The King is coming, where will he find you?
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At that time Mary got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea, where she entered Zechariah’s home and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. In a loud voice she exclaimed: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear! But why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. Blessed is she who has believed that what the Lord has said to her will be accomplished!”
In our culture today, we are encouraged in so many ways to focus our attentino on ourselves during the week. Whether it is the performance review; applying for promotions; selfies; social media and my likes…I am the point of so much I do.
Sunday worship can be that rare experience when the church invites us to focus away from ourselves and what we do or don’t do to what God is doing in Jesus Christ. And this Sunday we are going to see God doing some particularly wondrous things!
But first, I want to teach you a new word.
Parakaleo - to call near, i.e. invite, invoke
Parakaleo - to call near, i.e. invite, invoke
To be addressed by God is to be called by God. To be met by God is to be given an ethical assignment by God. When we understand our God’s call on my life, my parakaleo, my life is specified, given significance by God’s power and presence. My life is given distinctiveness not by my heroic efforts (“I’ve got to be me”) but rather because of my particular vocation (“What does God expect of me?”).
In scripture we find very little about the value of humanity being found in some inner essence like many eastern faiths teach. There’s no notion that I am most myself outside of my commitments and my relationships with others. In fact, scripture teaches that I exist because I have been called upon. Parakaleo ought to be translated not only as “called” but “called alongside.”
To be met by Christ, to be addressed by God, is to be called alongside Christ to work with Christ in doing our bit part in God’s coming reign in the world.
The King is coming
The King is coming
We’re coming to the end of the calendar year. For many of us, we began this year full of optimism for things we wanted to accomplish…I have good news for you; you get a chance to do it all again in just a few days. But not everyone gets
As I have been planning and praying for the Blue Christmas service we are having tonight, I have been thinking of people who feel at the end…actually the dead end of life. A particular mom who earlier this fall, experienced a life change that will never be undone. She isn’t unwell, has no health problems. She has beautiful children, but still she is denied something that she really, really wanted. And in not receiving the future she thought was hers, she is deeply sad. But who wouldn’t be.
This sermon, on the Sunday before Christmas, is for her; even though she is probably not going to be with us today, but in her place sit many of you who are more like her than you ever wanted to admit.
Today, in our text, God goes gynecological. This is the Sunday when women, so often marginalized in scripture as in society, are put front and center. Even if you are not a woman, you should listen up, there just might be something here for you. This Sunday’s Gospel, as we stand on the threshold of Christmas, the incarnation, could be good news for you.
Two women are featured center stage. How many Bible stories does that call to mind? Not many.
Two once-childless women, in a world that had few roles for women other than childbearing, greet each other. Mary visits her older relative, Elizabeth. Mary has gone to tell Elizabeth of her pregnancy. When Mary walks in, Elizabeth feels the child in her womb leap. Then, filled with the Holy Spirit, Elizabeth becomes a preacher. With a loud voice she shouts, “God has blessed you above all women, and he has blessed the child you carry.” Then Elizabeth says, “As soon as you greeted me, the babe in my womb jumped for joy.”
This is a great deal of baby talk. What’s it like to desperately want a child but to know you have long passed that possibility? What’s it like to have a fetus leap in your womb? I guess you’d have to be a woman to know. I asked my wife back when she was pregnant with our kids what it felt like and she had real difficulty describing the amazing-ness of it all.
What’s it like to feel that you are worthless because you are childless? Or what’s it like to be denied advancement, to be overlooked, even when you are good at the job you do? You’d have to be a woman to know.
What’s it like to be on the margins of society, paid less than men for the same work because you took time to raise a child? What’s it like to be relegated to the margins, seen and not heard, powerless? You’d have to be a woman to know.
In the midst of this “ME, TOO” culture we find ourselves, I have often wondered what it is like to be the object of sexualization. We tell girls they can be valued for their mind, their personality, their talent, but then we encourage them to dress and perform in ways that tells us the only thing we really value is their performance or their sexuality. I look at my daughter, beautiful, smart, a great pilot, and wonder what’s it like to grow up that way? Guess you’d have to be a woman to know.
