Canterbury United Methodist Church New Traditions December 14, 2014 Text: Luke 1: 26-38 Focus: The passage describing Gabriel’s message to Mary shows God’s miraculous way of changing the world through the birth of children. Like the story of the birth of John the Baptist, Jesus’ birth through Mary involves a pregnancy that was not supposed to happen, in an unexpected way, to an unsuspecting person. Function: We have become more focused on how to give than on how to receive. And with the emphasis on giving have come obligation and guilt and dread. Mary’s example of receiving involves giving up control of her life and accepting God’s gift to her. Mary receives this gift with her palms open. Can we learn to receive in the same way? Prayer: Great and gracious God, the joy of Christmas is so close that we can barely stand it. The decorations are up, the menus are planned, and we are in full swing of buying gifts for everyone on our lists. Yet in all the planning and buying and doing, we have allowed our joy and anticipation to be replaced with feelings of obligation and checklists and sometimes even guilt and dread…because we have forgotten how to receive gifts well. Grant us wisdom to understand that giving well first requires that we learn how to receive well. May we learn to receive as Mary did…and let it be with us according to your word. In the name of your son Jesus, who entered the world in a most unexpected way…amen. On Giving and Receiving 1) We were taught early on that it is more blessed to give than to receive a) Children are a great model for receiving gifts….sometimes the box and the wrapping paper get more attention than the present inside. b) At first, gifts are received with innocence and joy…but somewhere along the way, the joy and innocence turns to greed and the focus is on getting more. c) Story of three year old Wilson and the wrapping paper…”I want more, more, MORE!!” d) So we try to shift the focus for our children to the virtues of giving…we teach them that it is better to give than to receive. 1 2) Giving that becomes guilt and obligation a) By the time we become adults, the giving message is in full swing…were you anywhere near the Summit yesterday? b) The idea of having the right gifts, in the right quantities, for everyone that you think should receive a gift for you becomes a task, a thing on a list that you strive to check off… c) And if you behind in checking off your list, this is the time of year when you start to get panicky, and that sense of dread and guilt start building up in the bottom of your stomach… d) I saw this is the blog of one of the national writers I follow just the other day…I haven’t bought one gift yet!! e) Somewhere along the way we have let the joy of giving get replaced by the guilt of buying… 3) Focus on text: Let it be with me, according to your word… a) Familiar story of angel telling Mary that she will become Jesus’ mom b) Shows again that God changes the world through the birth of children c) Pattern of God working through the birth of children to mothers who thought they couldn’t be mothers d) One thing that really stands out to me about this passage of scripture is that God is choosing to act in ways unexpected by the world: i) Mary is poor instead of rich ii) Mary is female in a male-dominated world iii) Mary lives in backwater Nazareth instead of center of the world Jerusalem where the power is e) Second thing is the way that Mary receives the message…she gives us control of her life and says, “Let it be with me according to your word.” f) It makes me think that we need to work on learning how to receive again. 2 4) Receiving as giving up control a) We say that we want to “Follow Jesus, Serve Others.” Seems to me that the act of following means learning how to give up control. b) When Wilson and his brothers were old enough to be in Boy Scouts, we did a lot of backpacking on trails in some beautiful parts of our country. c) Somehow, I always found myself at the very back of the column…backpackers call it the sweep because part of your role back there is to make sure none of the scouts wander off where they shouldn’t along the way. d) If you hike in the sweep, you pretty much give up control…control over where you are going…control over how fast you go…control over what terrain you go over…someone up at the front of the line is making all those decisions for you. e) It seems to me that following and receiving have something important in common…they both involve learning how to give up control, as Mary did with the angel. 5) Holding your gifts in the palms of your hands…. a) I think this message of giving up control in order to follow someone else’s lead is pretty hard for us to hear. b) We want to be in control…we want to get things done…we want to change the outcome of events to what we want it to be…we want our families to have the best Christmas ever….we think we owe it to them…we want our children to be happy…we want, we want, we want. c) All those “we wants” are us imposing our will on someone else…sometimes in love and for good…but sometimes with guilt and obligation and dread. d) I want to ask all of you to focus instead on how you receive this Christmas. e) Think about how you receive…do you receive your gifts and clutch them with your fingers? Or do you receive your gifts with your hands open (like you do in communion) and hold them in the palms of your hands? Do you receive with gratitude? Or with possessiveness? 3 f) Mary was called “theotokos”…the God bearer. We think of her as the mother of God. g) The good news today is that we all carry the image of God within us…the question is how we, like Mary, will carry that image to others. h) Like Mary, may we receive our gifts with open hands and say let it be with us according to your word…. i) Amen and amen. 4