William H. Willimon - "The Lord Is with You" (December 19, 1999)
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| - | The Gospel for this Sunday of Advent | 0:12 |
| is always Luke story of the Annunciation to Mary. | 0:15 | |
| In the sixth month, the Angel Gabriel was sent from God | 0:29 | |
| to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, | 0:32 | |
| to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph | 0:36 | |
| of the house of David and the virgin's name was Mary. | 0:41 | |
| And he came to her and said, "Hail, oh favoured one | 0:46 | |
| "The Lord is with you. | 0:51 | |
| But she was greatly troubled at the saying | 0:54 | |
| and considered in her mind | 0:56 | |
| what sort of greeting this might be. | 0:57 | |
| And the angel said to her, "Do not be afraid Mary, | 1:00 | |
| "for you have found favor with God. | 1:05 | |
| "And behold you will conceive in your womb | 1:07 | |
| "and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, | 1:10 | |
| "He will be great and will be called | 1:16 | |
| "the Son of the Most High. | 1:18 | |
| "And the Lord God will give to him the throne | 1:20 | |
| "of his father David and He will reign | 1:23 | |
| "over the house of Jacob forever, | 1:25 | |
| "and of his kingdom there will be no end." | 1:27 | |
| And Mary said to the angel. | 1:31 | |
| "How shall this be since I have no husband?" | 1:34 | |
| The angel said to her, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, | 1:38 | |
| "and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. | 1:42 | |
| "Therefore the child will be born | 1:45 | |
| "will be called Holy The Son of God." | 1:48 | |
| And Mary said, "Behold, I am the handmade of the Lord. | 1:54 | |
| "Let it be to me according to your word." | 2:00 | |
| And the angel departed from her. | 2:04 | |
| This is the word of the Lord. | 2:08 | |
| We call it the Annunciation, this Sunday | 2:15 | |
| when we always read the story | 2:20 | |
| of the Angel Gabriel's announcement to Mary, | 2:21 | |
| that she was blessed among women, | 2:26 | |
| that she was going to have a baby, | 2:30 | |
| and that the baby's name would be Emmanuel, God with us. | 2:32 | |
| But you will note that the first thing | 2:40 | |
| the Angel Gabriel said to Mary was, | 2:43 | |
| the Lord is with you. | 2:47 | |
| We refer to this scene by the big Bible word Annunciation, | 2:50 | |
| but what we really mean is "call" because on that day | 2:55 | |
| Mary got called by God. | 3:01 | |
| She was told that she was blessed among women. | 3:07 | |
| Because God was calling her. | 3:11 | |
| Throughout the history of the church, | 3:15 | |
| Mary has always been known as the first disciple | 3:18 | |
| because you see, she was the first to get called by God | 3:21 | |
| to join up with the Jesus movement. | 3:26 | |
| She was the first to say, yes. | 3:30 | |
| And the Bible is just full of this sort of thing. | 3:35 | |
| Here is somebody minding his/her own business | 3:38 | |
| and then from out of nowhere, there comes this call. | 3:42 | |
| The person is often startled by God. | 3:47 | |
| Maybe that's why the angel Gabriel said to Mary, | 3:52 | |
| "Don't be afraid." | 3:56 | |
| Usually the recipient of such call ask questions. | 3:59 | |
| Mary's question was, well, how can this be? | 4:05 | |
| And who could blame her for asking? | 4:10 | |
| She's not even married, as she says, to Joseph, | 4:12 | |
| she's engaged. | 4:16 | |
| She's a young woman without, | 4:18 | |
| so far as we know any particular education | 4:20 | |
| or preparation for this call. | 4:22 | |
| How can this be? | 4:25 | |
| Of course anybody receiving a call from God, | 4:28 | |
| anybody, might well ask the same questions. | 4:32 | |
| How can this be? | 4:36 | |
| And the question, maybe in Mary's case | 4:38 | |
| is not so much one about obstetrics, | 4:41 | |
| but it's rather about how can this be | 4:44 | |
| that God would choose me? | 4:48 | |
| I never can read this text without thinking back | 4:53 | |
| to a Bible study with a group of youth | 4:57 | |
| and we were studying to the Gospel of Luke | 5:00 | |
| and we read about this Annunciation, | 5:02 | |
| and I asked the teenagers | 5:05 | |
| a question I thought I would know the answer to | 5:08 | |
| and that is what fascinates you most, | 5:11 | |
| what do you find most interesting about this story? | 5:13 | |
