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[0:00] And our reading for the sermon is Luke chapter 1, 26 through 38. Luke 1, 26 through 38. And just a reminder that we're in the third Sunday of Advent. But this is the reading from the fourth Sunday of Advent because next week we're going to have our Christmas pageant and we're not going to be able to have a sermon, sorry. But you come back on Christmas Eve and you will hear a sermon from Victoria.

[0:25] But we're in the middle of Advent or kind of near the tail end of Advent. And remember Advent is from the Latin word advenir. It means to arrive. It's about the coming of Jesus both at the beginning of time and at the end of time. But now we're talking more about when he appears in the world as a baby. And this particular passage is often called the Annunciation, which is just another way of saying the announcement of the birth of Jesus to Mary by the angel Gabriel. And Gabriel appears only three times in Scripture. He appears here. He appears. He appears a little bit before this when he makes an announcement to Mary's cousin Elizabeth. And he also appears in the book of Daniel. That's it. But Gabriel is a messenger angel. And Gabriel is bringing this message, this announcement to Mary.

[1:14] And he's inviting her into God's service in a special way. And I'm going to say invite because as we'll see later, it seems that Mary's consent is important to this story. It seems that it's important that she has to consent to what is being, offered or proposed by God through the angel Gabriel. So let's go to our reading. It's Luke 1, 26 through 38.

[1:37] Verse 26. 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 more than that. 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.

[2:33] Mary said to the angel, How can this be since I'm 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 was said to be barren for nothing will be impossible with God.

[3:05] 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. Father, thank you for your word, and we ask that you add your blessing to it in Jesus name. Amen.

[3:31] Well, first off in this season, I want to give you the traditional greeting of God's good favor. And it goes like this. I want to wish you a very messy Christmas. That's what it says here. It says messy. Would you rather have a merry Christmas or a messy Christmas? Who wants a messy Christmas? No? Yes. Brian, good. Yes. I'd rather have sort of an organized Christmas, but I'm offering you a messy Christmas today, right? Right? Now, why did I say that? Because I think that's what God is saying to the world. He's saying, have a very messy Christmas. I want you to have a messy Christmas. And why? Because this is how Jesus came into the world, right?

[4:13] He could have sort of appeared. Just think about all the different ways that God could have sent Jesus to do the things that Jesus was supposed to do. Jesus could have just appeared like blip or like if you like Star Trek, like the transporter. He could have sort of materialized. He could have walked out of thin air with a bunch of sparkling lights around him or something like that. Or a door could have opened in some building that was like a closet that was empty. And he could have walked out of it, you know, as a full grown person, ready to talk and do all sorts of things. Or he could have appeared magically in front of a whole crowd of people. And then they would have been really oppressed and they would have listened to him. But it doesn't happen that way, does it? He shows up as a baby, right? Why does God choose to do that? That's more complicated. Babies take a long time to grow up and do things. There's a lot of work involved. Babies make a mess. Have you noticed if you have babies? Babies make a mess. And then when they're older, they still make messes, right? They just make different kinds of messes.

[5:08] So he could have been just a normal person, too, that God somehow adopted. So he could have been just some random person that God somehow kind of put his finger on and said, You, you'll be the Messiah. You'll be the Son of God and I'll adopt you into being my son. And actually, because he's a normal person, he's not a normal person. Believe it or not, there's some Christian theologians who believe this. One of them was at my seminary and we weren't really sure about him. We were not sure what he was up to. But he was okay. He's actually a very distant relative of my wife's family. But that's a different story. I think that tells you something. And he was Swedish.

[5:45] Anyways, just kidding. So he could have, Jesus could have been born to some famous or rich people, kind of like the ancient version of the Kardashians. You know, like everybody would be watching. They'd be like, that kid, he's got a bright future. There's the camera's always on him. When he's ready to say something, we're all going to be listening. He could have been born into something like, and like Herod's family. They were a bit like the Kardashians back then. It could have been exciting. A little bit of drama, a little bit of paparazzi around it.

[6:15] No, Jesus was born to a poor family in a poor village. And he was born in a way that we just read about, which was he was born to a virgin, which has its own level of messiness. Okay. So we'll look at it this.

[6:32] First, you think about how he came. We call it the incarnation. The idea that Jesus came into the world being fully God and fully human at the same time. This is a central belief in Christianity. Jesus isn't like half God and half human.

[6:48] He's not one day God and the next day human, kind of like sort of this Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde who kind of changes depending on if the moon is shining or something like that. He was always fully God and always fully human at the same time in a way that we can't quite understand. But that's the incarnation is that God enters flesh for the purpose of having relationship in the world. But when you think about mixing God and man, I think that's a messy mix. Why does God want to mix with man that way? That's a mess. You would think that God wouldn't want to have much to do with humans after the fall.

