2025-12-08
Brooke Strong
Sermon Text...
I have a confession to make. As much as I love the audacity of Mary in the story of the annunciation, I have a really hard time believing that things happened quite as easily as the gospel of Luke reports them.
I mean really . . . do you REALLY, in your heart of hearts, believe that an angel appears to a 14-year-old girl, tells her that, although she is just a virgin, she is going to become pregnant and she just says, “oh, okay.” Do you really think that in a culture where a woman could be stoned to death for having a child out of wedlock, Mary will just say, “Let it be.”
Remember, before we get to those words of acceptance, we are told that Mary was “perplexed.” My guess is that there is a whole lot of stuff that gets rolled up in that tiny word, perplexed. I’m guessing that Mary struggled mightily with the angel . . . at least initially . . . as she tried to imagine what this winged messenger was asking of her.
Just as she is beginning to plot out her young life, beginning to figure out her future with Joseph, along comes the Divine One into her life and throws her a massive curve ball: she is to bear God’s son. Think about that for just a second . . . can you fathom being a young teen having to tell your father that you are pregnant?
And, in her small town – where everyone knows everything about every single person, it wasn’t just her father. She was about to disappoint ev-er-y-one! So what the bible wraps up in that little word perplexed is probably quite a bit more than just a momentary lapse of confusion. My guess is that Mary was downright troubled.
And then there is phrase with which the angel greets Mary: “favored one.” We can imagine her thinking, “Thanks, but don’t do me any “favors” please! Seriously! How is it a favor to turn one’s life upside down with the news of an unexplainable pregnancy?
But, it seems that Mary, if nothing else, was a good Jewish girl who knew her bible stories. She knew that when God came looking for Moses, Moses claimed a stuttering problem and tried to duck the request. Jonah sailed off in the opposite direction of where God sent him. Abraham and Sarah laughed. But, unlike her biblical ancestors, Mary didn’t try to wiggle out of things. She accepted the words of the angel as a fait accompli.
Because Mary learned her lesson from all of them: when God comes calling, don’t fight it. You may be rocked by being called favored one. You may be perplexed. But there is no use in arguing with God. Not if you want peace.
And so she says, “Let it be. Let it be with me according to your word.” Or, more likely, she managed to squeak out a weak, resigned, assent: “OK.”
And with that, Mary finds deep and abiding peace. She is able to sing. She is not only no longer afraid, she is now fearless, for she realizes that what she will do will happen by God’s power, not by her own. She is ready to change the world! She begins to sing:
“God has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly. God has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty.” She is turning the world on its ear! There is no stopping her now!
So what can we learn from this young peasant girl? Could it be that we, too, can find peace if we simply trust God? Can we move from fear to fearlessness if we accept that God views us a favored ones and is calling us to change the world?
That is what my friend, Margaret, did. I’ve told you a bit about Margaret before. Called by God to do amazing things, Margaret admitted to being a bit perplexed when she was quite young, but quickly accepted that she could do more than she imagined. Born legally blind in 1914, she could see a tiny bit with one eye and so was determined to learn. And learn she did, graduating from Lincoln West High School in 1932 and from Oberlin College in 1936.
When Case Western Reserve University told her she could not make it in their social work program because of her disability, she refused to accept such limitation and instead earned her master’s degree in 1951 from the University of Chicago and went on to work for 27 years as a social worker at Metro, including the last four when she was rapidly losing her hearing. Fearless!
When I met Margaret in 2001, she was 87 years old, completely deaf and legally blind. Yet she was still working to change the world, faithfully writing letters to congress-people on a variety of justice topics, especially ones seeking environmental justice.
And she was at peace. Margaret was the most serene person I have ever known. Not because her life was serene, but because she accepted God’s call for her and lived it to the fullest, very much as Mary did.
In 2006, at the age of 92, Margaret moved to Florida to be near family, flying on a plane when she could neither see nor hear what was happening. Fearless! When I last visited with her in March, 2011, just weeks before she died at the age of 96, Margaret enthusiastically told me all about the letter-writing campaign in which she was engaged on behalf of the Southwest Florida Conservancy.
Margaret, like Mary, is an example for all of us of what we can do, what we can overcome and how we can find great peace, if we simply put our trust in God and surrender our need for control of our lives.
This Advent season, as we await the Prince of Peace, I pray we will each spend some time perplexed by what God calls us to do, but that ultimately we will put our trust in God and let it be. May it be so. Amen.