Ecclesiastes 3:1-13 - A Time To...

There is a saying, you could even maybe call it a proverb, that says that the reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once. Sometimes, when you look back at certain times in your life it feels that everything is happening at once. Other times, you may look and wonder if anything is really happening in your life at all.

Christmas Day was one of those times where it seemed everything was happening at once. We were trying to celebrate Christmas, we had our 7am Christmas service at the church, Lisa’s parents were arriving in the evening, and Bronte chose this day and this time to come down with her first stomach flu. It was not pretty, and it was not great timing at all. We had about three or four Christmas themed outfits that we kept changing her into after she vomited on the one before. It took us a while to figure out that we were dealing with more than a little spit-up. We would put her in an outfit and we’d head back under the tree to play with presents with her and next thing we knew, we’d need to find another outfit for her. I guess the reason we didn’t catch on right away was that Bronte wasn’t acting sick at all, she was her usual, cheery, smiley self so we figured she couldn’t really be sick. She didn’t begin to act sick until the next morning.

I ended up spending a chunk of the afternoon on Christmas Day driving around Storm Lake looking for something that might be open so that I could get some Pedialyte, a water with electrolytes in it, basically Gatorade for babies, which the Emergency Room nurse suggested we feed her. Of course, since it was Christmas Day, nothing at all was open and so I eventually found myself at the Emergency Room begging them for some Pedialyte to get us through the night. They were very gracious and did that very thing for us, truly saving us from having to bring Bronte to the hospital to keep her from dehydrating.

Bronte’s first sickness was not exactly fun for us and it clearly wasn’t fun for her, but it wasn’t a horrible crisis either. We are thankful that things weren’t any worse. But the whole experience reminded me how time works. It reminded me that we can have the best laid plans and be all set up to do what it is that we are planning to do, and then something will happen that will change everything. Ecclesiastes 3 tells us that there are different times in our lives, different seasons. It tells us there are times to love, celebrate, plant, heal, dance and mend. But there are also times to hate, die, mourn, weep, tear down and even (though it doesn’t say it in these words) be sick.

We are in the middle of the Christmas Season. We are celebrating the incarnation of our Lord and Savior, Jesus. And we are also celebrating the turning of the year: the ending of 2007 and the beginning of 2008. What season are you in? And what are you going to do with the season that you are in? We can learn from the author of Ecclesiastes, that we can accept the season we are living through and find ways to thrive in it, for everything that God puts before us, no matter how difficult and trying it may be, is there to strengthen us and help us through.

I. The Problem with Prosperity Gospel

I must admit that I continue to struggle with people who say that if you are a Christian, then nothing bad will ever happen to you. This message, which is quite vocally preached in some Christian circles, tells us that we are called to live victoriously as Christians and therefore if there are any problems in our lives, we are doing something wrong with our faith. This message comes from an understanding of the faith that I’m not terribly crazy about. It looks at our faith as something that is about receiving from God instead of truly being a relationship with God. If faith is only about receiving blessings from God, then it becomes an issue of asking God, “What have you done for me recently?” And this is not one of the questions I believe that we should be asking God.

I don’t think much of this prosperity gospel because it doesn’t line up with the faith that I have found in my life. It doesn’t line up with the God I know and it doesn’t line up with scripture either. The fact is that our lives have seasons. They have times of plenty and times of want. They have times where things seem to be going well and they have times where you wonder if God is really with you. And this is captured so beautifully in Ecclesiastes 3.

There is something terribly poetic about Ecclesiastes 3: the contrasts between the good times and the bad; the juxtaposition of the two is just beautiful. I truly wish some of the bad things weren’t in the list. Many people wish there wasn’t a time for weeping or mourning in the list. But I wish there was never a time for war. I wish there was never a time to hate. But this is a part of the world we live in. It is a part of what we experience in the world. And just by listing it out, Ecclesiastes allows us to find meaning in the difficult times as well as the joyous ones. Without war could we truly appreciate peace? Without mourning could we know the joys of dancing?

