Saying Yes to God
December 13, 2009
December 13, 2009
Rev. Susan E. Gilbert Zencka
Frame Memorial Presbyterian Church
Texts: Micah 5:2-5a, Luke 1:26-38
I think every family has rules – indeed, most places have rules. In my family growing up, I only remember four rules: don’t lie, don’t call someone else a liar, don’t say “shut up”, and if one parent says no to something – don’t go to the other parent. That doesn’t mean those are the only things for which I could get into trouble, but those are the only things I remember being told, strictly, were rules.
In my family as a mother, we also had a few rules: (1) don’t lie, (2) no ball throwing in the house, (3) when there is rough-housing someone always gets hurt [note that this rule doesn’t say no rough-housing, it merely describes the consequences that always follow from rough-housing], and (4) no playing chopsticks on the piano. Again – there were lots of things for which you could get into trouble, but these were the things that had risen to the level of being stated rules.
What are some of the rules in your family? I was talking yesterday with the kids in one family, and I asked about rules, and one of them said – well, it’s not like we have them on a plaque on the wall, but we know what they are. How true – most of us know what we are and aren’t supposed to do in our families.
Families have expectations– those aren’t quite as clear as rules, but sometimes they are even stronger. For example, in many families, it is an expectation that kids will work hard to do their very best in school. It’s also likely an expectation that family members will be kind to one another…even if sometimes we don’t meet the expectation. Kids expect to be taken care of; parents expect to be obeyed. And in life, we have expectations about how things will normally go: people won’t die until they get old; we will be loyal to our friends and family; most grownups will have a job (and yes, taking care of family is a job); people will get married before they have babies. Expectations can be very powerful – for example, most of us have the expectation that people will be fair to other people. When people aren’t fair, we feel strongly that something has gone very wrong. Even if we have grown to realize that life often isn’t fair, our expectation is that it should be.
In our time, we expect that as kids grow older, they will have more freedom and more responsibility. In fact, I spoke with 5 kids between the ages of 8 and 12 over the past two days, and all of them said that this is one of the best things about being the age they are: they have more freedom than they did when they were younger, or they said they have more responsibility than they used to. In our time, we think that freedom and responsibility go together.
In the time of Mary, people didn’t expect so much freedom. And girls in particular did not expect much freedom. Most girls got married very young, at about 15 or 16 years old, to someone that their families chose for them to marry. And in fact, there would have been an engagement ceremony years earlier. This kind of engagement, called betrothal, was like the first stage of marriage. If a reason came up that they didn’t go through with the marriage, they would actually have to get a divorce, even though they hadn’t been officially married. Betrothal was that serious. But couples who were engaged didn’t yet live together or even spend time together.
And in those times, just like in our times, everyone knew it took two people – a man and a woman – to have a baby. So when Mary found out she was going to have a baby – she knew that this is not the way it was expected to be. She was betrothed. She didn’t live with a man. She knew that babies came after a couple was married. And in fact, in those days, marriage first was not only an expectation; it was also a rule in the religion.
As I said, girls didn’t have much freedom, and one of the rules for girls was that they weren’t allowed to talk with men outside their families. So when the angel Gabriel showed up and called Mary by name, there were a lot of reasons for her to be upset.
First of all, as I mentioned last week, it seems that angels must be kind of scary, because every time they show up, in the Bible, they say, “Don’t be afraid.” But Mary might have also been afraid because people might think she was talking with a man who was a stranger. And once Gabriel told her why he came – she was going to have a baby – she might be afraid because it was against the rules for women to have babies before they were married.
And remember, girls got married very young, and Mary isn’t fully married yet, but is told she’s going to have a baby – she was probably about 14 or 15 years old. Fourteen or fifteen years old! And while it would definitely be hard news for a 14 or 15 year old girl to be pregnant in our time – in Mary’s time it was against the law, too. And so, when the angel Gabriel tells her this, she says , “How can this be? I haven’t yet been with a man.”
Now those of you who were here last week, and heard the story of Zechariah and Elizabeth, and their experience with the angel might think that this would mean real trouble for Mary – after all, when the same angel told Zechariah that Elizabeth would have a baby, Zechariah asked for a sign, and the angel took away his voice until after the baby was born. So now, the angel tells Mary she’s going to be pregnant, and she asks, “How can this be?” But the angel just answers her questions. Why does Zechariah get such trouble and Mary not? It’s not that angels like girls better. The thing is, that what Zechariah said, asking for a sign, was kind of like saying, “Prove it!” And Mary just asked “How can this happen?”
There are a couple of other differences between last week’s story and this week’s story, too. One is that Zechariah and Elizabeth had wanted a baby for a long time and had even prayed for a baby. They saw their baby as an answer to prayer. Mary wasn’t even married yet – she hadn’t been praying for a baby, and realized that having one would create some real problems for her.
Also Zechariah and Elizabeth were both from important priest families, and Zechariah was a priest. But Mary wasn’t important in any way – she was just an ordinary girl.
And when the angel told Mary that God was going to come to her and she would have a baby that would be God’s son, even though Mary knew how much trouble this could be, she said, “Here I am, the servant of the Lord, let it me with me according to your word” – in other words, “I’ll do what God wants me to do for him – I’ll be OK with all this happening.”
