Advent 4 | Mary Mother of God | Luke 1: 26-56

Does God always have the very best for us in mind? Sometimes I wonder. Oh, I believe God has the best intentions for the human race as a whole, but does God always have MY best interests in mind? Or yours? Perhaps I just woke up feeling a bit cynical this morning - so what's new? But perhaps there's something important to discover in this question.

Consider the story of Joan of Arc. There have been two films about her recently, one on television and one on the big screen. Now I've seen both of them, and though there is no doubt that the scriptwriters took some liberties with history to craft their dramas, they both were admirable works of cinema and worthy of consideration, if only because they have exposed a whole new generation to this timeless story of how a lowly peasant girl led the armies of France to victory.

Born in the early fifteenth century, Joan was just a baby when the battle of Agincourt was fought. (French scholars, please forgive my pronounciation.) When she was fourteen she began hearing voices. Michael the archangel spoke to her, as well as St. Catherine and St. Margaret. She tried to forget these voices at first, but they persisted. They told a number of disturbing things: that she, a woman, would lead the French army, and that she would not live a very long life.

Finally, when she was sixteen, the voices became more insistant, and she decided to act upon them. Now she could have simply thought herself mad, and ignored them. She could have asked for exorcism. Perhaps a girl of lesser mettle would have. But instead, she consented, and she went to the Dauphin, the prince of France, and pursuaded him to give her an army.

Now, imagine how the generals in the French forces must have felt. A little girl is being given command of their troops, and it seems that she doesn't have a strategic bone in her body. In both films she is portrayed as so gung-ho to simply charge straight ahead that she doesn't have a moment to spare to think about how her troops might best be deployed, how she might outsmart the English, and make the most of her slight forces. The voices say "attack" and that's what she insisted that they do, regardless of how foolhardy it might seem.

Amazingly, the generals let her get away with it, and even more amazingly, her lean-on-brains approach actually worked. The English invadors at Orleans were defeated, and the Dauphin finally crowned King of his own country at the cathedral at Rheims. The French had been conquered by a foreign country, and had successfully freed themselves, even if only a portion of their lands, from the marauders. In America, we appreciate just how precious freedom is, how important it is for a people to be able to govern themselves without foreign powers sticking their thumbs into our pie - especially the Enlgish!

But this liberation would not have come for France had it not been for a very extraordinary little girl, whom God chose to do great things. But was it so great for Joan? Not long after the victory at Orleans, she suffered a terrible loss at Paris, and was not long after captured by the Burgundians and handed over to the English, who, of course, burnt her at the stake for witchcraft. I'm sure this was an act of political revenge, but there might also have been some real fear involved. The egos of these great English fighting men surely could not fathom how they had been beaten by a girl. She must certainly have been a witch. It was a win-win situation for everybody except for one person, poor Joan.

Joan reminds me a lot of another little girl who we revere as playing a great role in human history. I am of course talking about Mary, the mother of Jesus. Here is a little girl, who, like Joan is about 14 years old when she starts to hear the voices. This time it is not the archangel Michael to comes to her, but another archangel, Gabriel. Gabriel prophesies that she will bear a son, and declares that he will be a great king over Israel.

Mary, of course, is incredulous, saying, "How can this be? I do not have a husband."

Gabriel replies that it will be a miracle, just like the miracle that happened to her cousin Elizabeth, who was finally found with child in her old age. "With God," Gabriel tells her, "nothing is impossible."

So what does Mary do? The angel has told her that she has found great favor with God. So heck, why not? Why not say yes, and enter into whatever compelling mystery God is unfolding before her very eyes. Why not say "yes"?

Why indeed? While we all enjoy the very romantic story scripture portrays of Mary, it's what scripture doesn't show us that is so vitally important. What it doesn't show us is that from the moment she said "yes," Mary might as well have had a scarlet letter sewn to her tunic. Joseph may have graciously taken them in, but folks back then were not stupid. They could count nine months as easily as you can. For Mary to say "yes" to God's crazy plan meant saying "yes" to being regarded as a loose woman for the rest of her life. It meant that people would always consider her son to be an illigitamate child. The Talmud even preserves a tradition that Jesus' real father was a Roman soldier, implying that Mary was either raped or a prostitute. Ugly, isn't it? Not very romantic at all. This is the grim reality that saying "yes" to God meant for Mary. And yet God did it anyway.

