Possibility where there is no possibility

A sermon for the fourth Sunday of Advent, given at the United Church of Acworth, Acworth, NH on December 18, 2011.

2 Sam. 7:1-11,16
Ps. 89:1-4,19-26
Rom. 16:25-27
Luke 1:26-38


As we enter into today’s scripture from the gospel of Luke, we join Mary in the amazement and hope of the announcement of her conceiving of her son our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

This birth of all births has received the most attention.
What is happening here? Why so much excitement?

All throughout the Bible, God is bringing a way where there was no way.
Possibility where there was no possibility. This is the substance of hope.

“Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.

We can become so full of fear when we think of all that can happen to ourselves, all that can happen in the world, all that can happen to our loved ones. Mary was afraid when she was confronted by the powerful presence of such a majestic messenger as the angel Gabriel.
He said “do not be afraid.” Stilling her momentary fears and preparing her for his announcement of great hope which will banish fear: the coming of Jesus Emmanuel.

“And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus.”

Jesus is the greek way of saying the Hebrew “Joshua” – Joshua was the great hero of Israel who fulfilled the hope of bringing the people of Israel into the promised land after they were brought out of slavery in Egypt by God’s prophet Moses. The name Joshua (and the name Jesus ) literally mean God delivers – God saves – God brings liberty from to the captives, and homecoming to the exiled.

Jesus will be a new kind of liberator, a new kind of salvation.

“Mary said to the angel, ‘How can this be, since I am a virgin?’ The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. “
“For nothing will be impossible with God.”

Nothing will be impossible with God.
All throughout the scriptures we have stories of nothingness in which God creates something new.
Sarah conceived her son Isaac after nearly a century of infertility.
Moses leads the people of Israel out of slavery into the desert where blossomed a new hope, a new community, worshiping the God who delivered them.
When exiled from their homeland for 150 years, God brought back the people of Israel through the decree of the Persian King Cyrus.

Now in the context of poverty and oppression in the Roman Empire, God promises to Mary that she will give birth to a new Joshua – a new salvation of God.

And Matthew’s version of the story adds, “and he will save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21)

The great deliverer is promised who will not just bring people to a new community where love is the rule and justice is the goal, working to abolish all systems of hate and oppression, but the deliverer promised will also save people from their greatest adversary – their own bent way of life, their own selfishnessness and hate – this internal deliverance from the greatest of slaveries God will accomplish through Jesus’s death and resurrection, freeing humanity from their bondage to sin and by the power of the Holy Spirit enabling a new life, a rebirth to a life of love.

It may seem impossible for this kind of newness, for this kind of deliverance to come,
It may seem impossible for this kind of change, this kind of rebirth to break into our world.
It may seem like utopia to imagine a community so full of God’s love by the power of the Holy Spirit that differences of race, class, or gender no longer remain walls preventing community.
It may seem unreal to imagine being released from a past of guilt, a present of bondage, and a future of fear.
But this is the deliverance conceived by the Holy Spirit in Mary. This is God’s salvation, Jesus, our Emmanuel.
Nothing will be impossible with God.
As we long for God’s presence, for new life, for new hope, let us remember that it starts with us – let us turn to God from our own bent way of life and receive God’s full forgiveness and love shown to us in the coming of this baby in Mary’s womb – let us catch the train of deliverance on the railroad to freedom. Let us say with Mary, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”