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"Seeing Mary And Joseph As Our Teachers” Sermon Delivered By Reverend Richard E. Stetler – December 18, 2011 Centenary United Micah
4:1-4; Luke 1:26-38 In the blink of an eye
we have reached the fourth Sunday of Advent and have lighted the
Candle of Peace. This
morning we are going to consider how peace can be maintained in our
lives, a mastery that would increase our physical, mental and
spiritual health.
Billions of people have not been successful at holding on to their
peace. One of the
reasons they fail at doing so is that they view their resentments,
frustrations and anger as entitlements.
They feel perfectly justified in saying so.
Mary and Joseph provided humankind with an alternative. Go back in
time with me for a moment when an angel visited Mary.
The first words Gabriel said were these, “Peace be with you.
God is with you and has greatly blessed you.”
The angel told Mary many things about her future: “God will
make a great king with the infant son you are carrying, as his
ancestor David was.
There will never be an end to his kingdom.” (Luke 1:32f) Clinging to
the thought that God was with her, Mary made the very difficult
journey to As we continue
the story, the three Astrologers came, left their gifts of gold,
frankincense and myrrh and returned to The family
returned to When Jesus had
a vision at his baptism and began to teach as a rabbi, that role had
not been part of the angel’s words.
The word “king” had been mentioned several times.
As Jesus continued in his
ministry, three of the Gospels record that Mary and Jesus’ brothers
came to get him. (Mark
3:32) Jesus knew that his
mother and family members had other plans for his life. When he
learned that they were asking for him, Jesus turned to his listeners
and asked, “Who are my brothers, sisters and my mother?
All of you are when you desire to do God’s will.”
(Mark 3:35) Imagine
yourselves being Mary for a moment as we advance our timeline.
We find her standing at the foot of a cross upon which her
son is dying. Think of her confused thoughts and emotions! There is
no way that Mary understood her son the way we do today.
Mary was living through the most agonizing and torturous
moments of her life. She was witnessing the power of What did Mary and Joseph teach the
generations that followed?
The answer is to trust that God is leading even when we have
no understanding. This
was the faith of Joseph, Daniel, Elijah, Miriam, Ruth, Sarah, Joshua
and Deborah. None of
these people knew what God was doing in their lives.
There is no question that
God’s will is unfolding, but none of us will live to see its
fulfillment while in our physical form. As we pastors
are delivering our sermons, many times we wonder if anyone is
listening or if anyone cares what we are saying.
It is not surprising that even Jesus faced this issue. There
was a time in his ministry when people lost interest in his words
and they stopped attending his meetings. After people stopped
coming, Jesus turned to his disciples and asked them, “What about
all of you. Do you want
to leave me also?” (John 6:66f) Once I was
delivering a message one Sunday afternoon to people in a skilled
nursing facility. The
nurses would bring out the residents, many in their wheelchairs.
Some were on IVs and could barely keep their eyes open during
my sermon. One woman
kept yelling unintelligible sounds as I spoke.
I could sense my words dying about three feet away from the
lectern. I was convinced that no one was listening.
When the
service was over, I went around and greeted each person before they
were taken back to their rooms.
Sometimes I had to awaken them to do so.
When I came to the woman that had been yelling out, she said,
“Thank you for coming. I have often wondered why God allows
terrible things to happen to us. Now I have my answer.
Thank you!” The nurse who
was attending to her looked as though she did not know what just
happened. She whispered to me, “I have been caring for this
woman for several years and those were the first words I have ever
heard her speak.” I came away feeling as though God had said, “Dick,
just keep talking and let me take care of what happens with what you
say.” From that moment
to this, I have done just that. We have to
remember that the evolutionary process of human history has taken
thousands of years. When
Jesus taught, he wrote nothing that was preserved. There were no
printing presses to duplicate his message.
When he was killed, his disciples scattered.
All of them except his cousin John were martyred.
Peter was crucified upside
down. The Apostle Paul
was sentenced to death in Not everyone understands or cares
about his message and all of us have to be at peace with that. What is happening in
creation among our species is not our plan; it is God’s plan. Our
role at this phase of our evolution is to hold on to our peace as
did Mary and Joseph and not try to predict anything based on what we
think needs to happen. Each of us
can become like hardened soil during a drought.