And babies? We all love babies, find them cute and cuddly. We also live in a society in which many pregnancies are deemed “unwanted” and many yet unborn babies, like the ones in Mary’s and Elizabeth’s wombs, are at great risk of being killed by the very person who carries them because they don’t see any other way. How does an “almost mom” get to the point where killing what’s inside of her seems like the best thing to do? You’d have to be a woman to know.
So scripture has made us focus, as we stand on the threshold of Christmas, on two people on the margins, two people on the bottom rung of the social ladder, as a way of teaching us something about the incarnation of Jesus Christ, God come to us in the flesh, our flesh, God with us.
You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus.
A divinely wrought wonder is taking place in a very young woman, Mary, who is surprised by the angel Gabriel and told that she will have a baby—that is, she will have a future, she will play a prominent role in God’s move upon the world. God’s getting ready to do something grand, cosmic, and miraculous, and guess who God enlists to play a major role in that revolution. Mary, an unmarried girl. A girl who is willing to sacrifice her greatest possession, her future. But that’s not all.
A miracle of sorts is also taking place in an older woman, Elizabeth, who’s plans for the future were long ago given up on, that all hope was lost. Her baby will also play a big part in the Messiah’s advent. You see, childless, a woman in that day and in that part of the world was truely futureless, since children were the equivalent of our social security system. A childless couple, going into their old age, were extremely vulnerable without the guarantee of support and protection by their children. In a married couple, the husband had a job, provide for his family, and the wife had a job, provide for our future; and Elizabeth had found the task beyond her and there was nothing she could do about it.
So when you think about this being the context for the coming of the king; beginning the story of the Messiah with these two women discussing such matters had to be considered an odd way to begin the story of the Christ. The Messiah, the coming king was to be big, powerful. This king would vanquish all of Israel’s foes. These women are vulnerable, marginalized, and culturally suspect because of their childlessness. How could they be a part of any story of a real King?
And yet the story of the coming King who would be God’s salvation for the world begins with them. What does that tell you? What does it tell you about the connection between your current circumstance and the coming King?
We are right on the threshold of Christmas this Sunday. Where does Christmas find you? If things are going pretty well for you; you are well-fixed, on top of the world, in control of things, then I’m not sure what this story of Mary and Elizabeth and the babes in their wombs has to say to you, unless it is to remind you that God comes to people in conditions unlike yours. That this king comes to people desperate for hope, desperate for renewal, desperate for a future.
Where does God find you this Christmas? Out in the hill country of Judea, out back, away from the centers of influence and power, marginalized, feeling forsaken and without a foreseeable, fruitful future?
Well, good news: that’s exactly where God comes to you. Just as in the cases of Mary and Elizabeth, God is able to make a way when you thought there was no way. God is able to give you a future that you cannot earn for yourself. Good news.
Please note what Elizabeth says to Mary as she blesses her, “ Happy is she who believed that the Lord would fulfill the promises he made to her.” Blessed is she who believes that God is trustworthy, that God keeps God’s promises. That’s why Mary is referred to as, “blessed above all women.”
She is blessed because she believes that God is doing what he promised. Being a pregnant and unmarried isn’t something anyone in their day would volunteer for in their day; but Mary chose to believe the word of God given her by the angel about this coming King.
“There is no greater privilege than to hear God call you to a particular task, believe that He will accomplish it through you, declare yourself to be His servant, and allow Him to use you as He wishes.” Luke: A Bible Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition
The king is coming…and he has a parakaleo planned for you. Sure it’s a calling…sure it’s something you would may not have considered before…but rest assured, you are not too far away for him to give your life significance and real meaning as you walk alongside the KING.
That King is coming…so go ahead. Believe the promises of God about this coming King. Trust this coming King to deliver you a Christmas that you can’t obtain solely through your striving. A gift. New life. Fresh possibility.
The king is coming...Merry Christmas.
The king is coming...Merry Christmas.