"Step Back"

So, 

Last week we talked a little bit about what happens when you like Jesus are asleep in the boat, comfy with your head on the pillow and things go crazy. A storm comes out of nowhere and now you gotta deal.

Like the morning I woke up with a pain in my chest, and waited to tell Sue until the kids were on the school bus. Two stents later all was well, but it was not fun at all. 

Crises never seem to come on a plan!

They come out of thin air and send all our well-crafted plans down the river, just like that bridge in Puerto Rico. One that had been put in place when the previous bridge was washed away just a few years ago in another hurricane.

And crises can be devastating and debilitating. 

Or they can be opportunities! Or both. 

The flooding in Puerto Rico is a disaster for the folks living there. For us they are an opportunity to together do something to make a difference.

Now we haven’t figured out what and even if that is the only place we should and can help, but crises can be opportunities!

Because our faith allows us to see an opening for God to do something amazing though us to alleviate the suffering of folks who once again have had the wind and the waves, the rain and the floods wash away everything around them.

Crises of course come in all kinds of different sizes and intensities. Having your only car repossessed is one kind of crisis. Hitting a bear is another. Have a leak under your kitchen sink is another yet.

We’re at the second week of four talking about peace. And the scripture lesson takes us to Mary, the mother of Jesus, amazing response to the angel’s announcement to her that she is going to have a baby.

Think about what was ahead for Mary! This is not peace! This is a huge disruption of whatever peace Mary may have been experiencing.

Becoming pregnant was no small deal in Mary’s time. Discovering one is pregnant is always a crisis. And in Mary’s case more so because as the angel makes clear in the verses just before this reading in Luke, Mary was not married.

In this generation it may not be as big a deal as it has been in the past. All ministers my age and older know the conventional wisdom is that the first baby can come at any time, the second takes nine months.

Yes, every clergy person has married a couple that discovered they were pregnant before a marriage took place. But in Mary’s day getting pregnant without being married could result in death.

That problem was averted and there is a story with that, but here’s the thing, Mary was pregnant!

It can be a crisis of joy, but still filled with concerns and trepidations, even when the baby has been hoped for and prayed for. 
And when the pregnancy is unexpected and one imagines for Mary, not even desired, this is bad.

Yet Mary’s reaction is not panic, not sadness or fear, but praise!

Mary is at peace. Mary is centered. Mary is in a trusting relationship with God, so whatever happens Mary affirms God has got her!

And part of that reason is for sure the fact that Mary had an angelic visitor who told her the child she was to carry and birth was none other than the long-awaited Messiah.

Yes, an angelic visitor telling us that everything is going to be okay might well calm our nerves about whatever is happening in our lives. 

But what the scripture today reveals is that Mary’s peace is steeped in her deep, deep faith.

Mary, it seems, was a woman with an amazing relationship with God, one filled with far more faith than you or I, I think, who heard those angelic words and believed them. 

God was indeed, truly, with her! 

And her praise reveals the joy it brought her!

Maybe that was part of the gift of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit within her: growing faith! And as a bonus growing peace!

She believed, and believing was at peace.

If only we could be like Mary!
No, I am not suggestion we all get pregnant by the Holy Spirit – although, do remember, we all carry within us the Holy Spirit.

Have you ever thought of yourself in those terms - as one who carries God’s presence with you wherever you go!

To work, to school, to the ballpark, to Frontera’s on Friday night, to the supermarket, even online. You and I! We are folks pregnant with the good news, because we believe it and are at peace.

And when we get crazy news, we could react as Mary did! 

We could think, O God this is going to be amazing! 

It is so exciting to be able to see all that you plan to do. I rejoice in all you have done and am marveling at the way this new thing you are doing will reveal your presence!

Maybe it’s just me, but that seems such a better way to respond to crisis. To put our faith to work and grow peace, to plant faith as it were and harvest peace.

And then with Mary we could say, “With all my heart I praise the Lord, and I am glad because of God my Savior. God cares for me, his humble servant. From now on, all people will say God has blessed me. God All-Powerful has done great things for me, and his name is holy. He always shows mercy to everyone who worships him.”

Amen.