Mary’s Yes
Read the passages first! Luke 1:5-56
The story of the monk – 21 years alone with God, then up to 2000 people came to see him each day – wonders and miracles, what we would now call ‘words of knowledge’ – relationship with God unleashed God’s power. Seraphim of Sarov. (See photocopy)
TRUST
Mary – chosen by God to be the mother of Jesus, God’s own Son
Mary was chosen by God because God knew she could be trusted, because she trusted HIM! Do you trust God? It is probably the single most important element in any relationship – a prior necessity before we allow ourselves to love and be loved.
Mary was chosen for who she was, not for what she did. It’s true that who she was was someone who had all the right connections – but if you look at the genealogies of Jesus in Matthew 1 and Luke 3 – genealogies that fulfil many OT prophecies about the coming Messiah (cf. in OT_________) – her right connections were through Joseph. Mary was dependent on the male line in the culture she lived in to give her all the right connections! She shared the limitations of every woman in her culture. But God is not limited!
More important than the human connections was the fact that Mary was a person habitually connected to God – she was humble. She says so herself! How can that be? There is a joke that says, ‘I’m not proud, and I am humble enough to say so!’ (about pride and humility)
True humility is about being ‘earthed’ – the word humility comes from humus meaning ground. It’s about being ‘grounded’ – about having a right view of ourselves as God made us, which only comes from being in close relationship with Him. We cannot truly know ourselves otherwise! So Mary was humble enough to say so! In relationship with God we will ALL feel humble, even while at the same time we will ALL experience his amazing love towards us – more and more the closer we get to Him. There is incredible strength in true humility. This is what Mary said – most Bibles call it ‘Mary’s Song’:
SING a version of the Magnificat – ask Ali
BELIEVE
When Mary went to see her cousin Elizabeth, who was miraculously pregnant, Elizabeth said, ‘Blessed is she who has believed that what the Lord has said to her will be accomplished!’ Elizabeth’s response is not to Mary’s call from God to active mission! God had said He would do something, and Mary believed Him. Later, it would have repercussions on what she would have to do in her life, but for now she trusted that what He had said to her would come to pass. For that she is blessed. And the Spirit in others recognised that attitude – a real trust in God is very attractive to people who are seeking God – to those who are longing to know that there is hope in this world. Elizabeth’s response was to the fulfilment of the greatest hope the Jewish people had ever had – a Messiah! And Mary believed God – she trusted Him - when He said it would come to pass through her. That’s all she was asked to do – trust God.
The Magnificat – the song we have just sung – is both personal to Mary and corporate – it is for all of us who, like Mary, trust God.
Let it be…
Angels are God’s servants – his messengers. When Gabriel appeared to the virgin Mary with God’s message for her, his greeting was rather surprising. ‘Greetings, you who are highly favoured! The Lord is with you.’ This was obviously not a usual greeting, because Mary ‘wondered what king of greeting this might be’. Mary was troubled – this in itself is unusual, because when presented with an angel, most people are afraid.
The The Christmas Mystery by Jostein Gaarder who wrote Sophie’s World. Numerous angels, including a ‘young’ one who is being taught, ‘Don’t forget to say, “Do not be afraid!” – this is the ‘usual’ greeting.
If Mary was troubled, it must have had something to do with the words ‘highly favoured’, because the angel goes on to repeat, ‘you have found favour with God’. What did it mean? I don’t suppose she was surprised by ‘The Lord is with you.’, in the present tense, because if she had a close relationship with God, she would jolly well know that God was with her! So that would simply have been a statement of fact on the part of the angel. I don’t think that she was afraid, because Gabriel doesn’t tell her ‘Do not be afraid’ until later. Maybe she was thinking,
· What have I done to deserve this? (favour, that is)
· Had any angel ever greeted anyone with those opening words before? It was like being ‘named’ – ‘you who are highly favoured!’ Names are very important in the Bible – they describe who a person is – that is, the essence of the person. The angel could have said, ‘Greetings Mary!’ After all, that was her name!
Mary was troubled not just because being visited by an angel was unusual – she was troubled because Gabriel’s greeting was unique.
God didn’t make her wait for the answer to her troubled thoughts, as we know sometimes happens. Gabriel immediately explained the meaning of his greeting (Luke 1:31-33):
‘You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob for ever; his kingdom will never end.’
