"Ticket to Ride"

7-26-15

Lexington UMC                                  “Ticket to Ride”

Luke 13: 31-35

“I think I’m gonna be sad.  I think it’s todaaaay, yeah!  The girl that’s drivin’ me mad is goin’ awaaaay.”

I know this is a pop song and all, but I have to tell you…I hear so much sadness and disappointment in these lyrics.  Don’t you?  It’s the cry of a broken heart.  Do you recognize the sound?

We heard that sound earlier when we read these words of Jesus:

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!  How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!

To put it another way…  Jerusalem’s got a ticket to ride.  And she don’t care.  And Jesus’ heart is broken.

How strange sounding that must be for those who worship other gods.  “Isn’t your God all-powerful,” they might ask.  “Yes,” we would say.  “Our God is all-powerful and mighty to save!”  “Then how could your all-powerful God possibly be sad and disappointed?” they ask.  Well?  Good question, right?

The answer to that question goes back to the way that God made us human beings.  God made us with the ability to choose…to choose life or death…to choose to love God or reject God.  Without that free choice we would be no better than robots – we could never have a real, authentic relationship…and a real, authentic relationship with us is what God had in mind from the beginning.  God wouldn’t settle for anything less.

The fact that God in Christ is weeping over Jerusalem shows just how far God will go in protecting humanity’s freedom to choose.  God will take it all the way to the cross, won’t he?  And beyond!  Our choice…that  is what is at the heart of this message today…our choice…

1.     Every single one of us has a ticket to ride today.  Do you care?

Inside your bulletin you will notice a ticket.  On one side it reads, “Ticket to Ride.”  On the other side, it reads, “Do you care?”  I’m going to ask you to do something with that ticket later on in the service.  Will you use it?  Will you walk away?  For now, hold on to it.

So picture in your mind Jesus standing looking over the city of Jerusalem, his arms open wide…  He is sad at their rejection.  Now, let’s back up a few verses and see some of the things that happened before Jesus wept over Jerusalem.  Before Jesus got sad, he got mad.

Jesus is on the way to Jerusalem.  He has been teaching, and some Pharisees came up to him and said, “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.”

What is behind this warning that the Pharisees gave Jesus?  We don’t really know.  Are their intentions good?  Are they trying to help Jesus out, or trick him?  All that we know for sure is that they are trying to tell Jesus where he can and cannot go. 

Now let’s stop here for a second.  This is almost too much to believe!  Religious people trying to tell Jesus where to go…  What were they thinking?  But here we are 2000 years later… still trying to tell Jesus where he can and cannot go.  Aren’t we?  “Jesus couldn’t possibly want to have anything to do with those folks,” we say.  “They’re not like us!  They are not even in our denomination!”

Or maybe we say, “Jesus, you stay here in church and mind your own business.  I don’t want you coming to my home.  You might not like what I watch on TV.  I don’t want you going to work with me.  You might not approve of how I act at work.  I don’t want you hanging out with me and my friends.  You might not like some of the language we use.  I don’t want you getting involved in my politics.  You see what I mean?  You stay in your place, Jesus.”

Here’s where Jesus got mad.  At least I think he got mad.  When the Pharisees told him not to go to Jerusalem because Herod wanted to kill him, Jesus said, “Go and tell that fox for me…  Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and to morrow and the third day I finish my work.”

What do you think Jesus was feeling when he said those words?  To help you answer that question, I will put up the emotions from Disney Pixar’s movie, Inside Out…  There’s Anger, Fear, Joy, Disgust, and Sadness.

So when Jesus told the Pharisees, “You go and tell that fox Herod something for me…”  What do you think Jesus was feeling?  Maybe anger?  Certainly not fear!

I think Jesus was mad about the Pharisees trying to tell him where to go.  I think he was mad at Herod for thinking he could possibly stop God’s plan.  And then I think he was sad over the way people would reject him.  Did you notice that Jesus compares Herod to a fox, and himself to a hen?

The fox was a crafty, sneaky varmint…wanting to feed its own selfish hungers.  The hen wanted to gather the chicks underneath her wing to protect them.  One represented Herod…the government…the earthly powers that be…the way of the world…kill or be killed…  The other represented Jesus…  represented God’s desire for us.  Listen to these words from Psalm 36: 7…

How precious is your steadfast love, O God!  All people may take refuge in the shadow of your wings.

