Pasadena Presbyterian Church Sermon Text
December 28, 2003

"Enlisted in All This Birthing"
Preached by The Rev. Dr. Mark Smutny

Scripture:  Luke 2: 41-52

"His mother treasured all these things in her heart."

- Luke 2: 51

Christmas is over - the day, anyway.  The baby whose birth we celebrated just three days ago is now 12 years old.  My, the days have gone by fast.  It seems like only a few years ago our sons, now 20 and 17, would jump in our bed at 5:30 Christmas morning, delight in their eyes and urgency in their voices.  "Daddy. Mommy. It's Christmas!" 

This past Thursday, we rousted them out of bed around 10 a.m. 

"Chris!  Ken! It's Christmas morning! 

"Huh?"

"Huh?"

That night we worked on college applications. 

This Sunday, we hear of a parent's anxiety about her child growing up, losing one who was once so close, and what to do about it. Overnight, Jesus has grown out of infancy and troubles his mom and dad by leaving them behind. When in their frantic search they find him in the temple, he answers their anxiety with a mysterious, "I must be in my Father's house."

Mary, at first, did not understand, but she "treasured all these things in her heart." 

In fact, she'd been there before.  This story of Jesus in the temple is not the first Luke tells of Mary and her relationship with the Incarnation.  It had begun the moment the Angel Gabriel had announced to her that she was blessed among women, that she was going to have a baby, that his name would be Emmanuel, God with us.

That scene in the Bible is traditionally called the "Annunciation," the announcement.  Of course, the Annunciation wasn't only an announcement for Jesus; it was one for Mary as well.  The familiar word for what she received is "calling"- that's what she received.

The Scriptures are full of stories of people receiving callings out of the blue.  Someone is going along in life, minding his own business, then from out of nowhere, a call comes.  The person is either startled, shocked or goes into denial.  Mary is afraid.  Moses insists he's not a public speaker.  Isaiah believes he is utterly unworthy.  Jonah runs the other direction.

From out of nowhere, the flash comes and the recipient usually asks incredulously, "How can this be?"  That was Mary's response, a pretty sane response.  She was unmarried, no education, no particular preparation, as far as we know.  "How can this be?"  Of course any of us receiving a call from God would respond in a similar fashion.  "How could this be?"

Then, Mary accepts the call.  "Let it be according to your word."

When Abraham received the call, he was so shocked he couldn't speak.  Sarah laughed.  Paul couldn't see a thing.

Mary simply says "yes."  As today's lesson reminds us, twelve years later, Mary says "yes," not only once but many times.  She had to keep on saying "yes."  She and Joseph were stunned to find Jesus in the temple.  Perhaps she was afraid not only because he was lost to her, not only because she was already needing to let him go, but also because she knew all too well what the future held in store for her son. 

"She treasured all these things in her heart."  Mary had said "yes" to the call of God before the angel, Gabriel.  "Yes," to bearing the Messiah, "yes" that day in the temple, and one day she would again say "ye" at the foot of the cross.  When Mary was called by God she was saying yes to all of that.  So many birthings and dyings, giving life and letting go.  She treasured all these things in her heart.

You get these calls.  Not only back then in Mary's time, but right now.  The Scriptures and certainly the entire Protestant movement teaches that God is in the call business all the time and for all times for everyone who bears the name of Christ.  Even today God calls, maybe especially today.

When I was in high school, the absolute farthest thing from my mind was to become a pastor.  I didn't attend church, didn't believe in God, considered it all a massive waste of time and a total delusion.  My debate buddies and I, in fact, just for kicks, would in our spare time invite unsuspecting Mormon missionaries to our houses for a friendly visit.  We would then lacerate them with our cynicism and our supposed intellectual superiority. When we finished with the Mormons, we would try Jehovah's Witnesses and Southern Baptists.  This is what we did for sport.  Rather pathetic.

When one day my best friend and debate partner sat me down on his front lawn and told me, "God is love," it hit me right between my eyes and changed my life.  I tried to run, but couldn't hide.  It was an Annunciation, a call, as clear as they ever come.  "How could this be?  Let it be according to your will."  Thirty years later, God still lays hold of me.

Some people go through a deliberate, measured discipline of discerning their call.  They look at their strengths and weaknesses, what they most enjoy doing and what the world most needs and they figure it out.  This is valid.

Some people go through hades and back.  They anguish and sweat.  They run and hide.  They look at their lives and see their failings.  They see their limitations and their humanity and cannot imagine that God might be calling them. But God calls through the muck and swamps of broken humanity all the time.

William Willimon tells a favorite call story from one of his theological students from Duke Divinity School:

"I was the teenager from hell.  I made my parents' lives utterly miserable.  I flunked out of college and spent a couple of years working.  While working I met a  woman, we had a child, and started attending church for the kid.  I listened occasionally. Gradually it began to dawn on me that if God had a calling for everyone, God had a calling for me.  I went back to college and soon realized that I wanted to be a pastor. 