When we accept that all of this is a part of the world we live in we can find strength through it all to help us move forward in the difficult times and help us to remember God in the good times. I’ve said before that it seems to me that when everything is going well, when you are in the times of joy and dancing and laughter, you sometimes forget about God. You begin to rely on yourself a bit too much. You begin to believe that all your fortunes are of your own making.

II. The Dark Night of the Soul

But sometimes we have the opposite happen. Sometimes we go through a long time of mourning. Sometimes we look around and we wonder if peace will ever come again. These times are an important part of the world we live in. I would even go as far as to say that they are an important part of the Christian life. Some Christians have even come up with a name for these difficult times. St. John of the Cross, a 16^th century priest referred to the difficult time as the dark night of the soul. The term has stuck and it is still talked about in those terms today. For St. John of the Cross, the dark night of the soul is a time where God seems distant, where problems seem overwhelming, where questions seem abundant, where faith is difficult. St. John of the Cross spoke of the dark night of the soul as a time where prayer became difficult and God seemed unrelatable. But he also believed that in the midst of the crisis of faith there was blessing. He believed that instead of just being a test of faith, the dark night was a time for the faith to grow and prosper and become even deeper.

If you spend time praying when praying seems impossible, if you cast your cares upon God when God seems unrelatable, if you allow yourself to surrender to a God who you aren’t sure you believe in, then you will find strength and growth. And when God reveals himself to you once again you will find yourself on even more sure footing.

This concept of the dark night of the soul has been translated to a modern context in the overly pithy poem “Footprints in the Sand”. The poem talks about a person complaining because they looked at their life and saw two sets of footprints in the sand, one set for themselves and one for Jesus, who was walking beside them. But at the difficult times in their lives, they would only see one set of footprints. The author of the poem asked why Jesus abandoned him during those difficult times. And of course, Jesus responds by saying that he didn’t abandon in the times of trial. Rather, the reason you only see one set of footprints is that Jesus was carrying him through the difficult times.

III. What do we do

But Ecclesiastes 3 doesn’t just spend time focusing on the juxtaposition between good things and bad things happening in their seasons. It comes up with an understanding of the world that at first seems somewhat depressing or maybe just pragmatic. Ecclesiastes as a book talks about the fact that there is so much that we just don’t have control over, it is better for us just to live our lives to the best of our ability and let God sort it out. Ecclesiastes seems to be telling us that if we’re searching for meaning to our lives. If we’re searching for understanding or greater purpose, we may just find ourselves disappointed.

But I’m not sure that the book is trying to actually be depressing as it asks this question. I think that it might actually be a good question to ask, and the answer that is found in chapter 3, if you really let it sink in is quite powerful. It begins at verse 12: “I know that there is nothing better for us than to be happy and do good while we live. That everyone may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil—this is the gift of God.”

Sometimes I think we are looking for a little too much from God, from our faith, from our lives. We sometimes think that we are all destined to some sort of greatness. And we are, but the true greatness that we receive doesn’t happen here on this earth. It happens when life on this earth is over and we are in eternity. What we have to look forward to in this world is that we can eat, drink, and find satisfaction in the work that we do. Ecclesiastes tells us that this is a gift from God. Are we willing to accept that gift? Are we willing to take it and find meaning, find purpose in it? Do we find satisfaction in what we do? Are we finding ways to experience joy in our lives and do good? This is what we are called to each and every season of our lives. And if we live this out, we will find joy and strength in the good times and the bad: when Bronte is vomiting up on Christmas Day as well as when she’s being her sweet, good-natured, normal self; when we find ourselves in times of mourning as well as when we find ourselves in times of laughter.

God does have a plan for you. He does have a purpose for your life. Know this, accept it, believe it. And find joy and happiness in your life, it isn’t worth spending too much time on the negative. And if you cannot find happiness right now, be about doing good, for if you seek out ways to do good, the happiness will come. And God will be with you, even if it doesn’t seem like it. And he promises a great eternity ahead. But for today, for this life, do as the author of Ecclesiastes recommends: eat, drink and do things that bring you satisfaction. This is truly a gift from God. Amen.

