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Spencer C. Lawrence, Church of the Cross, Hoffman Estates, IL, December 17, 2006 Christmas is a conversation with God. It is not a time just to talk about God. It is an opportunity to make contact with and to begin to live in a conscious relationship with God. Christmas in our culture may include other things, but this is the core idea. God sent Jesus to bring us back to our spiritual roots. Last time, you may recall, I spoke to you about the angel Gabriel’s visit to Mary when he told her that God had chosen her to give birth to a child who would be called the Son of God. This really was a conversation. Mary asked how this could happen and the angel told her about the Holy Spirit coming upon her, and if she had trouble believing it, her relative Elizabeth had conceived in her old age. God can do anything. In the end, Mary submitted saying, “I am the Lord’s servant. Let it be with me according to your word.” In today’s lesson Mary went to visit her relative Elizabeth. Luke tells us that she set out with haste. Upon entering Elizabeth’s home, Mary shouted her greetings. When Elizabeth heard her Elizabeth’s baby leapt within her. Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, exclaimed, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? For as soon as I heard the sound of your voice, my baby jumped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.” Mary was likely both stunned and delighted by these words. They certainly confirmed what the angel had told her. There was simply no way that Elizabeth could have known all that without God revealing it to her. God would be doing great things in and through Mary. It also began to dawn on her that this was consistent with the way God had worked in the past. Mary, perhaps unconsciously, drew upon the words of Hannah whom God had finally blessed with the child Samuel (1 Samuel 2). She incorporated many of Hannah’s thoughts in her magnificent prayer. Mary told how God had lifted up the humbled the proud, raised up the lowly, fed the hungry and helped the people of Israel in fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham. Mary’s prayer is called “The Magnificat.” That’s because she said that her soul “magnified” the Lord. When we magnify something we make it look greater than it is. Not so with Mary. For her “magnifying” God meant extolling how great God already was. The Magnificat is a prayer of praise. Since her prayer is so long, we might think that Mary was the only one talking – that it wasn’t really a conversation. Not so. A careful reading will reveal that others spoke. It really was a conversation. And, as we shall see, it was a conversation expanded, a conversation enlarged, a conversation magnified. In the church we often think that the only conversation that really matters is the one each of us has with God. Now there’s some truth in this. We can have a personal relationship with God through entrusting ourselves to Christ. It’s how it began for Mary. But Mary didn’t just have a conversation with God and leave it at that. The angel pointed her to Elizabeth who was experiencing something of a miracle herself. Gabriel knew that the conversation with God entails conversation with other people as well. We are not spiritual Lone Rangers. We need each other to keep the conversation fresh and alive. We need each other to continue to magnify God in our hearts. Notice how the conversation takes shape. Mary greets Elizabeth. Elizabeth’s baby jumps inside her. Elizabeth is filled with the Holy Spirit who moves her to say things that confirm what the angel said to Mary. On the surface it would seem this is a conversation between two expectant mothers. But it is way more than that. You see, God the Holy Spirit gets involved. The Spirit shapes what Elizabeth says. And the Spirit by helping Mary recall Hannah’s words shapes what Mary says. In the end, it is a huge encouragement to Mary. Have you ever had a conversation with another person that seemed to be inspired by God – when what was being said couldn’t have been said unless God were part of it? For many – it know it’s been true for me - God has spoken through preaching. God often uses a sermon or someone’s teaching to say just what we need to hear. Sometimes God speaks to us through one-on-one conversations with other people – much the way God spoke to Mary through Elizabeth. Whose words have helped you recently? Maybe it was a conversation with your wife or husband. Maybe a friend spoke God’s word to you. Maybe it was a word of warning, or a word of instruction or a word of mercy. Whatever it was, you recognized the voice of God in his or her words. Years ago – I’ve told you this story before – I missed an ROTC class (some of you will remember those) when I was a student at the U of I. The university was so big that no one much cared if you missed any other class, but if you missed ROTC it was sure to be noticed. At any rate, I missed a class and was called in to see the sergeant who asked me to explain my absence. Needless to say I was more than a little apprehensive because I didn’t think I had a good excuse – I had been attending a prayer meeting in the student union and it ran over; besides that, I had a splitting headache – which was the truth. (How I could have a headache after a prayer meeting, I’ll never understand.) The sergeant said, “O.K. Try not to miss again.” I thought, “That’s it? ‘O.K. Try not to miss again?’” That