"I dreaded telling my parents after all I had put them through, now that my life was taking this unexpected turn.  I met with my parents and told my story and that I now believed that God was calling me to be a pastor.

"Suddenly my mother burst into tears, saying, 'I'm so ashamed!  I can't believe this has happened,' she said. I was troubled by her response.  'What do you mean?' I asked.  'I can't believe this happened,' she said.  'Didn't I tell you before you that before you were born I had a couple of miscarriages?  I didn't think I would ever have a child.  So I promised God that if I could be allowed to have a baby, that I could bring to term, I would name him Samuel and dedicate him to God, just like Hannah did back in the Old Testament.' "

The son heard all of this with astonishment.  "Why didn't you ever tell me?" he asked.  "You could have saved me a whole lot of trouble.'"

"We're Methodists," the mother replied. "How was I to know something like this would work?  I didn't know whether we believed in that kind of thing." (1)

God can work in the most unexpected of circumstances.  Call can seem mighty strange.  It can be frightening.  It may not make sense.  Like Mary, Jonah, Moses, and Paul there are all kinds of reasons why God should not get hold of us, but God does get hold of us.

We look at our lives, exposed in all of their frailty and imperfection and cannot imagine that God could use us.  Yet God does.  That's how God has always brought about good.  God takes ordinary human beings and places them in situations where the soil is tilled.  Someone who very likely doesn't come close to looking like an angel walks up to you  and says, "Yep.  You're the one.  You're the one I need, right now.  Let's go. God has need of you."

It's a good idea, when those moments come to simply say "Yes, let it be according to your will."  There's nothing worse then an uncalled life:  selling real estate when you're supposed to be teaching children or teaching children when you're supposed to be selling real estate.  People make themselves and their loved ones simply miserable by forcing square pegs into round holes.  It happens way too much very sad.

Vocation, being seized upon by God, can be frightening and turn your whole life upside down.  It can also be exhilarating.  When a person truly finds her gifts and put them to work, the results can be amazing.  It is truly amazing to have your life caught up in something far greater than yourself. 

A dear, dear friend of ours, Dr. William Schram, the former pastor of the congregation we served in Dayton, Ohio in the 1980s, who mentored us far more than anyone in our careers, would say to parishioners after they expressed concern about how he was too working hard and might burn himself out with all the demands of ministry, "Yes, but it sure beats working for a living."

Call is that place where what you do beats working for a living, whether you get paid for it or not.

Call is also a great gift.  That's why Mary said "yes."  She knew not only that it would turn her life upside down, but that she would give the world what would be her most precious gift to give. What gift do you have to give?

The church, throughout the centuries, has called Mary the first disciple.  She was the first to hear the call and have her rather ordinary life wrapped around and caught up in  the Incarnation.  She was the first to hear the call and say, "Yes, according to your will."

God apparently changes the world through ordinary people people who get caught up in a sense of call, who say "yes" and then engage in extraordinary ministry.

As one of your pastors, I know that many of you have a powerful sense of call and some of you are not so sure.  I've been with you long enough to see some of you give up what you once thought was your calling but was only a job, and seen you come to discover that place inside where your deep gladness meets the world's need.

I've seen some of you schlep begrudgingly all day through your work, competently and responsibly, though without fire.  Then I see your face light up when you talk about serving meals at Union Station or playing an instrument to the glory of God or serving home communion. It should come as know surprise that what is going on inside of you is quite akin to all that birthing going on inside of Mary so long ago.  It is God getting to you, birthing something deep inside you.  

When Mary felt that little baby flip flopping inside her womb, when her mother's heart was filled with butterflies when she feared for her lost twelve year-old, when her soul was wrenched in two when she beheld her dying son at the foot of the cross,

So many dyings,

So many birthings,

She kept saying "yes" to them.  Her "yeses" meant that she kept partnering with God.

She kept saying yes to the God who already chosen her, found her, reached out to her in the ordinary circumstances of her life and caught her up for purposes for which the world now sings. 

When we say "yes" to the countless little nudges that God places in our lives

• the quiet voices,

• the open doors,

• the new opportunities,

• the necessary confrontations that hit home right between the eyes 

then we know what Mary knew.  God is with us.

We treasure all these things in our hearts.  We say "yes" again and again.  And with God's promise to be with us, we enlist in new life.  We can never fully know where our calling will take us.  We do know that once caught, God will not let us go.  It's an amazing rebirth, this life of faith.  "Let it be, O God, according to your will."  Amen.

(1) William H. Willimon, Pulpit Resource, Logos Productions, Inc., pg 59

(c) Copyright 2003 by Mark K. Smutny.  All rights reserved.  Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution.