Fourth Sunday of Advent, December 21, 2014 | 8:00 a.m.

A Sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Advent

Judith L. Watt
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 89
Luke 1:26–38

O kindle, Lord most holy, a lamp within my breast,
to do in spirit lowly all that may please you best.

from the hymn, “O Lord, How Shall I Meet You?”
Paul Gerhardt

There is a scene in the movie Dead Man Walking that I’ve never forgotten. It occurs close to the end of the movie, just hours before Matthew Poncelet’s excecution in the electric chair. Susan Sarandon plays the part of the nun, Helen Prejean, who has been visiting Poncelet for the last six days of his life. The crime he has been accused of was the horrific and senseless murder of a young innocent couple while they were parked in a car in the woods. During Sarandon’s several visits, Matthew, who is played by Sean Penn, goes through stages of being either defensive or arrogant or surly or inappropriate. He does not admit his guilt readily. The legal authorities, the jailers, the parents of the victims have all deemed Poncelet an animal, a creature who deserves death, less than human. But Sarandon’s character in the story, based on a true story and the real-life experience of Sister Helen Prejean, cares about something more: his spiritual life, his honest confession before God, his taking responsibility for his actions, his relationship with God. And so, in this scene that always so touches me, Sister Helen speaks to Matthew between the iron bars separating them. He finally cries and confesses the truth of what he has done. In his own way, he admits remorse; his whole body shows it. And the sister says, “You are the son of God, Matthew. Do you believe that?” He cries some more and looks at her and nods sheepishly. And then he says through his tears, “I ain’t never been no son of God before.” And they both cry.

The scene helps me understand something about God’s interaction with Mary, and hopefully, by the time I’m done this morning, you’ll see why.

There is a second story that caught my attention this week and that also helps me understand God’s interaction with Mary. This time, though, it is a video that was posted on Facebook. It was a video about Bruce, a CTA worker who works on the Blue Line, at the Grand station. The subtitle of the video is “The Difference a Good Morning Makes.” The few minutes of video showed Bruce Meredith, with his CTA vest and cap on, greeting every single person who passes him in their mad rush up and down the escalators on their way to catch the train. The video included interviews with some of those people who told how important Bruce was, how they expected him to be at the Grand station every morning to greet them, how that greeting changed their day. The video ended with Bruce himself speaking—about how he felt what he did made a difference, how he loved having a platform to add a little joy into every single commuter’s life, how he loved greeting everyone no matter who they were. Watching the video put a huge smile on my face, because the absolute love that existed between Bruce and those commuters he greeted was so evident.

So how do either of these stories connect with Mary and the Annunciation? For me, both stories remind me of God’s intervention into the ordinariness of life, into the lives of the least expected, into the lives of those long dismissed or forgotten. Matthew Poncelet, the subject of Dead Man Walking had been discarded as less than human, beyond redemption, and through the efforts of a Catholic sister who herself had no fame or notoriety, God broke into his life and he heard a greeting, an acceptance, minutes before his death, a greeting much like the greeting Mary heard. She heard, “Greetings, favored one.” He heard, “Matthew, you are a son of God.”

Greetings, favored one. Matthew, you are a son of God.

The people racing every morning to their work places or home from their work places through the turnstiles of the Grand station on the Blue Line hear a greeting too—from someone they have come to rely on for his greeting. Bruce Meredith, the CTA worker, greets them regardless of their station in life and only because they are simply human. “Hey, brother. How you doin’?” Literally thousands of ordinary men and women are greeted by Bruce every morning, regardless of their status in the world. One woman interviewed in that video said, “He brightens my day. Sometimes I have to wait to get my greeting from him, because there are so many other people waiting.” Greetings, favored one. Matthew, you are a son of God. Hey, there, how you doing this morning?

Those stories helped me peel away the years of what the church has projected on Mary and helped me remember again, in more vivid detail, that she was a poor, illiterate, unknown teenage girl from a town that was on the other side of the tracks. She would have been considered nothing special, worth very little. Worth very little, like Matthew Poncelet. She would have been considered just one of the everyday masses of humanity, racing up and down the escalators of the Grand station on the Blue Line. Hardly worth a greeting. Hardly worth being considered a daughter of God.

