Greetings, Favored One

Luke 1:26-38 – The Annunciation, 2019

Surprises can be good or bad and you may enter the land of unexpected consequences if you are the one delivering a surprise.

Knowing your victim – I mean, the honored recipient of your surprise – and all the possible detours and deviations that may arise when pulling off a surprise, and then preparing for them is really important.

Take, for instance, these surprises that were prepared for me the year I turned 50:

The first happened in Connecticut, where my parents and brother lived, and where I had gone to celebrate Mother’s Day with my mom. My birthday is just a couple of weeks later, in May.

The ruse they had carried out was for me to visit my brother’s house, about 30 minutes or so from my parents’ while the party planners went to work at my parents’ house. What nobody expected was that a day’s worth of heavy rains would cause the tributaries of the Connecticut River that wound their way between those two places to rise so much during the day, that many of the roads I needed to take were flooded and closed.

When I was finally able to find a clear way back to my parents’ place well over an hour after I left my brother’s, I discovered a group of old friends and family who had all been waiting all evening for my arrival, poised and ready to shout “surprise” only to have themselves be surprised by the lengthy and unexpected delay. All was well, however and we were all “gotten” by the surprises that had played themselves out that night.    

Then, the actual weekend of my birthday, our oldest son, Bill, conspired to get me out of the house by taking me out to lunch so Jim and friends could prepare. Bill lived in Smyrna, Delaware, about 45 minutes from our home and just down the road from a really great gardening center I didn’t get to visit very often.

My birthday is in May, and gardening is one of my favorite things to do, so after lunch I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to go shopping for flowers. I took my time, browsing through the flowers, the shrubs, the trees, the vegetable plants, the hanging baskets, the yard ornaments – until finally my cell phone rang.

“Where are you?” my husband asked me. “Think you’ll be coming home soon?” Then he covered his tracks by asking me where we kept something.

So, we chatted and then I finished up my shopping, filling my mini-van with geraniums, perennials and a few other annuals. Then I made the leisurely drive home, still totally in the dark about what was in store for me. When I got to our house, I was greeted by friends and family who had been waiting for a very long time for my arrival!

In today’s Gospel, Mary receives an infinitely more astonishing surprise. The angel of the Lord appears out of nowhere. Gabriel might as well have shouted “Surprise!” at the unsuspecting girl.

When he first comes to her, “shock” doesn’t even begin to describe Mary’s reaction. First there is this grand intrusion into her life, but the words Gabriel speaks confuse, confound, and trouble her: “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.”

Greetings, favored one?  Mary may be young, but she has no illusions about who she is. She is a person of no account in the culture in which she lives. She is young, and though she is engaged to be married, she is probably only between 12 and 14 years old, the usual age for betrothal in her world.

Typically, after such a match was made, legally binding her to Joseph, she would continue to live in her parents’ home for about a year. Once she reached child-bearing age, she would go to live with her husband.

Further, we know that she comes from a small, po’-dunk town, for that is what Nazareth was in the Ancient Near East. The equivalent of “the wrong side of the tracks.”

So, in case you’re keeping track, in a nut-shell, in Mary’s world, she has these strikes against her – she’s female, she’s poor, she’s from the wrong side of the tracks, and she’s barely more than a child herself. You can’t get much more “lowly” than that.

Yet, Mary’s story is surrounded by and enclosed in the surprising, and the impossible story of God’s astonishing, amazing, saving advent into the world.

We might be surprised at the Lord’s choice of mother for the Messiah, but God knew what he was doing.

There is an adage I’ve heard, and you probably have too, especially as it is applied to trial lawyers headed to court. The adage is this: do not ask a question you do not already know the answer to.

“Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.”

What follows Gabriel’s greeting is not so much a question as it is an astonishing announcement: that God has chosen Mary to conceive and bear the child, Jesus, who will reign over an everlasting kingdom.

Could Mary have refused God’s desire for her? Perhaps. But God knew Mary as God knows each of us, and God called this young, powerless woman for this role in transforming the world. Throughout the Scriptures, God has often surprised those through whom God has chosen to work, allowing and causing the most impossible of events to occur through them. By the same token, God has called and used the most unlikely characters to do the impossible, transforming them and the world through them.   

As we contemplate this Gospel passage, one that we are quite familiar with, God invites us to be surprised once again at the way in which God works. This invitation is especially timely as it comes at a time when we as a people are discerning how God is calling us to function in a world actively opposing the goodness and unending mercy of God, and God’s ceaseless compassion and love for those least likely to be among the “favored” of God.

As we contemplate Mary’s story, God is inviting us to be surprised once again by the ways God does the seeming impossible through the most surprising means and through the most surprising people.

When we have gone astray, diverted by the floodwaters of our own desire and sin, when we have become distracted by the things of the world that appeal to us, while ignoring the things of the world God has instructed us to focus our attention upon, when we have broken our relationship with God over and over again, and when the floodwaters have risen and we have felt lost and isolated, God has faithfully waited for us, prodded and pursued us. To our great surprise, our brokenness and propensity for getting lost and being delayed from answering God’s desire for us doesn’t keep us from God.