| I thought they would mention something | 5:16 | |
| about the virginal conception of Jesus or something. | 5:17 | |
| But one of the teenagers responded, | 5:22 | |
| "Well, what interests me is, | 5:26 | |
| "I mean, like if it's God, and if God wants to do something | 5:29 | |
| "for the world, how come God just didn't do it? | 5:32 | |
| "How come God starts out doing something for the world | 5:35 | |
| "by asking a bunch of people to do it for him?" | 5:39 | |
| That's interesting. | 5:43 | |
| That's behind every annunciation, every call. | 5:48 | |
| Mary accepts the call. | 5:53 | |
| She says, "Let it be to me according to your word." | 5:56 | |
| On another call occasion, young as Isaiah | 6:01 | |
| responded more enthusiastically to a vision in the temple. | 6:05 | |
| "Lord, Here am I send me." | 6:09 | |
| Another Annunciation, old Abraham, | 6:12 | |
| when he was told that God was gonna make out of | 6:15 | |
| a great people, he was just so sort of stupefied | 6:17 | |
| that somebody in his advanced years would be being called | 6:22 | |
| by God to do something, he didn't say anything. | 6:25 | |
| His wife Sarah began laughing, when she heard God's call. | 6:28 | |
| She was over 90 at the time. | 6:32 | |
| These calls of God | 6:36 | |
| are often astounding, perplexing. | 6:41 | |
| And yet in the story, Mary says, | 6:45 | |
| despite the perplexing qualities, Mary says, yes. | 6:49 | |
| You get these annunciations throughout the Bible. | 6:56 | |
| And you also get these annunciations today. | 7:01 | |
| That's right. | 7:06 | |
| Maybe you thought like, what happened to Mary happened once | 7:07 | |
| and only to her. | 7:11 | |
| But the Bible indicates that God | 7:14 | |
| seems to be in the call business. | 7:17 | |
| Even the day maybe, especially today. | 7:21 | |
| God seems to love to call things forth. | 7:26 | |
| The Bible story starts when God says, | 7:30 | |
| Let there be light and let there be a world | 7:33 | |
| and let there be animals and let there be people. | 7:36 | |
| God just seems to love to call forth. | 7:39 | |
| Even today I teach this course at the Divinity School | 7:43 | |
| called Introduction to The Theology | 7:48 | |
| and Practice of Ordained Leadership. | 7:52 | |
| It's for people who are at their first semester in seminary. | 7:55 | |
| People who feel called by God one day to be pastors. | 8:00 | |
| And the first thing I have them do in this class | 8:05 | |
| is to, everybody has to write a paper entitled, | 8:08 | |
| My Call To The Ordained Ministry. | 8:12 | |
| And I just simply asked them to put down on paper, | 8:16 | |
| how they got called? | 8:20 | |
| Why they think they ought to be called to to be a pastor? | 8:23 | |
| And I love reading these papers. | 8:27 | |
| Some of them are very strange. | 8:30 | |
| (congregation laughing) | 8:34 | |
| One year I noted that God seemed to call people on patios, | 8:34 | |
| for some reason. | 8:39 | |
| (congregation laughing) | ||
| And some of the papers tell about visions, | 8:43 | |
| stunning visions from God during the night | 8:46 | |
| when they least expect it, or their lives are tossed | 8:49 | |
| and they're tormented and they don't know which way to turn | 8:53 | |
| and they finally realize they've been called | 8:56 | |
| and they summon up the courage to go to seminary | 8:58 | |
| and they say yes, here I am, send me. | 9:02 | |
| Some of them are very calm, ordered, | 9:08 | |
| not very spectacular accounts | 9:12 | |
| of a gradually growing awareness that God | 9:14 | |
| was calling them, that God had something for them to do. | 9:20 | |
| One woman said that she had been married | 9:27 | |
| to a pastor for about 15 years. | 9:31 | |
| And she was a pastor's wife. | 9:35 | |
| And one afternoon she said, | 9:37 | |
| she was sitting on the sofa in the parsonage, | 9:39 | |
| an old sofa, and she was smoking a cigarette, | 9:42 | |
| and she was drinking a beer, | 9:47 | |
| and she was reading some trashy supermarket | 9:48 | |
| checkout line sort of novel. | 9:51 | |
| And her husband walked in, this pastor, | 9:54 | |
| and he said something to her like. | 9:57 | |
| "Well, you sure don't look like a pastor's wife." | 9:59 | |
| And with that, she said, she stomped out that cigarette, | 10:02 | |
| she throw down that novel and she shouted, "Well I'm a wife | 10:05 | |
