"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.”