Small Faith, Open Hands

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[0:00] So next up is our sermon, and I'm going to invite you to turn in your bulletin. We have our reading is from Luke chapter 1. I'm going to start at verse 26 and clear my workspace here. All right. Luke 1, 26 through 38, and a few words of introduction before we begin. This is Advent week four. Again, Advent is this time where we anticipate the coming of Jesus Christ into this world. Today, it's the coming of Jesus in micro form, really, as Mary is announced to Mary that Jesus is on the way. So the story just keeps unfolding in Advent, that Jesus is coming into the world in one way or the other. And the first response, the first human response to Jesus is faith and willingness to be a part of God's redemptive plan. So let's keep that in mind as we go to our reading. Our reading is Luke 1, 26. Luke 1, 26 through 38.

[1:00] In the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph of the house of David. The virgin's name was Mary. And he came to her and said, greetings favored one. The Lord is with you. But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. The angel said to her, do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found. Favor with God. And now you will conceive in your womb and bear a son and you will name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the son of the most high. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever and of his kingdom. There will be no end.

[1:49] Mary said to the angel, how can this be since I am a virgin? The angel said to her, the Holy Spirit will come upon you. And the power of the most high will overshadow you. Therefore, the child to be born will be holy. He will be called son of God. And now your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son. And this is the sixth month for her who is said to be barren. For nothing will be impossible with God. Then Mary said, here am I the servant of the Lord. Let it be with me according to your word. Then the angel departed from her. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for your word. And we ask that you add your blessing to it in Jesus name. Amen.

[2:38] Well, I want to draw your attention to something and it's not something that we read. But if you look at it, you'll see, and it might be homework for you for later is to look at verses five through 25 of this exact same chapter. Luke chapter one, verses five through 25. Um, and that is a very parallel, somewhat parallel story of an angel coming to somebody else and announcing the birth of somebody else. It's the foretelling of the birth of John the Baptist and, and the angel comes and appears to his father in this case, a man named Zechariah. And here's how these stories are similar. There's some sort of parallelism between these two announcements, annunciation narratives, right? And here's how they're, they're similar. An angel appears to John the Baptist. An angel appears to Zechariah. The husband of Elizabeth, who is Mary's relative. The angel tells how Elizabeth will have a son. Just like how the angel tells Mary. And a name is given for this son. John. In this case, the name is John. And there is a prophecy about the kind of life and ministry that John will have. So, so far so good. We have something very similar happening in both stories. But as you may guess, they are also different in important ways because they're different children.

[3:56] But as you may guess, they're also different in important ways because they're different children. But as you may guess, they're also different in important ways because they're different children. There's different purposes that God has in this. They're both miraculous, but in different ways. For example, Elizabeth is advanced in years, beyond the age of having children. So this miracle is a lot like Abram and Sarah. Like they were not able to have children, but God enabled them miraculously to have a son. And the same is true with Zechariah and Elizabeth. Mary is able to have children, but there's no biological father. So that's a difference there, right? The sons are prophesied to do different things. Similar, but different things. John is to prepare the way and call people back to God. But Jesus, it says, will be given the throne of his ancestor, King David. So in essence, the angel is saying, this one will be the Messiah. He will be the anointed one, right? The one that people have been waiting for. So there's a lot of hope and a lot of expectation tied up in this child. And as we see Mary is perplexed at the angel showing up later in life. She's perplexed and ponderous about all these things. And so Mary is coming to grips with the gravity of what's happening here.

[5:09] So both stories have the person involved questioning the prophecy. And that's a similarity. But the the motivation for the questions are different. And we're going to spend our time today actually looking at the different motivations for the questions. If you were. And we haven't read it, but if you remember the story, Zechariah doesn't believe that this can happen. So his question sort of comes out of disbelief like this is impossible. Just he's thinking in terms of human biology. He's like, this cannot happen. We've we've wanted children all our lives. We've prayed for them. We never got them. Now we're past the age of ever reasonably ever having a child. And now you're telling me we're going to have a child. I don't believe that. I don't think that's possible. Now we know with Abram and Sarah, with Hannah, you know, beautiful story from 1 Samuel, that God can make these things happen. And God does make these things happen in the life of some of his people. Right.

