December 20, 2020 – Luke 1:26-38
Sermon – Fourth Sunday of Advent (2020) – YouTube
Luke 1:26-38
Surprise!
4th Sunday of Advent – December 20, 2020
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
It’s my birthday today.
When I was born 54 years ago today, my mom was 40 years old.
She had already had 6 children, the last of which had been born 7 years previously.
Most people had assumed she was done after 6!
Apparently not.
My parents always insisted I was “planned” despite how things look on paper.
But maybe I was just a nice surprise.
And that’s okay – as everyone knows, I like surprises.
In the Gospel story this morning,
Mary is most certainly surprised by the angel Gabriel’s announcement that
she is pregnant and is going to give birth.
Jesus was definitely not “planned.”
True, she was betrothed to Joseph, but as she says, she was a virgin.
She would likely have been between the ages of 12 and 14.
At the other end of the spectrum, her cousin Elizabeth also found herself surprised by pregnancy.
She considered herself long past the age of being able to conceive, but hey:
the angel Gabriel came to her with the same announcement he’d given to Mary:
she was pregnant and would give birth.
Both women are surprised and would have had good reason to be.
Based on age and experience they figured they knew what they could expect.
They figured they knew the truth of their situation.
But there was something more that God had in store for them.
God is no respecter of what we think is possible – thank goodness.
“Nothing will be impossible with God,” says Gabriel.
And there is a whole world of good news in that.
Yes: I’m turning 54 today.
So I think I can reasonably know what to expect in life.
I’ve seen a lot, I’ve experienced a lot.
I know people are capable of surprising you, both with delight as well as disappointment.
But still, I think I know what it’s realistic to expect.
No, don’t worry: I’m not pregnant.
But this story reminds me that things we don’t expect are possible.
The night before I wrote this, the first shipments of Covid vaccine arrived in Canada.
That is kind of a miracle,
and certainly is “best case scenario” based on information we had 9 months ago.
I honestly didn’t expect vaccine development to go as smoothly as it has,
especially considering the new technologies being used.
But there it is.
I didn’t know what exactly to expect when our world was turned so upside down 9 months ago.
And what I did expect wasn’t good.
Many of those expectations have turned out to be reasonable.
The scale of illness and death, the stress put on our health care system and its workers,
the economic toll and the strain on our mental health – none of these surprise me.
But what has surprised me is the new ways I’ve connected to some people and
how life-giving that has been.
What has surprised me is how lovely stillness has been when there is literally nowhere to go.
What has surprised me is how life-giving the Psalms have become for us.
If Gabriel had come and announced that to me 9 months ago,
I fear I wouldn’t have believed him.
Perhaps all that shouldn’t surprise me, but it always does.
One fundamental way for us to think about God is that our God is a God of resurrection.
The God who wrests life from death.
Here’s the greatest surprise: Easter Sunday morning.
The event of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead reminds me that
we might be surprised to come to find something beautiful in the midst of loss.
Or find some new capacity in the midst of diminishment.
I regularly go out walking along Omand’s Creek near where I live.
I go out at all times of the year and like to notice the changes from week to week and
from season to season.
What I didn’t expect to see recently was a lovely surprise: trees taken down by beavers,
presumably for a lodge somewhere nearby.
I am determined to find that lodge!
But somehow I find it surprising and comforting, that somewhere near my home,
my beaver friends are resting warm and snug in their lodge, perhaps up against a bank,
wresting some life from winter.
On this day, December 20th, my birthday, Katie Luther died in the year 1552.
Katie was a nun who was sympathetic to calls to reform the church.
Eventually she and several sisters fled the convent in search of a new life.
Seeking refuge she sought out Martin Luther and
eventually took the old bachelor for a husband.
Ultimately, they had six children together, cared for four orphans,
and tended a steady stream of students from the university where Luther taught.
She got up at 4:00 every morning, bred cattle, tended the garden,
brewed the beer and fed the household.
By all accounts it was a happy marriage for the ex-nun and the former monk.
A great, wondrous surprise for both of them.
The quality of wonder is something we value at this time of the year.
Perhaps we are nostalgic as we remember what it was like to be a child when
wonder seems to have come so much easier to us.
But there is good news in the announcements to Mary and Elizabeth:
God will not stop surprising us no matter what our age.
We want to wonder.
We long, I think to be surprised by life.
We hope to be surprised by reconciliation and justice.
And we yearn to be surprised by economic equitableness and social harmony and
healing at every level.
The one who brings it all was first announced as a surprise to Mary all those years ago.
And that one has the capacity to surprise still – perhaps it is his modus operandi.
Perhaps surprise is just the way Jesus rolls.
I mean, his conception and birth were a surprise,
so why would we think the way he continues to come should be any different?
As a grown man he advised his followers to keep awake and watch for him.
Perhaps that was simply a way of telling them to expect to be surprised.
Perhaps it is our job to remain in a constant state of wonder –
and perhaps it is God’s job to surprise us.
And maybe, above everything else, we should prepare ourselves for the biggest surprise of all,
which is that, as we learned as children, he is “born in us today,”
and seeks to bring healing and reconciliation and justice through us.
“Greetings, favoured one, the Lord is with you.”
A surprise, indeed.
Amen.
Pastor Michael Kurtz
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
