4th Sunday in Advent

Summary

Years ago I watched a movie called, “The Nativity”. It starred Keisha Castle-Hughes the girl from New Zealand who was in, “Whale Rider” if any of you remember her.  The movie, of course, is about Jesus’ birth, and brings into play the usual cast of suspects, meaning the shepherds, King Herod, the Wisemen from the East, Zecheriah, Elizabeth, Joseph, and of course Mary.

It being a modern movie, the filmmaker tried to get the culture, and the conditions of life in that time correct.  The movie showed us that life was rough.  Not only were people living in a much more crude manner than we do today, but also politically, life under the Romans, and Herod their proxy king was one of taxes, enslavement and hardship.  So for those reasons alone, watching the movie was worth it, because one came away with a better idea of the realities of the world into which Jesus was born.

Yet even more startling were the probable realities of Mary, Jesus’ mother.  The first scene in which you see her, you do not realize that one of the girls who is helping in the field, throwing clods of mud, and chasing young boys, is the soon to be betrothed and pregnant Mary.  Keisha, the actress whom I mentioned above, was 15 at the time of filming. Mary in all probability was very young, relative to how we think in this age, but totally normal for a girl in her time.

In that day in the history of our world, girls became women at their puberty, and Jewish boys went through their Bar-Mitzvah at the age of twelve, and so became men.  Now, the boys, I mean men, needed to wait until they were well enough established in their trade, before they were married, but not the girls, or should I say women.  For from the age of twelve up through the age of fifteen or sixteen were the prime years for a young woman to be married, back then.  Many women by the time they were twenty already had three, four or even five children.

In the movie, Mary’s shockingly young looks really give the viewer pause, to rethink what the news of Jesus’ impending birth really meant to this young woman.  Her world which was already changing with her betrothal to the twenty-something Joseph, was even further turned upside down.  God was telling her she was to give birth to the Son of God…a fact that no one would at first believe.

Now I want to step away from thinking directly about Mary for a moment, and think about the simple fact that God decided to intervene in the world, in human form so as to make a change, to set things right.

Why would God do that?

Why did God not simply appear in all of his might and glory and simply bring about change directly?  Why did God not appear as his Son, like some invincible hero like Zeus’s son Achilles did in the Greek Myths?

Why did God come down and appear amongst us as a weak and dependent baby?

In the New International Version, the first chapter of the gospel of John reads, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.  We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

In John’s first chapter, he writes of God the Son, as either the “Word,” or the “Light.”  So, he is saying that God came to dwell, or live amongst us.  That is the very definition of the word Emmanuel.  And John continues that in the person of the Son, Jesus, which means, “God saves,” we have seen, heard, and experienced God’s grace and truth.

You see, I think God wanted to work change in a very organic and thus more effective way.  God did not want to save through command or awe, thus taking away from us humans our second-greatest natural gift after life, which is ‘free will.’  No, God wanted us to use our ‘free will’ to accept his gift of eternal life and salvation by believing and living lives of faith in him.

John explains it thusly, “But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.”

God does not want to command us to believe, but rather God wants us to choose to believe, and live in the gift of grace that he gives us.  He wants us to willingly accept his gift of new life, and so live lives of faith.

In a way, he wants us to emulate Mary.  Mary was literally given new life to bear, in the news that she was to become pregnant.  And though she was perplexed and slightly confused about how all of this would work, she in the same instant accepted the gift that God was giving her.  You see God was entrusting to her the chance to share with the world God’s son Jesus.  Mary was the bearer of the Word, the Light of which John writes, she was the bearer of the king, the holy One promised by God to the world to bring about the turning of the world.

This is what God asks of us in our lives of faith today.  We are called, like Mary, to bear the Christ child, to bring the good news of Jesus to the world.  Though we are at times perplexed or even confused in how to do this, we need to trust that the Lord will show us the way.  We are the ones who by our lives lived in God’s love are to bear, show, proclaim and live out Jesus in the world.  We, like Mary, are the bearers of God’s Light and Word, to our; communities arrayed on the Oslo Fjord, to our co-workers, our classmates, our friends, and of course into our families.

Mary had no special training.  Mary was not extra-special.  Mary was not sinless or pure.  Mary was not extra brave.  Mary was…ordinary, and Mary was, chosen.  Mary was chosen by God to do his good work, to live out her faith, to share the Light and life.

You too are…ordinary, but you also are chosen.  You are chosen by God to do good work, to live out your faith, to share the light and love of Jesus, so as to bring about new life.

Remember, God’s entrance into the world, his nativity as the baby Jesus, was the greatest gift you will ever receive, and it can be the greatest gift you will ever give.

Have a blessed and merry Christmas, in Christ’s love!

Amen.

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