| "I'm not a pastor, God called you. | 10:08 | |
| "God didn't call me okay." | 10:11 | |
| (congregation laughing) | 10:14 | |
| And she meant it as a way of course of telling her husband | 10:17 | |
| to back off, but she said, as soon as those words | 10:20 | |
| came out of her mouth, it was like something ringing | 10:23 | |
| in her head, this voice said, | 10:26 | |
| "Well, how do you know you're not being called | 10:29 | |
| "to be a pastor?" | 10:32 | |
| She said that thing started working on her mind | 10:35 | |
| over the next few weeks. | 10:37 | |
| And after a period of struggle and surprised at the idea, | 10:40 | |
| well there she was, sitting in a class in seminary. | 10:45 | |
| I think she's gonna make a great pastor. | 10:50 | |
| One of my favorite stories about call | 10:54 | |
| that I got on these papers, | 10:56 | |
| was a student who wrote of his teenage years. | 10:58 | |
| "I was a teenager from hell. | 11:01 | |
| "I made my parents lives completely miserable. | 11:04 | |
| "I was so irresponsible that I flunked out of college | 11:08 | |
| "in six months, then I went out and I bummed around | 11:12 | |
| "and started working. | 11:16 | |
| "I met this person, we lived together a while, | 11:17 | |
| "we got married. | 11:20 | |
| "And then for some reason, | 11:23 | |
| "we started attending this little church | 11:24 | |
| "in the neighborhood where we were living. | 11:27 | |
| "And gradually, I came to the surprising conclusion | 11:29 | |
| "that God had some kind of plans for me. | 11:34 | |
| "I started thinking about going back to college | 11:39 | |
| "and going to seminary to be a preacher. | 11:42 | |
| I dreaded telling my parents" he said, | 11:47 | |
| "After all they had been through and now to come to them | 11:50 | |
| "and tell them my life had taken another weird, | 11:53 | |
| "surprising turn, I just hated to tell them about it." | 11:56 | |
| But he said he met finally with his parents. | 12:01 | |
| And he told them that he was going back to college. | 12:04 | |
| He told him about the surprising turn of events, | 12:07 | |
| the way that though his life had been one long, | 12:10 | |
| tortured series of mistakes | 12:14 | |
| and accumulated irresponsibility. | 12:17 | |
| Now, he thought that he really had some direction | 12:19 | |
| he had this claim upon his life. | 12:22 | |
| And when he was telling his parents this | 12:25 | |
| his mother suddenly broke out in tears. | 12:27 | |
| And she said, over and over again, | 12:31 | |
| "I'm just so ashamed, I can't believe this has happened. | 12:33 | |
| "I'm so ashamed." | 12:36 | |
| And he said, "What do you mean by that?" | 12:38 | |
| And she said, "I just can't believe this has happened. | 12:41 | |
| "Didn't I tell you that, before I had you, | 12:45 | |
| "I had a number of miscarriages | 12:48 | |
| "and I was just so disappointed. | 12:50 | |
| "I didn't think I would ever be able to have a child. | 12:53 | |
| "And when I became pregnant with you, | 12:56 | |
| "I prayed to God and I said God if you'll let me bring | 12:58 | |
| "this baby to term, I will dedicate him to the Lord | 13:02 | |
| "just like Hannah did back in the Old Testament. | 13:06 | |
| "And I will even name him Samuel just like Hannah did. | 13:08 | |
| "If you'll just let me have this baby, | 13:11 | |
| "he will be yours forever I promise." | 13:14 | |
| Sam said, "Why? | 13:19 | |
| "That's unbelievable. | 13:23 | |
| "How come you never told me about this? | 13:25 | |
| "You could have saved me a lot of trouble | 13:27 | |
| "if you told me that, she." | 13:28 | |
| (congregation laughing) | 13:29 | |
| She said, "We're Methodist, I didn't know | 13:31 | |
| "this kind of thing would work." | 13:34 | |
| (congregation laughing) | 13:36 | |
| "I didn't think things like I mean, | 13:38 | |
| "we don't take the Bible that literally, | 13:39 | |
| "I didn't know how was I to know it was gonna work?" | 13:41 | |
| All I'm saying is if you think the story | 13:48 | |
| about the call of Mary, | 13:50 | |
| Mary being called by this Angel Gabriel. | 13:53 | |
| If you think this is weird, think again. | 13:56 | |
| Cause stories of annunciation and call | 14:00 | |
| and vocation they, | 14:03 | |
| they tend to be kind of strange | 14:08 | |
| and they're not strange because God send some kind of angel | 14:11 | |