The earthly powers that be…the way of the world = the fox.  God = the hen.  Here’s the big question:  “Where are we in all this?  As Christians?  As a church?  Are we more like Foxy Loxy or Henny Penny?  Are we focused on our own selfish interests, or are we trying to take others under our wing?

Remember the heart of this message…  Who are we?  We are the ones who have a ticket to ride.  Take your ticket and look at it again.  You’ve got a ticket to ride.  Each of us is one of the chicks that God the mother hen longs to hide under the shadow of her wings.  Do you care?  But here’s something else to consider…

2.     Not only are we ticket recipients – we are ticket ambassadors.  We are supposed to spread the good news to others that they have a ticket to ride as well.

Can we make someone use his or her ticket?  No.  Can’t do it!  However much we love them, they are free to not care.  It might make us sad.  We might weep over them like Jesus wept over Jerusalem.

Is it our (the church’s) job – to be ticketmasters…to dispense the tickets?  No.  Here’s where the Pharisees got it wrong.  They thought they were the ticketmasters.  If you want to get to God, you had to come to them – do all the stuff they did – become like them – and then you could have your ticket.

When Jesus challenged them, they got upset.  Didn’t they?  The Pharisees didn’t get upset with Jesus for leaving too many people out.  They got upset with Jesus for opening his wings too wide – for offering a ticket to the people that they didn’t think were ticket-worthy.  “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them,” they grumbled.

We’re not the ticketmasters.  That’s not our job.  Jesus bought the tickets with his own blood.  He gives them out.  Neither can we make someone use their ticket.  Our job is to first use our own tickets, then to spread the news to others… to spread the news of Jesus’ fabulous offer: “You’ve got a ticket to ride!  This ticket is a gift to you.  It was paid for by Jesus himself.”

I can picture the church – as she follows Jesus – becoming like the hen…with her wings open, inviting all to come underneath for shelter.  If we are following Jesus, church, I think this has to be our posture.  Arms open wide.  We make the invitation - and sometimes…many times, we will be rejected.  But we keep pressing on toward the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

And we make sure we keep the main thing the main thing.  Have you ever heard the old saying, “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing?”  On Wednesday night we talked about how that the Israelites had made God’s big deal into their little deal.  God wanted the Israelites to rebuild the Temple when they returned from exile, but they faced opposition.  So they quit working on the Temple and focused on building their own houses instead.  They made their own interests the main thing.

What is God’s big deal, according to Jesus?  What’s the main thing?  When Jesus was asked what the most important commandment was, what did he say?  We can find it in Matthew 22: 37-40…

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.  This is the greatest and first commandment.  And a second is like it:  You shall love your neighbor as yourself.  On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

This is God’s big deal.  The big deal… The main thing… The question is - Is this our big deal – our main thing…or have we made something else our big deal? We could think of it this way: If we all have a ticket to ride – then we could say that God’s big deal is the train.  We could call it the Love Train.  Couldn’t we?  Love God with everything we’ve got…love our neighbor as ourselves…  We’ve got a ticket to ride on the Love Train.  That’s the big deal!

I think we are guilty of sometimes making other things into the big deal.  We take a big deal and turn it into the big deal.  I’ve seen it happen over the last few weeks.  I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, but I have to tell you - I’m about sick and tired of seeing Rainbow Flags and Confederate Flags on my Facebook feed, y’all! 

I promised at the beginning of this series that I would address some of the issues that we have witnessed in our country over the last several weeks have gotten a lot of attention – like the Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriage, and removal of the Confederate Flag from the State Capitol Building. 

This is not a sermon on the issue of homosexuality.  I preached that one not too long ago, and if you’d like to see it, it’s up on my blog.  I don’t plan on preaching a sermon on the Confederate Flag, and I’m not here to tell you to take yours down or to put one up.  What I do want to ask you to do today is to not let a big deal become the big deal.

We are living through some monumental shifts in our society.  It’s like living through the 60’s and 70’s all over again – except different.  You do recognize that, don’t you?  It’s a big deal.  We ought to really think about these issues – and not just react to them.  We need to learn to ask the question: “How do we, as faithful followers of Jesus Christ, respond to the changes we see happening?”