[7:23] But it's not a bad mixture. It's an amazing. It's an amazing powerful mixture because Jesus is God and man at the same time. That's the incarnation. And so for the incarnation to work, he had to have an actual birth. He couldn't just appear out of nowhere, which meant that Mary needed to actually conceive him. Right?

[7:44] And that part's difficult to understand too. Like how did this happen? The angel says this is going to happen. And Mary says, I don't understand how that's going to happen. I'm confused about what's going to happen. And the scripture doesn't give too much detail other than Gabriel says that God will, in a way, overshadow her. This is the same word group that's used to describe God's presence in the place where God is worshipped. Like the presence of God hovers over or overshadows the tabernacle or the temple or these places where God is reliably found. Right? And so all it really is saying is that God will be in that place. Near her and around her and enveloping her. Right? It's beautiful, actually. But beyond that, there's no more details. But from that interaction, Jesus comes into her womb. It begins to be gestated and eventually is born. So when God sort of overshadows that place in the temple, that becomes that place where God can be interacted with by the people who were coming to the temple or the tabernacle. Right? They could pray. They could listen. They could sense the presence of God near them. They could hear from him. They could have him reach into their lives, too. So there's this beautiful sense that God's presence, which was always sort of hovering over things in the time before Jesus.

[9:16] But this presence, sometimes it would be called the Shekinah or the glory of God. It was still kind of out there and up there. Although you could feel it. But in the incarnation, it became invisible. It became flesh. It became embodied in a human being. And then God's glory came into a human being and walked around. As it says in the first chapter of John, the word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. Right? And we've seen his glory. Right? So that's that. That's how God kind of changed. And so it's messy. We're wishing you a messy Christmas. And God's saying, I'm going to give you a messy Christmas. This is going to be a little bit different. Now, there's more mess. So you want more mess? There's also the mess about the reputation of Mary. This is not an easy thing for her. Okay? Mary kind of hints at this, too. She says, not directly, but she says, she asks him how she can conceive since she hasn't been with the man. She's thinking that, well, how is this going to happen? Do I have to now consummate my marriage with Joseph or something like that, which hadn't happened yet?

[10:19] And that's where we get the description of the Spirit's power. But in the back of her mind is probably her reputation. She's thinking, what's going to happen? What's going to happen when I have to start showing and explaining what's happening here? Right? There's her reputation. There's her family's reputation. If her father's alive, if her brother's alive, there's going to be some difficult conversations. Right? There's people in the village who are going to whisper about her. Right? How can they know that she hasn't been unfaithful to Joseph, the man she's engaged to? Right? So there's all sorts of messy honor and shame dynamics that are not fleshed out. It doesn't talk about this at all in the Scripture. All we're left is that Mary is slightly worried about this. What about my reputation? What's going to happen? And if you read the Matthews Gospel, when Joseph finds out, he's very troubled by this too. But an angel appears to him and explains the situation, and he's able to process it in a constructive way. So that's good. But in this season, it seems like, she and Joseph need to be a lot less worried about what other people think about them. I think that's the beauty of it, perhaps, is, guess what? You've got more important things to worry about.

[11:33] You don't need to worry about what other people are going to think about. You need to be ready to welcome God into the world by having him in your own family. That's your job right now. Forget what everybody else is saying. And so it's actually not easy to set aside your traditions and your family expectations and your reputation. And all of that is linked to your security back then, for sure. And... And... Even part of your identity. But they're being asked to do this very difficult thing, both Mary and Joseph, actually, in the long run. And we should ask, why?

[12:08] Why is God asking them to do this difficult thing, this kind of messy thing? It could have been so much easier some other way. Why all this extra work? And there's one more piece. I'm kind of belaboring it, but I think this is interesting. We're not going to go into much detail except to mention briefly that the promise that Gabriel gives is for their son Jesus to sit on the throne of his ancestor David. So we think, we know that Joseph is in the line of David. And since Mary might be a somewhat close relative of him, not too close, but somewhat close, that she's also probably in the line of David. And so for those people who are waiting for the Messiah to come, being connected to the line of David is very important. But if you read the Old Testament, you find out that David is a really messy person. Remember that? David is a total mess, right? He cheats with a woman and then he kills her husband. Great guy, right? And in his own household, it's a total nightmare. His own household is a mess, okay? One of his sons tries to kill him and then sleeps with his concubines. Do you know that story? This is a really delightful story from the Old Testament. I'm kidding. You know, it was a really tense Thanksgiving that year.

