William H. Willimon - "The Lord Is with You" (December 19, 1999)
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
- | 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 |