Unexpect News Luke 1:26-38

Any parent, either an adoptive parent or a birth parent, can tell you that their child's story didn't start the first day they held them. No the story starts for parents starts way before the first day you hold a child in your arms.

Jesus' story started with the surprise visit of an Angel named Gabriel. God's messenger came to this young woman speaking words that she'd never heard before.

Luke's words invite us into a space and time that has never been duplicated. Mary and the Angel meeting was a encounter like no other. Mary was so young; some think that Mary as young as 13 others think maybe as old as 17. The angle was so confident speaking words of promise and authority. Up until that very moment Mary had known her place in life. She had a plan for what was coming next. She was going to get married to Joseph. She was going to be a pretty normal young woman. She was going to do exactly what every other young Jewish girl in Palestine did. She had dreams and hopes like every other young woman her age. And now this angel came and started speaking to her in words and ways that she'd never heard.

The story of parenting sometimes comes as a surprise. Sometimes the surprise comes after years of hope and other times the surprise comes most unexpectedly. Mary had just met this angel and now in the same moment she learned that she was going to have a child.

Every so often my wife and some of my women friends remind me that there are certain experiences in life that I will never get. Pregnancy and childbirth, I have been told, are really quite different for the person giving birth than for the ones watching and hoping to hold the new born child. Today we see what God did through Mary's faith to change the world.

Isaiah 61:1 God keeps promises

The prophet Isaiah came tell us some good news. He came to tell us about one God anointed and sent out. God moved Isaiah to speak boldly,

“The spirit of the Lord God is upon me,

because the Lord has anointed me;

he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed,

to bind up the brokenhearted,

to proclaim liberty to the captives,

and release to the prisoners; Isaiah 61:1 NRSV

God keeps his promises. Isaiah's words for the people returning from exile were words meant to renew hope. Hope can be scarce; but God's revelation helps us to see that God is still at work in our world. Advent is about hope. It's about the hope that we discover as we remember the God who keeps promises. God always has and he always will. We forget God; but God hasn't forgotten us. We forget God's promises, but that doesn't mean that God has forgotten them.

The prophet Isaiah announced great news 2500 years ago to the people of Israel. They'd just come home after exile. They found nothing in Israel as they'd hoped to discover it. And the prophet started to announce something huge. God's coming. And in order help us remember that God is in the business of keeping promises God's sending somebody to earth to remind us. Isaiah helps us remember that promises from God matter. As a guarantee that the Word would reach us God promised that he would send somebody to earth as his messenger. Jesus is the guarantee for all of us to see.

Preparing the way Mark 1:1-8

This week we read the start of Mark's Gospel. These words are really the preface to Jesus' story. John Wesley said,

The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ - The evangelist speaks with strict propriety: for the beginning of the Gospel is in the account of John the Baptist, contained in the first paragraph; the Gospel itself in the rest of the book. www.ccel.org/ccel/wesley/notes.i.iii.ii.html

This is Mark's nativity story. No shepherds or angels are in this story like Matthew and Luke tell about. Instead Mark starts with Jesus is ready for ministry at the Jordan River. He came out to the river to meet John, the preacher of baptism and repentance.

Will you know it when Jesus comes?
Jesus coming into view as God incarnate doesn't seem shocking in Mark. The subtle way he arrives is key to this story. Mark is knows that we look for God to arrive in a BIG WAY. And he responds to our expectation, not by spinning a tale that shocks and surprises us, rather he lures us in with story full of unfinished details.

• Isaiah had told of John and Jesus coming generations before. We are left to wonder if the crowds knew that John was making the way ready for Jesus.
  
• Jesus comes to meet John. We are left wondering why Jesus had to meet John.
• John preached like he knew Messiah was coming and we are left to wonder how John knew he was coming.
  
• Jesus comes out of the water and a voice is heard from heaven. We are left to wonder who heard the voice.

Mark's story of Jesus coming starts with the very ordinary circumstances of a baptism at the river side and the words of a preacher. Mark is a story teller's Gospel. We readers and hearers of this Gospel are introduced, through the story, to Jesus. We meet him not in our time and space; rather Mark invites his hearer and readers into a different space, ancient Palestine, and time, the height of Roman Power. We meet him and still have plenty of questions to ask.

Rend the Heavens and Come Isaiah 64:1-9

Advent starts this year with the reading of a prophet's prayer,

¹ O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence— ² as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil— to make your name known to your adversaries, so that the nations might tremble at your presence! Isaiah 64:1-2 (NRSV)

Isaiah's words reached out towards God with deep desire and passion. He wanted God's presence to be experienced in the world. Isaiah wanted God to send earthquakes shaking the mountains. He asked for fires to make the waters boil so that the Holy Name of God might be realized. Isaiah wasn't asking for God to come sometime in the maybe or could be future. He was asking for God to come manifest in glory right now, in his time and space.

Isaiah prayed for God to come right now. Martin Luther commented in his lectures,

“This is a true prayer when the devils and the ungodly enemies have been accused and a strong desire bursts forth into prayer and into a longing for God.”Luther's Works, Vol. 17 : Lectures on Isaiah: Chapters 40-66. Page 363

The prophet of God, who spoke God's Word in season and out of season yearned for the world to experience God's presence. As a prophet Isaiah knew God's presence in the Word; but he yearned for something more than words to communicate the power of God to the people of this world.

Isaiah yearned not only for his own experience of God but for others to experience God. He asked God to make himself seen. Isaiah wanted God to be realized by the other people he lived along side of every day. Modern day believers may share this same experience. Many among us to see God be real for the people around us just as he is real, by faith, for believers. We long for God to confront those who are indifferent to Him with his holy presence. But God chose not to come to earth with earthquakes and fire. He chose to come in flesh and blood. We yearn for his glory to be manifest in contrast to the apathy of this world.

⁷ There is no one who calls on your name, or attempts to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity. Isaiah 64:7 (NRSV)

Isaiah may have exaggerated the situation as he wrote, about "...no one who calls on your name," but the experience of isolation in faith that he names is profound. Isaiah's prayer grew from the very heart of faith. He'd been driven to declare the Word in uncomfortable situations where many didn't believe a word that he spoke. Now he wanted God to be real and manifest not only for believers but for the scoffers. Isaiah wanted God to waked up the apathetic who believed God didn't care at all.

God's response to Isaiah was to come. He came to earth not with the fire and the earthquake, rather he came as a baby boy laid in a manger. We yearn for him to come and be real in our day, just like the prophet. We don't see the signs of his presence and miss him all the more.