I don’t know that all of us would respond that way to being told that we were going to be doing an important job for God – it would be nice if we did, but I think we might just as easily say, “Why me? I’m not ready!”
Most of us, kids and adults, when we see something that is important to do, and might make a real difference, but it could get us teased, or be hard for us, we think long and hard about whether or not to do it. If another kid in our class is getting picked on, we think about whether or not we want to come to their defense – it’s normal to think that way. As adults, if we know someone needs help, but we’re really busy, we think a little about whether or not we want to take on the added work. Or if we hear that someone’s lost their job, we don’t always call to offer our support, because we don’t know what to say, and we don’t want to feel awkward. I think that each of us can think of a time when there was something to do that would make a difference and that we can imagine God would have wanted us to do – but we either didn’t do it, or thought for a while before we did, because it was going to maybe be hard for us if we did it.
That’s a big part of the reason we think Mary is so special – she said Yes to God, right away.
And there are other reasons that the story is special – let’s go through some of them:
Mary wasn’t expecting to be the mother of God – there may be times in our lives when something will come to us, and when we think about it, it seems like something God would want – we might be surprised by this. God has surprised people through the ages, and continues to surprise people today. Let’s be ready to be surprised by God, let’s remember that God invites ordinary people, even young people, to be part of God’s work, and let’s be willing to say yes to being part of God’s surprises for the world. Working for God may be hard sometimes, but it makes the world a better place, and it will make our lives better in special ways, too. Amen.
Rev. Susan E. Gilbert Zencka
Frame Memorial Presbyterian Church
Texts: Micah 5:2-5a, Luke 1:26-38
I think every family has rules – indeed, most places have rules. In my family growing up, I only remember four rules: don’t lie, don’t call someone else a liar, don’t say “shut up”, and if one parent says no to something – don’t go to the other parent. That doesn’t mean those are the only things for which I could get into trouble, but those are the only things I remember being told, strictly, were rules.
In my family as a mother, we also had a few rules: (1) don’t lie, (2) no ball throwing in the house, (3) when there is rough-housing someone always gets hurt [note that this rule doesn’t say no rough-housing, it merely describes the consequences that always follow from rough-housing], and (4) no playing chopsticks on the piano. Again – there were lots of things for which you could get into trouble, but these were the things that had risen to the level of being stated rules.
What are some of the rules in your family? I was talking yesterday with the kids in one family, and I asked about rules, and one of them said – well, it’s not like we have them on a plaque on the wall, but we know what they are. How true – most of us know what we are and aren’t supposed to do in our families.
Families have expectations– those aren’t quite as clear as rules, but sometimes they are even stronger. For example, in many families, it is an expectation that kids will work hard to do their very best in school. It’s also likely an expectation that family members will be kind to one another…even if sometimes we don’t meet the expectation. Kids expect to be taken care of; parents expect to be obeyed. And in life, we have expectations about how things will normally go: people won’t die until they get old; we will be loyal to our friends and family; most grownups will have a job (and yes, taking care of family is a job); people will get married before they have babies. Expectations can be very powerful – for example, most of us have the expectation that people will be fair to other people. When people aren’t fair, we feel strongly that something has gone very wrong. Even if we have grown to realize that life often isn’t fair, our expectation is that it should be.
In our time, we expect that as kids grow older, they will have more freedom and more responsibility. In fact, I spoke with 5 kids between the ages of 8 and 12 over the past two days, and all of them said that this is one of the best things about being the age they are: they have more freedom than they did when they were younger, or they said they have more responsibility than they used to. In our time, we think that freedom and responsibility go together.
In the time of Mary, people didn’t expect so much freedom. And girls in particular did not expect much freedom. Most girls got married very young, at about 15 or 16 years old, to someone that their families chose for them to marry. And in fact, there would have been an engagement ceremony years earlier. This kind of engagement, called betrothal, was like the first stage of marriage. If a reason came up that they didn’t go through with the marriage, they would actually have to get a divorce, even though they hadn’t been officially married. Betrothal was that serious. But couples who were engaged didn’t yet live together or even spend time together.
And in those times, just like in our times, everyone knew it took two people – a man and a woman – to have a baby. So when Mary found out she was going to have a baby – she knew that this is not the way it was expected to be. She was betrothed. She didn’t live with a man. She knew that babies came after a couple was married. And in fact, in those days, marriage first was not only an expectation; it was also a rule in the religion.
As I said, girls didn’t have much freedom, and one of the rules for girls was that they weren’t allowed to talk with men outside their families. So when the angel Gabriel showed up and called Mary by name, there were a lot of reasons for her to be upset.
First of all, as I mentioned last week, it seems that angels must be kind of scary, because every time they show up, in the Bible, they say, “Don’t be afraid.” But Mary might have also been afraid because people might think she was talking with a man who was a stranger. And once Gabriel told her why he came – she was going to have a baby – she might be afraid because it was against the rules for women to have babies before they were married.
