Before you sit and ask you if you would pray with me, Father, that's what we gather to do this same evening, some 2,000 years later, to give you all of the glory that you do. Father, speaking on behalf of my friends, most of the time we try to steal it to Robert, most of our lives are bent on glorifying ourselves. But tonight, Lord, I think I speak for a lot of us, we'd like to put all of those things aside and just focus on you and give you the glory that you are due. Lord, as we try to look at this story, that has become so familiar to each of us, as we try to look at it again tonight, I pray that the power of the Holy Spirit would overwhelm each of us, no matter how long we've walked with you, Jesus.
I know there's some in the room tonight that are sitting around wondering and pondering, just like Mary did. For others, Lord, this is their 50th, 60th Christmas Eve service. But I pray tonight, for all of us, there would be some new realization of who you are. And I pray that the same choice that everyone, including your mother, Mary had that first Christmas.
I pray that the personal story that she went through, the personal choice that she had to make, that the Spirit would bear upon us tonight, that same choice is ours. What do we do with this baby in a major? But before we go any further, we pause to bring him glory. Father, come and speak to all of our hearts.
I ask you in the great name of Jesus the King, and everybody at Menom Hill said, Amen. Would you all grab a seat? Thank you for coming out. This is always the awkward portion of the Christmas Eve ceremony because I sit there and I watch my wonderfully talented friends and I think, what do I have to contribute to this?
So bear with me over the next couple of minutes as I share with you a little bit of what's on my heart. We are, oh, you know, one other thing I forgot to tell you, when we spoke about those prayer requests and financial considerations at this is your church, pretty much everything at Menom is always available to mhcc.life. So if you want information on anything, if you want to fill out a prayer request, giving all an mhcc.life, you don't have to handle that tonight. I just wanted to make you aware of that.
We are in a season of wonder. And if you're like me, when I sit around coffee shops and libraries, knowing I have a sermon, right, I began to wonder too. I began to wonder why it is. It's always so hard for me to get started on a sermon.
And then I began to wonder what it is that people actually do wonder about. And so I googled it. And as we know, if it's on the internet, it must be true. And so here's what I've come across.
I wondered what people wonder about. And I came up with the list of things that people, in fact, apparently are wondering about. Some of the things you've probably heard about posited before I have. Why does quicksand work so slowly?
Why are boxing rings square? But the questions would get deeper as you go down the rabbit hole. How can a slim chance and a fat chance actually be the same? Why is quite a few and quite a lot the same?
How come Superman, if you could stop bullets with his chest, how come he would always duck when someone's through a gun? Why does sour cream have an expiration date? I tried to avoid working so hard. I thought about doing the math on this one.
How much deeper would the oceans be if sponges didn't grow it? This one is extremely deep. Isn't Disneyland really a people trap operated by a mouse? And apparently people have been wondering this for 50 or 60 years now.
If it was only a three-hour cruise, why did Mrs. Howell have so many clothes? You can work on those for the rest of the weekend. But for us tonight, this marks the end of four weeks of wandering and pondering and reflecting together.
If you're a church person, you know that the church calls this season, these weeks leading up to Christmas, this season of reflection and preparation, Advent. And this Advent we've been trying to reflect and wonder, along with the key character in the life of Jesus, his mother Mary. And if you know the story, that would make a lot of sense. Luke, he was a first century, highly educated Greek physician.
That actually gave up his day job because he had heard so much about this Jesus that, well, according to his own writings, he set out to write the most orderly account of who Jesus was. Luke records, and he likely records it because Mary told him how it all went down. Luke records on several occasions during the events of that first Christmas and over the life of Jesus. Mary, well, Mary would do with this season.
And I think this night beckons us to do. To treasure up moments and to ponder over them, to reflect on them, to figure out what they mean for me and what my role is in them. In fact, that is the Christmas ornament you leave with tonight. That message is going to be etched on it.
