“BLESSED IS THE CHILD…”

A sermon based upon Luke 1: 39-56

By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

$th Sunday of Advent C, December 23rd,  2018 

(4 of 5 Sermons on Luke’s Gospel Texts)

Excitement fills the air.  We are almost there.  Christmas Day is only two days away.   And what biblical story is any more fitting to express the excitement and expectancy we feel, than two pregnant women who are both about to give birth to their first child? 

When Teresa and I were learned we were about to adopt our daughter, we also were filled with all kinds of excitement.  Realizing that in just a matter of weeks, our lives were about to change forever, we made a quick trip to ride bikes in in the early Fall of 1998.  We were overjoyed, but we were also realistic.  This was an answer to prayer.  This was after a long time of waiting and wondering.  Our lives were about to make a major adjustment.

As we think about all our expectations of Christmas 2018, on this 4^th Sunday in Advent, it is the ‘feeling’ of all this expectancy, that Luke’s gospel brings to us today. 

Here, we have a wonderful story of two women; Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, who was six months along in her pregnancy, and Mary, the mother of Jesus, who had just been visited by an angel, who informed her that she had been chosen to give birth to Jesus, who was the ‘Son of the Most High’ God (1: 31-32).  But even take out the fact this is about the birth of John the Baptist or Jesus, this still is an amazing and fitting story, filled with all kinds of energy, expectation, and excitement.  Folks, each of them were about to give birth to a life.  They were ‘going to have a baby!’

BLESSED ARE YOU… (42)     THE BLESSING COMES TO US

When Elizabeth heard Mary say she expecting too, the first words out of her mouth were “Blessed are you among women and blessed is the child you will bear!” (42). That’s a good way get to the heart of Christmas, isn’t it?  Blessed.  Blessed are these women giving birth.  Blessed are all women who give birth.  Blessed is the child who receives the gift of life from their parents. Blessed, Blessed, Blessed!

‘Blessed’ is a word that points us to the work, favor, and presence of God in our world.  “Have a Merry Christmas” means that we hope that everything is happy for you, but “Have a Blessed Christmas” or as we often hear it in everyday life, “Have a Blessed Day”, is a special kind of greeting that has newly surfaced in recent years.  It’s a greeting that not only wishes for good fortune or good things, but it’s a greeting or expression that acknowledges Israel’s God as the source of all that is good about life. 

To use the word ‘blessed’ in conversation is fast becoming a secret, hidden, Christian expression—a sign that the person you are talking to lives with an understanding of knowing the presence of God in their life, and wishes the same for you. Thus, ‘Have a blessed Christmas’, means more than have fun or have a good fortune, but it is a wish for faith, for fulness, and is recognition of the faithful promises and purposes of God.

But this wish or acknowledgement of ‘blessing’ often goes against the grain of what is happening in our world or our lives, doesn’t it?  Life does not always feel blessed, just like births and giving life a child is not always easy.  Complications come.  Babies can be stillborn, deformed, and having children, even in the best of circumstances, can make life complicated.  Mother’s have died giving birth.  A woman is still in a very serious, risky, physical condition when she is giving birth to a child.  

In addition, as we all know, having a child means giving away a part of yourself that you will never keep in the same way.  Blessed, yes.  You are giving life and gaining life, but this is also a blessing that can take as much as it gives.  A ‘blessing’ of new life brings all kinds of new responsibilities, challenges, and even problems into our lives, but even in these burdens the blessings that come give us meaning and purpose.  We’re blessed.

Blessings are always this way, aren’t they?  Blessings are blessings precisely because they are heavy, become burdens to bear, but are also full of promise, possibility, potential and hope.  The particular blessing that Elizabeth alludes to in her response to Mary is the ‘blessing’ of Jesus.  This is somewhat a surprising response from her because Elizabeth is of ‘old age’ and her pregnancy is quite physically amazing in, and of, itself. 

But what Luke wants us to know is that while Elizabeth’s pregnancy is marvelous and amazing, Mary’s pregnancy is of even more amazing.  It is much more than a physical or personal miracle, because, we are told, that Mary’s child will be born the ‘holy one’ who ‘will be called the Son of God’ (v. 35).  This is not simple the fulfilment of a mother’s hope to have a child, because this is the fulfillment a hope in THE CHILD.  This child will be named Jesus (31), the long-awaited and promised one who will finally ascend to and assume David’s throne (32).

Of course, such ancient language is hard for us to grasp, since we have rejected simplistic, royal, answers for our complicated lives.  Can there still be a message of such a ‘royal promise’ for us? 

