"Advent faith"
When we were in England, the children's workers in one church had a tape that was used regularly as the background narrative for the nativity play. It began “Mary skipped through the streets of Nazareth.” I suppose it was making the point that Mary began life as a very ordinary girl. And that is where we all start! Ordinary people. Women and men; with our weaknesses, our hopes and ambitions, our hurts and inadequacies. And then Mary met an Angel – Gabriel whom we heard about in connexion with the highly educated senior civil servant, theologian and author, Daniel... And now that same angel was speaking to a teenage girl in a small town in Galilee district.
Faith takes us beyond the ordinary
1. Mary's conversation with Gabriel began with this: "Hail, O favoured one, the Lord is with you!" (v 28). This first thing she had to appropriate – by faith – was this: God's favour. Mary, you have had grace, favour, thanks, delight, poured out upon you. Initially, her reaction was one of panic: she felt troubled. She was thrown into confusion. “But.. what do you mean? Me? Favoured? How?” So much so that Gabriel had to say it again: “It's all right Mary; don't be afraid, you have found favour with God.” Our minds are so set in habits of doubt and self-deprecation, that it is a step of faith to hear Gabriel, or anyone else, say to us “You have found favour with God!” But that is where we need to start.
2. Mary would need faith: she was favoured to give birth to a son who would be called Jesus. "He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High;" (v 32) That word, “most High” was one the Greek-speaking Luke would previously have heard referring to the greatest of the Greek Gods. But Mary also knew it, referring to Yahweh, the Lord God, the only true god. The angel was telling Mary she would give birth to God's Son. And she did give birth to God's son, because she believed this truth even if she did not fully understand it. It takes faith to receive this second thing that Mary received: God's Son. Gabriel goes on to say in verse 35: “The child to be born shall be called Holy, Son of God”. The word “Holy” here means more than a holy man: it means the “divine Son of God.” (it's used in the same way in John 6. 69). Faith is needed to grasp the awesome reality of who He is, the amazing truth that “Lo, within a manger lies He who built the starry skies” that “in the beginning was the Word, and the word as with God and the word was God...The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory” (John 1. 1, 14) We can't prove that Jesus was the Son of God (although there is strong evidence!); we can't prove his identity; we can't even begin to understand how divine and human nature can be perfectly combined or how God can exist in three persons. We receive these truths by faith.
3. Gabriel went on to say "and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there will be no end." (v.32f) Flowing from who he is – God the Son – is what he came to do! We sometimes sing “he was born to die...” Although that's true, it's only half of the truth! He was born to bring God's kingdom – and in order to do that, he had to die. God's Kingdom has broken in to our world through Jesus. Mary speaks of the coming Kingdom in the Magnifacat (the name for her song of praise in verses 46-55): “He has performed mighty deeds... he has scattered those who are proud...He has brought down rulers… but has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty.” The things Jesus did were evidence of the Kingdom; they were the nature of the Kingdom – they way things are when God's rules apply. There is wholeness, healing, hope. There is justice, integrity, honesty. There is peace, compassion, generosity. Evil – greed, prejudice, violence, pain – are driven out. This is the scope and depth of what Jesus came to do. And we are invited to receive God's Kingdom by faith in what Jesus has done on the Cross.
4. Now Mary needs to know how this is going to happen to her. We'll come back to her question in a moment. But as an answer, Gabriel explains, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you” (v. 35) By faith, Mary was called to welcome God's Spirit and be touched by God's Power. And in order that we may carry the truth about Jesus within us, in order that we might bring something of God's Kingdom to our world, we need to receive God's Power by faith.
 |
| Image: G Lilly |
So faith takes us beyond the ordinary. By faith we receive God's favour; God's Son and the truth about who he is; God's Kingdom and the hope it promises; and God's Power by The Holy Spirit to live for him.
That would be a nice place to stop. But it's not where we are, is it?
Faith is allowed to ask questions
We have a shed load of questions. "How come God wants to use me? How can Jesus be God? How can God become human? What is this Kingdom? Why has it not impacted the world more? Why is there bad stuff in God's world?" We have questions.
So had Mary. "How shall this be, since I have no husband?" (v. 34) or "How shall this be, I am a virgin?" (literally, as in the AV “I do not know a man”) What she means is “We were keeping the law, and waiting until we were married. What are you saying Gabriel?” Now Mary didn't have a problem believing it was possible (that was the problem Zechariah had when he was told he and Elizabeth were going to have a child in their old age – see verses 5-12). In a fairly short time Mary and Joseph would be married, and in the normal course of things, children would happen. She could even get married a bit sooner if that were what God was saying. Mary's problem wasn't with believing it but with making sense of it. Listen – faith is allowed to ask questions.
