be just chance.  But with time, we began to see that God's hand was at work.  What may have been a surprise at first, was actually God at work.  

In our reading this morning, we see one of the greatest surprises there ever was, the surprise that took place when an angel by the name of Gabriel appeared to a young teenager by the name of Mary. The angel told her of a surprise that had to be quite startling.  Even scary.  It was certainly cause for great concern.  

Even the introduction, “Greetings, you who are highly favored!  The Lord is with you.”  If an angel appeared to you and told you were highly favored by God, wouldn't that be a bit startling.  Here is a young girl, by some accounts only about fourteen years old, from a very poor working family, just trying to get by each day.  She probably wasn't that different from many of us, though I suspect that even at the tender age of fourteen, she had a great deal of work to do, and it's sure that she never tasted the benefits of growing up in the middle class in America.  Yes, she had great faith.  But I doubt that she had done anything in her life up to this point that would warrant such a greeting from an angel.  It had to be startling to her.

But then the follow-up.  “Don't be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.  You will be with child and give birth to a son.”  Here is quite a different surprise.  She was pledged to be married, in the Jewish custom of the day, there was an engagement period of a year or two when the groom would arrange for the dowry.  She was considered pledged to him, but they lived apart until the end of the period, and the payment of the dowry.  Then they would have the formal ceremony and the wedding celebration.  

So when she expresses some question, and said that she was still a virgin, and you know it would have been very much against Jewish law for her not to be.  Sexual promiscuity was not tolerated in that day.  And if she was found to be with child before the engagement period was over, she could very well have been stoned to death.  Especially if Joseph denied the child was his – and he would have also been in violation of the law had he not denied it.  So as surprises go, this was a biggy!  Like the car dealer always touted, this is Huuuuuuge!

It had to be somewhat bitter-sweet news.  On the one hand, the angel was telling her that she would give birth to God's son.  Her Son would reign over the house of Jacob forever.  That's great news!  Almost unbelievable news.  What young lady wouldn't want to be the mother of the coming Messiah?  Though I kind of doubt that they ever really thought about the birth of the Messiah.  I suspect their belief was more along the lines of someone just appearing from the heavens – not born as a baby, to grow and be nurtured.  Babies are so helpless, and I doubt the image of a helpless Messiah really fit into their beliefs.  But still, to be told you were the one to give birth to the Messiah -  that would have to be pretty incredible news.  

Yet on the other hand, if it was discovered that she was pregnant before she was married, the law would call for stoning her to death.  And there were always enough judgmental people around who were ready to start a good stoning.  Even today, there always seems to be enough judgmental people around to get things started.

And what about the shame of the family?  That had to be a serious concern in a day when family was everything – family had to take care of each other, there was no government assistance.  No charities giving to the poor.  If your family didn’t take care of you, you had nobody.  And how about Joseph?  The shame it would cause him to find he was engaged to an adulterer?  Probably the last thing she worried about was the shame to herself.  Because an “adulterer” was exactly what she would have been labeled.  If she was somehow to escape being put to death, she would have lived with that reputation the rest of her life.  

Let’s think for a few minutes.  Considering all of this, what would you have done if you were in her shoes?  If you could choose, if it was you the angel appeared to, you who had to balance all these really serious concerns, would you have chosen to go along with that plan?  I suspect that most of us today would turn and ran.  Most of us would have been very unwilling to go along with such a thing, under those circumstances, and in those times, and knowing those risks.

And yet, I strongly believe that God allowed Mary to choose.  If Mary had been overcome with fear, God wouldn't have forced the issue.  If Mary were scared to death, God wouldn't have insisted.  If Mary chose the sensible choice, if she had turned and run, like most of us probably would have done, I believe God would have honored that.

But obviously that’s not what she did.  What was her response?  It's a classic.  She told the angel, are you ready for this, she said, “I am the Lord's servant.  May it be to me as you have said.”  Facing what she had to realize could have meant almost certain death, she said, “May it be to me as you have said.”  

What choice would you have made?  To be honest, I not sure it was the choice I would have made in that situation.  Yet, Mary trusted God completely, in what could have been a very scary situation.  Simple faith.  Not worrying.  Just believing.  How much better would our lives be if we could share Mary's complete trust in God.  If we could be filled with simple faith, rather than trying to over examine every little “what if” that came our way.  If we could stop worrying, and just believe.  You know what kind of life I think we could have?  A life as filled with blessings as Mary's.  

In the end, we know that it worked out for Mary.  She wasn't killed.  Joseph stood by her and didn't break off the engagement.  And when the child was born, and Herod wanted to kill him, God sent them to Egypt.  When it safe, God brought them back. When the time was right, God moved them back home again, back to Galilee.  Things certainly weren't easy for her, but God was always just a step ahead, and she was always faithfully and obediently following Him.

I think that's the lesson we can learn from Mary.  That if we allow God to be that close, just a step ahead, and we obediently follow Him every step, we, too, can live a life of simple faith, never worrying, just believing.  And the God that we love, the God that we trust beyond all doubt, will be with us.  It all started with the simple response, “May it be to me as you have said.”