Greetings, favored ones. The Lord is with you!

Friends, the good news of the Gospel is that God is still active in the world, still surprising us by his choice of disciples. Through Jesus, God has made each of us as favored as Mary, as blessed as Joseph, as chosen as any of the most unlikely but holy people we read about in the bible.

God’s activity and promise did not end at the cross, and resurrection. Instead, God does the impossible through the cross - it blossoms there, for the salvation of the whole world.

God pursues us through the least likely places and makes us people of God’s own creating and redeeming. The same God who worked through the lowly teenage girl from the wrong side of the tracks is still at work in you, even when you feel that you are unworthy, too messed up, not gifted enough or faithful enough to be God’s vessel for the healing of the world.

God’s favor is with you, and you, and you – and me. Sinners that we are, God’s favor is with us, redeeming us, abiding with us, and using us to bear Christ into the world.

Greetings, favored ones! The Lord is with you!

God favors the lowly ones. Amidst our weakness, our self-centeredness, our apathy, God is at work. Amidst our pain and illness, our depression and despair, God is at work in us. Amidst our confusion and worry, our loneliness and isolation, God is at work in us.

Greetings, favored ones! The Lord is with you and intends to do great things through you!

As we reach out to the other, God is at work in us. As we serve our neighbor, God is at work in and through us. When we extend forgiveness to others God is at work in and through us. When we ask forgiveness of those whom we have hurt, God is at work in and through us.

As we pray and meditate, God’s favor is here, and God is at work in us. As we worship together and share in the feast of Jesus Christ, God’s favor is here, and God is at work in us. As we prepare for the coming of the Christ Child as Mary herself did, God’s favor is here, and God is at work in us, actively doing the impossible, transforming us for God’s service, doing great things in and through us.

I invite you to join me in this exercise this week: reflect on these words: “I am favored by God. Indeed, God wants to do great things through me. One of those things might be…..(fill in the blank). Surprise! May God’s will be done, through you. Amen.

Choose Your Stories Well

Luke 4:14-30

Last week a wee little snowstorm interrupted our ability to worship together, and so our gospel text is, in fact, the assigned gospel from both weeks. I think we need to hear the whole story in order to understand the good news this gospel Luke brings to us today.

Last week’s text sets up the situation and gives us a taste of what the people might have experienced in the synagogue that day. Jesus is at the beginning of his public ministry.  He comes to his hometown of Nazareth, and on the Sabbath, he goes to the synagogue, just like the rest of the observant Jews of his hometown did. The congregation is made up of old friends and neighbors who listen while scriptures are read and preached. Jesus takes a turn reading.

He is handed an Isaiah scroll and from it he chooses this familiar passage to read out loud – and it’s one of their favorite passages. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me ……. he has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

The crowd lingers on each word, especially coming from the mouth of this man who is one of them – “Is not this Joseph’s son?” They are so proud of him - a fine example of a hometown boy-done-good.

The text Jesus has just read is one of hope and promise. It is the promise of grace and mercy and God’s unending compassion – for them – for God’s chosen people.  They are full of anticipation for what will come next from the mouth of Jesus. They are prepared for him to confirm that this good news has been saved and presented just for them – for the good and faithful Jews that they are.

They are in for a surprise – a shock, in fact.

Have you ever known of a surprise to backfire? Not all surprises turn out the way you expect them to, do they? Take my 50^th birthday party, for instance. It was so well planned that I hadn’t a clue that it was coming, so, I unwittingly went shopping and dawdled my time – and lots of it, away – leaving a houseful of guests waiting and waiting – for I don’t know how long, for me to return home.  In the end that story, turned out okay. Such is not always the case.

Not all surprises are good surprises; not all surprises are well-received or turn out okay. I’m sure you can think of examples of those, too. Things can simply go wrong sometimes.

Jesus has this uncanny ability to surprise people, and they aren’t always pleased by it. That’s what happened on the day Jesus read and preached in his home synagogue in Nazareth.

To give a little background, this story really has its beginning about 500 years earlier, as the exiles return home to reestablish their lives in the Promised Land following decades of captivity in Babylon.

A controversy arose then, which was still alive when Jesus came along. It has to do with how far God’s care and love extend into the world. Who is inside the circle of God’s love and protection, and who is on the outside?

Tradition said that in order to maintain the purity of faith it was necessary to eliminate all foreign influences. All you had to do to support this argument, was to point to the historic debacle of Solomon. It was his foreign wives who brought the pagan religions to Judah, sending the kingdom on a downward spiral that led to defeat by the Babylonians and the exile of People of Israel in the first place.

There were many who were quite certain, therefore, that God’s care could not extend beyond the bloodlines of the Hebrew people. “No intermarriage!” cried Ezra, the priest, and Nehemiah, the prophet. The race had to be kept pure. Old tales of caution such as those about Esther and Daniel were recited, in which the preservation of God’s people in the face of the demonic influences of foreigners was the clear point.

But then, at the same time, there were people on the other side of the argument. While holding just as much reverence for the law, they did not believe God’s grace was limited to those of their own race.