Luke 2 (Christmas Morning) - Mary: Woman of Contemplation

I. Making Sense of It All

When you are working your way through life, sometimes it just doesn’t make sense to you. Things happen in a way where you just cannot see God working through it. But then, when you look back at what happened, you begin to make sense of it and you can clearly see God’s hand in it.

I finished my studies at North Park Seminary in 2001. I was looking for a place to do my internship and not having much luck. I was wondering what God’s plan was for me. I had a couple interviews with churches to see if I could intern there and have the internship turn into full-time ministry. But none of these things worked out. Then I fell into a full time job working with developmentally disabled adults in Chicago and worked out a part-time internship at the church I was attending, one that I didn’t get paid for. It seemed that my plans for my life were being put on hold. It seemed like things weren’t going where I wanted to see them go. I wondered how God was working his plan for my life, or perhaps, if I were on my own. Now, looking back, it is easy to see God at work in my two extra years in Chicago. My work with the developmentally disabled adults was a real blessing to me, and my internship was a great experience. And when my internship was done and I could graduate, I was called here to minister in Albert City.

I wonder this Christmas morning if Mary had a similar experience. She had been told by God that her son would be the Son of God. She had been told that he would be the Messiah, whom the people of Israel had been waiting for for centuries. And then she found herself traveling to a distant town, away from home and family right around when she was due. When she got there there was no place for her to give birth and so she ended up in a stable, surrounded by animals, laying her newborn son, the future king of Israel, in a cattle trough.

I wonder what she thought of this turn of events. You see, we know the Christmas story so well, we hear it year after year and it is a part of the fabric of our celebration of the holiday. But for Mary it was all new. She didn’t know what to expect. She didn’t know what was to come. And things sure didn’t seem to be going the way that she would have expected.

And then a group of dirty shepherds show up and tell her that angels appeared to them. Wow, maybe God is at work after all, even though what he is doing doesn’t seem to make sense. And later on, maybe even a year later, magi from the east show up with gold, incense and myrrh. Maybe Jesus actually will be king. But then Mary and her family have to flee to Egypt to protect Jesus from being killed. Life doesn’t go as we plan it, does it?

II. Pondering

There is a recurring phrase, though, throughout Luke’s telling of the Christmas story and Jesus’ childhood. The recurring phrase is that “Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.”

Mary knew there was something special about her son. She knew Jesus was going on to special things. And so everything that she saw that was unusual, everything that didn’t really make sense to her, she remembered and thought about. And then, looking back at these things later, understanding them in context with each other, she was able to make sense of God’s plan through Jesus. This is the life of contemplation. This is what is valuable about spending time thinking on the things of God. Contemplation, thinking on the things of God, allows us to catch a glimpse of God truly working in this world. It is not enough, I believe, to go about doing the things of God. It is not enough, I believe, to just trust that God is working in the events around your life and so then just go about your life expecting to never understand what is going on. No, God wants us to think on the things that he is doing. He wants us to spend time seeking out his will and focusing on what it is that he is doing for and through us. The book Experiencing God, which one of our adult Bible studies on Sunday mornings is studying, talks about it this way, find out what it is that God is doing in the world, and then get involved in that. And the way to see what God is doing in the world is to do what Mary did. Treasure up the things you see going on. Study the work of God. Learn from it and watch as God makes sense of the world to you. This is what Mary did as she watched God work in unusual and unique ways with Jesus.

III. God’s Plan

But what was God’s plan? Why did Jesus come as a poor baby? Why did Jesus come to die a criminal’s death at a much too young age of thirty-three? It doesn’t make terribly much sense.

Lisa and I had our own nativity about nine months ago. We didn’t have to travel a terribly long distance, though we did have to drive through the fog in the middle of the night. And we didn’t have to go to a stable to give birth, instead of a stable, we had a wonderful maternity ward at the Storm Lake hospital. Seeing the difference between what we experienced and what Jesus experienced in his birth reminds me of how great God’s sacrifice was in sending his Son as a baby. Babies are about as helpless as you can possibly be. When Jesus was born about the only thing he could do was cry. God chose to send his Son in a way where he would be totally and completely reliant upon Mary and Joseph. And he allowed him to be born in a cattle shed. And we see a little later, when Jesus was dedicated in the temple when he was 40 days old, that Mary and Joseph give the offering that the poor would give. Mary and Joseph were not people of means. They were truly poor. This is the way that God chose to enter the world. It really doesn’t make much sense.