Just before the story of Gabriel’s conversation with Mary, the focus is on Zechariah and the birth of John the Baptist. That story takes place in Bethlehem. Bethlehem is a respected city. And Zechariah and Elizabeth are related to a priestly respectable ancestry. But Mary is from a nothing city, a city with a no-good reputation, a city that we might equate with one of the most rundown and perhaps dangerous places in Chicago.

Yet it’s this Mary (imagine a thirteen-year-old from an extremely poor family living in a neighborhood of burned out homes)—it’s this Mary who is greeted by an angel of God as “full of grace,” as “favored one.” She is not described as extraordinarily holy. She is described as favored one because she has been chosen. The description “favored one” is not the reason she was chosen. John Calvin translated favored one as the “happy one who has received the undeserved love of God.” Mary could be an ordinary person like each of us. She could be any number of teens we see day in and day out, struggling for acceptance, wondering about survival and safety. She could be one of our tutoring students.

And God breaks into her life.

Ashley Cook Cleere writes, “The tendency to think that leading unassuming lives in out-of-the-way places isolates us from the extraordinary is debunked by Mary’s surprise visitor, just as it is dismantled by television broadcasts of school shootings and forest fires, or small towns that take pride in the accomplishments of members of their communities” (Feasting on the Word Year B, vol. 1).

God breaks into ordinary lives, and not only ordinary lives but also lives without hope and lives that haven’t been valued and lives where there is guilt and need for forgiveness. This story reminds me that God breaks in, with the words, “Greetings, favored one.”

Kathryn Huey points out that this story of the angel’s announcement to Mary isn’t called the Request, nor is it called the Invitation. It’s called the Annunciation. The Announcement. I don’t know about you, but sometimes I think I would have preferred that God could have chosen to save the world all on God’s own. But this story, this conversation between Mary and Gabriel, “tells us that God wants humanity to be part of the effort, even if it makes things much more complicated and even difficult (which it does): God intends to draw Mary and all of us into what God is doing.” And God is apparently not willing to do this behind our backs or without our own participation (New Proclamation, Year B, 2008). This is what makes Mary’s story our own. It’s what connects for me as I think about Sister Helen Prejean ministering to what the world would call a worthless criminal, and it’s what connects for me as I think about an ordinary human being making it his business to greet every single person that comes through that one Blue Line station.

Mary asks questions after Gabriel speaks to her. She asks, “How can this be?” It’s a question most of us have asked at one time or another. One commentator says that these four words, when we utter them, may well signify the nearness of God. We ask the question in various circumstances. In hospital waiting rooms, at the bedside of the dying, when there is a good report from a doctor, at the news of yet again more shootings or continued racism, or when we wonder why injustice has such a grip on our world. How can this be? The commentator hints that perhaps these four words—“How can this be?”—express the underlying conviction we have, whether we acknowledge it or not, that God is involved in our lives in ways that are mysterious, in ways we don’t understand, just like Mary didn’t understand. How can this be?

I’ve listened to much of young Malala Yousafzai’s acceptance speech when she accepted the Nobel Peace Prize earlier this year. She is certainly a very young girl used by God to try to turn the world upside down. A young girl God has used to bear God into the world. Not a Christian but a devoted follower of God. She knew firsthand the injustices of not being allowed to learn because she was a female. Her life was threatened. She was wounded on account of her views and on account of her witness, on account of her having said yes to God’s call to bring more of God into the world. We wouldn’t have expected such a choice, I’ll bet. But God breaks into all kinds of lives.

We distance ourselves from Mary by making her holier than she is meant to be and by forgetting her ordinariness. We distance ourselves from her by reading the story as though she had no choice about her response. She simply surrendered. Oh, how extraordinary, the church has said. Barbara Brown Taylor says that yes, the angel announced the impending birth and didn’t ask Mary for her assent, but Taylor asserts that there is a choice for Mary and that is “whether to take hold of the unknown life the angel held out to her or whether to defend herself against it however she could. We have a similar choice in our own lives—to say yes or no—yes, I will live this life that is being held out to me, or no, I will not. Yes, I will explore this unexpected turn of events, or no, I will not.” You can say no to your life, Taylor says, but you can rest assured that no angels will trouble you ever again, but if we say yes to our lives, if you say yes to your life, you can take part in a thrilling and dangerous scheme with no script and no guarantees. You can agree to smuggle God into the world inside your own body.

Mary had the last word: Here I am. Here I am. Will it be our word as God breaks into our lives? Here I am! And the Word was made flesh. Amen.