Faith leads to submission in action
When she was told how this was going to happen – the Holy Spirit coming upon her as he had upon the prophets of old, the power of God overshadowing her, the pre-existent, eternal Word of God, becoming flesh in her womb – Mary had no problem believing it. And, remarkably, she had no problem submitting to it. By faith, Mary gave the Lord a submission that was marked by three key words:
1. Transformation "Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word." (v.38) It involved her self-image, her plans, her reputation, the whole direction of her life. No arguments; no protests; no complaints about the pain and the cost involved. Just “Let it be to me according to your word.” There are few sentences in the Bible more powerful, and few prayers that the Lord wants to hear more than this one: “Let it be to me according to your word”! I am ready for my life, its direction, its motivation, its ownership, to be transformed.
 |
| Image - G Lilly |
2. Travelling. Immediately, Mary wasted no time. Gabriel had given her Elisabeth's story, as evidence to show that God was at work. (v. 36) So she immediately went and found Elisabeth. She went to explore what God was doing. On a journey of discovery. And she found that old Elisabeth was indeed six months pregnant. Elisabeth's baby jumped in the womb when Mary arrived. She saw what God had done and heard words of encouragement. And she stayed to serve Elisabeth in the last three months of her pregnancy. We need to travel – to get up and visit someone, to cross the street, to put ourselves about and see and hear what God is doing in other people's lives. It will encourage us. We need to travel to serve others. And we need to travel on an inner journey as we grow.
3. Telling. See verses 46-56. Mary herself had an experience of the prophetic, when she spoke out this wonderful piece of Hebrew poetry that emphasised to upside-down, life-transforming, radical nature of God's Kingdom. “The Lord has done great things, and holy is his Name.” We need to let our faith lead to telling people who God is and what God has done – for us.
- Speaking Gospel: about God's good news.
- Speaking testimony: our story. “The Lord has done great things for me.”
- Speaking prophetically, talking about how God's kingdom turns our world upside down.
So by faith we receive God's favour, God's Son, God's Kingdom and God's power. And by faith we say to God, “Let it be to me according to your word”
© Gilmour Lilly December 2016
Advent 2 Preparing the way: Penitence
We normally prepare because we expect something to happen. Today's story is that this eccentric man, dressed in a rough coat woven from camel-hair, tied round his waist with a leather belt, eating locusts and wild honey (in other words, living on the absolute basics) comes preaching in the desert – and people are excited by his appearance, his presence, his message, so much so that the flock to listen to him.
His message is terse: “Repent (change of mind) for the kingdom of heaven is near.”
John self-identifies as the “One sent to prepare the way of the Lord...” he was, as Michael Green put it, “His Master's Voice”!
Something was going to happen. The Lord was going to come among his people. The promised “Kingdom” was at hand – this season of the Messiah that Isaiah had promised, the last days that Joel spoke about, the beginning of the “end” that Daniel had hinted at. The Kingdom is at hand. It's going to happen. There was “one coming after John”, more powerful than him; he wasn't worthy to tie this guy's laces. This was the person who was going to bring the Kingdom; who was going to baptise with the Holy Spirit, who as going to bring judgement. A winnowing fork or fan was used by a farm worker to throw grain into the air, so the husks and weevils and other rubbish blew away and the seeds could then be ground for flour. This person – Messiah – and the Kingdom, were coming with the power of the Spirit and with judgement.
So what does “ready” look like?
People were coming to John and being baptised. People went down into the River Jordan, and were splashed, plunged into the water. (Not sprinkled with a few drops of water from a clam shell. Greek has two words: bapto means to dip, like the blacksmith dips the red-hot horseshoe in a barrel of water to temper it, or like cloth is dipped in dye; and baptizo means to swamp, flood, drown, or sink... baptism was meant to ruin you! It was a public declaration of a private change of heart, a reorientation. It was a token of a desire to be spiritually clean, a way of expressing this “repentance” thing.
Now this wasn’t something John invented. These Jewish people already knew about baptism. When a family from “outside” of Judaism – Romans or Greeks for example – adopted the Jewish way of life so totally that they wanted to be accepted fully as Jews, it took three stages. All the family were baptised – a ceremonial bath to wash away their “Gentile unclean-ness.” Then all the men were circumcised. Then the head of the household offered a sacrifice.
