Find A Way To Ignore One Another
December 15, 2002
Isaiah 61:1-4,8-11  Luke 1:46-55

I like cop shows...Law and Order...NYPD Blue...Third Watch. A week past Monday on Third Watch, Officer Sullivan, an overweight New York cop provided today’s Sermon title. Poor Sully has been through a lot just recently in his life and work; his wife was gunned down by the Russian Mafia; he took his revenge shooting the mafia boss. He is not sleeping too well; he is constantly irritable and short-tempered. He arrives at a disturbance on the street; a beer delivery truck...specifically a "Rolling Rock" beer truck has parked right outside a woman’s flower shop. The truck driver and the flower seller are really getting into it; she complains bitterly that he parks right outside her store every day... both of them are shouting at one another. Officer Sullivan is irritated that such a fuss could be caused over something so small; he issues them both with an order: "Find a way to ignore one another."

Now maybe Sully is on to something here; maybe there are times and situations when it would be better for people to find ways just to ignore one another! But I am sure that this is not the way we should be thinking about our God and our faith this Advent season. "Find a way to ignore one another" was not the attitude or response of Mary to all that was happening around her, to her and even inside of her. She has been told that she will have a child by the action of the Holy Spirit of God, she was told this child would be a boy, a boy who would grow up to be a special Son and a special King in God’s name. She doesn’t ignore this news – she accepts her calling: "Here am I, the servant of the Lord, let it be to me according to your word."

Neither does Mary ignore the news concerning her cousin Elizabeth. Mary is told by the same messenger from God that Elizabeth , a much older woman believed to be infertile is also pregnant. To this extent these two women are alike, both facing an unexpected pregnancy but in other ways they are not at all alike. Elizabeth is a woman with a husband; she has a standing in the community, but Mary is a woman on the very edge of her community, in danger of being excluded. So Mary sets off to meet her cousin and in her meeting with Elizabeth she finds comfort and hope and faith and strength to persevere with what is to happen in her and to her.

Mary does not ignore what God is doing in her life. Mary accepts the role and the task God has for her, she offers her life for the life of the Son of God. She becomes a willing partner in nurturing and giving birth just as God needs her to do. And, in the words we read in Luke, she offers her song of praise and faith to God.

In this song, which we know as the Magnificat, Mary acknowledges herself as a servant of God. She offers thanks for all that God will achieve through her faithfulness… namely the salvation of the world. She delights in the beginning of something all together new, God’s realm, God’s Kingdom.

In this kingdom, in this realm there is to be a complete reversal of the orders and values...from those that reflect the world to those that reflect God. In this realm, there is no place for those who trust only in their own power, no place for those who trust in their own wealth, no place for those who are rich in the things of this world. But in this realm, there is a place for those who will trust God, there is space for those who see that they need mercy, there is room for those that are lowly in heart, there is a welcome for those who are hungry for food but filled with God.

This is the message isn’t it...it is very, very, disturbing. It is not a message that fits terribly easy with us; it makes us feel a little or a lot uncomfortable, somewhere inside we are squirming, somewhere we maybe wished we stayed home, somewhere we would rather just sing our happy songs and be done! It is a message...God’s message... and it does not sit easily with the world’s trashy, tinsley, tinny, feel-good, feel-happy, feed your face, eat, drink and be merry, spend, spend, spend view of this season.

This message is not my message...except that I must bear witness to it, it is God’s message.
~  It is God’s message and God is consistent.
~  It is God’s message; seen in God’s deliverance of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt; seen in how God’s Law stressed the need
     to welcome and provide for and include the alien in the midst of the community of Israel; seen in God’s message through the
     prophets condemning hypocrisy and self-serving religion.
~  It is God’s message; the message of Mary’s Song; the message of the where and how and when and why of the birth of our Savior:
     born in vulnerability, a refugee in infancy; the message of Jesus’ life and teaching and His death and resurrection.