And I hope every year for now on, when you take it out, you won't just hang it, you'll ponder, you'll treasure and reflect on this night and Jesus. Now, if you've been on the journey, you know we've done our reflecting on the life of Mary, kind of in reverse. My thought has been in my own life. It's always easier to see what God's been up to in my life when I look in the rear view mirror.
It's never as clear going forward. And so we've looked at what Mary treasured up and pondered in our heart. We've looked at it starting at the end of her life. We looked at those last years of her life and eventually her death.
Tonight, this last night, we're going to, well, we're going to go to the cradle, where I want to wander and ponder along with you. For that matter, I think, wonder and ponder over what Mary did. One last question to wrap up the Christmas season together. And I think it's the simplest question.
Maybe it's the foundational one. Why her? Why Mary of Nazareth? I mean, there's been a lot of women over all of time.
Why this woman at that time? I mean, it's interesting, right? Mary must have wondered the same thing, because being the mom of Jesus as we've seen over the last weeks, it was for Mary anything but easy. If you've ever asked why me Lord, I'm guessing you've had kind of a modern day Mary moment.
But the question for Mary that she could have asked, and as I hope to show you tonight for you and I, it actually gets answered before she or maybe we could even ask it. So what I want to do now is move backwards from where we were last weekend if you were here. Last weekend we looked at Jesus at the age of 12 at the temple. Tonight we move backwards to the home of, well, I don't want to break it to you this way, but almost a very unremarkable young lady, at least by the world's standards.
Mary is likely that first Christmas, 13 or 14 years old. The age many of our daughters are getting their braces on, Mary was bearing a king. She's living in her hometown, a tiny nowhere, podunk village of Nazareth. It's a town so insignificant, you can't even find it on first century maps.
And in this podunk village, Mary is nothing more than a peasant girl. She's not a citizen of Rome, the occupying force. She had little importance even among her own people. And yet it was to this girl that the angel Gabriel appears, with no warning, no premonition announcing that she was going to give birth to the long awaited messianic king.
I kept asking myself the question, why her? I mean, I'll give you one answer, one kind of generic, non-specific answer to the question of why Mary. It is that Mary was a nobody from nowhere, because the choice of Mary at this one level, it actually tells us more about God than it does Mary, because it actually was her lowly stature, her humility, her earthly nothingness, which in effect made her the perfect candidate for God. Because if you know the story of God, this is the story of God, this is who God almost always chooses.
In fact, Mary understood it. She sang and celebrated as much, shortly after she discovered she was pregnant. Luke records the song she sang, and I'm guessing it's because she sang it for him. Here's what he wrote, Mary breaks forth in song, my soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices and God my Savior, for he is looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.
He has shown strength with his arm, he scattered the proud in the thoughts of their heart, he's brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty. Why did God choose Mary? Because God doesn't look at people the way you and I do.
Unlike man, God looks with favor almost consistently on the lowly. It's consistent in the art of the biblical narrative from beginning to end. Some of you know the story is God always chooses the unlikley, and the lowly he chooses the elderly Abraham and sour to bring forth the chosen people. He chooses Moses, a murderer and a fugitive of the law.
A man who by his own admission was not a good public speaker. He tended to sheep, but somehow he becomes the law giver and the shepherd of all of the people of Israel. He chooses David, the shepherd boy, the scronia son of Jesse to be Israel's great king. And now he chooses a peasant girl from nowhere to bear the Messiah.
Jesus grew up poor. I don't know if you ever reflected on that. He understood the plight of the lowly and the humble. And maybe that's why so much of his ministry is recognized by these teachings.
Things like all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted. That whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant. And that the last one day would indeed be first, and the first would be last. At one level, the entirety of the Christmas story from the choosing of Mary, to the fact that there's no room in the inn for a woman bearing a king.
How about right down to the fact that the first people invited to see this king are night shift shepherds. The entire Christmas story is nothing more at one level than a call for us to humble ourselves too. It is a constant and annual reminder, especially for those of us that live in our swanky communities of Mendom and Chester and Long Valley and Randolph that we are not perhaps all we think we are. To remember, maybe uncomfortably, that God opposes the proud and he gives grace to the humble.
