Episodes
Sunday Dec 23, 2012
Suddenly... Joy, Mary
Sunday Dec 23, 2012
Sunday Dec 23, 2012
Rev. Dean Snyder Luke 1:26-38
I’d like to think toady about birth. I’d like us to think about Mary.
What can Mary teach us about joy?
I began Advent this year with – frankly – a selfish motive.
The Christmas stories are so full of joy. Zechariah and Elizabeth experience joy. John the Baptist in Elizabeth’s womb leaps for joy. The magi who are following the star, when the star stops over Bethlehem, are overwhelmed by joy. The angels bring the shepherds in the field “good news of great joy. “
My personal goal this Advent has been to try to figure out how to have more joy in my life. Less worry. Less anxiety. Less boredom. More laughter. More happiness. More joy.
So this morning we are looking at the story of Mary receiving the news that she will give birth to Jesus and her response, “Here am I. Let it be with me according to your word,” to see if there is something in this story that can help us understand how to have more joy in our lives.
I have three things that Mary’s story seems to teach us.
First, pregnancy and birth is a central metaphor of the Christian faith. God is being born into the world. God is going to be born into the world either through us or in spite of us. Usually it is some of both.
The joy comes when we are part of God being born into the world through us. When we say “yes.” When we say: “Here am I. Let it be with me according to your word.”
Professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced “chick-sent-me-high-ee”) began his happiness studies by studying composers. In his study, he discovered that it was as though the music was determined to be born into the world and the composers ecstasy was when they let the music take over.
One composer told Professor Csikszentmihalyi: “You are in an ecstatic state to such a point that you feel as though you almost don’t exist. I have experienced this time and again. My hand seems devoid of myself, and I have nothing to do with what is happening. I just sit there watching it in a state of awe and wonderment. And [the music] just flows out of itself.”
The composer says to the music: “Here am I. Let it be with me according to your word.”
I am convinced movements for justice, equality and freedom are ways that God is born into the world.
There are no books on my office shelves that I go back to reread portions of them again more than Taylor Branch’s three-volume history of the civil rights movement, and no volume that I reread more than the first volume: Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63.
I have become convinced that the civil rights movement was determined to be born into the world and people made choices whether to let it be born through them or in spite of them. It was really only a minority of the church –white and black—that chose to let the civil rights movement be born through them. They paid the price but they also knew the joy.
Something of God wants to be born into the world through your life and mine. You are Mary. I am Mary. We are Mary. The question is whether God will be born through us or in spite of us and that is a spiritual decision. Will we fight the movement of God in the world or will we allow the movement of God to be born through us?
I don’t know how God is wanting to be born into the world through your life. It may be a new truth trying to come into your awareness. It may be creativity trying to come out of you. It may be a movement wanting you to be part of it. It may be peace wanting to be born in you.
I am convinced God wants to be born into the world through us. We can fight it or we can say, “Let it be.”
To receive her joy Mary had to give up control and let it happen. She had to cooperate rather than control. You can’t control a movement. You can’t control a birth. You can only fight it or go with it. The birth is going to happen one way or another.
Dr. King discovered early on that he could not control the movement. “Don’t bother me with tactics,” he said more than once. “I want to know if I can apply nonviolence in my heart.”
We cannot control the movement of God’s spirit. We can have open hearts. And that is where the joy is.
Second, to receive her joy, Mary had to choose God over Joseph. This is not really part of our lesson this morning but it is part of the larger story and I want to say a word about it since we did not have the chance to talk about Joseph last week.
For God to be born into the world through her Mary had to care more about what God thought than what Joseph would think. Mary had to care more about what God would think than what her family would think, and what her neighbors would think.
The greatest joy killer in our lives is needing the approval of others more than the favor of God. Needing to be popular more with human beings than with God.
When God is trying to be born into the world through you, it will almost always bring you into the experience of the disfavor and disapproval of others.
I am not saying we should not listen to others or accept the advice or guidance of others. I am saying that if we need the approval of others, it will be hard to experience the joy of God being born into the world through us.
Third and last, joy is always mixed with pain. There is no birth without labor. Pain and joy are not opposites. There will always be struggle in our path to joy. There will always be work.
I was thinking about Adele Hutchen’s death this week and it took me to the eighth chapter of the book of Romans, the chapter I often read when I am thinking about death. I have favorite verses there
What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will [God] not with him also give us everything else? (Rom 8:31-2)
Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? (Rom 8:35)
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Rom *:37-39)
This week I started reading earlier in the chapter and I discovered an odd statement there. In Romans 8: 18, 19 and 22, Paul says:
I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. 19 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…
Paul says that creation itself is in labor. Creation itself is pregnant. Creation itself is giving birth.
All the pain we experience, all of the groaning, all of the suffering, Paul says it part of something new being born and at the end of it will be joy. At the end of it, joy will find us.
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