And remember, girls got married very young, and Mary isn’t fully married yet, but is told she’s going to have a baby – she was probably about 14 or 15 years old. Fourteen or fifteen years old! And while it would definitely be hard news for a 14 or 15 year old girl to be pregnant in our time – in Mary’s time it was against the law, too. And so, when the angel Gabriel tells her this, she says , “How can this be? I haven’t yet been with a man.”
Now those of you who were here last week, and heard the story of Zechariah and Elizabeth, and their experience with the angel might think that this would mean real trouble for Mary – after all, when the same angel told Zechariah that Elizabeth would have a baby, Zechariah asked for a sign, and the angel took away his voice until after the baby was born. So now, the angel tells Mary she’s going to be pregnant, and she asks, “How can this be?” But the angel just answers her questions. Why does Zechariah get such trouble and Mary not? It’s not that angels like girls better. The thing is, that what Zechariah said, asking for a sign, was kind of like saying, “Prove it!” And Mary just asked “How can this happen?”
There are a couple of other differences between last week’s story and this week’s story, too. One is that Zechariah and Elizabeth had wanted a baby for a long time and had even prayed for a baby. They saw their baby as an answer to prayer. Mary wasn’t even married yet – she hadn’t been praying for a baby, and realized that having one would create some real problems for her.
Also Zechariah and Elizabeth were both from important priest families, and Zechariah was a priest. But Mary wasn’t important in any way – she was just an ordinary girl.
And when the angel told Mary that God was going to come to her and she would have a baby that would be God’s son, even though Mary knew how much trouble this could be, she said, “Here I am, the servant of the Lord, let it me with me according to your word” – in other words, “I’ll do what God wants me to do for him – I’ll be OK with all this happening.”
I don’t know that all of us would respond that way to being told that we were going to be doing an important job for God – it would be nice if we did, but I think we might just as easily say, “Why me? I’m not ready!”
Most of us, kids and adults, when we see something that is important to do, and might make a real difference, but it could get us teased, or be hard for us, we think long and hard about whether or not to do it. If another kid in our class is getting picked on, we think about whether or not we want to come to their defense – it’s normal to think that way. As adults, if we know someone needs help, but we’re really busy, we think a little about whether or not we want to take on the added work. Or if we hear that someone’s lost their job, we don’t always call to offer our support, because we don’t know what to say, and we don’t want to feel awkward. I think that each of us can think of a time when there was something to do that would make a difference and that we can imagine God would have wanted us to do – but we either didn’t do it, or thought for a while before we did, because it was going to maybe be hard for us if we did it.
That’s a big part of the reason we think Mary is so special – she said Yes to God, right away.
And there are other reasons that the story is special – let’s go through some of them:
- Mary was very young – we know from this story that God doesn’t just ask grownups to do important jobs. God has important work for kids. There are other places in the Bible when young people are asked to do things for God, too.
2 Mary was an ordinary person – she wasn’t a priest, or a famous person, or a rich person. God has asked lots of ordinary people to do important things.
3 Mary asked questions, and God doesn’t mind questions. God doesn’t much like a smart-aleck, but God has no problems with questions. This isn’t the only place in the Bible that teaches us that lesson either. Lots of God’s people in the Bible have asked lots of questions, and most of the time, God doesn’t mind. It’s okay for us to have questions about God, and while you can ask a parent or me, it’s also OK to take those questions straight to God.
4 This baby wasn’t the only miracle baby – throughout the Bible, Isaac, Samson, Samuel and John were also born in answer to prayers, because of God’s help.
5 But this baby was God’s idea – sometimes God answers our prayers, and sometimes God comes up with the ideas. We should know that some of what we do with God is our idea, and sometimes God brings things into our lives that we haven’t thought about or asked for. God might bring things into our lives that we haven’t expected.
6 Sometimes what God wants us to do will create a lot of change or trouble – as the years went by, there were many surprises for Mary in being the mother of Jesus. Not all of these were happy surprises. But God also took care of her all along the way. Some of the ways we follow God might lead to surprises in our lives, even things we don’t want, but God will take care of us all the way, and we will usually be glad we went along with God, even if it has lead to a lot of trouble. Lots of things that are wonderful and good are also a lot of trouble (like babies – no one has them because they’re convenient, but they can be quite wonderful.
7 God isn’t so much about the rules as about relationships. Like in our families, parents don’t take care of kids because there’s a rule about it – they do that just because they love being parents, and they love their children. Children don’t do chores because it’s their job, but because it’s part of being in a family to chip in and do some of the work. Likewise, God cares for us because of who God is, because like our parents, it’s natural for God to love us, totally. And for us, following God isn’t so much a matter of following rules as loving God, sharing God’s love with others, and being ready to do our part as a member of God’s family.
Mary wasn’t expecting to be the mother of God – there may be times in our lives when something will come to us, and when we think about it, it seems like something God would want – we might be surprised by this. God has surprised people through the ages, and continues to surprise people today. Let’s be ready to be surprised by God, let’s remember that God invites ordinary people, even young people, to be part of God’s work, and let’s be willing to say yes to being part of God’s surprises for the world. Working for God may be hard sometimes, but it makes the world a better place, and it will make our lives better in special ways, too. Amen.