Which led me to my second answer of Lihar, because there were other poor girls in Nazareth at first Christmas season. Why this poor girl, why Mary? Well, as I said, the question got answered before Mary had the chance to ask. If you go back to Luke's research reporting on the encounter between Mary and the messenger angel Gabriel, the message that he gave was this.
The angel went to her and said, Greetings, you who are highly favored. The Lord is with you. I don't know what your faith background is tonight. Some of you depending on your church tradition, you may know this as the Hail Mary or perhaps the avaimaria prayer.
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you. Those words, highly favored in the New Testament, full of grace. They're actually a translation over and over of this one word in the Greek. The word is translated grace.
Mary is full of grace. But what does that actually tell us about Mary? What is she full of and why? What does that word even mean?
We use it so abundantly in our culture, right? We sing about amazing grace. We say grace before we eat a meal. We see somebody who's stylish or elegant and we say that they're graceful.
What does the scriptures mean? What do these prayers mean when we say that she's full of grace? Well, in the scriptures, it can be confusing because the meaning of grace can change depending on the context in which it's used. Adam Hamilton writes that grace is all at once, God's kindness, his love, his care, his work on our behalf, his blessings, his gifts, his goodness, his forgiveness, and his salvation.
But he goes on, it is always more than any one of those things or all of those things. It is everyone and all of them only when they are fully, holy and completely undeserved, when they are purely an unmerited gift. Why Mary? Do you want to understand why Mary was God?
Or why Mary was chosen? It's because she was highly favored by God. She was full of grace because God had chosen her even though she didn't deserve it. As strange as it might be to say, she was full of grace and therefore likely had done nothing to deserve it.
Yet, though she did not deserve the honor, her place in history, as we've seen, Mary is likely the most famous, most honored, most revered woman who has ever lived, even the Koran speaks highly of her. And she did nothing to do it. But she was given the blessing anyway. This is why she's full of grace.
She's overflowing with the unmerited, undeserved. She couldn't repay it if she even wanted to, gift in favor of God. And she would give birth to grace in current. In fact, her womb at first Christmas Eve night was literally full of grace.
Don't you see? Mary was not full of grace because of her piety. She was full of grace because, well, simply because of the privilege she was given. Jesus' life, his message was this message of grace.
He would, and look, grace is an uncomfortable message. If speaking of Mary and saying that she didn't deserve this blessing, if that's uncomfortable, grace is always uncomfortable. Jesus would be crucified because of his message of grace. It is controversial.
It is unsettling. He would have grace on sinners and tax collectors and prostitutes. All the kinds of people that the people at the top of the food chain, right, looked down on to all the people who for all of the centuries had been told that God had no place for them, that he had nothing but disdain and wrath for them. Jesus comes and goes to dinner with them.
And he would one day, with Mary there at the foot of his cross, he would one day take the wrath of God, do it the injustice of sin, he would take it for all of them. And for you and I, why Mary? One word, grace. But this Christmas Eve, I want to expand that.
I want to make it more personal for you. Here's the scripture say for unto you. A son has been born unto you, a son has been given. So let's change the question why you, what did you do to deserve this?
And the answer is the same. Grace, it is the unmerited favor of God. And here's the thing about grace. Grace is much easier received, accepted, and rejoiced over when you really believe you need it.
I think this is why God chooses a lowly in the humble because they get it. They not only know they need it, they want it. They revel in it. This is why grace is so often ignored or worse yet rejected by the rich and the powerful and the elite.
They don't, oftentimes we don't feel we need it. We can stand on our own merits. We're good, hard-working, industrious people. We have all of our deeds and our titles and our accomplishments.
We are, after all this, we proclaim all the time, good people. But friends, the life of Jesus and the cross of Jesus would proclaim something quite different, that all of us, from the first to the last, from the best to the worst, all of us are in need of the same gift that Jesus' own mother was. But it is grace, which brings me to my final reflection on this night of reflection. Why Mary?