My daughter would say to me – ‘Too much information, Mum!!’ But Mary took it all in her stride. First she is not afraid, merely troubled because she can’t work something out, then in response to her questioning mind she hears the most momentous angelic announcement in human history, and all she wonders is, ‘How will this be since I am a virgin?’ Here is a person who gets down to the brass tacks - to the realities of how God has normally made this world to function reproductively! She seems genuinely interested, and carries on a relatively normal conversation with Gabriel. And yet again he obliges with more information. [God does not want us to be in the dark about those things that are really important!]
I love this bit, because although we will see that Mary was willing, God loved her so much that he did not leave her alone. The Holy Spirit would ‘beget’ Jesus in her, but she would share her pregnancy with someone close to her who would also recognise that she was not pregnant by any man. Such a burden would have been difficult enough anyway. And just in case Mary or Elizabeth were ever tempted to doubt the truth of the angel’s words, Elizabeth (who was too old to have a child) would also be pregnant. It’s interesting that it is only after Gabriel gives Mary this information that he says, ‘For nothing is impossible with God.’ God does not expect human beings to carry burdens alone – He did not expect Mary to carry the knowledge of her pregnancy and what it really meant alone. God made sure others close to her knew and blessed her for it.
What was Mary’s response? ‘I am the Lord’s servant. May it be to me as you have said.’ Then the angel left her. Gabriel had completed God’s bidding. A servant does their master’s bidding. There is no question. Mary’s will was in tune with whatever God asked her to do. BUT this was more complex! Mary’s will was in tune with whatever God decided would be done TO her! This is a position of relinquishing power – of letting God be God. Some Bible translations put it this way – ‘Let it be unto me…’ But WHO we ‘let’ do to us is all important!
I love a quote by Eugene Petersen:
We do want to be in control as human beings. It gives a sense of power that can be falsely equated with well being. And I notice that quite often advertising campaigns on TV play on this human propensity.
Mary was willing to let God be in control. That word ‘let’ is very important, because it is the word that connects with our own wills. God will not do anything against our will, lest the possibility of real relationship be destroyed. He wants us to want his will to be done. That’s why that bit of the Lord’s prayer is so important. ‘Your will be done’ relinquishes our will to God.
This is not the ‘Let it be…’ of the Beatles’ song, which is advising us to let go of everything and just ‘be’. It is not letting go – it is being open to receiving from God by grasping hold of Him alone. It is an active ‘Let it be done…’, because we are saying ‘yes’ to God’s activity in our lives, to God’s almighty power transforming us by his Spirit, according to His will. It is taking what may feel like a huge risk, because we don’t necessarily know beforehand (as Mary partially did) what God is going to do or how He is going to do it, to transform us into the people He created us to be.
So ‘let it be unto me’ requires TRUST in God. Only God, the one who created us, knows who we are meant to be. And like Mary, it means letting the Spirit of Jesus into our lives, to transform us. In Mary, it was the literal incarnation of Jesus himself that took place. In us, it is also an incarnation, as the Spirit of Jesus, the Holy Spirit, is allowed to rule in our lives. There is a re-incarnation (that has nothing to do with the Eastern concept of reincarnation) that takes place each time we allow Jesus to fill us by his Spirit. Paradoxically, we don’t become less ourselves – we become more ourselves! All mission is incarnational in this way. Who we are is more important than what we do. Francis of Assisi put it this way, ‘Preach the Gospel at all times – if necessary, use words.’
In PNG when we went there…(example as per my talk in Spanish)
This incarnation of Jesus in our lives requires TRUST. And this trust is not in ourselves. Trust in this sense has to do with ‘believing’ the other person – it is relational. Mary was the first believer in Jesus. The Bible (Hebrews 11.6) says that ‘ without faith it is impossible to please God, because…_________________________’
And in Philippians 1.21 Paul makes an astounding claim – ‘For me to live is Christ and to die is gain.’ This is the trust that we recognise as ‘faith’. Mary trusted God when she said ‘yes’ to his will for her – although she didn’t know what the future would bring. But perhaps more importantly, God trusted Mary! (You may remember that I said that at the beginning!) To reveal Himself in the incarnation of Jesus Christ as a human being, God trusted in a human being!
And that is the way it is still. The incarnational message is trusted to us – men and women - by God. The revelation of Jesus Christ depends on us, in the power of the Holy Spirit. And that is mission – making Jesus known to others.