Christ Lutheran Church: Welcome

That We Too Might Be Called Blessed - December 21, 2008

That We Too Might Be Called Blessed

2 Samuel 7:1-16, John 1:6-12

December 21, 2008

Rev. Dave R. Garwick

The Gospel Lesson of what you just read is called the “Annunciation”. Annunciation sounds a little like the word “announce”. The annunciation, then is when the angel Gabriel announced to Mary that she was going to have a baby – no less than the Son of God.

What has always most impressed me in this story is the answer that Mary finally gave when she, “I am the handmaiden of the Lord. Let it be unto me as you have said.” That is one of the most dramatic and inspiring declarations of faith I have ever heard.

Seven years ago I stood right near the spot where this happened, right in Nazareth. In three months several more of us from this congregation will stand there once again. Now you may think, “How in the world could anybody know precisely where this actually happened?” But what historians told me over there was that back then Nazareth was a very small with only a couple hundred people or so – much smaller that even our Maple Plain. The physician Luke who penned this story did so only a couple generations after the incident. If some world famous event happened here in Maple Plain, I can guarantee you that a couple generations later there would be all kinds of people around here who would be able to tell you exactly where it happened. With the spread of Luke’s account, the location most certainly would have been marked, remembered and told over and over and over again.

So, whenever we read about the Annunciation, what I want to preach about is what Mary did. It really shocks my confirmation students when I tell them that Mary was most likely about their age when she was visited by the angel Gabriel and told that she was going to be pregnant with the Son of God. And then to think that a terrified and confused fourteen year old girl could come up with the declaration of faith like she did ... THAT is what I always like to reflect on.

But you know what? This story is not about what MARY did – it’s about what GOD did. After all, she did not say, “My soul magnifies myself.” What Mary said was, “My soul magnifies the Lord.” So, let’s not dishonor her by magnifying HER. This was about what GOD did.

And what did He do here? Well, let’s start by going back to this little exchange we heard about in the Old Testament where King David got this idea in his head to build a dwelling for the Lord. This is about a thousand years before the Annunciation to Mary. King David had finally established Israel as a superpower and was sitting back for the first time of peace in a long time. He’s kind of kicking back in his new cedar palace when it dawns on him that he has not built a dwelling for God himself. So that’s what he decides to do.

Except for one thing. God draws him short and says, ‘I don’t need you or anybody building anything for Me. I can take care of myself. YOU do not take care of ME – I take care of YOU. Sonny boy.”

God tells David that it will be David’s son, Solomon whom He will appoint to build a Temple to house the name of the Lord. But now fast forward a thousand years and look where God has chosen to dwell. For nine months. In the womb of a fourteen year old girl. THAT is where the Son of God will live for nine months ... inside the womb of Mary. And who is Mary? We do not have a clue. God has told us all kinds of things about other women who have had miraculous pregnancies. We know about Sarah, about Hannah, about Mary’s cousin Elizabeth. Not a word about Mary, though.

This is solely GOD’s doing – to come to earth in person, as a baby, through an apparently totally unremarkable fourteen year old girl. And even though it was God’s doing, He did not force this on her. He waited for her “yes” to this unplanned pregnancy, which was at least for a little while a totally unwanted pregnancy.

Even Mary’s declaration of faith was something that GOD did. What fourteen year old person would come up with something like that on her own? Even Martin Luther said this about himself when he explained the part of the Apostle’s Creed that deals with the Holy Spirit. Luther said that,

“I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him; but the Holy Ghost has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith; even as He calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian Church on earth, and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one true faith.”

This is not the story about some unusually gifted spiritual saint who got it all together and won the eye of God. This is the story about how God chooses to do miraculous things through regular mortals ... like Mary .... like us. It is the story of how it can be God who is behind some of the most difficult, unplanned and unwanted things in our lives, who is there to give us the strength and faith that even we did not know that we had so that we can bear up under it and even magnify the Lord ... so that, like Mary we too may be called “blessed.”

That we too might be called blessed.

Amen. May it be so.