This message from God, come to us in the person of Jesus Christ, born of Mary, seeks out in all of us a response:
Will we partner with God in being faithful Christian people?
Will we accept the role and the demands of being as Servant of the Lord?
Are we willing to accept the cost and the discomfort and the upset and the challenge of God being born in our lives?

The Eastern Orthodox Churches describe Mary as "theotokos", a Greek word that means "god bearer." Today and always, each and every one of us is asked to be just that: "god bearers"; accepting and living out of our faith, sharing the life of God with all those around us and especially with those who lack love or hope or food or shelter or friends. To be a God bearer...isn’t this what all of us desire to do and be? In our best moments, with our best intentions, when faith seems easier, when things are going well. To be a God bearer: this is our calling and commissioning in our baptism, by our sharing in the fellowship of the church, by our nourishment at the Lord’s Table.

You are called and expected to bear the life of God in your life and carry it into the world around you. It is God who calls you to be a god bearer, it is God who expects you to be a god bearer. God, the God who loves you and who claims you in Jesus Christ, expects you to be a god bearer! God expects you to live with priorities and attitudes that reflect God’s nature and demonstrate beyond all doubt that your chief desire in life is to bear the life of God in who you are and in what you do.

Today, once again, God invites all of us to be god bearers. To help us make our response, God has surrounded us with the saints of the church. God has given us each other, those who have walked this way before us and now are gathered into the Church Triumphant and those saints yet to be gathered into the church. God has given us all these folks for two reasons. First, so that we can help one another fulfill our calling and second, that by living and working together we can maximize our potential so that together we can share God’s gracious, forgiving and inspiring love with many other people.

I have some hopes of what God might do with this sermon today and your response to it. I hope that God would shake us up and stir us up in a variety of ways so that individually and together we can better bear God’s love in our lives and through our lives into the life of the world around us. I don’t know specifically what God is asking of each of you individually, but I do know that God is asking you to grow or to be changed or to be stretched in some aspect of your life or faith. I know God is asking me to pay more attention to what God is saying to me, to make and take time and space to listen. I can imagine a whole lot of ways in which God might be ready to shake us and stir us!
▪  To get over some past resentment,
▪  To return to a clearer focus on the basics of your faith,
▪  To take time to read and ponder the Scriptures,
▪  To make prayer a bigger priority,
▪  To reconnect or get connected to some activity where you used to serve or feel called to serve whether it be singing in the choir,
    attending Sunday School, Teaching a class, attending circle, working with the youth.
▪  To take a step forward in some area of your faith where you might have gotten stuck,
▪  To be reconciled to someone from who you have been estranged.

In the past year or two, it seems that maybe some of us felt awkward because we felt that we had been put in the difficult, almost impossible position, of having to choose between differing views of who and what Northminster is and can become. Faced with such options, it could not always have been easy to be clear where God was. As Pastor of this church family, I assure you that your pain and unease was felt and shared...right in here. For the times when I was slow to understand all that was happening or if I ever exacerbated the uncertainty, accept my apologies.

But I also have this to say: As I look across the life of our congregation today, as I have worked with all of our officers and leaders throughout 2002, as I share with all the church staff, all of them true colleagues, and as I look to the future towards which God is calling us, I know that the life of our church has always been, and will always be about all of us being god bearers. By the love of God this is who we are, and this is who we need to become. By the grace of Jesus Christ this is who we are, and this is who we need to become. By the fellowship and power of the Holy Spirit this is who we are, and this is who we need to become.

Yes the budget is tight! Yes volunteers are sometimes slow to step forward! Yes there is more we believe God wants us to do! To be god bearers and to help each other be god bearers; this is something towards which we MUST all be working and praying and pledging and giving as we support one another and as we allow God to nurture us and challenge us and change us. This is our future, this is God’s future for this church, so let’s get with the program, let us not find ways to ignore one another, but let us find and create many ways in which we can follow the example of Mary, by being god bearers together.  Amen.