But, again and again, after experiencing something that just didn’t make sense in any way, God would do something that would show Mary that he was really at work in Jesus’ life. The birth in a stable didn’t make sense for God’s Son, but the angel-song and the magi showed that God was truly at work. Jesus’ death didn’t make much sense but his resurrection showed that God was at work.

This Christmas morning I want to encourage you to spend some time looking at the way that God has worked in your life. Things may not make sense for you; they may seem to go against what your plans for your life were. But God is at work. He is doing great things, even today. So I encourage you to follow Mary’s example and treasure up the things of God in your heart and ponder them. See what God is doing and get behind it. Study the ways of God and see how it is that he is working in and through you. Let this contemplation of God allow you to see him at work even in the most confusing things. God could just surprise you with shepherds, with magi, with a prophetess speaking words of wisdom to you, or even with resurrection when all you can see is death. Amen.

Luke 1:39-56 - Mary: Woman of Justice

As the choir sang about this morning, the shepherds witnessed something miraculous and marvelous that Christmas night. Angels appeared before them and glory shone round about them. And the angels sang praise to God and offered peace on earth. Every Christmas people dream of peace on earth. And every Christmas we realize that we have a long way to go to get there.

Peace between nations is far off. Back in the eighties we saw the end of the cold war and we thought this might be a coming peace. But since that time we have not known peace at all. And once again, this year, we have troops on the other side of the world, celebrating Christmas away from their families and their loved ones. I am sure that they are praying for peace on earth this Christmas, just as they are trying to bring peace to Iraq themselves.

Peace between individuals is far away also. We have broken homes and broken relationships all around us. People are hurting and suffering alone and the pretend at peace, but it is really not there.

But the angels talked of peace on earth and I wish it were something that we could find in this world. I look around and it seems forever distant. And yet it was sung of that Christmas night. Jesus was meant to bring peace to this world, even though we don’t see it. To understand the peace that Jesus brings we need to look a little earlier in the Christmas story than the nativity or the shepherds. We need to look back at Mary’s song and the justice that she knew God would bring.

I. Banned

The song of Mary which we read this morning is often known as the Magnificat. This is the first word in the song in Latin. The Magnificat plays an important role in more liturgical churches, particularly the Catholic Church. It gets sung regularly in worship as it is the first real song of praise to God that we find in the New Testament. And it is a song written by Mary. Obviously the Catholics are going to like it. And yet, I was shocked to find out that in the 80s, in Guatemala, a country that at the time was between 75 and 80 percent Catholic, it was illegal to speak the Magnificat in public. That’s right; the government of Guatemala found gentle Mary’s song so subversive, so dangerous, that they banned it.

Now I must admit, I expect this kind of thing in certain governments. Governments that are autocratic, governments that try to reduce freedom will often try to take people’s religion from them. In some Islamic countries in the Middle East and in Africa it is illegal to convert from Islam to Christianity. Communist Russia outlawed Christianity in all forms and Communist China has a husk of Christianity allowed so they can say that they support religious freedom though it is clear through their practices that they don’t. The government of Guatemala was in the midst of revolution in the 80s and has never been a stable government. So maybe it makes sense for them to try to take people’s faith away from them.

But it wasn’t people’s faith that the Guatemalan government was trying to steal from them. They were allowed to remain whatever religion they wanted. They didn’t have their Bibles removed from them, they weren’t told they couldn’t worship, they were just not allowed to recite the Magnificat, the song of Mary in public.

The government of Guatemala found something dangerous in Mary’s song. They found something powerful in the way that the people were responding to it. And they were scared of it.