When I see photographs of those royal children in England, George and Charlotte, I see beautiful children who have born with great pedigree, privilege, and wealth.  Even as an American, who understands the weaknesses of royalty and monarchy, I still can’t help but connect those small children with both the good heritage of the English past, and the hope of the English future.  Even though the ‘royals’ are mostly figure-heads in our modern world, they still command respect when and if they rightly take on the burdens and responsibilities to represent the needs of everyday people to the elite and the power-brokers of the world.  When a royal uses their position, power, and privilege to shoulder the burdens of their people, even royalty can still have and find a meaningful place in the world.  

So, for a ‘royal’ to take their proper place, they must shoulder the greatest needs of their people, and this is exactly where this ‘blessing’ of Christmas is going.  This blessing is not simply a blessing for goodness, well-being, or good fortune, but Elizabeth refers to Mary and her child being ‘blessed’ with the burden of bringing hope to a broken, sinful, and discouraged people.  Jesus is to be the ‘royal’ who opens the door of hope for the world, because he is the ‘blessed’ one who bears the burden of hope.

BLESSED IS SHE… (45)   THE BLESSING FLOWS THROUGH US

What is perhaps most important about this ‘blessing’ is not just who it comes to (Mary), but how it comes through Mary to all of us.  Elizabeth’s second greeting says: “Blessed is she who believes that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her! (45).  Here, the acknowledgment is that God’s blessings are released through the trust, the belief, the faith, and the discipleship of a simple, common individual who gives their own life, body, soul, and strength to be used of the Lord in the world. 

Mary is indeed blessed, but not simply because she gives birth to Jesus, but because she is the first person who is gives herself to God to allow Jesus to be born through her.  This is how God’s blessings come into the world; they don’t just come to us, they must also come through us.  If there were no ‘blessed is she’, there could be no blessed are we!  All great blessings begin in the human heart and come through the individual who allows God’s goodness to flow through them.

In thinking about how big things begin with individuals, and often start with very small things and very simple ways, I was reflecting recently about women now having the liberty to drive in Saudi Arabia.  No doubt, this is a ‘blessing’ for many, including Saudi men, who now have women driving them around.  Not everything has changed in that Arab world yet, but an opening, a beginning, and a place has been made, and now the blessing of freedom can be tested and perhaps will spread, through this freedom and blessing women who are allowed to drive.

Isn’t this a picture of how God’s blessings always work, when they are release through a few, or given to an individual, so they can finally be understood and shared with the many, and bring greater blessings?   Isn’t this how salvation still comes and is spread in the world?  You can’t convince or win a world, until you start with touching, winning, and convincing one heart.  You can’t change a community, until you change an individual.  God’s love can’t be released into the world, until that love is felt and shared by and through one single person, who in turn, passes on that blessing to others.  The greatest blessings spread when from one blessed heart, others begin to see not only what God has done, but what God still does.

This is still how the ‘blessing’ of Christmas spreads through the world.  When the work of God’s saving blessing began, it began through a specific people, Israel.  Then, through Israel, and through one woman’s life, God send his son into the world to touch the whole world.  The saving work of God always works from the particular to the many.  God’s saving message can’t simply be ‘broadcasted’ like on the news, nor just show up on the calendar, but the blessing of Christmas must still be released through the individual—who is blessed, loved, nurtured, and released into the world with fresh hope, goodness, and love.  

I don’t think it’s an accident that Christmas gravitates toward blessing and showering children with good things.  When the story of St. Nicolaus first arose in the world, he was a patron saint of children, giving gifts and blessings to those who were most vulnerable and susceptible to the dark powers of the world.  Today, the blessing of children by St. Nicolaus, has become one of the main events of Christmas, as children wonder at what  Santa will bring.

This early ‘blessing’ of sharing, giving, hoping, and receiving gifts is wonderful blessing for a child to experience, and they do understand what is happening very quickly, don’t they?  But as the child grows, matures, and comes to understand that the world does not revolve around them, but that life and love should also flow through them, healthy and stable children becoming adults, learn that to receive the greatest gifts and blessings of life, means they should give them back and also become a blessing to the world.  It is the child who receives and understands source of all blessings, who learns to return the blessing back into the world.

Isn’t this what it means to understand that Mary, by being the first to receive the great blessing of this child, naturally becomes the first to believe, and then to turn her own life over to the glory of God.  “My soul magnifies the Lord!”  She sings and confesses. because she, Mary allows God’s blessing to flow through her, not just to her, so that her own life become a channel, a conduit, of blessing back to God, which now, still comes not just to us, but can also flow through us to someone else.

