So What Do You Expect? Expect Wonder
December 17, 2017
Dr. Tom Pace
Luke 1:34-45
Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?”The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be bornwill be holy; he will be called Son of God.And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren.For nothing is impossible with God.”Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth.When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spiritand exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me?For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy. Blessed is she who believed that there would bea fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.”
We’re in a series of sermons on what to expect at Christmas. We talked two weeks ago about expecting goodness and then last week we talked about expecting transformation, that God works to change us. Today we want to talk about expecting wonder.
Let’s join together in prayer: Gracious and loving God, open us up today. Open our eyes that we might see and our ears that we might hear. Open our hearts that we might feel and then O Lord, open our hands that we might serve. Amen.
The shepherds are minding their own business in the field at night and a whole army of angels shows up. We always paint the heavenly host as a choir. It’s really an army – that’s what the word means. This force of angels shows up singing, “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace.” There’s a head angel who speaks to the shepherds and says, “For to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior who is Christ the Lord.”
And there’s a star that doesn’t move across the horizon. And the shepherds are amazed.
When they go to see the Christ Child after they leave there the Scripture says that “All who heard about it were amazed at what the shepherds had told them.”
This is the season in which we like to talk about wonder and amazement. The magic of Christmas. We talk about it with Santa who somehow magically delivers toys to children all over the world, all in one night. We read our children the great story of The Polar Express. It’s about a little boy who’s taken to the North Pole on a magic train during Christmas, and there he receives the very first gift of Christmas. He can choose whatever he wants. He chooses a bell from the sleigh’s harness and he takes it home. But on the way home there’s a hole in his pocket and it falls out of his pocket. But Santa finds it in the sleigh and delivers it on Christmas morning.
Here’s how that story ends: “At one time most of my friends could hear the bell, but as years passed it fell silent for all of them. Even Sarah found one Christmas that she could no longer hear its sweet sound. Though I’ve grown old the bell still rings for me, as it does for all who truly believe.” It’s a marvelous story.
What I find most interesting is that we don’t have any trouble talking about being amazed at the story of Santa, but somehow we’ve lost our sense of amazement about Christmas itself. That on that day, born of a virgin, God chose to become a human being, to come and save us from our sin. To enter the world and turn it around. To change everything beginning that day. That is what’s truly amazing. That God will indeed save us from our sin.
I don’t know – what amazes you? When magicians do their thing we always say, “Expect to be amazed!” That doesn’t amaze me so much because I figure there’s some sort of contraption or gadget that makes it work. Now that close-up magic, where you’re right there and you’re looking at them? You say, “How did you do that?” You find yourself amazed, and we like that. We love it because it awakens within us this realization that there’s something beyond our comprehension. Something that is amazing to us.
This choir amazes me, that they can produce incredible music every single Sunday. Just a few miles from where we sit here there are amazing things that happen in the Texas Medical Center. At Texas Heart Institute at Baylor - St. Luke’s they are working on stem cell research that will allow them to reproduce the human heart in the laboratory outside of the human body, then transplant it back into the human body and give someone a new heart.
Bud Frazier and his team – he’s been working all of his life on an artificial heart. They believe that one day they’ll have a fully implantable artificial heart. Just like when your knee went out and you got a new knee, or a new titanium hip, now you’ll just go get an artificial heart. They’ll plant that in there and you’ll just buzz right on along.
I’m sorry, friends, that’s amazing! At Houston Methodist Hospital’s Research Institute they believe they have actually found a cure for triple negative breast cancer. That was announced this year. It’s an amazing thing. It uses little nano-particles and they couldn’t figure out how to deal with the nano-particles because they kept getting rejected by the human body. But what they found is that viruses aren’t rejected by the human body so they attach the nano-particles to the virus and the virus goes into the tumor. That way the nano-particles can eat up the tumor. And in my lifetime that will be available to every one of us.
At MD Anderson Hospital, Dr. Jim Allison is on the short list for the Nobel Prize for Medicine. Because he has figured out to use our own immune systems to attack the cancer instead of using chemotherapy.
Friends, we need to expect to be amazed. Because God is at work right here in our world and is doing incredible amazing things all around us.
We’ve always said, “I don’t believe in healings.” I believe in healings, because I see them happen not far from here every single day.
There’s this passage in Habakkuk that is just beautiful. Habakkuk 1:5: “Look around you and see! Be astonished! Be astounded for a work is being done in your days that you would not believe it if it were told you.”
Do you believe it? Apparently that’s our part of the deal. Our part of the deal is for us to believe it. So when the angel appeared to Mary, she asked a simple question, “How can this be since I’m a virgin?” The angel explained it to her and she simply said, “Let it be to me as you have said.” Bring it on!
The Scripture we read today closes and says, “Blessed is she that believes that what the Lord has spoken will be accomplished.” So will you believe it, that God has entered into our world and will save us from our sin?