As we continue our Advent look at Mary, Jesus’ mother, we will look at her song this morning. What do we find revolutionary in it? Does it have the power in it that the government of Guatemala was so scared of? Or is it just a nice song written by a young woman who was praising God for what he was going to do?

II. Mary’s World

Mary’s song and the danger seen in it by the wicked and the rulers becomes clear, once again, when we look at it in the context of Mary’s world. Mary and her people lived lives of subjugation. They were ruled over by people whom they didn’t want ruling over them. Rome controlled the world. It is because of Roman rule that Mary ended up not being able to give birth at home, but rather in Bethlehem, because of a census. Because of the rule of the Romans, Mary and all of her people felt helpless and week. They could not live the way they wanted. Their worship had to conform to the expectations of their Roman masters. And Rome had placed King Herod in charge of the area that Mary lived in. King Herod was not a kind ruler. When Mary sings that the Lord “has brought down rulers from their thrones”, anybody hearing this would know what rulers she was talking about. She was talking about Herod the great. And here was a teen aged, unwed pregnant girl singing a song that proclaimed the end of Herod’s reign. This takes courage. It takes willpower. It takes a great faith in the power of God to bring about his will.

Think forward a little bit in the Christmas story for a moment, if you will. The Magi come from the east, to King Herod the Great, and tell him of a great king that they see coming to Israel. What is Herod’s response? It is to murder children around the country, to protect his throne. This is the kind of ruler that Herod is. He will do anything to retain his power. He even killed his own family to make sure that he would remain king. He was ruthless and hard. And Mary, a young girl, stands up to him, through song, as she acknowledges what it is that she believes God is going to do through her son, Jesus. Scot McKnight puts it so well in his book, The Real Mary:

If you were a first-century poor woman, if you were hungry and oppressed, if you had experienced the injustices of Herod the Great, and if you stood up in Jerusalem and announced that the proud and rulers and the rich would be yanked down from their high places, it is likely you’d be tried for treason and put to death for disturbing the “peace.”

If you were Herod or one of his twelve wives or one of his many sons with hopes of the throne, you would have heard these words as an act of protest, if not revolution or rebellion. Even if you, as Mary, were to argue with your accusers that these are words straight out of the Bible, you’d be accused of subversion, of wanting your son to become the next king. You just might end up crucified. (McKnight, 23)

But Mary’s subversion is not an earthly subversion. Her treasonous words weren’t to round up people to revolt. No, Mary saw God as the worker in these things. She saw God as someone who was on the side of justice. She saw God as the one acting to bring about this reversal in fortunes. She sees God as the one who will give food to the hungry, and she understands this because she herself is hungry. She sees God as the one who will put an end to the current problems in the world, the current injustices, the current pains.

But Mary didn’t understand all the details. We need to realize that, along with most of God’s people, she didn’t get what God was doing initially. Mary didn’t know at the beginning that God was sending his Son to die on a cross. She believed that her son would probably be an earthly king. She believed that God was going to put an end to the reign of Herod and begin the reign of Jesus. She didn’t know how God was going to change the world through her son, she just knew that he was. And she believed that this offered hope to the weak and the downtrodden and the poor. She believed this because God was using a poor young girl to bring about his coming kingdom. She believed this because she truly believed in the justice of God.

III. God of Justice

You see, both sides of the political stream get this wrong. The conservatives believe that it is the individual’s role to give food to themselves. They believe that everybody has the opportunity to make it and those who have failed have only themselves to blame. They’re wrong. It is not the individual who is responsible for taking care of themselves, it is God who reaches down to care for them.

The liberal believes that it is the government’s role to help the hungry. Actually, they’re closer to the truth in this area than the conservative. For, again and again, throughout the Old Testament prophets and even here, God is promising to come in and make right the things that the government has failed at. But, though they may be more on the right path, here, they still have it wrong. For, once again, Mary says it so clearly, it is God who will bring justice to this world. God is the only one capable of it. God is the only one who will not let self-interest get in the way of justice.

Mary was a woman of justice in that she pointed the way to a God of justice. Mary believed that God was going to do great things through her coming son. She had hope that God would bring an end to the suffering of her people. She had faith that God would stay true to his promises. And so she sang a song and prayed a prayer praising God for something that he had not yet done.

