Can I Get an Amen? — July 7, 2024
July 7, 2024
Luke 1:26-38
Can I Get an Amen?
Dr. Craig Goff
When my son Michael was about 4 years old, I was interviewing for a youth ministry position down just below Houston, Texas at Lake Jackson Church of the Nazarene. The church board flew us down so that they could meet my whole family. As we were up in the air somewhere between BNA here in Nashville and Hobby International on the south side of Houston, Michael was looking out the window of the plane; when he saw the clouds down below us he said, “we are upside down.”
I had no idea why he said that, but you probably do, and his mother did. She explained to me: “it’s because the clouds are usually above us and now they are below us.” I don’t remember what I said, but I do remember thinking, “wow, that’s pretty cool.” That is a pretty neat way to look at those clouds.
Where we upside down? What were we doing up there above the clouds? In the beautiful song Both Sides Now by Joni Mitchell, Dann and Donna sang for us we are encouraged to see clouds in a new way and from a different perspective. We are invited to see clouds and life from a new perspective.
She uses her imagination in that song much like a child might. For example, a child might see clouds as rows and rows of angel’s hair and ice cream castles in the air, or as feather canyons.
An adult might see a cloud as a sign of bad weather or as something blocking the sun when you’re at the beach.
How do you suppose Mary, the mother of Jesus, would have looked at clouds during the days she carried Jesus in her womb? She was very young. For our day and time she would be considered to be a child. Scholars tell us she was somewhere around 13 years old.
I think she might have looked up at the clouds and seen ice cream castles and feather canyons.
She was young. She was female. She was Jewish. She lived during a time when Jewish men often began their day with a prayer thanking God they were not born a Gentile, a woman or a slave.
She lived in that kind of environment.
She lived in an occupied country. The Roman’s ruled everything. The emperor ruled a vast empire which included Israel at the time with an iron fist. You could be crucified, e.g., for what would seem to us the smallest of offenses, if you were a slave or if you were poor….
This young, Jewish female is called to see life from a different perspective. She is called to see herself in a different light, from a different side. The spiritual and the physical. In general she would have likely been thought of as someone who really couldn’t have known what life is about and whose words could not be expected to carry much weight. Yet here we are two thousand years later talking about her. I know her name and you know her name and the angel Gabriel knew her name.
We know her song, the glorious Magnificat. The whole world knows her song.
Gabriel knew her name. He came to her and said, “Greetings favored one.” He goes on to say, “The Lord is with you.”
I can’t help but wonder what a Roman soldier or judge might think.
How do you suppose a Roman soldier overhearing a conversation in which a young peasant girl was being told she was “highly favored and that the Lord was with her might have reacted? – maybe comical or just really, really sad?
We don’t know exactly, but we do know how Mary responded. True, she had some questions. The same question any young woman would have who was told, you are going to bring a baby into this world even though you are virgin would have.
But she listened with the ears of faith and she dared believe this message from God.
We know who Mary was because she listened to God. And we know what God can do because when God came to Mary with a job to do, Mary said yes.
She didn’t just look at things from earthly perspective, she dared to believe God could do something in this world no power on earth or anywhere else could stop.
I know this is kind of a Christmas story. But if stores have Christmas in July we can too.
So what can we learn from the experience of this little Jewish, peasant girl living under the occupation of the Roman empire?
Maybe that if we look at things from another side, from a different perspective, we might become part of something bigger than we can create or produce on our own.
Or to put it another way as we try to make sense of our current political environment.
Democrats would have us believe certain things about who we are. Republicans would have us believe something else about our identity. Social media would lead us to believe our worth is determined by how many followers we would have. Marketers would have us believe our worth is determined by how young we are (or look). Wall Street would have us believe our value is measured by how well we are doing in the stock market…
But Mother Mary, the young mother of Jesus, helps us to see maybe our identity is found in something else. Maybe our identity if found in saying Amen to those who come to tell us, “The Lord is with you. The Lord has things for you to do, and it doesn’t matter what anyone else says, you are highly favored.”
Mary is who she is because of God. It is time for us to decide we are as those the Lord is with and those the Lord favors.