One way we could respond would be to get hung up on “yesterday.”  Remember that Beatles song from 3 weeks ago?  We could pine for the good ol’ days before all these changes.

That might be tempting – but there is a big problem with that.  The main problem is that we simply can’t go back to yesterday.  Not really.  We can be nostalgic.  We can be in denial.  But life has to be lived forwards…can’t be lived backwards.  Regardless of how we feel about it, things have changed.

As we close out this series, I want us to remember something about these changes in our society.  These things are directly connected to the Scripture that we shared today.  I want us to remember a couple of things – 3 things, really: 

• ·       No group of Pharisees (or any other of us “religious experts”) get to tell Jesus where he can and cannot go.  No group gets to do that.  Not even us.

We need to remember that when we are tempted to say something like, “Jesus couldn’t possibly be behind some of these changes.”  Really?  We know that?  Are we going to be so arrogant as to tell Jesus where he can and cannot go? 

• ·      No political powers that be…  No “Herod” who is in office now or who will be in office in the future can thwart the plan and purpose of God!

The Kingdom of God is not in jeopardy.  Whatever you or I or anybody else says… God is still Sovereign.

You might be among the those folks who were disappointed by the Supreme Court ruling or by the Confederate Flag being taken down from the Capitol.  You might be among those who were happy about the decisions.  I’m of the opinion that both sides need a hug about now.  There have been a lot of stones thrown from both sides.  My point is - whether these changes make you happy or sad – they have not de-railed the plan and purpose of God.  God still wins, people.  Your political candidate might or might not win…your preferred political policy might or might not win…  But in the end, God still wins! 

• ·      No decision made by the Supreme Court…no declaration by any group of politicians or any governor…can ever change the church’s mission.  God’s big deal is still supposed to be the big deal for the church.  The name of God’s train is still the Love Train.  It hasn’t changed.

And nothing that has happened over the last few weeks has affected your and my ability to do what God has called us to do…  to be disciples of Jesus Christ - to use our ticket to ride, if you will…  and to make disciples of Jesus Christ – that is to tell others that God’s arms are still open wide.  They’ve got a ticket to ride, too!

You’ve got a ticket to ride.  Do you want to stand on the platform arguing?  Or do you want to get on the train?

"Imagine"

7-19-15

Lexington UMC                                   “Imagine”

Rev. 21: 1-6

I was walking in the front door of an Elementary School one day, and I saw an inspirational quote painted on the wall. It is a quote from William Arthur Ward, and it read:

If you can imagine it you can achieve it. If you can dream it, you can become it.

“What a cool quote,” I thought. And for the most part, I agree with it. It’s a good quote for an Elementary School.  I think we should teach our kids to imagine and to dream, don’t you?

But I have to confess something to you this morning. I don’t entirely agree with this quote. Why? If imagination and dreaming always led to achievement and becoming, then as a kid I would have been able to play basketball like Larry Bird and I would have been able to throw a baseball like Nolan Ryan. That’s what I imagined when I was playing in my yard, you see.

I’m not a kid anymore, but I still can close my eyes and imagine the future. When you imagine the future, what does it look like? I want you to hold that question in your mind. We are going to come back to it. When you imagine the future, what does it look like?

This is the third message in the Beatles series, and I hope you are getting something out of them. The first week we looked at “Yesterday” – the past. Then last week we looked at our present – the hand we’ve been dealt today – and we heard the whispered words of wisdom from Jesus’ mother, Mary. “Let it be,” she said. “Let me become what you have called me to be.” Have you prayed that prayer yet today?

So past, present…now it is time to imagine the future. What do you imagine, when you think about the future?

Two weeks ago, when I talked about “Yesterday,” I said that it was natural and normal for us to look at and long for yesterday – especially when our today is painful. Remember that?

1. In the same way, when our today is painful, it is natural and normal for us to look for, and imagine a future…somewhere out there where things are better.

That’s what I think John Lennon was doing when he wrote this song. He was going through a very tumultuous time…personally, professionally, and with the world he saw around him. He was saying – “Imagine with me a future that is better than today.”

