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You may have heard this story before. A chauffeur had been driving a chemistry professor to dozens of speaking engagements. He'd heard the same speech time and time again. Finally he said to the professor as they were driving to the next engagement, "Professor, I reckon I could give your speech myself, I've heard it so many times!" The professor said, "I'll bet you $50 you can't." "You're on," said the chauffeur. |
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He stopped the car and the two exchanged clothes. They arrived at the banquet. The chauffeur, dressed in a tuxedo, sat at the head of the table and was introduced. He stood up and gave the speech verbatim. There was a standing ovation when he was finished. |
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Then the MC got up and said, "You know, we're so fortunate to have such a fine resource with us tonight, and since we have a little extra time, let's have some questions and answers. Well, the first question was asked and the chauffeur stood there speechless, clearing his throat in nervousness. Finally he had a moment of inspiration. He said, "You know, as I think about it, I reckon that's such an easy question I bet even my chauffeur could answer it." |
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The mistake the chauffeur made, of course, was to think that because he'd heard the story so many times before, he knew everything there was to know about it. In fact that's a mistake lots of people make about the Christmas story. We've all heard it so many times before that there's nothing new here any more. |
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Yet I wonder whether that's actually true. I wonder whether each time we here the story it shouldn't shake us up, again. Why? Well, because it's actually full of the unexpected. Let's look at this small section of Luke 2, at these inspired utterances and notice what some of those surprising things are and where they come from. |
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Surprise 1: Elizabeth's Prophecy |
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Having heard that Elizabeth is expecting a child, despite her advanced age, Mary decides to go and visit her. But the moment she enters the room Elizabeth's baby does a huge jump, and Elizabeth is filled with the Holy Spirit. Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit she calls out: "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. 43And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? 44For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy. 45And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord." |
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I'm sure this was the last thing Mary expected. She knew that something special was happening to her, but to have it confirmed in this particular way, with an utterance inspired by the Holy Spirit, out of the mouth of her cousin, must have been of great significance to her. And notice the surprising things that come out of Elizabeth's lips. She describes the child growing in Mary's womb as "My Lord." This is no ordinary child. This will be the one who is Lord. This child will be the Son of God. |
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And notice too the reason Mary is blessed. She's blessed, not because of some innate righteousness on her part but because she believes God's promise. You'll remember of course that the angel Gabriel had come to Mary one night and had told her she was going to bear a son and was to call him Jesus. He was to be great and would be known as the Son of the Most High, the Son of God. Mary couldn't understand how this could happen, when she was a virgin, but nevertheless she said "I am the Lord's servant. Let it be to me according to your word." Mary would have known as much about the basics of how babies get here as we do so she knew this couldn't happen - unless God did a miracle. But still, she was willing to suspend rational thought at that point and trust that God could do whatever he said he could do. And it's that faith in God, in God's word that makes her truly blessed. |
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Surprise 2: God will use even one as unimportant as Mary. |
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Mary's response, in turn, is to sing an inspired song. And at the centre of that song is her wonder at the thought that God would use her, as humble as she is, to fulfill his purposes. That is, that God would use one who is of such lowly status as a young peasant girl. She's from the backwoods, from the bush. Everyone knew that nothing much could come out of Galilee. Do you remember, when Philip told Nathaniel about Jesus, Nathaniel said, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" Yet here Mary finds herself at the centre of God's plan for the salvation of the world. Here we see at the micro level what God has done through the gospel for all people. James says: "Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters. Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him?" (James 2:5 NRSV). The wonder of the gospel is that Jesus has come to call all people, rich and poor, weak and powerful, famous and ordinary, to follow him; it's that the humble are lifted up, the poor made rich, the unrighteous made righteous, the insignificant raised to the status of God's sons and daughters. Though with one proviso: notice she says: "50His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation." Our worldly status isn't what matters to God. What matters is that we fear him. As we saw a few weeks ago, that means we give him the glory that's his due; that we understand who he is and who we are in relation to him; and that we be like Mary and believe that what God has promised will actually happen. |
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Surprise 3: The powerful are brought down. |