| to deliver the message, though God sometimes does. | 14:15 | |
| But I think they're really strange | 14:20 | |
| because the one being called is you. | 14:24 | |
| Like Mary, well you think of all the reasons, | 14:30 | |
| this thing is crazy, this doesn't make sense, | 14:32 | |
| it's not rational it's, we're not perfect people. | 14:35 | |
| We got baggage, we got these personal characteristics, | 14:39 | |
| we got these limitations, we're cowards by nature, | 14:44 | |
| we're this we're that. | 14:47 | |
| Nevertheless, in our better moments, | 14:50 | |
| we, like Mary, | 14:53 | |
| we just simply say, yes. | 14:56 | |
| I don't know how this thing is gonna be, | 15:00 | |
| I don't know where this thing is. | 15:01 | |
| Yeah, yes. | 15:03 | |
| And this appears to be the primary way God chooses | 15:07 | |
| to change the world. | 15:10 | |
| It appears God doesn't do things in the world | 15:13 | |
| through earthquake, wind and fire, but | 15:15 | |
| through ordinary people like Mary, who get called. | 15:18 | |
| Furthermore, just ordinary people who say, yes. | 15:24 | |
| Maybe you recall those beautiful Renaissance paintings | 15:31 | |
| by people like Fra Angelico, I think of the one | 15:33 | |
| by Simone Martini, the Annunciation | 15:37 | |
| in the Uffizi gallery that | 15:39 | |
| has this elegantly dressed Angel | 15:41 | |
| and speaking to this elegant Mary, | 15:44 | |
| and they always depict Mary as cowering | 15:48 | |
| as drawing back in fear. | 15:52 | |
| She must have been in fear, | 15:56 | |
| Why else would the angel Gabriel told her. | 15:58 | |
| "Don't be be in fear" | 16:00 | |
| And usually in these paintings, | 16:04 | |
| there's always a dove. | 16:06 | |
| There's a dove hovering above the scene | 16:08 | |
| just over Gabriel and Mary. | 16:11 | |
| A dove, of course, is a symbol of the Holy Spirit. | 16:13 | |
| And that dove is a reminder that this call thing | 16:17 | |
| is God's idea before it's ours. | 16:22 | |
| This whole Annunciation thing is an announcement from God | 16:27 | |
| that comes to us as if from above on the wings of a dove. | 16:33 | |
| But the story of Mary also reminds us, | 16:40 | |
| that though the action is initiated from above, from God, | 16:44 | |
| this thing is still a two way street. | 16:50 | |
| Somebody has got to receive the announcement. | 16:53 | |
| Somebody's got to say yes. | 16:55 | |
| Thus the story of Mary is a strange event | 17:00 | |
| with this Angel Gabriel sweeping into her life. | 17:04 | |
| And this thing is from God, it's from above. | 17:07 | |
| But at the same time, it's also from below. | 17:12 | |
| That is, it's a perfectly understandable believable story | 17:16 | |
| about a young woman who to her surprise and some fear, | 17:22 | |
| finds her life caught up in the loving purposes of God. | 17:27 | |
| Therefore, it's a story about very human confusion and fear. | 17:34 | |
| But it's also a story about Mary's yes. | 17:41 | |
| I don't know how all this is gonna happen. | 17:45 | |
| But use me as you will. | 17:48 | |
| Yes. | 17:51 | |
| I know, I know Mary's call was unique. | 17:54 | |
| Nobody before or since has ever been called | 17:56 | |
| to do what Mary was called to do, the mother of Jesus. | 17:59 | |
| Thus Mary is called in the Eastern Church, | 18:05 | |
| The Theotokos, The God Bearer, | 18:07 | |
| because you see, it's Mary that bears Jesus | 18:11 | |
| the Son of God into the world. | 18:15 | |
| And yet you can't hear the call of Mary | 18:18 | |
| without maybe thinking about your own. | 18:23 | |
| Our encounters with God often show much | 18:27 | |
| the same pattern is Mary's. | 18:29 | |
| There is unknowing, there is surprise, | 18:32 | |
| there is confusion, fear | 18:35 | |
| because this call comes from above. | 18:37 | |
| Not of our own devising. | 18:41 | |
| It's not something that we thought up or we planned, | 18:43 | |
| rather it's something God gives. | 18:47 | |
| And yet at the same time, like Mary, | 18:51 | |
| we do have some say so in the matter, we gotta say yes. | 18:54 | |
| Mary could have said no. | 19:00 | |
| We could say no. | 19:03 | |
| We can say, no thank you God, | 19:05 | |
| I'm quite happy in my life just the way it is, | 19:08 | |
| my life may be proceeding in some rather unimaginative, | 19:10 | |