[6:13] So God can do it and God does do it. And there's a bit of a if you want to use the word punishment, I think that's a little too strong. It's not a punishment, but there's a. Sort of a reminder for Zechariah that he needed to have more faith in this moment. And so the angel tells him, because you did not believe me when I told you that this was going to happen, you will not be able to speak until your son is born. And I don't know if that solved a lot of problems for Zechariah or created a lot of problems for Zechariah or for the people around him. But yet so that was his reminder, his inability to speak for nine months. Was this a good thing? And so Zechariah gets this reminder that God has power. God is willing, willing and able to do what God wants to do. And we're not the ones that really should say to God, can you really do that? I don't think you can do that. That's not our place.

[7:09] Now, Mary has her own question, and I want to draw attention to that. I want to spend some time on that. Her question is this. How can this be? Since I have never been with a man. Is that. The literal translation is I have never been with a man. And so this is where we need to slow down a little bit and look at this question and the implications of this question. First, we should say that this is where we understand the concept of the virgin birth in Luke's gospel. Now, Matthew's gospel mentions it, but it gives it very little space, just a sentence or so. But in Luke's gospel, it's repeated several times in various ways that Mary was a virgin. We should say that Mary was a virgin when Jesus was born. And the virgin birth and the virgin conception is important for us. We should say at least that this also should be impossible for God, right? Just like Abram and Sarah, Zechariah and Elizabeth, this is also a miracle of birth. It's a different kind of miracle, but yet it's a miracle of birth. But in no way should this be impossible for God, just on the logic of it. God, if God can do anything, if God can create the universe with his own will, then I can do anything. the word, right? Then he can do this. This is within his ability, right? And also we should

[8:30] say that the idea of the virgin conception and the virgin birth work towards our theology of the incarnation, which is a super important theology for us. It's so deep. It has so many layers. It has so many implications. We could actually have, now I gave myself an idea, we could have a seven-part sermon series just on the incarnation, and maybe we will in the new year, we'll see. But there's just so much detail going into this idea of the incarnation that Jesus being fully human and fully God at the same time means that his parentage needs to be both divine and human. So that kind of has its own internal logic too. But we want to focus again on Mary's question. Her question is, how can this be? How can this be since I have never been with a man? And the question as we read the language, even if you read it in the original language, in this context is not like Zechariah. It's not like her saying, this is impossible. She's not saying how, because that's impossible. I don't believe it. She's actually thinks it's possible, just that it hadn't happened yet, right? The question is more one of how, and how means in what way, in what manner will this happen? How could this happen in a way that I can't see yet?

[9:46] Could you explain the methods? Can you explain? The way in which this will happen. And then the angel does. The angel obliges us. Well, this is how it will happen. And just so you know, this is what will happen. This is how it will happen. And her thinking is, I can't bear this child. The child's not here yet. There's no child to bear. But her willingness is actually apparent well before she agrees to do what God plans to do. She's like, I'm in, but I don't have this child yet. How is that going to, how's this going to work? She had already thought to herself, oh, I could give this child. I could give this child, but I don't have one yet. I don't have a child to give yet. How is this going to happen? Well, the angel says this, this will happen in this way. So this is the occasion then for, for Gabriel to explain the how that the, and that the child is different and that it will have a human mother and a divine father. And I think this is why Mary is the right person to be the mother. This is why there's two reasons why Mary is the right person. I mean, think of all the people in the world that God could have chosen. And actually the list gets narrower a little bit because this needed to be somebody who was descended biologically from King David and Mary checks