little conversation became for me a parable of the mercy of God. I am sure that sergeant hadn’t thought in those terms at all. But God used his words as a source of encouragement for me. It moved me to thank God for mercy. Sometimes God speaks to us not just through, but also for other people. I don’t mean to say that God tells Jim to tell Sarah something. That can happen – God can do anything! But more often God tells us something we can do to help other people. A couple of weeks ago a woman – not of this church – discovered that all of the things she had in storage had been sold at auction to pay back rent on her storage compartment. She and her children had a place to stay but almost nothing to put into it. Needless to say, things looked very bleak. One of our church members learned of the situation and she called family members to see if they could help. The woman’s brother-in-law who works for the Palatine Park District was in a meeting when he learned of a family who was eager to give away furniture and towels and sheets that their now deceased son had used. He mentioned this fact to his sister-in-law who began to arrange for a place to store the things until they could get them to the family that needed them. The man called the family willing to give their son’s things away and explained the situation to them. Before the day was over he had arranged for a Palatine Park District truck to pick up and deliver the things to the storage area. His sister in law and her family then loaded the things into the truck and helped unload them at the other family’s house. We can talk about coincidences all we want, but this was more than that. God was speaking in and through these people to help someone. And everyone involved was amazed at how God works in the world. The conversation with God is expanded when others are included. And when others are included we will inevitably be moved to praise God’s greatness even more. Elizabeth’s words were a source of assurance and encouragement to Mary. God really was working in her life. So she sang this song of praise to the God who has chosen her – as lowly as she is – for such a wonderful task. She was amazed at God’s goodness to her. And not just to her but also to people of Israel whom God was sending the child to save. Mary included the whole nation of Israel in her prayer of thanksgiving. God was not only blessing her, God was blessing all the people. That’s how great God is. Mary moved from offering a prayer of submission to offering a prayer of praise that has been remembered down the ages. Like Mary we can reflect on the gift God has given us in Jesus. Jesus’ coming had social and economic implications. Justice will finally be done in the world. Who wouldn’t like hunger and sickness to end? Who isn’t grieved by hearing stories of the desperately poor around the world? Who wouldn’t be glad if war came to a sudden halt everywhere? Who wouldn’t be happy to see girls and boys around the world encouraged to realize their full potential and make a lasting contribution to human society? That day has not yet come, but, according to Mary, it is coming. It is a reason to be thankful. Mary’s prayer, The Magnificat, however, began with Mary praising God for having chosen her even though she had no standing, no credential, no accomplishments. God had no earthly reason to pick her to bear Jesus. She like a lot of people today was a nobody. And as I said earlier, Mary’s words were shaped by Hannah’s prayer. Hannah was grateful to God for allowing her to conceive a child. Hannah had felt like such a failure. Even though her husband had tired to comfort here, she still felt terrible. Whatever else this means, it means that God is in the business of taking nobodies and failures and turning them into somebodies and “successes.” I am not talking about a health and wealth gospel. We can’t count on God to make us rich and powerful. It does mean that there is hope for those of us who have ever failed at something – maybe a job, or perhaps a marriage, or possibly in raising our children or perhaps in the realm of personal morality. We’ve messed up; we’ve failed; we’ve fallen short. But we can take heart because God is eager to help us turn our lives around. And it means that those of us who haven’t accomplished very much – or feel as if we haven’t accomplished all that much – can have hope, too. Perhaps you are young and just getting started. The future seems daunting and you’re not sure what to do your lives. Or maybe you’re in mid-career and it’s not going exactly as you had hoped. You are discovering that you’re really not on track to become great men or women. Or maybe you’re near the end of your working lives and looking back over your lives you ask, “What exactly did I accomplish?” And you don’t know what to say. The good news in Mary’s great prayer of praise is that because of Jesus God, in addition to establishing justice, is in the business of forgiving and healing broken lives. And God is in the business of filling ordinary lives with meaning. Living with that twin hope can move us to deep gratitude. Christmas is a conversation with God. The conversation begins when we entrust ourselves to God through Jesus Christ. But it is not a conversation we engage in all by ourselves. It’s not just one on one. This conversation is best when we include others in it. By including others we discover more reasons to praise God’s name.
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