[13:24] They're like, Dad, are you going to come? Are you going to cut the turkey? Yes, but I think I need, you know, I have to hold a shield in one hand and the turkey knife in the other because I'm not sure if you're going to come at me. It was difficult, absolutely, right?

[13:38] And for all his faults, David at least is a man whose heart can turn to God and who can repent of his sins. So David had that going for him. But nonetheless, being in the line of David isn't necessarily an endorsement if we think about it too much.

[13:53] So you may be saying, well, that's all very interesting and you've kind of laid out all the things that make this kind of a messy Christmas, but what's in it for us, right? And I would say it's this. This is Christmas. This is God coming into the world as Jesus. This is God coming into your life. He's asking to come into your heart, to your family, to your home. And he's not calling you to a tidy and organized and manicured life that's free from drama or conflict or hardship or challenge, okay? God isn't calling you into that kind of life. He's not calling you into that kind of Christmas. I'm going to say that again. Again, God may not be calling you to a tidy, organized, manicured life that's free from drama or conflict or hardship or challenge.

[14:38] God's not calling us to that, I don't think, right? God enters the world in a messy way and he enters our lives in a messy way. And he wants our lives to be messy. I want you to be messy. Do you want to be messy? Who wants to get messy? I know, it's tough. Yeah, Brian does good. Good. You know, we need to own that we're not perfect, that we've had some moments like David, hopefully not completely like David, but some moments like David. We've had some tough Thanksgivings. We've had some crazy uncles that want to talk about politics and sometimes we agree with them and we're sad that we do, or you know what I'm talking about.

[15:11] Sometimes we have to be realistic that our reputation could take a hit if we follow Jesus, right? We have to acknowledge that our families aren't perfect. Our kids aren't perfect. Our church isn't perfect. And the church with a capital C is definitely not perfect. It's a mess.

[15:28] The world's not perfect. The church isn't perfect. We're not perfect. But God has sent his perfect son into it in the same way that he sends Jesus into our hearts in the flesh. Incarnation in a messy way, not in some instantaneous clean and magical way. He comes in the flesh so that he can have relationship with people. It's like the covering of God over the temple. He comes so that people can touch and walk with him and laugh with them and cry with them. Think of all the things that Jesus does. He gets angry. He cries. It doesn't say he laughs anywhere, but he must have laughed if he had all those other emotions, right? He walks with people. He heals people. He touches people. He's completely incarnational.

[16:16] And I'm going to tell you that if my life is too organized and too ordered, I don't think there's going to be room for other people as much. If I'm just worried about God, I'm not keeping all my ducks in a row, I'm not going to make room for other people. I'd rather have a messy house that people drop in on unannounced than an immaculate house that's like a museum where you go, shhh, don't touch anything. You have to be quiet. I'd rather have that crazy house with people dropping in all the time and the kids going crazy and the dog running all around. Wouldn't you rather have that? I hope you would. That's the messy house. That's the incarnational house.

[16:54] So what do we need to do? Well, let's look at Mary. There's an invitation from God that looks like this. Remember, it's an invitation because of her response. This is what God's invitation looks like. Hi. Hi.

[17:08] This is what God says. Hi. Would you like to have your entire world turned upside down? You'll have to let go of just about everything you thought your life would be. Let go of it. It's going to be incredibly hard work. It's going to be incredibly tragic. But it's going to be incredibly fulfilling and breathtakingly beautiful.

[17:30] Do you want to take that invitation? That's the invitation that God made to Mary. Your life is going to get turned upside down. I hope you're in. Remember that this seems to be an invitation, right? Because there's no indication of how long she's given to say yes or no, but Mary gets the last word.

[17:49] And it's her consent. She says, May it be with you as you have said, or according to your word. Mary doesn't say, I guess I have no choice here. No, she says, I agree. I'm going to go on this adventure with you. It sounds kind of scary. I think I'm going to have some trouble. But what you're asking me to do is super important. And I'm in. I'm going to do it. Right?

[18:16] So I guess we can do the same thing. There's an invitation from God to have a very detailed, very messy Christmas, and a very messy and incarnational life. God says this, Hi! Would you like to have your entire life turned upside down? I'm talking to you now. Talking to me.

[18:34] You'll have to let go of just about everything you thought your life would be. And it's going to be incredibly hard work. And it's going to be incredibly tragic, but also incredibly fulfilling and breathtakingly beautiful.

[18:48] Are you in? Let's pray. Father, thank you again for your word. Thank you for the invitation to a messy life, a messy Christmas. Amen. Well, let's stand and sing the doxology and have one of our, oh, thank you. Praise God from whom all blessings flow.