[11:04] off that box, but really it needed to be somebody both who believed that this could happen and also was willing to be a part of God's plan to make it happen. So this is the most moving of all the verses in, in this section of scripture is verse 38. And I'll read it again. It goes like this. Here am I the servant of the Lord. Let it be with me according to your word. And this is a statement of faith, but it's also a statement of agreement that she wants to be part of God's plan. It's a statement of availability. I am available to God and I am available to God's plan for me. And so she was the right person to be the mother of Jesus. She had faith and she was willing, she was open and available. And honestly, I've preached on this passage probably about 10 times, honestly, because it kind of comes up every, almost every Advent, it kind of alternates. And I've often thought that the main point of this passage is her willingness and it is her availability. It is so important, but this year it has come to the front that this, this is so much also a passage about faith, about believing God, that God can do what God will say. And I think 2020, like we're in 2020 and I want, I really want a God who can save us.

[12:35] I really want a God who can do something miraculous. I really want that this year. And that's also the big difference between her and Zechariah. He doesn't believe this can happen. And there's some consequences for that. Mary does believe that this can happen. She just wants to, she also wants to understand how it will happen. And there's huge consequences for that too. Very good consequences. Also very challenging consequences. As Pastor Victoria said, she had to no doubt endure a lot of social trouble because of all of this. There's no doubt. We could get into that some other time.

[13:10] So I'm seeing now that Advent and Christmas are really a lot about faith. It's about faith this year. So we're talking about the incarnation. You can talk about Jesus being born in a lowly way, the manger, the stable. You could talk about angels and wise men and presence, and those are all super important things. But you know what happens when people meet Jesus?

[13:34] Even when Mary meets Jesus in this very tiny moment, when people meet Jesus, they find faith. When people meet Jesus, they find faith. And if you're taking notes and you want to write something down, write that one down.

[13:51] And if you're taking notes and you want to write something down, write that one down. The shepherds meet Jesus, then they decide to go and tell everyone they can about what they see and hear the night that Jesus is born. Every time in the gospels when people bump into Jesus, they're presented with an opportunity to believe. There's always this opportunity to believe in what he's doing because Jesus is always doing something that merits people believing in him. And that it's hard to watch sometimes because people, I've really faced with a sharp choice then, is that you can't be apathetic in the face of Jesus. You either believe, you're like, wow, or you're like, this is going to hurt too much of what I care about, so I'm not going to believe. It's almost like confirmation bias or some of those other cognitive biases that we have. I can't believe in Jesus right now because it would cost me too much. So I'm not going to believe. And we let our circumstances dictate our belief rather than the person of Jesus Christ and who he reveals himself to be to engender faith. And we let our circumstances dictate our belief rather than the person of Jesus Christ and who he reveals himself to be to engender faith within us and to allow that to happen.

[14:53] And I've been wondering if we've lost sight of this, of this aspect of faith. And we could actually have a whole sermon series on faith because faith is a tough subject. Sometimes we have it and sometimes we don't. Sometimes we're like Mary, we believe God can do anything. And sometimes we're like Zechariah and we're not so sure. We're skeptical. We don't think God cares. We don't think he's there. We don't think he can do amazing things. We think, maybe the time for amazing things is over and it was some other part of history, but not the present.

[15:25] There's a lot of things that can come and chip away at our faith. And by the way, I do think more often than not, we are like Zechariah. We're a little skeptical. We're a little, we're not sure that the miraculous could ever actually appear for us. And I want to say, and I want you to hear this very clearly. God does not give up on Zechariah. He doesn't give up on Zechariah. Or he does not give up on Zechariah's. He doesn't give up on people like us, like him, who is like us.

[15:56] He keeps his promises to Zechariah. The son is still born, but Zechariah is put into a place of having to listen for a season, which is a good way to grow your faith is to be in a space of listening. Right.