But here we are, two thousand years later, and the poor are still poor and there are still hopeless people out there. Was Mary’s song of justice just a fleeting hope, or is it more than that? Well, I believe that the fact that the song was banned in the 80s in Guatemala shows that it is more than just a fleeting hope.

There is power in Mary’s song. It is the power of speaking something into existence. Justice is still needed in places around this world. Sometimes, justice is needed even here in America. And we believe that Jesus can bring it. But how?

Are we willing to wait for Jesus’ second coming? Are we willing to accept that justice will never be on this earth until he comes again? I’m not willing to admit that. Oh, deep down I know that in a way it is true. As long as sin is in this world we will never know justice completely. The powerful will always lord it over the weak. Those who have will always take advantage of those who don’t.

But we do believe that Jesus came to this earth 2000 years ago and his coming made a difference. We believe that he came to save us from our sins and give us eternal life, but he must have come to save us from the earthly results of sin as well. I think he did. And he did in this way. We are told in scripture that we are the body of Christ. As the church, God is using us to work his will in this world. We are God’s hands, feet and voice. God is still a God of justice, but he has a new way to bring it. We, like Mary in her day, are called as the people of God to bring justice to the world around us. It’s an overwhelming job that God’s given us. But he’s given us the resources to do. We are told that he has given us his Holy Spirit to empower us and to move us forward in our faith.

People talk a lot at Christmastime about peace on earth. It’s in a lot of songs and on many banners. It’s something that is worthwhile to focus on each and every Christmas. It was proclaimed by the angels on that first Christmas night. How will we ever find peace on earth? When justice reigns. So, this Christmas, take a cue from Mary and do what you can to bring justice to your world; in song, in word, or in deed. God is ready to work justice through you as he did through Mary.

Luke 1:26-38 "Mary: Woman of Faith"

Well, we ended up canceling church last Sunday because of ice. So my Advent season is going to be very short. Next week we are having our children's Christmas program and then we have one more Sunday in Advent. I will finish up this series on Christmas Morning with our Christmas service. This sermon is somewhat racy as it talks about an unwed mother. Also, I mention it in the text, but I'm using Scot McKnight's The Real Mary quite seriously in this sermon series.

I. Why Mary

This year I plan to spend the Advent season looking at Jesus’ mother, Mary. This can be a dangerous place to go. Catholics through the centuries have built Mary up to such a place, put her on such a pedestal, that she is barely human anymore. They have called her the mother of God, they have prayed to her, they have talked about her faith being perfect in a way that human faith cannot ever be. They have exempted her from original sin, which afflicts every human. But Protestants have protested this goddess worship of Mary and have gotten back to a more scriptural version of a young woman who was chosen by God for great things. But in rejecting the Catholic extra-biblical ideas about Mary, many of us Protestants have rejected Mary altogether. We don’t want to make the same mistakes that the Catholic church made in regard to Mary so we’ll avoid spending much time talking about her.

And yet Mary is the center of the Christmas story. It is her faith that allows Christmas to happen in the first place. We are told throughout the Gospel of Luke that Mary pondered these things in her heart and we realize that Luke is telling us that he talked to Mary when writing the Gospel, giving her a chance to tell of Jesus’ birth as she experienced it. When, in the fullness of time, God was ready to send his Son, it was Mary whom he chose to be Jesus’ mother. Mary was not a goddess, but she was special.

I am reading a book by Scot McKnight, a professor at North Park University, called The Real Mary: Why Evangelical Christians Can Embrace the Mother of Jesus and it truly is an inspiring book. In the book we see that when we don’t place Mary on such a high pedestal, we discover that we can learn from her faith and her life. We can see how she was faithful to God and God was able to use this to bring about great things in the world.

So, this Advent season, let’s set aside our fear of being too Catholic and instead look at Mary and see what she can offer to us as Christians. We can definitely learn from her and grow in faith as we see that she was a woman of strong faith and great faithfulness.