| undemanding ruts, but at least they are my ruts. | 19:14 | |
| And I know where I'm going to be tomorrow at this same time. | 19:19 | |
| I may be living only for myself and my projects, | 19:22 | |
| but at least they are mine. | 19:26 | |
| And I'm not so sure, I want to have my life caught up | 19:28 | |
| in anything much larger or more significant than me. | 19:31 | |
| Well, you can say all of that when the call comes, | 19:38 | |
| and all that is perfectly understandable. | 19:41 | |
| But like Mary, you can also say, yes. | 19:46 | |
| And that can make all the difference. | 19:52 | |
| And when you say yes, you get to be the Theotokos. | 19:54 | |
| You get to be the God Bearer into the world. | 19:59 | |
| I work around college students. | 20:06 | |
| And a major part of my ministry here | 20:09 | |
| is sitting down with students and reflecting with them | 20:12 | |
| over what they ought to do with their lives. | 20:15 | |
| And I can tell you, | 20:20 | |
| there are a few things more sad | 20:23 | |
| than an uncalled life. | 20:27 | |
| Vocation, like the one Mary received | 20:32 | |
| is not only confusing and sometimes frightening. | 20:37 | |
| It can also be exciting, it can be invigorating. | 20:42 | |
| It can be a great gift to feel that God chose you | 20:46 | |
| for some godly purpose. | 20:50 | |
| Be a great gift to have your little life | 20:53 | |
| caught up in something more significant than your life. | 20:55 | |
| Thus Mary had faith to see that | 20:59 | |
| what the Angel Gabriel was offering her in calling her, | 21:02 | |
| wasn't only a bit disturbing and frightening. | 21:07 | |
| It was also great gift. | 21:10 | |
| That's why she said yes. | 21:13 | |
| That is why even to this day, | 21:16 | |
| we call her blessed among women. | 21:17 | |
| And that's why throughout the centuries, | 21:21 | |
| the church called Mary, the very first disciple. | 21:23 | |
| If I had time today, | 21:29 | |
| it would be fun to hear the story of your Annunciation. | 21:32 | |
| It would be fun to break you up into buzz groups, | 21:37 | |
| and you could write down on newsprint, we could have reports | 21:40 | |
| from the groups about your vocation. | 21:44 | |
| Sometimes it's related to your job. | 21:48 | |
| Sometimes it's related to what you do after your job. | 21:49 | |
| Sometimes it's related to something you do for the church. | 21:53 | |
| Most of the time it's related to something you do | 21:55 | |
| outside the church. | 21:58 | |
| As a pastor, I know plenty of people who've gotten a call. | 22:01 | |
| Now somebody else looking at your life | 22:07 | |
| might say, "Isn't that interesting, you know, | 22:10 | |
| "she could have done almost anything she wanted to do | 22:12 | |
| "with her life, but she became a nurse. | 22:14 | |
| "She decided to care for people, even though she knew, | 22:18 | |
| "it wouldn't make a lot of money." | 22:22 | |
| Or somebody else might say, "You know, | 22:25 | |
| "I find it interesting that when some people | 22:27 | |
| "spend their retirement on a golf course, | 22:30 | |
| "he spends most of his time down | 22:33 | |
| "at the community soup kitchen. | 22:36 | |
| "Now isn't that strange? | 22:38 | |
| "I wonder how he decided to do that." | 22:40 | |
| Of course, through the eyes of faith, | 22:44 | |
| for those of us in the know, | 22:46 | |
| those of us who know by heart, the story of Mary. | 22:49 | |
| we describe such circumstances | 22:53 | |
| not as something that we decided, something we chose | 22:55 | |
| but rather as a task, as an assignment | 23:00 | |
| given by Almighty God. | 23:04 | |
| An Annunciation that your little life | 23:09 | |
| is just about to count for something bigger than your life. | 23:12 | |
| The greatest gift of being called, | 23:20 | |
| of living a life summoned | 23:24 | |
| is summed up in those very first words | 23:26 | |
| the angel Gabriel spoke to Mary. | 23:29 | |
| The Lord is with you. | 23:32 | |
| You're not alone. | 23:36 | |
| The work you do is not exclusively for yourself. | 23:38 | |
| The gifts you've been given are also assignments | 23:42 | |
| for God's work in the world. | 23:46 | |
| Your little life is about to count for something. | 23:48 | |
| This is a great message of Christmas. | 23:53 | |
| The Lord | 23:59 | |
| is with you. | 24:01 | |
| Amen. | 24:03 | |
| (soft music) | 24:10 |