[16:10] And I think it's possible that we may only have a little bit of faith. Some of us, some have a lot, some have a little, some are in between. I'm your pastor. I'll be honest with you. There are times when my faith is thinner and there's times when my faith is more full. And that's just the natural ebb and flow of life in faith. It's the natural flow of life. And I'm going to talk a little bit later about what we can do when that faith is thin or small. I'm going to talk about that in just a minute.

[16:42] But even if we have even a tiny little, little bit of faith, God does not write us out of the story. We don't get to get to the details altogether. God doesn't give up on us. God goes searching for the one lost sheep and he leaves the ninety nine behind. God cares even if we have a small amount of faith. He wants us to meet Jesus again.

[17:02] I've told you this story before, but some of you haven't heard it or maybe you want to hear it again, is when I was in seminary studying to be a pastor, I had to spend a semester going to a hospital as a chaplain in training so I could learn bedside manner. You know, you could go into a hospital room and not be sick. be rude, but just be nice and supportive and, and just learn that, you know, people in a vulnerable place in their life just need a lot of prayer, a lot of comforting, a lot of presence. And so, um, I, I was learning from a supervisor on how to kind of how to be a chaplain, how to work in the hospital. And I was sent into the room of a man who had been in a terrible accident. A house had fallen off its foundation. He was working under it and had crushed him. And he was in the end, he was going to be okay, but his recovery was going to be like almost a year long. And he was in the hospital and he had all sorts of problems in internal, external, you name it. And, um, I didn't know how to pray because he was in such sort of a mangled, a mangled state. And I didn't want to pray that God would give him perfect healing right in that moment. Cause I didn't I didn't want to pray for him. I didn't want to pray for him. I didn't want to pray for him.

[18:14] I didn't want to get his hopes up. I didn't want to be unrealistic. And part of the lessons was to go back to your supervisor and say, this is what I experienced today. And this is what I learned. Pardon me.

[18:27] Okay. So I went back to my supervisor and I said, I felt like I needed to pull back a little bit when it came time to pray. Because I didn't want to hurt his feelings by praying for something that wasn't going to happen. Then he'd be disappointed. And he said, what kind of God do you believe in?

[18:47] I said, well, gosh, now that you ask me that, I'm not sure. Tell me more. He said, don't you think God could heal him? I like, I guess he could. Absolutely. He could. He said, you pray for healing. You pray in confidence that God could do something. It may not happen right away. You don't have to promise a timeline, but you can certainly pray that God would do something miraculous in this man's life. And so I said, exactly. That's the kind of God we need to believe in. And the next time I went back and I prayed with him and I even told him some of this. I said, look, I want to pray for you, but I don't want to pray in a way that's unrealistic. But I also want to pray in a way that trusts that God can do amazing things. So let's pray together. And I think he noticed the difference as a patient in the hospital. He opened up after that and he had to wait. And I left after a while. My semester was over. He was still in the hospital. And I, to tell the truth, I don't know the rest of the story. But I, you know, he was, I was told that he was going to pray. He was going to make a full recovery in time. And I, so I will, I'll hope that he did. And I'll trust that God gave it.

[19:49] So we, that's the question maybe we need to ask ourselves. What kind of God do you believe in? Do you believe in the God who can make John the Baptist from an old couple? Do you believe in the God who can make Jesus from a virgin? We have to believe that. And like I said, it's not that, logically, it's not that hard. God can do these other things, which are amazing. He can do this.

[20:15] Now, I mentioned that we want to ask ourselves, what should we do if we find our faith in a thin place? If you find your faith is shrinking. And I, you know, 2020 is a year to test many things. And it could be to test, it could have tested your faith. And it could have worn away at your faith. There's no doubt about it in my mind. But I think, and if you, and listen, I'm talking directly to you right now.

[20:43] If your faith has shrunk this year, and hear me, you need to do something about it right away. Don't put it off. Don't save it for another day. Don't say, oh, okay, it'll get better. Address it today. Your God wants you to be in relation with him. Your God even wants to hear that you don't have faith in this moment. You know how they say, help me believe, help my unbelief, right?