They told stories too; like the story of Jonah, who refused to believe that the foreigners of Nineveh could possibly be saved. Jonah only preached in that God-forsaken place after being spit up on shore by a great fish, but then God changed God’s mind after the people repented, didn’t he? God saved those people. Then there is the story of Ruth, a despised Moabite, who not only was accepted into the community by marriage, but became a part of the royal bloodline of David – and Jesus.

Imagine that: two opposing camps. Each equally dedicated to the faith. Each with their own interpretation of the law, each with their own stories to support their position. At odds and increasingly polarized in their arguments and practices. Does this sound at all familiar to you?

We see the same kind of thing today. There are insiders and outsiders. There are those we are certain live within God’s grace and those who don’t, because in our human economy, there are limits to God’s grace, mercy, compassion, and to blessing.

Our lines may be drawn based on race, color, religion, socio-economic standing, lifestyle sexuality, gender, or political leanings.

Not surprisingly, Jesus took a clear position on the matter. He declared that in God’s divine economy of love, not only did God care about those who were not Jews, sometimes God even seemed to favor them. There are, according to Jesus, no limits to God’s love and inclusion.

We tend to build borders around God’s love, rejecting those who do not fit our definition of God’s people. Who might those people be for us today? The religious conservatives? The liberals? Immigrants? The refugees? The homeless? The addict? The prisoner? Those of a particular race or color? Those of a certain religion or philosophy or lifestyle?

The thing is that every time we approach what we declare as the limits of God’s love, Jesus is ahead of us, tearing down walls, building bridges, and urging us to do the same. Jesus is always ahead of us, claiming those we place on the outside as ones that God embraces, loves, and lifts up.

I won’t lie - it can be tough to swallow Jesus’ claim that the divine blessing could possibly extend beyond our own kind, just as it was for the Jews in the synagogue that day.

Jesus also used stories to drive his point home, and that day he chose two that were not real popular among the isolationist crowd. First, he described how Elijah took care of the needs of a woman from the hated land of Sidon at the time when Hebrew women were starving.

The word of the Lord came to Elijah telling him to go to Zaraphath where he would meet a widow gathering sticks for a last meal before she and her child dies. Elijah ends up not only seeing that she had food for the rest of her life, but also brings her child back from the edge of death. Jesus drives the point home. This was a foreign woman in an age when foreign women were considered the curse of Israel.

Young preacher Jesus could have found a thousand other stories to use as illustrations for this sermon. But he wanted to make the point perfectly clear at the outset of his ministry: God’s love did not have national or ethnic boundaries, and it was that love he, Jesus, was sent to proclaim.

The second illustration was not much better. Quoting a story we find in 2 Kings, Jesus recalled how Elishah healed a man named Naaman, who happened to be an officer in the Syrian guard. Not only was the prophet helping foreigners, this particular foreigner was a member of an alien army!

God’s love for Sidonians and Syrians was not what the hometown crowd had come to hear, particularly since they could easily interpret “Romans” and “Samaritans” for Syrians and Sidonians. Instead of playing to their prejudices, Jesus claimed that God’s love was alive despite their prejudices.

We can imagine what this was like. Imagine your pastor at the height of the Cold War talking about how God has a preferential love for the Soviets and Cubans. Or, imagine that same pastor suggesting that God has a particular affection for the black activists that had just burned parts of the major cities of these United States during the racial wars of the sixties. Or, imagine your pastor suggesting today that we pray for the North Koreans, Muslims, the Iranians or even ISIS – or whomever YOU consider to be our enemy. Do we get the picture of what is going on here in the synagogue in Nazareth?

“They were filled with rage,” our text says, “and they got up, and drove him out of the town.” A church-going crowd suddenly became a lynch-mob. And Jesus learned that it is dangerous to talk about love to those whose lived feed on fear. It is risky business to describe how God’s affection extends toward those the audience despises.

And yet, my friends in Christ, the Gospel is clear. God’s love is always more pervasive, complete and powerful than our hatred or even the ways we define and limit grace.

Our nature wants to protect what we claim as ours and to reject what we don’t like or want to know. So often we project that onto God, making claims for God that exclude others. We want, by our very nature, to make the tent of God’s love an exclusive club. Jesus is telling us this day that God’s love is greater than we can even imagine.

How far is God’s love willing to go? All the way to the cross. And who is included in God’s circle of love? All whom God created.

Each week we confess that we are unclean, sinners in need of redemption. We believe that God’s forgiveness extends to us, sweeping us into God’s embrace. Jesus tells us that God’s arms, stretched out on the cross of Jesus, embrace even those we deem unworthy, even those we seek to reject.

The truth is that despite our sinfulness and the stubbornness of our prejudice, God loves us. The good news is that despite the walls we seek to build, God is already ahead of us in Jesus Christ, tearing them down and inviting us into something larger than ourselves. Jesus’ teaching in the synagogue that day is for us – both a reminder and an invitation to embrace the surprising truth of God’s love –unmerited love that claims us and unites us as one in the expansive, inclusive, Kingdom of God.

All images used by permission, Sweet Publishing/FreeBibleimages.org