And John wanted a better future. His current circumstances were pretty rocky! The year was 1971. The Beatles had broken up. The lawyers were still picking over the remains of his old band like a bunch of vultures. Every day for him was like fighting a battle. John Lennon and his wife, Yoko, were trying to get custody of Yoko’s daughter. Every day for their family was like fighting a battle. On top of that was the war that was going on in Vietnam. Do you remember the war in Vietnam?  I was too young to fight in that war, but I had family that did.  What I remember from that time was that every day my mom and dad would turn on the news, and there would be another report of the battles that were going on, and people being killed.  That’s what John Lennon was watching, too.

In addition to the personal and professional and family turmoil, there was trouble in John’s homeland – England.  There was a period of tremendous violence and fighting between the Catholics in Northern Ireland, and the Protestants. It was a time in history that became known as “The Troubles,” and it lasted from 1969 - 1997. Catholic and Protestants – fighting and killing each other. And John was watching this going on.

Can you see why he sat down at a piano in 1971 and wrote,

“Imagine there’s no countries. It isn’t hard to do. Nothing to kill or die for and no religion too. Imagine all the people living life in peace…

You might say, “Well that’s just a bunch of hippy-mamby-pamby-wishful thinking.”

I remember the 60’s and the 70’s…I remember the actual hippies…and I have to tell you – the hippies were not wrong about everything. Personal hygiene? Questionable. Free love? Probably not the best idea. But to dream of a better future? To imagine a better future? We all do that!

Haven’t you longed for a better future? I’ll bet you have. I’ll bet you thought to yourself – sometime when you were a student – “Man, this is hard. I can’t wait until I graduate some day. Won’t that be nice?” No more pencils, no more books, no more teacher’s dirty looks… You know?

Or if you ever served in the military – maybe you thought, “If I can just get through boot camp.” If you served in combat – fought in a time of war – you thought, “If I can just live through this – maybe someday I can go back home and we can live at peace.”

Maybe you have suffered physical pain, and you thought, “If I can just get through this surgery,” or “If I can just get through this rehab and get back on my feet.”

The Bible says that all Creation groans and longs for a better future. Did you know that? That is what the Apostle Paul wrote in Romans chapter 8…

I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God…We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now. (Rom. 8: 18-19, 22)

“Groaning in labor pains…” You mothers out there are probably thinking, “You think you know something about longing for the future…try being in labor and birthing a baby!”

So we long for a better future… Don’t we? Well I’ve got some good news and some bad news for us this morning. You want to hear the bad news first?

The bad news is – our imagination is too small…too limited.

The good news is –

2. God’s real future for us is better than we can even imagine. Can I quote the Apostle Paul one more time? The King James Version puts it beautifully, I think…

“Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him.” (1 Cor. 2: 9)

When you close your eyes and imagine the future – what does it look like?

If the best future we can imagine is one where we graduate from school, then our imagination is much too small.  If the best future we can imagine is one where we get a good job, buy a house, have a family, or take a trip to Hawaii – then our imagination is much too small.  If you think the best thing that could happen to you is to win the lottery, they your imagination is too small!

Even if we get bigger than that…  Even if we imagine a time where there is peace on Earth…  Even if we imagine a time where people are not fighting each other in the name of their religion…a world where there is harmony.  As good as that would be – that’s still way too small compared to the future that John talks about in Revelation 21.

John – and now I’m talking about John the Apostle – not John Lennon…  was having a pretty tough time of it himself.  When it wrote these words, it was about 60 years or so after Jesus died, rose again, and ascended into heaven.  John’s whole world had seemingly fallen apart.  Jerusalem had collapsed, being destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D.  The people in Jerusalem were either executed or exiled.

Everywhere you looked, Christians were being arrested and imprisoned or fed to the lions accused of being traitors to the Roman state.  John the Apostle was arrested and sent as a prisoner to a small island called Patmos which was near Greece.  I’ve never been there, but I’ve heard that if you visit the island of Patmos, you can go to the place where John was thought to have been imprisoned and see the cave where he was chained to the wall.

This was the place where John – his whole world torn apart…exiled and imprisoned…chained to a wall, saw a vision of God’s future.  And he wrote this vision down as a letter of encouragement to Christians in Asia Minor who were being persecuted.

·        Just imagine – John says – a future where God wipes every tear from your eyes.  We’ve shed some tears lately as a church family, haven’t we?

·        Just imagine – John says – a future where Death will be no more…no more mourning, crying or pain.  How does that sound to you?

