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Luke 1
26In the sixth month of Elizabeth's pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, 27to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin's name was Mary. 28The angel went to her and said, "Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you." 29Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. 30 But the angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. 31 You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, 33 and he will reign over Jacob's descendants forever; his kingdom will never end." 34"How will this be," Mary asked the angel, "since I am a virgin?" 35The angel answered, "The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. 36 Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month. 37 For no word from God will ever fail." 38"I am the Lord's servant," Mary answered. "May your word to me be fulfilled." Then the angel left her.
I am the Lord's servant . . . that's what Mary says!
Just as God called Mary to be his servant, so God calls us! God's call to each of us is will by no means correspond to the enormity of Mary's call, but nonetheless God needs each of us to be His obedient and faithful servants in the world. I made this point last Friday when I talked about God using the unlikeliest of persons to accomplish His will.
One of the ways God clearly needs us is to be living witnesses for the person and message of Jesus beyond this special season. When these weeks of the Advent season finally lead to Christmas Day and the celebration of Christ's birth, then the carols will cease and the name of Jesus will be spoken far less often. His birthday will come and go and our somewhat secular world will rush back to its madness, its worldly trappings, its focus on the material rather than the spiritual. Just when the message and life of Jesus are needed most, far too many of us will put away our high spiritual sensibilities just like we put away the tree and the decorations.
I hear God's call coming to me and to you to let these holy days revitalize our desire to be the ongoing living witnesses of this Jesus of Nazareth in a world clamoring for direction and meaning. It's not overdone to say that how Jesus lives on in our world beyond the glamour and spirit of the season depends on how and when others see Jesus in us.
St. Theresa of Avila in the sixteenth century penned words which powerfully remind us of this call:
Christ has no body now on earth but yours,
no hands but yours,
no feet but yours,
yours are the eyes through which Christ's compassion
is to look out to the earth,
yours are the feet by which He is to go about doing good
and yours are the hands by which He is to bless others now.
May we each say, with Mary, upon hearing this call...I am the Lord's servant!
A Special Opportunity - The Advent Prayer Stations, December 18-25
Beginning this Sunday and continuing to Christmas Day are the Advent Prayer Stations in the Mike Wilson Fellowship Hall. There are seven stations that move through the Christmas story from the angel visiting Mary through the wise men visiting the Christ child. Each station is designed to cause us to think of the story in a new way. The stations are also designed to be fairly interactive, and families are encouraged to experience them together.
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