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Christ Is Coming, Ready or Not Luke 1: 39 – 45 |
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Summary
Christ Is Coming, Ready or Not Today is the last Sunday of Advent, the season in which we’re supposed to prepare for Christmas and the birth of Jesus. That may sound a bit ominous to you. “Have I really been preparing for Jesus’ birth? I know that there are booklets of Advent devotions and Advent calendars that are supposed to help people get ready spiritually, but all I’ve done is buy presents, put decorations on the tree and bake cookies. I’ve still got to wrap presents and finish writing cards. How can I prepare to celebrate in the right way in just a few days?” Here’s something that should be obvious but that you may never have thought of: No one prepared to celebrate at the first Christmas but Jesus came anyway. Paul says that “When the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman.” It was the fullness of time, the right time for God, but it wasn’t because people had gotten everything ready. People have sometimes made the argument that Jesus was born when he was because Rome had established peace throughout the Mediterranean world and built good roads so that the Gospel could be spread quickly. Maybe God took that into account in deciding when to send his Son, but Rome wasn’t preparing for a Savior. They thought they had one, the emperor. Some of the Jewish people belonged to a group called the Zealots, and they thought they were preparing for the coming of God’s kingdom by fighting the Roman occupation. But it turned out that that wasn’t exactly what God had in mind. Two women Today’s reading presents us with a meeting of two women who, to conventional ways of thinking, were not at all the kind of people who would play a major role in ushering in anything revolutionary. There is a very young woman, not yet married, and a considerably older woman, the wife of a priest, who is past the age for childbearing. Both of them are, quite unexpectedly, pregnant. Mary was the first to be told that the Messiah was on the way — and even more surprisingly, that she was to be his mother. Already bearing him, she comes to visit her cousin Elizabeth. She is probably still stunned by what she’s been told — “You will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. ... [He] will be called Son of God.” This girl, maybe 13 or 14 years old, from the backwoods town of Nazareth, never dreamed of being the mother of the Messiah, the one who would be overshadowed by the Holy Spirit and give birth to the Son of God. She’s in good company with Elizabeth. She and her husband Zechariah had long hoped for a child but had gotten old and resigned themselves that it was never going to happen. There was nothing to prepare for, no need to buy a crib or baby clothes. And suddenly the news came to Zechariah that they would indeed have a son. It wouldn’t be just any son but one who would be a prophet and who would get things ready for the Lord’s coming. Zechariah hadn’t believed it and Elizabeth may have had her doubts. But here she was, six months along. Neither woman had been getting ready to have life turned upside down. Mary certainly hadn’t been prepared to receive this kind of news from God. She’d been spending her time drawing water, kneading dough and sweeping the floor. Certainly like all faithful Jews she prayed for the coming of the reign of God, but the news that it would come through her completely blindsided Mary. So we might ask why she is so special. Why would the church later sing that she is “higher than the cherubim, more glorious than the seraphim”? Elizabeth gives the answer in our text. “Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.” Mary trusted in God’s promise and said to God’s messenger, “Let it be with me according to your word.” Coming to faith Mary, of course, is unique, but she isn’t the only person upon whom the call of God suddenly burst. Jesus walks along the shore of the Sea of Galilee, sees two fishermen mending their nets, and says “Follow me” — and they do. Later he walks by the tax office and says the same thing to Levi, the tax collector — who leaves his desk and follows. We may think, “Well, they must have heard Jesus preach before that, or had some conversations with him, to prepare for their decisions to abandon their previous ways of life and become his disciples. But the Bible tells us nothing about any preparation of that sort. Just “Follow me” — and they trust him enough to do it. It’s very natural for us to think that we’re ready to believe, ready to make the right kind of commitment, if only the right kind of offer — an offer that seems good to us — comes along. It’s as if faith is some kind of property we have and we just have to decide where to put it — what to have faith in. It may be reassuring to think that way because it means that we’re the ones in control. We get to make the decision of faith. There’s a certain amount of truth in that. People are incurably religious. They put their trust in all kinds of things — various ideas of who God is, different gods and goddesses, causes, people, principles, possessions and ideals can all be where ultimate trust resides. Even those who don’t believe in any God, anything supernatural, still, when the chips are down, will rely on something — maybe themselves. Some people would say, “It doesn’t matter what you believe as long as you’re sincere.” God, the true God who brought Israel out of bondage in Egypt, says, “You shall have no other gods before me.” Faith in this real God seems to be something we struggle against. That’s the basic problem of human sin. How do we come to faith then? In his letter to the Romans Paul gives a very clear answer: “Faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ.” Faith in the true God is created by the word of God. Just as God spoke the world into being in Genesis, just as Jesus called the dead Lazarus from the tomb, so God’s word to rebellious and resistant humans brings about trust and commitment. How the word comes That word may come by different routes. We’re told that Mary heard it from the angel Gabriel, who answered her “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” by reminding her that “nothing will be impossible with God.” Elizabeth’s husband hadn’t believed what was told him and was made unable to speak, so who knows how he may have communicated what had happened to his wife. (“This angel told me we’re going to have a baby. But maybe I just dreamed it.”) And who knows what Elizabeth thought? But pretty soon the morning sickness convinced her! And you will come to church on Christmas Eve or Christmas morning as a person in need of faith. Oh, you won’t come as an atheist or a pagan. (Few of them will be at worship on Christmas Eve, more’s the pity.) But just as faith in the true God is not something we just naturally have or can create by ourselves, it is also not something we get once and for all and then can forget about. We can get tired of trying to live as faithful people. There are calls for our loyalty and commitment that may seem more attractive than the call to be disciples of Jesus. Faith often gets pushed out of the way by all the cares and concerns of life in this commercialized “Christmas season” in which we try so hard to be “merry.” And then you will hear the Word. Perhaps the best way to prepare is to just let go of the “I’ve heard this all before” idea and try to hear familiar things for the first time. “And the Word became flesh and lived among us.” “To you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.” Maybe it will be the words of the sermon, or Jesus’ offer to you of himself in the Lord’s Supper. Maybe it will be words that you yourself sing, words of a carol that are familiar but that this time make you think, “So that’s what it means.” “Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord,” Elizabeth said to Mary. “Faith comes from what is heard,” and the only preparation that is really necessary is listening. |
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