As a pastor, I have to tell you that this is one of my favorite passages in the Bible.  Why?  Because I have to stand beside the grave of the people that I love and the people that you love and offer a word of hope.  And thank God I don’t have to just make something up!  There is a future that is worth imagining!   And it is better than we can even dream of!

But it gets even better.  Really! 

You hear a lot of people talking about us leaving Earth and going to heaven…

·        Just imagine – John says – a future where, in the end, instead of us evacuating Earth and going to heaven…heaven comes to Earth.  God actually makes his dwelling place here!

·        Just imagine – John says – a future where God makes all things new.  Notice I didn’t say where God makes all new things…instead, God makes all things new. God’s good creation is actually a part of God’s good future!

Think of it!  God makes his dwelling place with us!  God makes all things new!  I love the way The Message puts this: 

God has moved into the neighborhood, making his home with men and women. (Rev. 21:3)

If we believe John’s vision of the future, then we see that God’s future is a future that involves transformation, not evacuation.  This is very different from a theology that says that it doesn’t matter what we do to this Earth…that it’s going to be destroyed and we’re going to go somewhere else.  I don’t believe that.  I don’t believe that that’s God’s future for Creation.  God’s got something better than that.  He’s going to make all things new.  God is going to move into the neighborhood, and make his home with us.  I believe God wants us to take care of the neighborhood in the meantime.

In the meantime…  That’s where we live now, isn’t it?  And these are “mean” times.  They are times where people get sick and die.  They are times when terrorists open fire and kill innocent people not just overseas, but at home in Chattanooga, Tennessee. In the meantime…times are mean.

But imagine God’s future.  I think it is time for God’s people to get their imagination back!  I hear too many of God’s people today moaning and groaning about how bad things are getting.  It’s like we’ve got this persecution complex.  It is the very opposite of what John was saying.  John who really was being persecuted, was imagining God’s future, and saying, “Live hopefully!  In the end, God wins!”

Can you see him in your mind’s eye?  John…chained to the wall of a cave…so full of hope for the future that he encouraged others!

The world is thirsty for that kind of hope.  Christians ought to be the most hope-filled people on the planet when it comes to the future! What if that is what the world heard from Christians instead of the negative, complaining stuff we have been putting out?  If we were filled with that kind of hope for the future, I’ll just bet that a lot of folks would want to join us on the journey to God’s future.  Don’t you?

Some of you here today are thirsty for that kind of hope.  I know it!  So hear the invitation of the One who is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.  The Lord says, “To the thirsty, I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life.”  Come and drink living water today.  Come drink in the hope John writes about, and experience today a foretaste of God’s unimaginably good future.  Then let’s share that hope when we leave this place!

"Let It Be"

7-12-15

Lexington UMC                       “Let It Be”

Luke 1:26-38

26In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, 27to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. 28And he came to her and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” 29But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. 30The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. 31And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. 32He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. 33He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” 34Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” 35The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. 36And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. 37For nothing will be impossible with God.” 38Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.

Last week we started our Beatles series by looking at “Yesterday.” We said that it is natural for us to look at and long for yesterday – especially when our “today” is painful. Then we asked the Holy Spirit to help us see our yesterday more clearly.  Why? Because hindsight is not necessarily 20/20… Right? Then we closed with the reminder that God’s plan always moves forward – not backward – so we just can’t go back to yesterday…no matter how much we would long to do that. Life has to be lived forwards.

Now it’s time to think about a healthy way of looking at “Today”…the present. To put it another way – Life has dealt each one of us a hand today.  How will we play the hand that we’ve been dealt? What do I do about my “today?”

Let us begin… Please look at someone next to you and say, “So…how you doin’?” You take about 15 seconds for them to tell you how they are doing, and then take another 15 seconds to tell them how you are doing. Ready? Go!

How you doin’? What’s up? What’s going on? How are things going? Sometimes we use that just as a greeting. I hope you really meant it when you asked it this morning to the person next to you! It’s nice when someone asks you how you are doing and they really mean it – isn’t it?

What was your answer? Great? Awesome? Fantastic? Fine as frog’s hair? If I was any better I’d be twins? If I was any happier I’d have to sit on my hands to keep from clapping? Or how about, “Just another day in paradise. Thanks for asking?”