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The next surprise is that those who appear to be powerful in our world, and those who are proud of their achievements, even perhaps with some justification, are brought down. She says He's "scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts." Isn't that a great expression? You probably know people who are legends in their own minds. These people think they've worked it all out, got it all together. They have life summed up. They know where they're going. They're doing it their way. But God knows better. We saw a classic example this week. The greatest bowler in the world retires and it's headline news. People are almost in mourning over his retirement. Even the Prime Minister appears on the news to pontificate on why he was the greatest. He's achieved just about everything you could hope for as a sportsman. But you look at his personal life and it's a mess. |
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Mary reminds us that God has shown up the foolishness of the world and its value systems by sending a little child born to a lowly peasant girl to restore his kingdom to its full glory. |
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Surprise 4: The rich & the hungry change places |
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Here's perhaps the greatest surprise of all. What does this world expect? That the rich will have whatever they desire and that the poor will struggle on with whatever they can scrounge. If you're poor, it's your part in life to be hungry. It seems a given that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. But not any more. God's turning this upside down. From now on it's the poor who will be filled with good things and the rich who'll go away empty handed. Mary can see this coming into shape in the way she and Elizabeth have been given the richest bounty in the world: to bear the Son of God and the prophet who would announce his coming. From now on, as Jesus points out in the sermon on the mount, the hungry, i.e. those who realise their own need and yearn for spiritual food, will be filled, will be satisfied, while the rich, that is, those who are self-satisfied and proud, will miss out. |
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Surprise 5: God's plan for Israel hasn't been forgotten. |
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As I said last week, there would have been many in Mary's day who thought that the great days of Israel were past and that it was doomed to be a victim of Roman imperialism forever. They would have read those prophecies of Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel and thought that God must have forgotten, it had been so long. But not so. God hadn't forgotten his promise to Abraham and his descendants. The coming of Jesus was to fulfill God's plan for Israel. To restore Israel to the centre of his creation. Not, mind you, in the way that some would have interpreted that. Not, that is, by restoring the physical nation of Israel. Some people today still think like this. They think that the return of Israel to Palestine after the Second World War was part of the fulfillment of God's plan for Israel. But no, that plan was fulfilled in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Jesus has brought a new Israel into being, an Israel that's based on faith in Jesus Christ, that derives its life from the life of Jesus Christ, and his Spirit who lives within us. |
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The Origin of these Events |
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But let's think for a moment about the origin of these events. Look at what Mary says in vs 47 & 49. In v47 she says: "my spirit rejoices in God my Savior," In v49 she says: "for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name." Here is the origin of all these surprising events. God our Saviour brings them about. The Mighty One, the Holy One, does them by the strength of his arm. God stretches forth his arm and the world as we know it is turned upside down. The old value systems no longer fit the world, now that Jesus has entered into it. Now what appears to be foolishness to the Greeks is seen to be the wisdom of God. What's a stumbling block to the Jews becomes the foundation stone of God's kingdom, the headstone that binds it all together. And we still see that happening today as the power of God brings people to the point of conversion. As God changes people from the inside out. As he enables people to change their old habits and to put on new ones: habits of godliness rather than those bad habits they've grown up with; habits of loving kindness rather than those shaped by self-centredness. |
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I think we need to remind ourselves of this over and over again. God's power is at work whenever the gospel is preached. If he could do the things we read about here in Luke 2, there's nothing he can't achieve. All that's needed is for people like you and me to preach the gospel faithfully, believing that the Holy One will do great things through us as well as through Mary. |
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Finally, notice that God does all these very surprising things in a very unsurprising manner. If you'd lived in Judea or Galilee at this time, you would hardly have noticed a ripple on the surface of local events. It was all very ordinary. Even Jesus' birth was just one birth among many. The stable was just a stable. Mary & Joseph were just ordinary people. But so often God chooses to use ordinary people and ordinary events to bring about surprising results. He can even use ordinary you and me to bring about surprising things here in Wattle Park if only we'll be like Mary and believe that what the Lord has said he'll do, he will accomplish. |
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So here we have 2 inspired utterances. Inspired messages containing a series of surprises that shake us out of our complacency, that remind us that this isn't just the same old story. This is a story that's ever new, ever fresh if we'll listen to it with open ears and hearts. |
