Father Mike's Message - 12/19/21

The Gospel: Luke 1:39-55
In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth.
When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry, "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord."

And Mary said,
"My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.
Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
for the Mighty One has done great things for me,
and holy is his name.
His mercy is for those who fear him
from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel,
in remembrance of his mercy,
according to the promise he made to our ancestors,
to Abraham and to his descendants forever."

Prayer: ​Lord, you have promised that when two or three gather in your name you will be present with them. We depend on that promise today and pray that you will move among us. Lord, we pray that have you inspired Mike's preparation, that you will enliven his presentation and that you will empower our application.  Amen

The Message:
Once again we are in Luke and looking at the Nativity Narrative. Those wondaful words from Mary regarding what is happening to her.
I'd like to begin this morning by reading the beginning of The Collect for today. Maybe you would like to turn to the part of the service in the Bulletin and read it with me.

"Purify our conscience, Almighty God, by your daily visitation, that your Son Jesus Christ, at his coming, may find in us a mansion prepared for himself...." 

There are three wonderful thoughts encapsulated in the beginning of this Collect that I would like to take some time to unpack this morning.

I sometimes feel that The Collects, that we read each Sunday, are sort of like the ugly cousins of Scriptures. You know that person who is a part of the family, they are always at the party, but not really part of the party. They kind of sit in the back corner while life goes on around them. They are easily overlooked and generally under-appreciated.

We read The Collects because they are there, and we need to, but we don't always stop to examine what they contribute to our Worship experience.

One of my Seminary Professors encouraged us to always read the Collect in our Sermon preparation. They said that The Collect is designed to draw together the, sometimes, disparate thoughts and ideas of the readings of the day into a succinct summary with a central promise or message for the readers.

As I said, there are three wonderful thoughts encapsulated in the beginning of this Collect.
1. Purify our conscience, Almighty God
2. by your daily visitation
3. that your Son Jesus Christ, at his coming, may find in us a mansion prepared for himself.

So, briefly, this is an invitation to the Lord to do the work that only he can do. Each of us is very aware I am sure of our own inability to bring about effective and lasting change in our spiritual condition and lives. In this Collect, we recognize that and we petition the Lord to act on our behalf. Purify our conscience, Almighty God.

Then we go on to the second point. Do you hear the echoes of the message from last week in this part of The Collect? By your daily visitation. This is not a one-day-a-week proposition. If any of us are going to live up to the potential that is within us we need to be in communication and relationship with the Lord on a daily basis.

Do you remember my questions from my message last week? How much time do we set aside for the Lord? How much do we expect that the Holy Spirit will meet with us?

Then we get to the major point, in this Collect, for all of us. This is the focus for the words of Scripture that we have heard this morning. It would be easy to skim over this section of The Collect. That when the Lord comes he will find a mansion prepared for him within us. A place prepared for him to rule and reign.

Now, this has to be acknowledged as an ongoing work of the Holy Spirit within us. We need to be inviting the participation of the Lord in our lives now. To think that someday, somehow, we will be ready to meet the Lord, if we aren't already in conversation and relationship with him, on a regular basis, seems to me to be a big ask.

So as we look at our three readings for this morning we begin with Micah.

Micah describes Bethlehem as insignificant and unimportant. It is quite unremarkable in its place among the cities of Israel. Bethlehem as Micah describes it does not have any great reason for pride or great self-esteem in its existence. There is a sense in which Bethlehem is representative of the first section of our Collect from this morning. Bethlehem although small has a clear and pure conscience.

When I think of Bethlehem and having a pure conscience I am reminded of David. King David, who also came from Bethlehem, was described as a man after God's heart. That might lead you to believe that he was someone who God would have been happy to do things on behalf of God.  He dreamed of building a sanctuary, a temple, a place where people could gather to worship the Lord. But he was prevented from doing this.

David wasn't allowed to build the temple because he was a man of war who had shed much blood and some of that blood was murdering Uriah, Bathsheba's husband. Obviously, David's conscience was not pure before the Lord.

Micah describes "the one" who will come out of Bethlehem - Jesus - this way:"

And he shall stand and feed his flock in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God. And they shall live secure, for now he shall be great to the ends of the earth; and he shall be the one of peace."

Jesus is a man of peace, with a pure conscience.

That means Jesus is able to be the man of God as he is described in Hebrews. Throughout the Gospels, we see how Jesus set aside time to be in communion with God. There we see the example of the daily meeting with God that is described in The Collect.

This is set in stark contrast to the time that Jesus dies on the cross. When he cries out " Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Jesus experiences disconnection from God, at that moment, in a way that he has never experienced it before.

Then we come to the Gospel reading for this morning. Luke lays out the story so we can experience it alongside Mary.

Now, I have to say that, for me, this section of the Nativity narrative is truly "divine mystery" in process. There are so many questions I want to ask at this point. About Mary, about her relationship with God, about her relationship with Joseph, with her knowledge or lack of knowledge of what is being asked of her. So many questions!

But truly here is someone who illustrates the third section of The Collect for today:

"that your Son Jesus Christ, at his coming, may find in us a mansion prepared for himself." Mary truly is the epitome of a person who is a mansion prepared for the Lord Jesus.

Not only that but she is courageous and offers her love and support to Elizabeth. Mary travels to meet with Elizabeth, a journey of 80 to 100 miles, and the two women acknowledge the divine moment that is happening to and through them.

Here are two contrasts of the miraculous. Elizabeth, older and for so long a woman unable to bear children, and the young virgin who both should not "be with child."

Mary and Elizabeth offer hope to the world in two very different and complementary ways.

The stigma of barrenness and the parallel understanding that this must be the result of sin, God's judgment, or God's punishment, is lifted from Elizabeth. So we can all hold out that hope that we too can be reconciled with the Lord.

While, at the same time, God can and will do the miraculous in a person's life despite all the reasons to the contrary as he does with Mary. The impossible will become possible to the People of God. And then Mary proclaims the wonder of it all. In those words that so many of us know so well:

"My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.
Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name."

So, what might we glean from The Collect and the Scriptures that have been set for us to read and study this morning? Well, one of the clear messages I believe we can continue to engage with is that God is not done with the miraculous.

If we are open, as The Collect encourages us to be, then God will come and work in us, he is open to our daily interactions and encounters with him and he is longing to find us prepared and ready when he comes again.

A fun slogan I heard and liked sometime back is by Rick Yancy in his book "The Fifth Wave" “God doesn't call the equipped, son. God equips the called. And you have been called.”

Or perhaps a different way to look at that is to read Philippians 1:6
"I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ."

I think we might actually be back looking at those two questions that keep turning up in my messages:
"What is it that you are doing Lord?"
"What is my part in it?"
But let us end this morning with those wonderful words from Mary:
"My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.
Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name."