Incarnation – Keeping it real
Luke 1:26-56; Micah 5:2-6
It’s Advent IV. There are now five days until Christmas day. Expectations are high. Anticipation is mounting. You might ask, “anticipation of what exactly?” That might depend on your age or life circumstance. I remember as a child the anticipation of wondering what would be under that tree. As I have gotten older that anticipation is becoming, might I say, seasoned. The flavours of my anticipation are blending like a soup that simmers all day in the kitchen. As I putter around the house while it’s cooking I grow accustomed to the smell of it, and may not even realize that I anticipate a taste of that pot of blended rich flavours at the end of the day, until my stomach grows hungry and then I remember – ah, that smells good. I begin to look forward to the coming feast. Advent is a waiting, an expectation, and an anticipation of what is yet to come and as we draw closer to the experience of the realization of God’s promise, we begin to notice more and more how hungry we are and how real that hunger is. I chose this beginning image of hunger because today I want to talk about real things – like hunger, and like pregnancy and birth, and a baby – flesh and blood real things. For that’s incarnation after all – God coming in the flesh was and is real. The anticipation, the expectation, the desire that God will deliver and that God will keep the promises that God has made is nothing if it is not real.
An angel Gabriel was sent to a small town to visit a young woman. Her name was Mary. She was a young Jewish girl in an out of the way, small town called Nazareth. Upon arriving, the angel said to Mary “Rejoice, Highly favoured one! God is with you! Blessed are you among women!”
You will bear a son, and give him the name – Jesus -meaning saviour or deliverance.
The angel said some more things about who this son would be like – the only Begotten of God,
someone who would rule forever over the house of Jacob and in line with his ancestor David,
But I’m sure Mary got stuck on the “you will bear a son,” part. I can’t imagine her being able to listen to all the things that were said after that.
Understandably she was troubled and wondered, “How can this be, since I have never been with a man?”
The angel told her that the power of the Most High would overshadow her and so the son to be born to her would be called the Holy One of God.
And then the angel, possibly sensing her level of incredulity, told her that her relative Elizabeth, in her older years, one who was thought to be infertile, had also conceived a child and was already in her sixth month.
I think it must have been the gritty reality of hearing about Elizabeth’s pregnancy that helped Mary recover herself so quickly, for she says to the angel, “I am a servant of God. Let it be done to me as you say.
With that, the angel left her.
I wonder if in the days that followed Mary really believed that it had all been real or was it merely a dream she’d had. She was going to bear a son.
There was one really good way to find out. Go visit Elizabeth.
Within a few days, the text in Luke says, Mary set out and hurried to the hill country to a town of Judah, where she entered Zechariah’s house and greeted Elizabeth.
As soon as Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. In a loud voice she exclaimed….
I’ll tell you in a moment what she exclaimed.
I just wonder if you have any relatives who greet you with a loud voice when you come to visit during the holidays. My grandmother always greeted us with a loud voice, like you were the most important person in the world.
“Look who’s here,” she used to say before she’s smothered us with her embrace and kisses.
When Elizabeth heard Mary arriving she exclaimed in a loud voice “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! But why am I so favoured, that the mother of the Messiah should come to me? The moment your greeting reached my ears, the child in my womb leaped for joy. Blessed is she who believed that what our God said to her would be accomplished.
I’ll let you imagine the embrace and kisses that followed.
How more real could this be?
The baby leaped in her womb, when she heard Mary’s greeting at the door.
In our congregation right now, there are two women that, I know of, who are with child. I wonder if either of you feel your infant move when you or they hear something, like when Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting.
In this day and age it is possible to know that one is pregnant long before it is possible to feel the infant move, but for the mother to be and anyone intimately connected to her, the feeling of that movement is a wonder to behold. The stirring within speaks of reality in a new way. A child will be born. This is the kind of reality that cannot be ignored then or now.
The Micah passage today reminds us that
hope for the birth of a child
was an important part of ancient Israelite messianic expectation.
The Micah prophecy born out of Israel’s history about 800 years before the Common Era, when Northern Israel was being threatened by Assyria, is filled with passages of harsh judgement against Israel’s wickedness, lack of justice and idolatry. Richard reminded us that in the words of the comedian Charlie Farquharson, a good way to sum up the entire prophets is with the phrase, “you’re doing it all wrong.” These texts of judgement are important parts of the advent message. In our anticipation of something to be hopeful about, something better than the world currently knows, we need to hear some of these mes
sages of the things that are wrong.
