This is a sermon that was preached on Sunday, December 17, 2017 at United Presbyterian Church, Sterling KS.
Read Luke 1:46-55, Isaiah 61 here.
Joy.
Such a little word and a big concept.
Joy is expressed in so many different ways. One of my favorites is what happens when
someone surprises us with an unexpected gift.
Kids especially go crazy expressing their joy, jumping around, yelling
and cheering. The joyful expressions on
their faces bring us joy. One of the remarkable things about joy is that it can
make us want to dance and shout, or stun us into silence, or even make us cry.
Our scripture reading from Luke today
is Mary’s song of joy. Luke doesn’t tell
us whether she was dancing or singing exuberantly, or sitting quietly
expressing her joy in prayer. Psalm
16:11 tells us that in God’s presence
there is fullness of joy. Mary has
seen God’s hand at work in her life, and sings for joy at God’s presence with
her.
Mary sings from the depths of her
heart. “My soul magnifies the
lord.” She is praising God with all her
heart, soul, mind and strength! God has
done great things and her faith has been deepened and strengthened. Mary has had a visit from the Angel Gabriel
with some amazing news, but it’s interesting to note that Mary’s song doesn’t
happen right after the visit from the angel.
What prompts her song is her visit with her cousin Elizabeth, so let’s
look at how this happens.
Luke tells us in chapter 1 that two
surprising and seemingly impossible things will happen. The angel announces both of these things to
Mary. The angel Gabriel comes to Mary and tells
her that she is to bear a child even though she is an unmarried virgin. And not
just any child. The angel says,
“He will be very great and will be
called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his
ancestor David. And he will reign over Israel forever; his Kingdom
will never end!” (1:32-33 NLT)
The angel uses titles and phrases that
the prophets have used so that Mary would recognize that this baby was to be the
long-awaited messiah.[1]
Then the angel has more news:
“What’s more, your relative Elizabeth has
become pregnant in her old age! People used to say she was barren, but she has
conceived a son and is now in her sixth month.” (1:36 NLT)
Two miraculous babies.
But we have no hint of any doubt from
Mary. She says, “May it be as you have
said” (1:38). She believed the angel, and went immediately to visit her cousin
Elizabeth to celebrate.[2] If she had found Elizabeth was NOT pregnant,
Mary might have then wondered if she had imagined that whole conversation with
the angel, but Elizabeth IS pregnant, just as the angel had said, and this confirms
for Mary all that the angel told her. This
is what prompts her song of joy. Mary’s faith and trust in God to fulfill all
his promises is strengthened.
We are seeing at work here exactly
what Psalm 16:11 tells us:
In God’s presence there is fullness of joy.
When something happens to confirm for
us that God is present with us, we find joy.
The 19th century Jesuit priest and philosopher Pierre
Teilhard de Chardin says it this way:
“Joy is the most infallible sign of the presence of God.”
God is always with us, but we are not
always aware of his presence. Signs help
us see and know that God is at work in our world.
A priest and a pastor stood near a
sharp curve on a busy road holding signs. “The end is near!” read the priest’s
sign, while the pastor’s warned, “Turn around before it’s too late!”
As a car passed by, the driver yelled
“Idiots!” Then he blasted his horn, raised one finger and stomped on the gas.
Moments later the clerics heard the sound of screeching tires, followed by a
big splash. The priest turned to the pastor and
said, “Maybe we should change our signs to ‘Warning: Bridge Out’.”[3]
Signs can be unexpected. Earlier in this same chapter, the Angel
Gabriel came to speak to Zechariah, Elizabeth’s husband, and to tell him that
Elizabeth would have a baby. Zechariah
asked for a sign. “How will I know that this is so?” (1:18) Zechariah asked because he didn’t believe
what the angel said. With Zechariah, the angel gets angry. “You want a
sign? I’ll give you a sign. Here you go.
Now you won’t be able to speak until after the baby is born.” And that is exactly what happened. Zechariah
doesn’t speak again until the day that baby John is being circumcised (Luke
1:64).
When God promised Noah and his family
that the earth would never again be destroyed by a flood, God gave them the
sign of the rainbow as confirmation of that promise. “I have
set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and
the earth” (Gen. 9:13).
When God was first commissioning Moses
to go back to Egypt and lead the people out of slavery, God gave Moses a sign
that would confirm that God was with them. He said, “I will be with you; and this shall be the sign for you that it is I
who sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship
God on this mountain.” (Ex. 3:12) After
they escape from Egypt into the desert, they do come back to the mountain and
meet with God (Exodus 19:16-17).[4]
Throughout the Bible we find God
giving signs as markers for people to help confirm that their faith was real.[5] God speaks to us through our circumstances[6],
and when our circumstances confirm our faith in the presence of God, we
experience joy like Mary’s joy that prompted her song. The feeling of joy becomes part of the
confirmation, a sign of God’s presence with us.
We do not rely on signs alone. For Mary, there is more than just the
circumstance of finding that Elizabeth is pregnant. There are the words from the angel. There are also the words of scripture. It is evident from Mary’s song that she is
familiar with the words of the prophets. Her song is similar to the words from
Isaiah 61 that we read as we lit the Advent candles this morning, and Mary speaks
of the promises that God made to Israel through Abraham and the prophets.
We find joy in realizing God’s work
and presence is not just in us as individuals, but also for all people. Mary’s song reflects a similar
understanding. She begins rejoicing
about what God has done for her individually, but then expands into the ways
that God is working throughout the generations.