II. A Difficult Situation

I don’t think we truly allow ourselves to understand Mary’s great faith until we allow ourselves to understand the world she lived in. The fact that she went along with what Gabriel told her in today’s scripture is quite amazing. You see, by agreeing to be the mother of Jesus, Mary was agreeing to begin a path down a long and difficult road, one that would make her an outcast, one that would eventually lead to her watching her son die on a cross at the young age of thirty-three. Of course she didn’t know that she would experience her son’s death. She probably believed that her son would be an earthly king, just as so many others believed.

But she did know that she would be ostracized and gossiped about when people found out that she, an unwed and engaged mother, was pregnant. You see, life has changed much in the last 2000 years. We treat unwed mothers much differently than they were treated in Jesus’ day. In fact, in Jesus’ day the laws were set that if a woman was pregnant outside of wedlock, they could be killed for this.

So, when Mary agreed to be Jesus’ mother, she was acting out in faith and facing death to do so. It gets a bit worse, though. You see, in Mary’s day, women would argue that they weren’t responsible for their pregnancy, and when they argued this they would be forced to participate in the bitter waters test. The bitter waters test was not a pleasant one. Mary, if Joseph had asked it, would have been brought before the priest, and be placed under oath and told to drink “bitter waters”: a mixture of dust, holy water, and a written curse that the priest would have written out in ink and put in the water. The written curse would say this, “may the Lord cause you to become a curse among your people when he makes your womb to miscarry and your abdomen swell.” It was believed that if the woman was guilty she would become sick. If she didn’t become sick, it was believed that she was not guilty of adultery.

But this also isn’t the worst of it. You see, in Mary’s day, this was practiced in front of large groups of people and the suspected adulteress would be paraded in front of them in full humiliation. Furthermore, the bitter waters that they would drink would often cause them to become sick and even miscarry.

By agreeing to God’s plan to bring Jesus into the world in such an unusual way, Mary was face this possibility in her life. But Mary trusted God. She trusted that God would not ask something of her and then betray her. And so she responded to Gabriel with words of faith: “may it be to me as you have said.”

III. Great Faith allows God to do Great Things

There are two traps that people tend to fall into when they see this faith of Mary. One is to take it for granted and undervalue it. We do that when we ignore the risks she was willing to take to be faithful to God. We do that when we convince ourselves that anybody in Mary’s situation would have done the same thing. We do that when we allow ourselves to think that Mary’s faith was easy. Having faith, being faithful to God when circumstances are against you, is not meant to be easy. It is meant to be difficult. It is meant to be work, to be hard. Faith is not supposed to be simple. It asks much from us, sometimes our very lives.

The second trap that some fall into is to elevate Mary’s faith up to such a height that we put her in a place that no other mortal could possibly reach. We elevate her to the place of goddess and look at her faith and faithfulness as superhuman. When we do this we miss the truth that we are all called to this great faith that Mary showed when Gabriel appeared to her.

You see, Mary isn’t someone to look up to as the perfect example that we can never reach. Instead, when we see her step out in faith, we realize that we are called to the same kind of life-risking faith. Without faith Mary would not have accepted the words that Gabriel had for her. She would have told God that she was too young or not ready. She would have said no to God’s great plan for her life and Jesus wouldn’t have been born. Think about that for a minute. God relied on the faith of one woman, Mary, and because of her faith he was able to bring us his Son, Jesus.

When we step out in faith, when we respond to God in the way Mary did, saying “may it be,” God is able to bring around great things in our world as well. It’s a strange thing, the way God works. He continually looks for ways to find faithful followers to work through. He continues to call to people and ask them to step out in faith and move forward. And when they do he then uses their faith to change the world, to save it. He did it for Mary. He saved the world through her. And he can do it for us as well.

And so we can look at Mary and see her as a woman of true faith. We can see her resolve in a difficult situation. We can see that she was willing to step out in faith even though it would take her to a very difficult place. And we can find it in ourselves to do the same thing. Maybe we might not have an angel appear to us and tell us we are going to be the parent of the Savior of the world. But we do have God asking us to step out in faith. How are we going to respond? Amen.