And what about Jesus? God asks him to speak the truth to a world obviously not ready to hear it - and I would be so bold to say that the world has YET to be ready for Jesus' message. And bravely, boldly, Jesus says yes. And what happened to him? He was crucified and in his last breath he cried out to God, asking, "why did you betray me?"

Doesn't all this make you wonder just a little bit about God? Who is this that uses people like pawns? Who takes trusting and devout little girls, chews them up and spits them out when they're finished with their "jobs"? Is that the kind of God we want to worship?

It is certainly not the God I worship. And if God really were as God has for so long been pictured, as this great King on a throne who can suspend the laws of nature at will, and can direct the movements of human beings as if they were robots, plotting out elaborate and painful scenarios for his own divine amusement, we would be right to reject him as anyone worthy of our admiration or worship.

But God is not, I think, very much like that picture. Process theology, which is always the starting point for my preaching, does not a posit a God who is in control of the universe, but one who is as much caught up in the movement of history as we are. If God is all-good, as I believe God to be, and if evil is real, and I believe that it is, we cannot logically hold that God is all-powerful, or God would have eradicated evil a long time ago. But in process thought, God does not have the power to suspend the laws of nature. Like us, he is somewhat at the mercy of the great soup of events that make up the world. Like us, God has hopes, dreams, and visions for the future. Like us, God does a little scheming, and does what he can to affect the outcome.

But God's power to determine that outcome is severely limited. God cannot shut down your brain and order you to destructive acts of sabotoge. God cannot stop missles in flight. God does not have the power to coerce, either people, machines, or events. But God does have an ace up his sleeve: persuasion. God has the power to suggest, to prick the conscience, to pursuade people to act, to pursue one path over another. But whether a person will choose to honor God's request, well, I believe God is holding his breath and crossing his fingers, just as we would in his position.

And so it was with Joan. God, through the voices of the saints, suggested to Joan, and suggested very forcefully, that she lead her people to freedom. But it was Joan, not God, who picked up her standard and rode out to meet the English.

An d so it was with Mary, whom God promised would give birth to the greatest King her people had ever known. But it was Mary who "be it unto me according to thy word." And it was Mary who carried the child to term, and it was Mary who was reviled as being a whore, and it was Mary who comforted her little boy when he was teased and rejected by his community for being illigitamate.
And so it was with Jesus, who chose to accept the baptism of John the Baptist, and upon whom the Holy Spirit lit. And it was Jesus who decided to set his face towards Jerusalem even though he knew it meant certain death for him. God didn't force him, not for a second. God asked, God might have pleaded, but in the end these people chose to collaborate with the divine.

And that's why they are heroes. No doubt that is why God approached them in the first place, not only would they be likely to say "yes" but they also had the internal fortitude to succeed. God did not use them as pawns, instead God approached them as partners, and they agreed.

I've always joked that someday I would like to go to a Christmas party dressed as a first century peasant girl, so that I could "Eat, drink, and be Mary." But you don't need bad jokes or funny attire to be Mary. All you have to do is keep an ear open to the divine. For God asks all of us, each of us in our own way, to bring forth Christ, to give birth to light and liberty and love, every day.

And is this painful? Yes, it often is. Ask Barbara Williamson about how hard it is to make the crooked paths straight in today's health-care jungle. God has called her to a unique and difficult ministry, and yet, punishing as her job may be, she says "yes" to God, and innumerable women and their children benefit from it.

Ask Harvey Short about the burden of fighting for one's freedom, about the men he saw killed in pursuit of this dream, of the call his God and his country had given him. He said "yes," and it cost him dearly; yet we all enjoy the fruit of his efforts.

God does not play us like pawns. God does not capriciously decide the fate of the peoples of the earth. But God does love, and strive, and dream, and God does ask of us sometimes terrible things. God give us the courage to say "yes." And if we do, if we decide we can be God's partner in his hair-brained schemes, then like Joan, like Mary, like Jesus, like Barbara and Harvey, we will be blessed. Let us pray.

O God, the things you ask of us are often difficult. And yet your word promises us that you do not ask of us any more of us than we are capable of bearing. Help us, when you come to us with your hat in your hand, asking us to do something crazy because it will help someone else, to be crazy enough to say "yes." Because together, there is nothing that we cannot do, no battle we cannot fight, no evil we cannot overcome, no soul we cannot preserve. Help us to give birth to the Christ child, each in our own way. Help us to say "yes" to you. Amen.