“For Whom Do We Hope?”
Dec. 23, based on Micah 5:2-5a and Luke 1:38-45
Christians have not usually worried about the dating of Micah 5, about whether it
was written by the eighth century prophet Micah or by one of his successors. That’s
something about which scholars worry. Christians know that this text was contained in
the Scriptures of the Jews, it was considered to be a Messianic promise, and it points to a
man who was born in Bethlehem, and who would become a great and just leader.
Christians know to whom this refers.
Try to imagine yourself living in those days as a Gentile godfearer, going to
synagogue and listening to the Scriptures of the Jews being read and preached upon in
Greek, your language. You and other godfearers have heard many prophetic texts and
many sermons. Now you hear of “one who is to rule in Israel, whose origin is from of
old, from ancient days” (Mic 5:2). You would ask yourself, who is this figure? You
might try to match it up with Isaiah’s prophecies of the spirit-endowed shoot of Jesse
who will rule in righteousness, or the son who will rule in justice and enlighten the
Gentiles (Isa 11:1, 4; 9:1-2, 6-7), or Jeremiah’s “righteous Branch” who will “deal
wisely” (Jer 23:5). You might also be asking what does it mean that his “origin is from of
old”?
Now try to imagine that someone comes to your synagogue and says he (or she)
knows who this figure is, and that “from of old” means that he lived in heaven before he
came to earth. The visitor goes on to say this person from Bethlehem, this promised ruler,
is Jesus of Nazareth, who was put to death by the Romans, but who rose from the dead,
appeared to his disciples, and ascended to rule with God the Father on high. The visitor
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says Jesus is the Messiah, and that he will fulfill the whole promise found in the
prophet’s text: that “he shall stand and feed his flock in the strength of the LORD . . . .
And he shall be the one of peace” (5:4-5).
The one of peace! That certainly sounds like the greatest promises of Isaiah and
Jeremiah, only now the Messiah has a name. You would want to hear more; you would
think about it and pray about it, and you would make a decision. There could hardly be
any neutrality on the question of accepting or rejecting a claim about the Messiah having
come.
I haven’t said what texts the synagogue visitor would have with him or her. And I
use the latter expression not to be politically correct but because many of the evangelists
were women, such as Pheobe, Priscilla, Chloe, Mary Magdalene, Susannah (Acts 8:2-3),
and Junia who is called an apostle (Rom 16:7). The visitor would not have the whole
New Testament, which had not been collected yet, but might have some of the letters of
Paul, and might have one or two gospels. In any case, there is no doubt that this visitor
would have stimulated great conversation in the synagogue, both among Jews and
Gentiles, and in many synagogues there would have been suppression of the conversation
by the authorities, who are trying to exclude the Jesus followers from stirring things up in
their turf. Some synagogues, however, would have remained open to the conversation,
and a few probably swung over to belief in Jesus as Messiah, which would make them
very unpopular with the authorities in Jerusalem.
If the visitor is coming to your synagogue after the year 90 A.D., he or she might
have possessed a copy of the Gospel of Luke, or maybe had heard the Gospel read aloud.
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Besides the major outlines of the Jesus story, Luke contains a large number of parables
and stories. The story we heard today tells of a pregnant Mary visiting her older
kinswoman, Elizabeth, who is pregnant with the child who will grow up to become John
the Baptizer. When Mary’s voice is heard in the house, the baby John leaps in Elizabeth’s
womb. Luke says that Elizabeth is “filled with the Holy Spirit” and blesses Mary and
“the fruit of [her] womb” (1:41-42). Elizabeth has an insight into the destined importance
of their two offspring, either at that moment or already beforehand, since her husband
Zechariah had also been visited by Gabriel, and told that his wife would bear a boy who
would become great, and would be filled with the Holy Spirit (1:11-19). Prophets were
believed to be endowed with the Holy Spirit, so Elizabeth is temporarily assuming a
prophetic role, while John will carry that role for many years.
It is delightful that John’s first prophetic action is to leap with joy, in utero! It also
shows that the Gospel, for Luke, is not a sorrowful affair, but mainly something about
which we should jump for joy. Luke, probably more than the other gospels, shows how
widespread were the Messianic hopes, and also the range of different hopes that people
had. Speaking of the crowd in Jericho, he says “they supposed that the kingdom of God
was to appear immediately” (19:11). Some wanted a nationalistic Messiah, and so they
were deeply offended when Jesus spoke about Elisha’s time, when the only person
healed was a Syrian (4:24-30). But Jesus challenged that whole idea, saying “How can
they say that the Messiah is David’s son?” (Luke 20:41).
So, what kind of Messiah do you look for? For whom do you hope? What kind of
Messiah is in your life now? Does the Messiah teach you, and change your life?
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Are you accepting, as Mary was? For the first verse in our Gospel reading today
was the last verse from what precedes the Mary and Elizabeth story: the story of Mary
being visited by Gabriel. This is where Mary makes that great statement of acceptance,
“Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word” (Luke
1:38). This is probably the most important thing Mary says at any place in our records.
She goes on to praise God in that hymn-like passage we call the Magnificat, which has a
formal and literary structure to it. But this statement “let it be with me according to your
word,” has rightly been made very prominent in interpretations of Mary. It’s a way of
saying “your will be done.”
What happens when we tell God “your will be done”? I think it reorganizes our
mind and heart. It signals willing cooperation on our part, and that means the spiritual
impulses we receive from God will be well integrated with our person. There will
presumably be less conflict between our impulses and our spiritual input. We cease to
feel that the will of God is alien to us, but begin to realize that it takes our personality
into consideration, and moves us in directions that are healthy and creative. God does not
want to distort our personality or suppress our creative thinking. Really aligning with the
will of God also means being true to ourselves, our deeper selves.
Let me try to draw together the main points I have discerned in these texts. You
may have noticed that my sermons are text-driven. We heard from the prophet Micah of
one who would come from Bethlehem, and who would rule with justice and peace. We
tried to imagine how that would sound to you if you were hearing it in the first century,
and also hearing that this prophecy had been fulfilled in the person of Jesus of Nazareth,
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and that this Jesus had sent his Spirit into the world, to be received by all who willed. We
heard of the mothers of Jesus and John meeting, and of John leaping in Elizabeth’s
womb. We could pause for a moment and think of the love of these two mothers, after
their sons are born, and of the mothers’ difficulties in understanding their very
determined sons, who must be about their spiritual Father’s business. It must have been
hard for Mary to understand why her son wandered off to talk with the scribes and
Pharisees when he was only twelve years old. Even remembering that he was a son of
promise might not have made it any easier for her to really understand him at times.
But right at the beginning, she accepted God’s will: “let it be with me according to
your word,” and I think this probably kept her on a good spiritual path, even through the
difficulties she would have to endure. Alignment with God’s will is the way to go
through all experiences, even when they seem unfair or unnecessary. For the journey
was not just from Bethlehem to Golgotha, it was also from there to the resurrection,
to the appearances to believers, the Ascension, the sending of the Spirit, and his
current rule on high, his patient waiting for this world to actually absorb his message,
for we have barely begun to absorb it! We have barely heard him at all. We have
often make mental prisons out of his truth, going right against the spirit of his
teachings. We have created arrogant priesthoods, cruel theologies. But he said “be of
good cheer . . . be not afraid . . . you trust me, trust also my Father, who knows how
to give you what is good.” So we should trust that God will be fair, like a good
parent, and kind, like Jesus. It is important to think about God that way.