Luke 1:30-35,
38 (English Standard Version) 30 And
the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with
God. 31 And behold, you will
conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.
32 He will be great and will be
called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne
of his father David, 33 and he
will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no
end.”34 And Mary said to the
angel, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?” 35 And the angel answered her, “The Holy
Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you;
therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God.
38 And Mary said, “Behold, I am the
servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” And
the angel departed from her.
Matthew 5:5 (English
Standard Version) 5 “Blessed are the meek, for they shall
inherit the earth.
Mary is a mixture of saint and sinner, like all of
God’s people. Yet there is something special about her, something that is not
readily recognized nor admired in our society. That something is seen in her
response to the angel’s announcement - let it be to me according to your word.
I see in Mary what the Old Testament called a broken and contrite heart, and
what Jesus called meekness. Mary is the embodiment of Jesus’ blessing of the
weak. Meekness is hardly a word that stirs the spirit of our hard driving age
where it is assumed that to be big, bold, and brash is still best and that it
is the pushers, and manipulators who win. Jesus said, Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit
the earth. I believe this quite literally. The meek will win. These are the
ones who will ultimately conquer this world – not the arrogant and the proud,
but the gentle, those whose pride has been broken by God and whose energies are
used and challenged in His service. The world and the future belong to them.
Let it be to me according to your word is an acceptance that
brings radical revolution to our world and to our life. It brings power both to
the political scene and the personal scene. The meek are able to conquer the
warring factions within and to unify different and conflicting desires around
the one desire to do God’s will. The meek are able to conquer the hearts of
others with their warmth, their compatibility, and their cooperative attitude.
The meek conquer the evil around them because they cannot be bought or pushed
around by the threats that this world brings. The meek are able to conquer as
they use their gifts in God’s service.
Christmas is God coming
to us in the meekness of a little child. He comes to conquer our rebellious
hearts and our unrestrained self-centeredness with the gentle words you are favored of God. Through our
lives bridled by Him, He seeks to conquer the world. And if by the miracle of
God’s grace we can say let it be to me
according to your word, a new power and a new world is given to us, and
Christmas becomes real.
From a sermon preached by
Henry Dobbs Pope December 4, 1983
© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell
Broyles
No comments:
Post a Comment