Mary

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Sermon Notes, Advent 4, 2020 Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us; Through the gift of the Gregorian calendar, we actually have the time this year to pray the Collect for the 4th Sunday in Advent in earnest. Some years Christmas comes so soon upon the 4th Sunday of Advent that we barely have time to offer our prayer before we turn to acknowledge the birth of Christ. But this year we have the grace to both pray and meditate on what we pray for. And what is that? Nothing less than the upheaval of life as we know it by the working of the Holy Spirit. Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us. Everything is on the line. No power structure, no government, no institution is exempt. We echo the prophet Isaiah, and we say, "We shall be changed." Or in today's vernacular, "Bring it on." That was hardly Mary's response when the angel Gabriel called on her to say the Holy Spirit was about to change her life forever. Luke tells us , "And he came to her and said, 'Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!' But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be." We are given insight into the character of Mary and we find that she was a careful, thoughtful person. Mary considers things. She ponders things in her heart. Like most of us she is suspicious of change before she embraces it. She knows from the history of Israel's prophets that when angelic visitors arrive, difficult times soon follow. She would have known the story of Gideon and the angel that visited him. He was in the vineyard, beating out the wheat to hide it from the oppressive scavenging Midianites when the angel approached. The angel addressed him as Gideon, the mighty man of valor. But Gideon was unimpressed. He looked around at his besieged country and replies if the Lord is with us, how come we are having all this trouble? The angel replied that he, Gideon, is the Lord's chosen one to save his people. Gideon answered I am the youngest of my kin and my family the smallest of clans. Why me? Show me a sign. So Gideon goes out as the angel directs him and collects a goat kid, and flat bread, and broth, and places it all on a rock and the angel of the Lord sends down divine fire to consume it. So Gideon believed in his calling. He collected the 300 men selected by the Lord and set off to fight the legion of Midianites and defeat them as the Lord had promised. Mary would have known how vigorously Gideon protested against the Lord and how mightily did the Lord pursue him. So when her angel came for her, she didn't ask for a sign but only how all this could be since she was yet a virgin. And the angel answered her, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy-the Son of God. Her response is the meek and powerful folding of her will into God's. "Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word." God's great act could only be accomplished through the humblest of submissions. I wonder, do we consider that when we pray for God again, in our lifetime, to stir up his power and come among us with great might? Because there is always that unspoken condition that we too submit ourselves, that we become like Mary, a servant of the Lord. God's great might is going to cost us our power, our might. The Holy Spirit will stir up his power in our hearts. Are we ready to pay that price? Peter thought wrongly that he could meld his power, the sword, with Jesus' power and defeat their enemies in the garden of Gethsemane. Jesus had to teach him a hard lesson. It wasn't his sword he needed, but his humility. Peter needed to be humbled into a deep shame at denying Jesus three times before he was useful to Jesus, as the rock of his church. Gideon saw his army of strength whittled down to 300 men against a throng of Midianites, horses and riders. And when the battle happened, even those 300 hundred were superfluous because it was the Lord who delivered Israel. It wasn't for Gideon's valor that he was chosen, but to be witness to the Lord's power. The followers of Jesus have never lacked for enemies, and ours today are powerful and seemingly growing. Many say that the church has never before faced the level of persecution it does today. COVID has done what no adversary of the church has ever been able to do: stop the people of God from gathering together to praise and worship Him. If you saw the documentary on KOMO news last weekend on the "soul of Seattle," you saw the horrible power of drug abuse consuming an entire city, an evil unleashed and unchecked. Against all this we cry out, "Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us." We admit that only by the great power of the Holy Spirit can our nation and our church be saved. We are reminded of the words in Maltbie Babcock's hymn This is my Father's World, , "Though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet." But we ask ourselves, how can a baby about to be born in Bethlehem stand up against all the evil sin has released in the world. Mary also wondered how that same baby miraculously growing inside her could be the promised Messiah come to save her people from their sins. The answer came from the angel, " For nothing will be impossible with God." Mary's submission to God's will is beautifully captured in the opening words of the Magnificat. "My soul magnifies the Lord." The power stirred up in her is the power of the Holy Spirit and Mary's soul magnifies or glorifies the Lord because that power is made manifest in her lowliness. There may yet come a time when Christians are called to arm for battle and defend the faith. It has happened in the past and I have no doubt but that it will happen again. But at this time, in this advent season, let us follow Mary's example, clothe ourselves with humility, and say with her, "let it be to me according to your word." And may the Holy Spirit stir up his power in us, in our hearts, and may God be magnified in us. In the name of the father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
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