[21:10] You need to do something. And the first thing I want you to do, and I'm going to bring up the chat log. Now I'm going to ask Yanni to bring up the chat log. Is I want you to remember a time when God was real to you in ways that were incredibly deep. If those times exist, and I hope they do, right?

[21:30] When was God real to you? When was God very present for you? When was it that you felt close to God? And I'm going to ask you to put a note in the chat log now. It could be a three-word phrase. It could be a single word. It could be a short sentence. Where were you? When were you? What did you feel? When were you close to God? Remember that time. And I'm asking you to share it in the log right now so that you can encourage your brothers and sisters. And that's part of how we grow our faith, too, is being in community. So I'm going to ask you, go ahead. Put it in the log right now. When were you close to God? What was that like? Where were you? Tell us just a little bit about it. It doesn't have to be long. I'm going to get my iPod. So I can read these things. I can't read them from a distance.

[22:23] I wish I didn't have to wear glasses, but I do. All right. Let's see. Okay. All the Godly Play kids are online now. That's good. Let's see. All right. Okay. Let's see. I think I got a text message, too. Let's see.

[22:44] It was a picture. Let's see here. Okay. All right. Somebody put something in the log so we know it's working. How's that? I'm going to type the word test. Test. Boink. There we go. Okay. I think some stuff is coming in. Let's see.

[23:08] Just me. There we go. Okay. Something just came in. All right. So Ted says, better understanding God's love for us while navigating a relationship this year. Good, Ted. Thank you. Yeah. Relationships can increase our understanding of God. Good. Craig says, in the Gambia, the hospital room where God miraculously healed a child I'd been praying for for many weeks. And that's actually from Karen, but under Craig's. Thank you. Thank you, Karen. Wow. God is real. Remember that. Zach at Houseboats in high school. Amen. Andres, freshman year in college. Excellent. There are times in our life where our faith is thin and there are times in our life when our faith is full and there's times in our life where God has really come through to us. And so the first thing I think you should do is if you're in a place where your faith has thinned out a bit is go back in time in your head. And remember those times when God was very real to you. Okay.

[24:17] And there are times when we have strong faith and there are times when our faith is taxed. There's no doubt. But God is constant in his love for us. The next thing you need to do is to tell a friend. Admit it. And some, you know, you could even put that in the log if you want to. Transparency is great in community. Admit it. Admit it. That you have, you could say, you know, I'm having trouble believing. I'm having a hard time connecting to God. I'm having a hard time thinking this is real. That's reality, right? And so that puts a dial on the table so we can just look at it. And a good friend won't try to fix you, right? They'll just listen to you. They'll just support, right? And that, I think that's the space that Zechariah was put into by God. He's like, you're going to listen now. You're going to listen. A few more came in. This is great. Pamela. Pam. Pam, I am waiting on a gurney in a hospital hallway by myself, waiting for a C-section, and God was present for you there. Wow. Praise God. Divya says, during my residency interview, I was half, a half hour late and was so upset, but I prayed. From there on I felt something reassure me and I did very well and I made it. Praise God.

[25:27] Let's see, Craig, this time, is actually from Craig, so many times while living in Liberia and being confronted with the crushing needs all around, knowing we had very little to offer, but God was enough. Thank you, Craig.

[25:39] Michael says, realizing I had attended a cult when in Scotland for three months, I realized the need to reevaluate my own faith. That's really awesome. And God probably led you out of that, so you could probably feel close to God for that. Wow. Yeah, thank you. And Barbara, at camp when God gave me a vision with three signs telling me what to do. Two, don't marry your fiance. Don't continue working in the dance school and go to a Bible school instead. Wow. God gives us vision. God gives us direction. In those moments when we hear and see God at work, we can feel incredibly close to him. See, I felt it. This is great. I have a watch on and my watch buzzes when I get a text message, so I know I don't miss the text messages.