The second half of her song recognizes the ways that God does the
unexpected, scattering the proud, bringing down the powerful, lifting up the
lowly and filling the hungry. She speaks
of these things as eternal truths about the way God has worked in the past, is
working in the present, and will continue working in the future.[7] God
had promised salvation to Israel, and told Abraham that all the nations of the
earth would be blessed through him. Now
that promise will be fulfilled through this baby that Mary will carry.
Mary expresses in her song themes that
we see throughout Luke and throughout the Bible. God uses insignificant people to do
significant things. God lifts up the
lowly, and brings down the proud. When
we see these things happening, when we see wrongs being righted, our hope is
renewed. These are signs of God’s
presence among us. These are reasons for
joy. And they are things that are
seemingly impossible. But with God, all
things are possible. When God does the
impossible or the unexpected, we respond with joy.
Maybe the
most amazing thing about joy is that it can co-exist with sorrow, and this is
one of the big ways that joy is different from happiness. This is expressed so beautifully in the animated
movie Inside Out. The characters in this movie are the emotions
that live inside the head of a 12-yr-old girl named Riley. There is fear, anger, disgust, sadness and
joy. My favorite character, and the one
who most often is in control, is Joy. But when Riley and her family move to
a new city, Sadness and Fear and Anger become more active. Joy struggles to stay in charge and manage the other emotions. The one that challenges her the most is
Sadness. Everything Sadness touches
turns blue. So Joy decides the best way
to stop this is to isolate and contain Sadness. She draws a circle on the floor
and tells Sadness that she must stay in the circle. As you might expect, that doesn’t work, Sadness
keeps touching things.
What the
characters in the movie learn is that we can’t just get rid of sadness, but in
the midst of it we find joy not by pushing away sadness, but by acknowledging
it[8]
and recognizing that God with us even in
our sadness.
God is in
our midst. Through faith in Jesus
Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, God lives in us. He is always with
us. Recognizing his presence brings us
joy. Our joy becomes part of our witness
to the world of God’s presence.
There was a woman who had been very
angry in her youth. She became a
Christian and was excited to give her parents a 50th anniversary
party because it would be an opportunity to show friends and family how God was
working in her life. She prayed that God
would use this day to reveal the changes in her. She lived over an hour away from the party
venue, so she made sure to get ready in plenty of time, taking great care to do
her hair and makeup, but when she grabbed the hairspray to give her hair one
last spray, she accidentally grabbed the bug spray instead. Quickly she showered again, but didn’t have
time to do her hair again. As she was
driving, she discovered that there was something wrong with her car and it was
overheating, so she turned off the air conditioning. The problem continued, so she had to stop
several times to allow the car to cool down.
By the time she got to the party, she was late, and sweaty, and her hair
was frizzy. She went to the bathroom to
freshen up and discovered that the heat had exploded one of the items in her
bag and everything was covered in white goop.
All she could do was just go out and enjoy the party. Later, in telling
the story to her parents, she told them how disappointed she was that she
hadn’t made the good impression she’d hoped to make, and for which she had
prayed for God’s help. Her mother helped
her see the day differently. “You used
to be so angry about everything. Today
you handled all the difficulties with humor and grace. Despite your troubles,
you were a joy. God answered your prayer and allowed you to show how he’s
changed your life.”[9]
Joy is the infallible sign of the
presence of God. Our joy is a sign to
others of God’s presence. Mary’s joy as
expressed in her song in Luke has inspired people throughout the ages.
Jesus himself is our sign of God’s
presence. When the angels came to tell
the shepherds about Jesus’ birth, they gave them a sign. “This
will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and
lying in a manger” (Luke 2:12). That
is exactly what they found when they went to find the child,[10]
and they went out to tell everyone the joyful news.
There was college student doing an internship as a chaplain
at a hospital. It’s a tough internship
at first because the student has very little training before they start
visiting patients and their families. In
one of this chaplain’s visits, she walked into a room where a man sat beside
the bed of his wife who was unconscious.
The man had just been told that his wife had very little time left. He was angry at God and not much interested in
talking to the chaplain. He told her, “Unless
you can tell me where God is in this, you can leave.” The chaplain stood there unsure what to do or
say. She said a silent prayer. “God, help me.” And suddenly she was overcome by the man’s
grief and she began to weep. In that
moment, through that chaplain, the man was able to see that God was there
weeping with him.[11] The joy in that moment was not happy or
exuberant or prompting cheers or song, but it came with hope and comfort and
peace, the fullness of joy that God’s presence brings.
Advent and
Christmas are all about celebrating the wonderful gift of Immanuel, God with
us, God always with us. God sent us his son so that we would know the joy of
salvation and be forever able to enjoy his presence. May you know more and more
deeply the fullness of his presence and the greatness of his joy.
[2]
Fred Craddock, Interpretation: Luke
(Westminster John Knox Press)
[4]
For more discussion of that event read here: http://www.crivoice.org/biblestudy/exodus/bbex28.html
[5] VanGemeren,
New International Dictionary of OT
Theology & Exegesis, Vol. 1, p. 331-3
[6]
Henry Blackaby & Claude King expand on this in their book Experiencing God (Nashville: Broadman
& Holman Publishers, 1994), 184ff.
[7]
Fred Craddock, in Interpretation: Luke
(Louisville: John Knox Press, 1990), page 30, points out the verbs are aorist
which in Greek expresses what is timelessly true.
[10] Were bands
of cloth unusual? No, but the manger
was. https://www.byunewtestamentcommentary.com/what-on-earth-are-swaddling-clothes/
[11]
Borrowed from Roger Nishioka who told a similar story to the Presbytery of the
New Covenant at one of it’s meetings in 2015.
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