Because I believe that God knew that she would accept in her lowly state the gift of grace. You will never reflect on this. You will never receive and enjoy a gift that you don't want or think you need. Gifts that are not wanted or needed go unreceived and unappreciated.
Husbands, wives, hopefully none of you tomorrow under the tree will receive from your significant other, a gym membership for Christmas. That gift, if not believed to be needed or wanted, is not only unappreciated, right? It could be perceived as insulting. I had a friend that did this once.
It didn't go well. This is the same way with the gift of grace. That morning some 2,000 years ago when Grace showed up on the doorstep of Mary in the form of an angel, that young girl had a very real choice about what to do with this message. How to respond to the gift of grace.
And tonight, some 2,000 years later, so still do we. This is the choice of every Christmas. See, here's the thing about being filled with grace. Mary was full of grace because Mary was willing to empty herself of, well, of herself, to let go of her plans and her dreams and her hopes and her ways and her ideas.
She traded her ways for God's grace. This Christmas, like that first Christmas, don't you understand? You can't be full of grace if you're full of yourself because he's still doing what Mary said he would do. He's still bringing down the powerful.
He's still lifting up the lowly. He's still filling up the hungry with good things and he's still sending the old two full away empty. See, here's the thing about grace. Grace is free.
It's just not cheap. Mary understood that even before she would see the price her son would pay so that you and I might be filled with grace. She understood the price of emptying herself in order to be filled with grace and in the face of the cost. This teenage girl with more bravery than your pastor said, yes.
I want to leave you with one last, hopefully lasting image of Mary. You see, the real Mary was very different than you think. The real Mary was a dangerous young woman. Her yes made her that way.
One author put it like this, he goes, if nice means meek and mild and mine your own business, then Mary was not nice. Instead of mining her own business, Mary was mining herids and Caesar Augustus. And most of us don't see Mary this way. If you're from a Catholic background, you might see Mary as not only nice but perfect.
If you're from a Protestant background, you've grown up with Mary as kind of the peaceful, stoic presence there at the meenger, the cattle are lowing, no crying does Jesus make. You know what you think she looks like, right? You've seen her face on Christmas cards and Christian art. And she's almost every single time.
You never see her jaw set firmly. She's often seen as meek and mild. And for some reason, I haven't figured this one out yet. Maybe you could email me and let me know.
She's always draped in Carolina blue. Go to our heels. But this is the Mary of art and major sets. Mary would come to know very personally that grace is free but it is not cheap.
Maybe the biggest surprise, and maybe you've never seen it this way, but perhaps the biggest surprise of the Christmas story is that Mary even consented to it. Luke says when Gabriel came, she was troubled by the news. She even doubted it. Of course she did.
The angel shows up and says, good news, you're going to be an unwed mother in first century Israel. And by the way, she's betrothed to Joseph, which would make her assume to be an adulterous. Her situation had Joseph not consented to it, was going to result in her being stoned to death in the public square. And in the face of it all, according to Luke, who I believe must have gotten it from Mary, she responded to that angel, I am the Lord's servant.
Mary answered, may your word to me be fulfilled. And then the angel left her. May it be so. Can you imagine?
May it be so. And not just one time. Do you need to re-imagine this? Not just one time she would spend her life declaring a very dangerous message.
Mary is a teenage girl. She's a woman of profound faith willing to announce, think this through, to the most powerful of her day, the kings and the rulers that their days are now numbered. There was a new king coming and, well, as she must have said, I'm his mom. The gospel she was birthing and bringing forth was not the only gospel in town that first Christmas.
She was presenting a rival gospel, if you will. Nazareth, like all of Israel, was under the brutal dictatorship of Rome and Augustus Caesar. Oh, Augustus Caesar, by the way, he had a little nickname. He insisted on being called that first Christmas.
Caesar Augustus, he declared of himself the son of God. Heck, on the streets where Jesus was born, they traded a coin. And written on that coin is his image with the words, divi-fil-ius, son of God. On the backside was the supposed comet which came during the day, proclaiming the day he was born.