Bottom line to all that is that sometimes we’re doing really well. That’s our status report. That’s the hand we are looking at today. Maybe not Four Aces or a Royal Flush – but a pretty decent Full House…

If that’s your today – if you feel like you just entered the Promised Land - there is something to remember… Be thankful! Don’t forget God during the good times. That’s what God told the Israelites as they were entering the Promised Land. Listen to these words from Deut. 8…

For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land—a land with brooks, streams, and deep springs gushing out into the valleys and hills; a land with wheat and barley, vines and fig trees, pomegranates, olive oil and honey; a land where bread will not be scarce and you will lack nothing; a land where the rocks are iron and you can dig copper out of the hills.

When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the Lord your God for the good land he has given you. Be careful that you do not forget the Lord your God…

You may say to yourself, “My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.” But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth… (Deut. 8: 7-11, 17-18)

I hope you feel like you are in the Promised Land today! I hope that’s what your today looks like!  Some days are like that…  But other days… Those days when someone asks us how we are doing, and if we are honest, and don’t give the automatic answer… “I’m fine.” If we are honest, some days we would have to answer… “I’m not alright. In fact, I’ve got trouble.” T-R-O-U-B-L-E! I’ve got the troubles of Job! Have you ever felt like that? The troubles of Job?  It was Job who summed up life like this…

A mortal, born of woman, [is] few of days and full of trouble. (Job 14:1)

What do we do when we find ourselves in times of trouble? That’s when we take our cue from Mother Mary. Isn’t that what the Beatles song for today says?

When I find myself in times of trouble, mother Mary comes to me – speaking words of wisdom: “Let it be.”

Seriously – It’s more than just a good song!  Mary does whisper to us the words of wisdom. But before we get to the words Mary whispers… Let’s look at her circumstances… Circumstances that would have others whispering about her…

Mary was engaged – betrothed would be the way they would have said it in her day. That may be no big deal for us these days, but betrothal in that day was a legally binding relationship. What do I mean by “legally binding?” I mean breaking off an engagement literally required a divorce. I mean that if a couple was engaged, and the man died during the engagement period, the woman was considered his widow. So that was the situation with Mary – betrothed to Joseph, but not yet married. Still living with her parents…

So, Mary…how you doin’?

I’m doing great!  I’m engaged to a wonderful guy named Joseph.  Pretty soon we will be married and have a home of our own.

That was the hand that Mary was playing.  It was a pretty good hand.

And then…God breaks into Mary’s “today” with a surprise. The angel Gabriel shows up and says, “Greetings favored one! The Lord is with you!” This scares the fire out of Mary – and who could blame her? And on top of that, she was “much perplexed.” (Next time someone asks how you are doing, say, “Much perplexed!) Mary was wondering what Gabriel meant by his greeting. “Greetings favored one! The Lord is with you!”

Gabriel knew she was scared and confused, so he explained.

“Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. 31And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. 32He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. 33He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”

OK…nothing scary about that! That clears everything right up! NOT!

You see there is a word for what Mary is hearing. It’s a word that people used to use all the time when referring to a woman who was pregnant out of wedlock. They used to say, “She’s in trouble.” Do y’all remember when people used to say that? “She’s in trouble.”

And hearing that she was going to be pregnant out of wedlock would have meant trouble for Mary. Her family? Her friends? Her neighbors? What would they be saying? “But Mary could just explain,” you say. “She could just tell them that the angel Gabriel visited her and told her that the baby was conceived by the Holy Spirit.” If you were Mary’s neighbor, would you have believed that?

And Joseph… What would she tell Joseph? How would Joseph react? Joseph would have had every right to put Mary to death. The law in Deuteronomy 22: 23-25 says that if a woman is engaged to a man and she gets pregnant by someone else, then her fiancé has the right to have her stoned to death.

At the risk of repeating myself here – I’ll say it again: “Mary’s got trouble.” At least that’s how it looks from the “lower story.”

On Wednesday nights we have doing a study called, “The Story,” which looks at the whole Bible as one continuous story of God’s interaction with his people. We talk about the “lower story”…the daily life that we are living out here… and the “upper story”…the purpose and plan of God. What we are learning on Wednesday nights is a powerful lesson - Sometimes the lower story looks bleak. But don’t forget about the upper story! That’s the lesson here with Mary.

