Journey week 1 12/2/12

Journey Week #1

LIGHT

Is there any story in the Bible that we know better than the Christmas story?  I would say Christmas and Easter might tie, but I think it is safe to say that we all know the Christmas story pretty well.  But it is also safe to say that we might not know it quite as well as we might think.

Therefore today we begin our journey to Bethlehem by starting where Luke starts, in Nazareth.

Nazareth is in the northern part of Israel.  In the part they call Galilee.  Do you see Jerusalem and Bethlehem way down at the bottom in Judea?  Then Samaria in the middle?  Nazareth was just a little town.  Not Reinbeck little… closer to Morrison perhaps 300-500 residents.  In fact it was so little that it is not even included on either the Roman, or the Jewish lists of Galilean towns of the day.

It was not just unimportant, it was despised.  When Nathaniel heard that Jesus came from Nazareth, he asked, “Nazareth?  Can anything good come from Nazareth?”

Nazareth was like Morrison in one other way. Like Morrison Nazareth was 4 miles from its nearest neighboring city: Sepphoris.  In fact Nazareth didn’t have many businesses or jobs, so most of the people from Nazareth walked for an hour to travel the 4 miles to Sepphoris in order to work. 

Sepphoris was a very important city with lots of jobs and theatres and stores.  It was a hotbed of political activism which caused the Roman governor Varus to almost destroy it somewhere near the time of Jesus birth.  But it was soon rebuilt. It was also the center of Jewish spiritual life in Galilee. Politically, religiously, commercially, Sepphoris was an important place.  Nazareth was not.

Sepphoris and Nazareth couldn’t have been more different.  Symbolic of that difference is that the homes in Sepphoris had beautiful hand laid tile mosaic floors in them, like the one we see up here.  (That is called the Madonna of Galilee) While the people of Sepphoris lived in that kind of luxury.    Many of the people of Nazareth lived in caves. 

That is where Mary lived.  Mary lived in poor little Nazareth. She may have even lived in a cave that looked something like this. Depending on their resources, their home may or may not have had any above ground structure.  They may have even shared the cave with their animals. Putting the animals by the entrance and living in the rooms further back.

  This is the church of the annunciation.   This church is built on the spot where we believe God spoke to Mary through the Angel Gabriel.    Inside the church is a little cave entrance.   Inside that cave entrance is what people say was Mary’s house.   Well it wasn’t really MARRY’s house.  It was her father’s house.  It wasn’t really her house because Mary was only 13 or 14 years old.  Does that surprise you?  Mary was just a little girl.  Now, you have to understand that women had a life expectancy of 25-29 years old.  So in order to have 10 or so babies before they died, they had to start when they were 15.  It was not unusual for a 13 year old to be engaged as Mary was.  

Now are you getting the picture?  Mary was just a little girl from a lower middle class, or perhaps even a poor family.  They lived in a cave in a comparatively poor, relatively unimportant, actually, an insignificant town in a nation occupied by the Roman Empire and rules by governors who were puppets of the military.

Mary was just a kid; like any of our children or grandchildren growing up in small town rural Iowa.

But not for long. 

·         Of all the girls, in all the villages, all lover Israel.

·         Of all the girls born to underprivileged families all over the world.

·          Of all the girls who lived unremarkable lives in of the unexceptional families, in all of the unimportant towns in all the world. 

God chose Mary from Nazareth to be what the Eastern Orthodox tradition calls Theotokos. The mother of God.

·         Is there anything the prepared her for that? NO, but God called her anyway.

·         Is there anything that qualified her for that? NO, but God called her anyway.

·         Is there anything that made her uniquely capable of bearing the son of the most high God in her womb for 9 months?  Nourishing him with her blood.  Protecting him from harm and eventually giving birth to the God child? NO, but God called her anyway.

·         Is there anything that equipped her to bear and suckle and raise the anointed messiah who was coming into the world to redeem God’s people from their sin? NO, but God called her anyway.

·         Is there anything that could have prepared this young woman to stand at the foot of the cross while her baby died for the sins of all mankind? NO, but God called her anyway.

What does that say about the nature of God?  Our God is a God full of surprises.  As far back as Noah, and Sarah, and Moses, and David, and even including the fisherman disciples; God has always been prone to call the ordinary, the average, even the disabled and disadvantaged to be the mighty servants of the most high God.  One of the fascinating things about the genealogy is that traces the birth of the messiah thorough 2 prostitutes, 2 widows and one 13 year old girl from a poor family.

And we should expect no less from God today.

Shouldn’t we expect that God might call any one of us, from our tractors, or desks or kitchen tables to do something important?

Yes- because that’s just the way God is.

Even more amazing than God’s choice of Mary- is that she said yes.

·         A lesser person would have run away tearing her hair out and screaming.

·         Any normal 13 year old girl would have been worried about what her fiancé, and friends and “oh man” her parents would think.

·         Most of us would refuse to have any part of a plan that would likely end with us being stoned to death.

YET… YET… how did Mary respond?  She was perplexed.  She wondered how this could be.  She said; in essence, explain it to me one more time.

And amazingly enough she said OK.  Actually she told the angel--- let it be to me as you have said.  In the context of an angel appearing in your bedroom, the prospect of what others would think, the likely legal ramifications.  In light of the fact that on average one in 20 women died giving birth. Those must be some of the most amazing words in all of scripture.  “Let it be to me as you have said.”

Would you?  Could you have said “yes?”  Could you?  Would you say yes to God if you were called today?

Could you?  Would you?

·         Your angel might come as a friend asking for help. 

·         Your angel might come in the lonely person you see at school or in the park.

·         Your angel might come as an elderly person who needs help shoveling their snow.

·         Your angel might come as the man with the red kettle standing outside of Wal-Mart.

·         Your angel might be the nominating committee calling asking you to do something a little out of your comfort zone.

·         You angel might come as a tugging on your heart to step out and risk getting involved in that new ministry you see advertised in the bulletin.

·         Your angel might come as an idea for a new ministry that you think is a little off the wall, but you just can’t get out of your head.

I don’t know how your call will come.  I don’t know when.  But I am confident that you are called.  I am confident that if God can use a poor little girl from a nowhere corner of the world, God can use you.  God wants to use you.

How will you answer?   It’s up to you…