As I have been preparing for this week’s message, I have been reflecting on the events that make up the Christmas story. My text for this Sunday is the story of the angel Gabriel’s visit to Mary (Luke 1:26-38). Gabriel lays out the whole plan for Mary. She is going to become pregnant, through the Holy Spirit, and be the earthly mother of God’s own Son, the long awaited Messiah.
This leaves Mary with a lot of questions. And it makes me wonder. I wonder what I would think if one of our junior high girls came to me with this story. I am pretty sure my reaction would be filled with cynicism and skepticism. I would wonder about her mental stability. I might suspect drug use. I would think she was delusional.
I would spend time with her parents, who would corroborate that she had told them the same story and they had many of the same reactions. That’s why they sent her to the pastor! She had never demonstrated this kind of thinking or dreaming previously.
Can you imagine how this must have unfolded for Mary? What does a teenager tell her friends about this pregnancy? The whole situation was embarrassing and unbelievable. No doubt her friends would abandon her. She would be the talk of the town, but not in a good way.
And her fiance, Joseph, how would he react? He was a super nice guy, but no guy would take this news well.
My guess is that people her at church would whisper about her, wonder, shake their head in dismay, disgust and disbelief.
We have romanticized, sanitized and commercialized the story and in doing so it has lost its scandalous nature. If this happened today, we wouldn’t do so well with this story, I am afraid. People don’t get visits from angels. Young girls can’t be impregnated by the Holy Spirit. God wouldn’t become a human being. Certainly if Jesus would be born today it would take place in New York, Chicago or Los Angeles, not Hull, Iowa.
There is so much surrounding this Christmas story that is incredible and incredulous. It is hard to believe, which is what makes the story so powerful. It is a story that requires faith; faith that our God is the God of unlikely choices, of unpredictable activity, of unusual means. God doesn’t play by our rules. God is subversive and counter-cultural. Part of what this story teaches us is that God wants to use ordinary people, like you and me, to do extraordinary things. His choices might not seem logical, or fit our idea of how things should work, or be in our plan for how life should go, but “His ways are not our ways and His thoughts are not our thoughts”.
The stories of Christmas remind us of God’s unusual way of going about His business and call us to be alert to what He may be saying to us and asking us to do today.
Are we watching, listening, and open to the unexpected and usual?
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