So the whole neighborhood is going to whisper, “Did you hear about Mary? She’s in trouble!” But listen again to what Gabriel said to her. First – he didn’t say to her, “Mary, you are in trooouublle!”  Instead he said, “Mary, you have found favor – or grace – with God.”

You have found… “Found” is a great word here. Most of the time we are in a hurry to get to “favor,” and we skip right over “found.” It’s the Greek word, eurisko, and it is where we get the word, “eureka!” from. Just for fun, let’s all say, “Eureka!”

“Eureka!” is what people call out when they have a surprising find…like striking gold or something. There’s a cool story about how this came to be. According to legend, the ruler Hiero II asked Archimedes to find a way to determine whether his crown was pure gold or whether it was mixed with silver. Archimedes pondered and pondered over the problem. Then one day, Archimedes stepped into his bath and noticed the water rose when he sat down. Then it hit him. He knew what to do!

And the story goes that he jumped out of the bathtub and ran out of the house naked shouting, “Eureka! Eureka!” (which means “If found it, I found it!”) I’ll bet his neighbors whispered about him, too!

What he realized, though, is that the way to determine if the ruler’s crown was pure gold or mixed with silver was by how much water it displaced. A pure gold crown would displace water differently than if it were mixed with silver.

So back to Mary… What was Mary’s surprising find? She was surprised by the grace that God was bestowing on her. Despite what it looked like in the lower story – in the upper story, God was bringing a Savior into the world. You see? Mary saw that the trouble she would face would be totally outweighed by the profound grace that God was giving to her!

Mary has this hand that God has dealt to her. What were her choices? Let’s stop and think.  Did Mary have a choice in this? Did Mary have a choice about being the “Mother of God?” Now that’s a big, theological question that we don’t have time to fully answer today. But the short answer to that question is… “No and yes.”

The answer is “no” in that Mary didn’t have a choice about the hand that she was dealt. God chose her. She didn’t apply for the job.  God didn’t ask for volunteers this time. God chose Mary.

But the answer is also “yes.” Mary did have a choice as to how she would respond. And here is where Mary whispers words of wisdom to all of us who have come after her. Here is where she tells every one of us how to respond to our “today.” She says, in v. 38, “Here am I the Lord’s servant; let it be with me according to your word.”

Let it be. What Mary is saying here is, “Let me become what you have called me to be.”

You and I have the today we have been given. Life has dealt us a hand.  I say “Life has dealt us a hand,” but I could say, “God has dealt us a hand.”  Do we have any choice in the matter? The answer to that is, “No and yes.” No, in the sense that we have the hand we’ve been dealt. OK?

But a great, big “Yes!” in how we respond to it. We can gripe and complain about it… or we can hear the whispered words of wisdom. We can say, “Lord…let me become today what you have called me to be.”

When was the last time you looked at your hand?  Let me call your attention to just one card.  Lexington, Alabama is found at 34.96615 degrees N Latitude, and 87.372892 degrees W Longitude.  Your card may be slightly different from that if you live outside the city limits, but you get my drift.  What is life like at this particular latitude and longitude?  Pretty good, I would have to say. 

Our family sponsors a child through World Vision who lives at 9.0300 degrees N Latitude and 38.7400 degrees E Longitude…  Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.  What is life like at that longitude and latitude?  Very different from ours…  Abject poverty, skyrocketing cost of living, political, religious and ethnic instability, corruption among tribal leaders, 50% unemployment among youth, and the lowest youth literacy rate in all of Africa…

But would you like to know what our sponsored child said in his last letter to us?  Do you think he complained?  Do you think he whined?

He asked about our family.  He said that he and his family were doing very well.  He was profoundly grateful for the care package we sent him, and thanked us for the picture of our family.  He said we are all very beautiful, and he loves us.

He goes on to tell about the music he likes and his favorite dishes.  He tells about some of their different customs and his dog and cat and chickens.

He said that he is excited to go to school in September and join his friends and teachers.  He loves math and science, and hopes to get better in his reading.

He ends his letter with, “May God bless you and your family.”

And you know what?  God has blessed me and my family.  How about you and yours?  So what are you going to do with your today?  Would you hear one more time the words of wisdom from mother Mary…and make them your own?

“Let it be…  Lord let me become who you have called me to be.”