And when he seized power, he proclaimed the pucks of Romana to wherever he conquered, the peace of Rome. And because he bought his power by his military might, he was seen and declared to be the Savior. The rise of Augustus' power was proclaimed throughout Rome in all of its territories as the good news of Rome, the gospel of Rome. Don't miss, it is non-accidental, the four words that express the gospel of the Roman Empire, the exact same four words the angel uses to express the gospel about Jesus.
The gospel they announced to Mary into the shepherds. To Mary, Gabriel says, the Holy Spirit will come on you in the power of the Most High will overshadow you, so the Holy One to be born will be called the son of God. You're bearing the son of God. Nine months later, Jesus is born, angels appear to shepherds near Bethlehem, and the same terms are used about Jesus that indicate his birth is going to be a massive problem for those in charge.
Do not be afraid, and maybe this is why they were afraid. They got the message in ways you and I don't. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all people because today in the town of David, a Savior has been born to you. He is the Messiah, the Lord, suddenly a great company of the heavenly host, a period with an angel praising God and saying, glory to God on the highest heaven and on earth, peace to those on whom his favor rests.
Mary has a dangerous message. It was dangerous for her to proclaim, and it made her dangerous to everyone in charge everywhere, from Caesar's palace in Rome to the high priest's altar in the temple. She proclaimed it to everyone everywhere. This is why her thoughts were in the gospel.
She gave them to Luke this way. Those four words, son of God, Savior, good news and peace, no longer according to Mary would apply to Caesar but to her son. Caesar Augustus was not Lord, Jesus of Nazareth was. And every time and every day she did it, she consented again.
She said yes again to grace, and she was constantly reminded that while it's free, it is not cheap. The story of Christmas is that Mary and Joseph actually had a plan for their lives, but God had a purpose for them. And the good news is actually this, that purpose is you. May it be.
Why Mary? Because Mary said yes to grace. Christmas Eve, some two thousand years later, the same gift is extended to you tonight. Why you?
What did you do to deserve it? Well you did the same thing, it turns out Mary did nothing, nothing. It's grace. It's a gift.
It's free. The question that lingers this Christmas Eve is will you give the same answer? This Christmas, after all of the weeks of pondering and wandering, will you like Mary look in wonder at the gift of a king in a manger? And like Mary, decide that no matter what it might cost.
No matter what plan you might have to lay down for his purposes, this Christmas, would you be willing this Christmas to let go of all of yourself justification, all of your best efforts to please God and earn your way to them, all of your titles and your trophies and your treasures, all of the things that you believe give you purpose and importance and identity and all of the pride that comes with them? This Christmas, would you drop them at the side of the manger and say yes to the incarnate gift of grace. Land, Son of Man, sent to us upon this land, divinity with us, On a virgin, virgin birth, prophecy fulfilled, Traited throne, form angel old, glory come to earth, Hallelujah, it's this, the Savior of the earth, And the angels join in Christ's heart. It's interesting the kingdom of the Caesars has ended a long time ago and a lot of other kingdoms have come and gone.
His message is still very dangerous, it's dangerous to another kingdom, it's dangerous to my kingdom because I have to decide, do I accept the gift of grace or do I remain the king of my own life? I'd encourage you if you're not following to Jesus. In fact, we're going to start a new series here in January, starting the first Sunday of January, we're going to move forward from the cradle and we're going to arrive at the Cross on Good Friday together and we're going to look at why Jesus was the most revolutionary figure in the history of the world. That is, gospel is not what most people believe it to be, his message is very radical and different.
If this interests you, I encourage you to join us on that journey. But tonight, we end the way we do every Christmas Eve. We end with Silent Night. So I'm going to ask you to stand and I'm going to light a candle up here and I'll begin to move my way through and some of my friends will come from the back and they'll make their way through.
Together we are going to light the room up with the light of Christ. And I hope it is a reflection of the power that would be available in our communities. The 96,000 people imagine if the people of light would be the light of God, not just on Christmas Eve in a room, but every day on the street. I'm going to have to treasure and reflect on that one as we sing together.