Two or three inches of rain may fall but it does not help.
The ground is too hard for the water to seep down into the
roots of various life forms. Such hardened soil is often made up of
years of hearing religious talk and listening to stories that are a
challenge to believe. People have also become immune to evangelists
in their past that used fearful images to motivate them
to repent. God is at
work, however, using even one or two faithful individuals who never
give up trusting God for the outcome of human history.
Sometimes that hardened soil weakens in people and hydration
begins. One Christmas
a convicted murderer serving time in a prison wanted to gather a
number of fellow prisoners to present a Christmas program for the
other inmates. He had
been a musician who had become a follower of Jesus through the
Christian Prison Fellowship. He approached the warden with his idea
and was greeted with a very
chilly and mixed response. Men and women in the prison had never
been brought together for any program. Very reluctantly, however, he
gave his permission. The first
rehearsal was a complete disaster.
Two men broke into a fist fight over which one would sit next
to a female prisoner.
Just as the guards were moving in to restore order, something
happened to change the atmosphere. A large framed woman stood up and
started screaming, “Sit down and shut up!”
She continued, Every one of
you knows the kind of mess we have made out of our lives. You are
behaving like animals and I’m ashamed to be with you.
This man wants to teach us to sing. Some of you may think
that’s corny, but I don’t think it is. I think it’s nice that
someone thinks enough about us and believes that we can pull off a
Christmas program for the other inmates.
I haven’t wanted to sing for years, but maybe its time all of
us try. You either sing or just sit there and shut up so that the
rest of us can. The piano man nervously cleared his throat and thanked her
for her eloquence. He
sat down at an old piano that he had just tuned with a small
crescent wrench and allowed them to hear what he had in mind.
As they began to practice, something unexpected happened.
For once they were preparing to present a program for others
about something God had done.
Most of them had been in the business of taking from others.
It is hard to
imagine that rapists, murderers, prostitutes, thieves, drug
kingpins, and extortionists were each placed into groups that
actually produced four-part harmony. What happened was absolutely
remarkable. They presented a Christmas program with Mary and Joseph.
As they sang
Silent Night many of them wept because of old memories of family and
friends. It was as
though God had reached through that hard, packed
dirt and seeped into their
hearts because one person wanted to help others remember.
God can create when we
become the instruments that allow God’s light to shine through us.
All we have to do is let go
and let God. It was Mary
and Joseph, and the host of others that followed that allowed the
Christ story to circulate into reaching every continent in the
world, that allowed more Bibles to be printed in the native
languages of each tribe on earth than any other book ever printed, and that allowed
governments to frame their constitutions on the concept of
love and serve one another.
The process
is, indeed, very slow.
Some of the best words ever written by the Apostle Paul were these,
“Do not conform yourselves to the standards of this world, but let
God transform you inwardly by the complete change of your mind.”
(Romans12:2) Paul and
thousands of others never surrendered their inner peace nor did they
stop trusting the evolutionary process of how God creates through
love. One day the
visibility of God’s will unfolding on earth will reflect God’s will
in Heaven.
We have to show up in every
circumstance and be willing to face the unexpected with the peace
that allows us to trust that God is at work in us. Once my
grandmother encountered a young man that burst through the back door
of her home intent on robbing her.
That door entered the kitchen where she was doing the dishes.
He held a knife to her throat and asked for her purse, money
and her jewelry. Without
batting an eye she said, “What would your Sunday School teacher and
your mother say if they could see you now?”
Well, he didn’t know.
She said, “Have you had your supper?”
He said, “No.”
She said, “Sit down.”
She fixed him dinner. In that
moment, my grandmother created a friend out of a young man who was
headed down a road from which there is no return for so many people.
He thanked her and often came back just to talk with her.
A little love is what
most people are crying out to experience. We can love
when we hold on to our peace and trust that God’s will can unfold
through us. The Candle
of Peace is very relevant to our lives when we remember that God is
always in charge. It was that knowledge that supported Mary and
Joseph. That same peace
is still available to all of us.
Let us learn to use it. |