You know, we turn on the TV and see all sorts of negative things there. All sorts of issues. The North Koreans have nuclear arms. I heard this week on the radio that somebody said that there’s a 30% chance we’ll be at war with the North Koreans. Seriously?
We hear about sexual harassment on the right and on the left and in every sector of our world. In Jerusalem which is called the “City of Peace,” four were killed in demonstrations there. Just not far from Bethlehem where Jesus was born. We hear all the rhetoric about being a nation divided more than ever, divided in terms of politics and ideology, economically, the “haves and the have–nots.”
All of those things are real. They’re true. We are blessed to have prophets among us who remind us and tell us about those things.
But, friends, we in the church, our language has become too cynical. Too defeatist. Too devoid of hope. We in the church are those who believe that God has not abandoned us, that God has chosen to save us from our sin. A moment ago you prayed, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Do you believe that to be the case? Or are you just saying the words?
When Jesus came, Jesus preached, “The Kingdom of God is at hand – repent and believe the good news!” Will you believe that? Our job is to proclaim that word to the whole world. The Christmas story is that we have not been left alone but that God has chosen to save us from our sin.
Maybe think about your personal life. We’ve spoken about the world but what about your personal life? Maybe you’re grieving and you wonder if you will ever be happy again. Well, I want you to hear the word from the angel: “Nothing is impossible with God.”
Maybe there’s a sense that you’re lonely and you wonder if you’ll ever find someone to spend your life with. I hope you will hear the word from the angel: “Nothing is impossible with God.”
Maybe you’re dealing with an addiction, alcoholism or some other addiction, and you think, “I’ll never shake this. I’ll never shake this.” Friend, I want you to hear the word of the angel: “Nothing is impossible with God.” Blessed is she – or he – who believes that what God has promised will be accomplished. God has entered this world to save us.
I don’t want you to misunderstand me. There’s a difference between expectations and expectancy. We talked about that throughout this series, that expectations are like treating God sort of like a vending machine. That you put a prayer in like it’s a coin and you make your selection, thinking, “This is what I’ll have.”
That’s not the way it works at all; I want you to note that in this story it says that nothing is impossible with God. But it was God who initiated the agenda here. Mary didn’t say, “Dear God please make me be the mother of the Messiah. I really want to be a mother when I’m 14 and not married.” It was God who initiated it. So what we do is that we lean into what God is going to do.
Let me give you this as an example. Suppose you are struggling with financial debt that feels like it’s going to overwhelm you. You pray, “Please God, send me more money. Please send me a windfall, some way I can make more money and pay off my debt.” But what you receive is something altogether different. You receive a different lifestyle, a leaner way of living, a sense of being set free from desires and wants and constantly pursuing things that keep up with your neighbors. What’s changed is you.
God wants to enter into our world and save us from our sin. So what do we do? I want to lift up two things. The first is that we look for the wondrous. Look for what God is doing all around you, look to be amazed. There’s a great old spiritual made popular by Sister Rosetta Tharpe in the 1940s. It’s got a great beat to it. Go listen to it on YouTube. It says, “There are strange things happening every day, Jesus is the holy light, turning darkness into light. There are strange things happening every day. He gave a blind man sight, he praised him with all his might, there are strange things happening every single day.”
Friends, look for the wondrous around you.
Have you ever been to the Brookwood Community? If you’ve not been out there you should go. It’s in the Brookshire area, and you can have lunch there at their restaurant. Brookwood Community is a place for adults with special needs, functional disabilities, who are living in a way that is productive and happy, where’s there is incredible community. It’s a place I go just to be inspired, because nothing is impossible with God.
Perhaps you have heard about reVision Houston. It’s an organization founded by members of St. Luke’s and St. Martin’s Episcopal Church to deal with at-risk young people, particularly those who are in the juvenile justice system or are at risk of joining gangs. If you go on their website you’ll see a video there. Dick’s Sporting Goods gave them a grant for their soccer team. And what you’ll see on the video are lives that are changed, completely changed.
God is doing amazing things around us and we just need to pay attention and see what God is doing. Then what we do is allow that wonder to point us to Jesus. So that’s what the shepherds did. They saw the star, they saw the angels, heard the voice of Gabriel, and they went to find Jesus.
You see, it’s fine for us to hear the magical bell of Santa Clause and the Polar Express, but the truth is that our real hope, our real sense that nothing is impossible with God, is found in that relationship with the Messiah himself. When you see that which is really wondrous, really amazing, astonishing, incredible, look to the one who actually does incredible things, who created the world and is putting it right again. Because it’s in the relationship with that Savior that we find our real hope is realized, that life and love defeat death and hatred. It’s in him we discover that really nothing is impossible. So look for that which is amazing. Expect to be amazed. Then turn to the one who makes that happen. In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.