[26:27] Adele felt very close to God during her father's open heart surgery. Thank you, Adele. For sending that in. That's a text message. Good. Okay. And again, if you are in a time right now in your life where you want to just tell your brothers and sisters, but you don't have to, that your faith is stretched a bit right now, you can put that in the log too. We will pray for you. We'll know how to just, we want to listen to you and love you.

[26:57] So here's the great news. Even if your faith is small, you can start with the tiniest amount. Oh, hold on. Oh, thank you. Karen sent me a text message saying, I had missed a text message, or a chat message from Greg after surviving my heart attack six years ago. Praise God, Greg, that God was with you. You felt his presence at that time. Good. Thank you. And thank you, Karen, for alerting me to it.

[27:32] So as I was saying, you can start with a little bit. If you start even with the tiniest amount, that's okay. If you look at Luke 17, five, you can look this up later. The disciples model this good prayer. They say to Jesus, help us to increase our faith. They are in this place where they said, I have a little bit of faith, but I want more faith. And of course, being around Jesus engenders faith. It creates an opportunity for faith. And Jesus's answer to them is a tiny parable. He talks about if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, which is small, very small, you will eventually be able to move mountains. And that's one of the shortest parables we have. All you need is the smallest amount to start. All you need.

[28:21] And that tiny seed will grow into a large tree. There's a, and I'll tell you, last night, Kaya and I went in our backyard. We made a little fire. We had a little metal fire pit that we have. And I was just reminded, like the tiniest amount of friction on the match head starts the match on fire. And that tiny flame starts the kindling on fire. And last night we had wet wood, but we had dry kindling because the kindling came from somewhere else. But the wood had been rained on. But I thought, you know, we're going to do this. So we put all the dry kindling in there. Kaya lit it. And the kindling got so hot that it dried out the wet wood and it overcame the fire. And it became the resistance of that wood that did not want to catch on fire. And we blew, actually had to blow the spirit. You could say we had to blow the spirit onto the kindling. And it got super hot. And then the wood dried out pretty quickly. And everything was on fire. And it was a wonderful fire. And we only had those tiny little marshmallows, you know, the kind that go in your beverage. And so we had these two prongs. And we put five little marshmallows on each prong. And then we roasted all of those. And they were delicious. They were delicious.

[29:31] But the big ones are easier to do. So a little spark starts a big fire. A tiny seed can grow into a large tree. Even a small amount of faith with the prayer that it be increased can grow to move mountains, Jesus says. Listen, I've got a lot of reasons to be like Zechariah. I really do. I'm not going to bore you with a list of all the ways that 2020 is a bad year. You do not need that from me. You have your own list. But there's a lot of reasons also to be like Mary. There really are. If God can do all these things, like make the universe with his word, or come into the world as a human, or make the living or the dead become living by raising them from the dead. And the greatest miracle of all, I think, is to redeem us from our sin and bring us to him in holiness and righteousness, both now and in the end. These are the miracles that God does and will do in our lives. They're all around us. They're all around us. I'm touching wood right now. I'm touching an iPad. God didn't make the iPad. He made this wood. And it's solid. It's there. It's a reflection of his word of creation. All those many years ago, the universe is a reality that exists, and thus God exists. And he's there. The faith I have in him is that he sustains this all in every second.

[30:53] He keeps every electron orbiting every atom in the wood on this pulpit in front of me. That. That. That. That. That. That. even this bad year. He's coming to meet you in Advent. He's coming to meet you in the flesh. He's coming to meet you in the word. He's coming to meet you and your brothers and sisters. And when you meet Jesus, you have this opportunity for faith. And when you meet Jesus, even a small faith can blossom into a great faith. If we remember all the things that God has done for us, all the things that God does for us now. And so my prayer for you, as we get closer to Christmas, is that we meet more and more of Jesus and we grow more and more in faith. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you again for your word.

[32:08] And we pray that you grow our faith in Jesus name. Amen.