St. Thomas’ Episcopal Church, Owings Mills MD
December 24, 2023
Year B: The Fourth Sunday of Advent
2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16
Psalm 89: 1-4, 19-26
Romans 16:25-27
Luke 1:26-38
The Faith and Courage to Carry Jesus Into the World
For the past two Advent Sundays we’ve been hearing about John the Baptist, that powerful and uncompromising prophet who called people to repent, to change their ways, to be dunked in the River Jordan and begin anew.
John prepared the way for Jesus, declaring that the Kingdom of God was drawing near.
And now this morning, on the Fourth Sunday of Advent, which, you may have noticed, also happens to be December 24th, as close as we can get to Christmas without it actually being Christmas, this morning we go back in time a couple of decades and turn our attention at last to the other central character of Advent: the Virgin Mary.
The passage that Deacon Les just read from the Gospel of Luke is a familiar one.
The story of the Annunciation is a key part of every church Christmas pageant when a child wearing a tinsel halo and fluffy wings stands before a blue-veiled girl playing Mary and says, “Greetings, favored one!”
But although this passage is very familiar, it was only recently that I realized that we’re not really told why Mary is so favored by God.
In fact, we’re told almost nothing about Mary – we don’t know how old she was, or what she looked like, or what kinds of things she was good at or what she enjoyed.
We do know that she was a virgin who lived in Nazareth, an unimportant town in Galilee.
We know that she was engaged to Joseph, who was of the house of David. That certainly sounds impressive, yes, but King David had lived a long time ago and by now his descendants were numerous and really just ordinary people.
Joseph was definitely not a prince living in a royal palace.
And we know that Mary had a cousin Elizabeth, who in her old age was miraculously pregnant, carrying the future John the Baptist.
That’s all good and important to know, but we’re still not told why Mary is the favored one, why God chose her to take on the unprecedented, mind-blowing, terrifying responsibility of carrying the Son of God into a cold and inhospitable world.
I always want to know more about the people we meet in the Bible – to learn their backstories and what happened to them next. That can be fun and interesting to imagine but the truth is that Scripture tells us everything we really need to know.
And that’s certainly true of Mary.
Why is Mary the favored one?
Well, when the angel appeared to her and greeted her, our English translation says she was “perplexed.”
But a better translation of the original Greek would be that she was “terrified.”
And who could blame her, right?
Mary was terrified.
But this young woman from the sticks didn’t try to run away from the angel.
She didn’t cry out for help.
She didn’t squeeze her eyes shut, desperately hoping that it was all a dream.
No, Mary stayed right where she was.
And when she heard the most amazing message from the angel, she must have known that she was being asked to do something very hard and dangerous, something that would be awfully difficult to explain to Joseph and everybody else, something that would cost her - and her fiancée – dearly.
But Mary didn’t suggest that the angel should try someone else – you know, maybe ask the girl who lives across the road.
No. Mary says, yes.
“Let it be with me according to your word.”
And in that moment we learn everything we need to know about Mary.
God favors her because she is a person of the greatest faith and courage – and she’ll need every bit of that faith and courage to carry Jesus into a world that already had enough kings, thank you very much, the powers that be who will want to get rid of this king of the Jews, right from the start.
And eventually, those powers that be will get rid him, all right.
Or, so it seemed.
And Mary, the favored woman of faith and courage, she will have to summon the strength to watch her son die in a horrible and shameful way, still trusting in the long-ago promise of the angel, believing that somehow her son would reign forever.
Mary was favored for her faith and courage.
You’ve probably seen on the news or read in the paper that, because of the horrific war between Israel and Hamas, the Christian leaders of Bethlehem decided to cancel this year’s Christmas festivities.
There will be no huge crowds of pilgrims and tourists flocking to the place of Jesus’ birth.
You may have also seen that this year the Lutheran church in Bethlehem created a very different, painfully stark, nativity scene.
Instead of resting peacefully in a charming straw-lined manger, the Baby Jesus lies amid smashed concrete, just like children lie among the rubble in Gaza and in so many war-torn places around the world, just like many children live in poverty and hopelessness right here in our own country.
Frankly, you know things are pretty bad when the Christians of Bethlehem feel like they have to essentially cancel Christmas.
And during these hard days – hard days for the world and for many of us - we may feel perplexed, or terrified, or angry, or sad, or maybe just exhausted by it all.
Yet, Mary’s faith and courage is available to us, too.
God gives us the faith and courage to carry Jesus into our cold and inhospitable world, right here and right now.
For example, we carried Jesus into the world with each gift we donated to the Christmas Extravaganza – each gift that we shared, sorted, wrapped, and delivered.
Our Afghan friends have endured so much rubble, survived so much suffering. They’re not Christians, of course, and nobody is trying to convert them – but we carried Jesus right into their lives with the many bags of clothing and other gifts they received from us – people they will probably never meet, people they’ll never really be able to thank.
And our friends at St. Mark’s On The Hill in Pikesville, during a time of transition and uncertainty, are boldly carrying Jesus into the world by restarting their food pantry – carrying Jesus right into the rubble of poverty and hunger, offering food to fill the belly, sharing hope to fill the soul.
Well, we are now as close as we can get to Christmas without it actually being Christmas.
At last, we’ve turned our attention to the Virgin Mary.
We may not know very much about her but we know all that we need to know.
Mary was favored because she had the faith and courage to carry Jesus into a cold and inhospitable world.
And in our own time and place, God gives us that same faith and courage, too.
Amen.
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