John's baptism was different. It was offered to Jews and non-Jews alike. So John was in effect saying to the Jews “you are just like pagans in the eyes of God. Your Jewishness isn't going to save you! You all – Jews and gentiles alike – need to “repent!”
And what does repentance look like?
It's more than an idea. There has to be fruit. Some of the people who came to John were very religious, and John wasn’t keen to baptise them. He wasn't sure they had really repented. Some were from a group called “Pharisees”: they took the Bible seriously; they believed in the resurrection. They were expecting Messiah to come. They believed in keeping the law, observing the Sabbath, washing their hands before eating, and so on. They were the traditional bible-believing people of the first century. And others were called Sadducees: they were more interested in the Temple and sacrifices than the Bible; they didn't believe in the resurrection, or angels. They didn't worry too much about the details of the law. They were the upper-class, intellectual, gown-wearing liberals of the first century. But all of them – Pharisees and Sadducees alike – were a “brood of vipers”. There was something poisonous in the way they thought, in their smugness, their lack of concern for others. Both needed to produce fruit of repentance. For the ordinary people, “Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same.” (Lk 3. 11) Then there were the soldiers, the tax collectors: they had to be fair in their dealings, not abuse their power, not oppress people. (Lk 3. 12-14) So John wasn't keen on baptising some of the people who came forward.
And tantalisingly, there is this other person who comes forward for baptism, whom John is reluctant to baptise. This time, it was because John wasn't sure this guy, Jesus, needed a baptism of repentance at all. In fact Jesus wasn't baptised in an act of repentance but “to fulfil all righteousness”. “Righteousness” here means the kind of life people were expected to live after being baptised: a life totally surrendered to God. So in his baptism, Jesus is saying “God is aleady fully in charge of my life.” And as part of his surrender to God, Jesus is embracing the cross, beginning to stand with the sinners he came to save. Jesus has a unique and special relationship with God the Father – he is God's Son; the Holy Spirit falls on him at his baptism; his Father is pleased with him. This was the Person, for whom John was preparing the way.
What are we to get ready for? What is the thing we are expecting to happen? Jesus has come. And he wants to visit us again by his Spirit.
We are to get ready for Jesus! Not just for Christmas!
We are to get ready for:
The kingdom of God to be manifested, to be seen! God's rule. God's rules!
Judgement that separates the wheat from the chaff, blows away the dust, and the weevils.
The Holy Spirit filling our lives.
Righteousness to be fulfilled... sins to be dealt with
Revelation of who Jesus is!
And how can we get ready?
By a public declaration of a private reorientation.
One way we can do that is by baptism. The baptism we do is shaped by what John did and by the fact that Jesus was baptised by John. God knows that we need to respond to him, we need to make a clear, public declaration of a private re-orientation. But the content of Christian Baptism is more than John's Baptism. John's was all about repentance. Christian Baptism is about reception as well as repentance. It is an appeal to God from a clear conscience. (1 Peter 3. 21) It is about repentance and faith.
So to be ready, we may need to make some kind of public, physical step: we have made Christianity too intellectual, too cerebral, too internal, and too private and too easy. You say something in your heart, to invite Jesus in. “Every head bowed, every eye closed; raise your hand so the preacher can see. “ But John, and Jesus, insist that wont' work. We need the sacraments. We need to step forward and get baptised. We need to take bread and wine. We need as Billy Graham used to say to “get right up out of your seat”.
Why do we have a prayer-team here every Sunday? Is it because they are better than all the rest of us? Is it because sometimes we can't pry for ourselves? Well, sometimes we do need someone to stand with us in prayer; sometimes we are not sure how to pray for ourselves. And we have a recognised team so that people who step forward are safe. But these guys' prayers are not necessarily any better than your own. Sometimes we know we can pray for ourselves. But we need to stand, to step forward and ask for prayer. I believe that the physical act of stepping forward and asking for prayer, is sometimes what opens the door for God to bless us.
We need to produce the fruit
As simple, Bible-believing Christians, we need to produce the fruit. As people who feel we know the “Right way” to do things, we need to produce the fruit of repentance. Attitudes of superiority, criticism, rivalry and hatred need to go. Attitudes that exploit and manipulate other people, need to go. Indifference to the suffering of the poor, needs to go. The instinct to put ourselves first, needs to go. The desire to be in control, or any idea of self-sufficiency, needs to go. Then we will be “our Master's voice”, empowered by the Spirit, and preparing the way for Jesus' kingdom to touch our world.
© Gilmour Lilly December 2016