HE HAS…. (51-54)   THE BLESSINGS ARE FROM GOD

What is most notable and remarkable is that the blessing given to Mary, and the blessings flowing through Mary, are not understood as the things God will do, but what God is already doing and has already done.

Can you hear the flow of Mary’s song of praise, known as the Magnificat? 

Observe her observations: “He HAS been mindful of his servant…The mighty one HAS done great things, He HAS performed mighty deeds,  He HAS scattered the proud, he HAS brought down rulers and lifted up the humble,  and He HAS helped his servant Israel… (46-54). The only thing that is in the ‘present tense’ is Mary’s own experience of God’s eternal love and power; everything else is spoken of as if it is has already accomplished and continues to be known and experience in the world.  The blessings that come from God, now continue to flow to and Mary and through Jesus, to have lasting repercussions until we all enter the world that is still to come.  As Mary concludes, she praises God because, through the promise of Jesus’ birth, God has remembered ‘to be merciful to Abraham and his descendants FOREVER, just as he promised… (55).

At the heart of everything Christmas meant in the world then, it still means in the world now.  To Mary, through Mary, and now to us, God’s mercy is still being extended to our world.  We too are called to be both recipients and participants of God’s great mercy.  This is the blessing of the child, through the child, and the blessing that that should flow to us and through us this Christmas.  This world, perhaps more than ever, needs to know, experience, and acknowledge the living and abiding presence of the God who is filled with helped and mercy.  To experience God’s blessing is an experience we can’t give ourselves, and it is the blessing that life itself can’t give us alone, without also knowing and experiencing God’s help and mercy.  Not long ago, I heard a professional astronomer quote a writer who once wrote that when he gazes into the heavens, he must always choose one of two possibilities: “Either we are alone in the universe, or we aren’t  He said, either of them are for him, equally terrifying’. (https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/41383-two-possibilities-exist-either-we-are-alone-in-the-universe).

Christmas is the good news that at the center life is another reality.  The good news of Christmas, is that life is ultimately blessed by the God who has revealed himself as mercy to all those who will seek help and hope in him. 

Terry Anderson was one who sought the Lord in the most difficult and darkest place.  Terry Anderson was held hostage for 6 ½ years in a foreign land. He was serving as a Chief Middle East Correspondent for the Associated Press when he was kidnapped in Beirut on March 16, 1985... and he was held captive until his release December 4, 1991. He had been a hostage for almost seven years. It was an incredibly difficult ordeal. but Terry Anderson came through it all with amazing strength.

After his release, Anderson was interviewed a number of times... and his answers and responses have been inspirational. Let me remind you of three of his most powerful comment, which remind us, even in the darkest time, and in the darkest places, of God’s forever presence and mercy.

1. First, when he was asked what had enabled him to survive this awful experience, he answered without hesitation, “My faith, my companions, and my stubbornness.” (Which is another way of saying, trust in God.)

2. Second, one reporter said, “Terry, you have said that you don’t hate your captors. Can you help us to understand that?” Terry Anderson replied, “It’s really very simple. I’m a Christian. The Scriptures teach us to forgive. I don’t hate anybody.”

3. And the third, he was asked, “Terry, did you ever lose hope?” Terry Anderson said, “Hard question... Of course, I had some blue moments, moments of despair, but fortunately, right after I became a hostage, one of the first things that fell into my hands was a Bible. Over the last 6 ½ years as a captive, I have spent a lot of time with the Bible... and that helped me so much because it’s about hope; it’s about trust in God, and that’s what gave me the strength to make it through each day.” And then Terry Anderson said, “You do what you have to do. Faith helps you to do what you have to do. I spent a lot of time with the Bible and it reminded me to do the best I could each day... and to trust God for the future.”

Some years ago, there was a captain on a Mississippi riverboat. He had been on that job for over 35 years. One day a passenger said to him, “After all these years of navigating the river, I guess you know by now where all the rocks and sandbars are.” He answered, “No, but I know where the deep water is!”

That’s what Elisabeth, Mary, and Terry are saying, isn’t it?  They didn’t know how to avoid all the sandbars and rocks of life, but they knew where the deep water is. We all know, that at Christmas as in all of life, there are some rocky places out there, but we can trust in God’s mercy to bring us through.

God mercy is the ultimate blessing that comes from the very God of Jesus, who is the hope of Christmas.  He still ‘extends mercy’ to our world, to those who will trust him, no matter what else we may experience.  Jesus is the blessed child, who was blessed to not only be blessing to us and to bear the burden of the blessing for us.  He is the child who is the savior who can still fill the ‘hungry with good things’ as we trust in the ‘promise’ and in the ‘forever’ of God’s mercy.  This is the blessing of the child of Christmas. Amen.