Specifically, Micah is warning the southern Kingdom of Judah that they will suffer the same fate as their brothers and sisters in the Northern Kingdom. Some of Micah parallels the early parts of the book of Isaiah. Keeping it real, neither Isaiah nor Micah shrinks from naming reality as they see it. The first few verses of chapter 1 of Micah and the first few verses of chapter 6 speak of a God, YHWH by name, who plans to contend with the people in a court of judgement and the list of evidence against the people, primarily the people with power, the leaders, the priests and the prophets, (those were the also the ones who were in trouble in last week’s sermon and the sermon before that) will be indicted for things like defrauding people of their homes, not caring properly for the women and children or the strangers in their midst, crying “peace” when they themselves are well-fed but declaring war on those who have nothing to put into their mouths.
There is nothing in this list that could not be applied to today.
But Micah and Isaiah are also the prophets who provide us with some of the most moving and memorable and poetic declarations of hope, often in the form of messianic hope and longing for the anointed one who will usher in the reign of peace and justice. In keeping with our emphasis on the messianic hope that involves the birth of a child, our specific text for today, Micah verse 5:2-3 we hear of the expected birth of the ruler that will come from Bethlehem. The Isaiah passage that speaks of the messianic hope for the birth of a child is Isaiah 9:6,
For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given,
and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called
Wonderful Counsellor, [a] Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
7 Of the increase of his government and peace
there will be no end.
He will reign on David’s throne
and over his kingdom,
establishing and upholding it
with justice and righteousness
from that time on and forever.
The zeal of YHWH Omnipotent will accomplish it!”
Messianic hope in the form of hope for a child is only one of at least four streams of the way Messianic Hope is described for us in the Hebrew Scriptures and our Old Testament.
First in the ancient texts there is the messiah who will carry on God’s covenant with Abraham and Moses and provide political deliverance.
The second stream is the hope for the continuation of monarchy or Davidic line in an ideal reign where all of Israel’s enemies will be conquered
The third stream seems to narrow the messianic hope to the anointed one, the birth of a child, a special Holy One who will establish an ideal reign of justice and peace.
And finally the one most difficult to grasp is the description of the suffering servant motif in Isaiah that began to suggest that the anointed one would voluntarily suffer or give up his life on behalf of the people.
In our consciousness these different streams converge and are brought together in creative ways by the writers of the gospels who saw all of the different strands of messianic hope, anticipation and expectation fulfilled in the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus.
Christ Jesus, the anointed one, the child born in Bethlehem to Mary, the child who grew to be a man, who healed and freed people from their imprisonments, the one who spoke profound words of wisdom and invited profound transformation in response, the one whose intimate connection to God ushered in a new reign of God and whose words and actions so threatened the status quo that they led to his death by shameful crucifixion. This same anointed one was raised by God and through all of this provides for the salvation of all who learn to know him. Even so…. we live forever with expectation – with anticipation, that we don’t notice unless we are hungry. The smell of it lingers in the air like the smell of a good soup but when we feel it move in our bellies in the form of hunger or like the stirring of new life caused by a tiny infant’s movement in the womb – it is then that we know how real our hope for complete fulfillment is.
All messianic hope which is another way of saying all hope for salvation is born out of real need.
How do we begin to know what we need? One way to know what we need is to pay attention. What is stirring inside, maybe almost imperceptively at first, but growing in strength?
There will be hungers that are unique to each one of us and to our unique spiritual journey.
There will be hungers within us that we hold in common with every human being on our planet,
like hunger for hope,
hunger for communion with each other and with God
and hunger for peace and for justice.
And these hungers remind us that some part of the messianic promises have yet to be fulfilled.
And though it is the birth of the child that we celebrate at Christmas, it is not the child alone who saves us, rather it is how we receive all that the child represents and becomes in the world and in us.
I’m reminded of the hymn that is also a prayer,
O, how shall we receive him,
how meet him on his way,
blessed hope of
every nation, our soul’s delight and stay?
O Jesus, Jesus give us now by thine own pure light
to know whate-e’re is pleasing and welcome in your sight.
Let’s learn from Mary and Elizabeth to keep it real! Let’s pay attention to the stirring within us that links itself to the hungers, hopes and desires of every nation, every religion and every generation.
Elizabeth’s words of greeting come to mind again. Blessed is she who believed that what our God said to her would be accomplished.
And may the grace and love and promise of God that found fulfillment in Mary and Elizabeth also find fulfillment in us this Christmas and always.