Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

LK1.26-38

Let me tell you about an unexpected encounter and conversation that I had almost two months ago.

I was flying from Washington Regan Airport to Orlando, FL to teach a seminary course.

And I was able to use some of my frequent flyer miles to upgrade my seat to first class.

Now some people, when they fly, are very conversational.

They say “hi” to the person sitting next to them, and try to strike up a conversation.

That’s not me.

I’ve got my headphones on before I sit in my seat.

I’m either going to watch a movie I’ve downloaded, or I’m going to listen to music while I read a book.

And I don’t have little earbuds in my ears, I’ve got headphones that cover your ears so that the message is clear.

And for some reason I thought to myself, “First class is going to be nice.

I know nobody’s going to want to talk to me.

I’ll have peace and quiet.”

Well, guess what happened?

The gentleman sitting next to me reached out his hand and introduced himself.

“Hi, I’m John.”

I shook his hand, “I’m Irwyn.”

I think to myself, “This is polite and innocuous.

It’s not going to be a problem.”

Then he said, “What do you do Irwyn?”

Internally… “I’m a pastor.”

“Oh.

I’m a minister too.”

Turns out that John was flying back home following his participation at a roundtable meeting of evangelical leaders with President Trump at the White House.

The majority of the flight was him extolling to me the virtues of the President and his policies.

At the top of his concern was protecting the church in America through policies and legislation.

Now, I’m for religious liberty.

But I attempted to press on this point and said, “I’m not afraid for the church in America based on who’s president, because Jesus is the one who promised that he would build his church and the gates of hell would not prevail against it.

And, in fact, the history of the church is one of growing and flourishing under persecution.”

He said, “Well, I don’t know about that.”

The message in Scripture that God rhythmically beats throughout is that the human condition is one of weakness and vulnerability; that true strength for people doesn’t come from our mental and physical fortitude.

No. God is the source of all true strength, and we experience it through our absolute and utter dependence on him.

The message in Scripture that God rhythmically beats throughout is that the human condition is one of weakness and vulnerability; that true strength for people doesn’t come from our mental and physical fortitude.

No. God is the source of all true strength, and we experience it through our absolute and utter dependence on him.

The experience of strength comes through our proximity to God.

What stood out to me most in my airplane conversation with John was his utter sense of satisfaction in being in close proximity to the power of the presidency.

He said, “We’ve never had access to the President and the White House the way we do now.”

And that proximity brought with it, for him, a sense of confidence that things would go well legislatively and judicially.

And, in the course of our conversation, he was able to be dismissive of the president’s moral and ethical failings.

Let me make this point.

I don’t really care what your political persuasion is.

You’re missing it, if you think that’s the point.

Because whether we are on the left or on the right politically, we’re human.

And to be human is to prefer to be situated in proximity to power as if the blessings are found in being in positions of worldly strength and not in being weak and vulnerable.

One of the themes that runs through our passage today is the power of God.

But, it’s the power of God on display at the margins, where Mary is.

I want to share these three points with you from the passage, Grace at the Margins, Glory at the Margins, and Gratitude from the Margins.

Grace at the Margins

Why is this story even here?

Why do we get to talk about Madonna and the Margins this morning?

The gospel writers don’t give us every detail about the facets of Jesus’s life and story.

In fact, it’s only Matthew and Luke who tell us of Jesus’s birth, Mark and John leave those details out of their gospel accounts.

Here’s my point.

Luke tells us at the beginning of this book his reason for every detail that he’s including.

He writes to Theophilus in vv.3-4, “it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you…that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught.”

I want you to understand that this is here so that you and I can have certainty about the way the grace of God reached down and continues to reach down into the margins with saving power to lift high the lowly.

And this is our first point, Grace at the Margins.

Luke tells us about a young teenage virgin girl named Mary, who lived in a nowhere city named Nazareth.

Nazareth is the opposite of Washington, DC.

Nobody is trying to move to Nazareth.

It’s about as far from the center of power, influence and industry as you can get.

Matter of fact, the common attitude about Nazareth is given to us by Nathaniel in .

Phillip finds Nathaniel and says, “We found the one Moses, the Law and the prophets wrote about, Jesus of Nazareth.”

Nathaniel says, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”

That’s what people thought about Nazareth, and that’s where Mary lived.

A young woman at the margins in a city at the margins of society.

As Phil Ryken writes in his commentary on this passage,

It is doubtful whether Gabriel could have found a more unlikely person to greet anywhere in Israel.

Mary was among the lowliest of the low...She was a poor, uneducated peasant girl living in a small country town far from the center of power...Mary was also a female in a culture that discounted women.

From a merely human perspective, she was totally insignificant.

And yet, it is to her God sends the angel Gabriel.

Gabriel says to her in v. 28,

Mary is shaken to her core.

She’s deeply troubled.

She’s afraid.

And she’s trying to figure out what’s happening here.

Then, Gabriel says to her in v.30,

The verb in v.28 and the noun in v.30 translated as “favor” is the same word for grace.

“O favored one,” that’s in the passive voice.

To be a favored one is to be a recipient of God’s grace.

To have found favor with God is to be a recipient of God’s grace.

The grace of God has found her at the margins.

It’s not as though there’s some special piety at the margins that makes her somehow deserving of grace; because the grace of God is always something that is undeserved, not merited.

In a recent article titled, Protestants Need to Talk More About Mary, Wheaton College professor Amy Peeler writes,

The fact that God became incarnate through a woman shapes all of Christian theology.

I would modify it a bit to say the fact that God became incarnate through this woman shapes all of Christian theology.

Here’s the deal.

First, God always sees those who are at the margins.

He always sees, particularly with eyes of compassion, those who are at the margins.

And his seeing is connected to his acting, to his doing.

We’ll get to this in a minute, but this is what Mary says in her song of praise, “He has looked upon the low estate of his servant” (v.48).

And his looking leads to his doing.

She says in v.49 “The Almighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name!”

This presses us because unless you find yourself at the margins—lacking resources, unable to pay bills, unable to afford health care, unable to live securely in your home, desperately seeking a better life somewhere else, unless you find yourself physically, or materially or emotionally at the margins—you and I are prone to not really see the margins at all.

And God’s selecting Mary and bestowing his grace upon her reminds us that he always sees at the margins.

And if we’re to be his people, we have to see the margins too.

Byran Stevenson of the Equal Justice Initiative says in his book, Just Mercy, that his work with incarcerated people on death row has taught him something.

Almost all of these individuals come from impoverished, marginalized contexts.

He says he’s learned that the opposite of poverty is not wealth.