Materials
Advent - Christmas Questions #3
Why Me?
Luke 1:39-45
by R. Todd Bouldin
Just as Jesus Christ was born of Mary 2,000 years ago, so by His Spirit He continues to be born within each of us. Receiving this new life will be as wonderful as it was for Elizabeth, and as painful as it was for Mary. When the Christmas miracle graces our house, we too ask the question, “Why has this happened to me?”
Prayer - O God Emmanuel, Your Christmas gifts of faith, hope and love have been waiting – waiting in our souls – waiting for You to make them leap up and take over our lives. In the Name of our Savior, Amen.
Elizabeth and Mary were quite a pair. Elizabeth was not a young woman like Mary. After years and years of praying for a child, after becoming used to not having a child, and after getting to the age where giving birth to a child was not a good idea, she gets pregnant with a baby she and her husband, who we met two weeks ago, will name John who is to prepare the way for Christ. Mary was a young woman as we discussed last week. She would hope for a child someday, once she was married and when it was appropriate. But not now. Not while she was still a virgin. Not while she was only betrothed. So when Luke wants to tell us the Christmas story, he introduces us to two pregnant women. One of them is too old to be a mother and the other is too young. But both of them now bear in them a great grace. Both are hands in the hands of God. In these two women, I believe Luke sees the promise of Advent, for them and for us.
As the Bible constantly illustrates, God’s timing usually takes us by surprise. Sometimes, as with Elizabeth, God moves too slowly. Sometimes, as with Mary, God moves too quickly. Like Elizabeth, some of you have been praying for a long time for something to happen in your life – something that would take away the shame, or remove the barrenness of your life. You think now that it may never happen. Obviously you can’t make it happen, because if you could have, you clearly would have. Over and over again, you’ve learned, you’re not in control. Like Mary, others of you find that something has happened – something that has disheveled your life this year. God has conceived something in your life that you didn’t ask for, something that you didn’t anticipate, something that doesn’t make any sense. You are frightened, confused, and clearly, you are not in control either. That’s the funny thing about God’s presence in our lives. Whether it is a joyful blessing or a frightening interruption, in both cases life is out of our control.
When we come together here in worship, we too share at least this one thing in common. Some of us have experienced a year of blessing and peace, while others of us have experienced a year of hardship and trials. But together we all come confessing that we share a common limitation of not being in control of our lives. It is fascinating in fact that, according to Luke’s Gospel, after Mary discovered that she would give birth to The Messiah, the first person she went to, with haste, was not Joseph or her parents, but her relative Elizabeth. Another woman whose life was out of control like her own. That means that the very first worship service in the New Testament, the first community of believers created and brought together by the presence of Christ, was two pregnant women.
That is not a point lost on Doctor Luke, who throughout his gospel will emphasize the important role played by women in the life and ministry of Jesus. Most of history, at least at this point in time, was about men – not in reality, but it is written as if kings, warriors, bishops and male philosophers and scientists made all the breakthroughs and developments in history. But when God intervenes with the single most important breakthrough in history, He chose two pregnant women to be His agents. I think that is because these two pregnant women demonstrate something about how history, and all of us, long for and find hope. Pregnancy is a wonderful metaphor for Advent – a living embodiment of the nearness of Christmas hope.
I have never been pregnant. I never will be. But I’ve watched some women in pregnancy. Everything in them changes by a process they cannot manage. In fact, the pregnancy comes to manage them. That is exactly what happens when a miracle begins to develop within each one of us. We can feel its presence, we know its nearness, we sense it’s coming. Just as cells miraculously divide to create organs, flesh, and bones, so does The Holy Spirit come to completely overtake our lives to give birth to new life within us. When that begins to happen, it will be clear that you are not in control. Rather, it is The Holy Spirit’s life in you that is controlling you.
The new life God creates in you may give you a calling that scares you. It may give you gifts, passions, or dreams you never expected to have. Don’t be surprised if you don’t understand it. You’re not the Creator. You’re not supposed to be. You’re supposed to simply receive it, and wait while it develops.
Waiting is one of the most important elements in receiving the new life God wants to give you. Waiting is what we do during Advent while we long and wait for the coming of Christ. Waiting is what pregnancy is all about. At first nine months doesn’t seem like a long time to wait. But the closer you get to the delivery date, the more time seems to drag out before the baby is born. That day seems to never come. Maybe you are waiting on a relationship that is slowly changing, or on a new job offer, or on your children to get their lives together, or for a word of healing that just won’t come. The longer you wait, the harder it becomes. It gets harder because each day God is moving you closer to a new life. Like a pregnant woman who has come to term, it gets harder and harder to bear a new life in a body that is stretched further than you thought possible. Eventually, you get to the point of exasperation and say, “God, stop teaching me about patience. I can’t handle that lesson one more time.” Or “God, stop teaching me to love difficult people. It was easier being mean.” Or “God, stop teaching me to depend only on you. I’ve given all there is to give.” Or “God, stop breaking my heart with the needs of other people. I can’t keep caring so much.” When you say things like this, it is often because the new creation in you has almost matured to full term. You’re almost there.
It is God that is conceiving something new within you. It is the nature of this God to give you grace, which is what you need. It is not what you want, and certainly not what you deserve. But as grace, it will lead to your salvation. But you first have to trust that it is grace – that it is the work of God that is accomplishing this new thing.
When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, we are told that the child within her leapt for joy. Luke says, “And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit.” (Luke 1:41). Elizabeth becomes the embodiment for Luke of all those who will receive new life. Their lives will be filled with the Spirit of God. Their hearts will leap for joy and gladness. That will happen in your life just when you thought life was out of control, just when God starts to conceive something new within you.
As He did with old Elizabeth, God has conceived something in all of our lives. Maybe it is an old hope that has come back to life. Or something that we really didn’t want, but it is back in front of us again. Or maybe it is a new mission, or a restlessness about where we are. Maybe it a longing for God that has gotten lost in the shuffle, or a desire for God that was shelved for a later day. Then this new thing God is doing comes into our presence. When we hear about the arrival of the Christ child, the thing that God is conceiving within us comes alive. It jumps for joy, reminding us that God is still at work within us. Our spirits soar and our heart races when we again feel during Advent this holy thing God is doing in our lives.
When Elizabeth experienced this, her only question was to ask, “And why has this happened to me that the mother of my Lord comes to me?” Why me? That is the question that comes when grace has found us. That is the Christmas question. We are a people who want to make sense of our lives, to find cause and effect for why life turns out the way it does. It is difficult to understand the tragedies that come our way. But it is even harder sometimes to accept the blessings that have come to us without reason. Especially the salvation of God. “Why me,” we ask. The explanations are not there. To try to explain life is to try to manage it or control it. But that isn’t going to happen. One of the messages of Christmas is that you are not in control of the blessings. You can’t create them or manage them. You can only receive them.
As with most of our “why” questions, Elizabeth receives no answer. She can only say, “For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy.” (Luke 1:44). The “why me” question simply evaporates as the joy overcomes the need to control. As she comes closer and closer to the coming Christ child. The closer you get to Him this Christmas, the more the questions about you and your life will fade away. They will become part of an indescribable joy, or as Paul says in Philippians, a “peace that passes understanding.”
God is doing something new within you this Christmas. Can you sense the nearness of its coming? Does your heart race as you recognize the presence of Christ within it? There is great joy to be found in living a life in the control and presence of God. The only pressing Christmas question is whether you will receive what is coming to you.
We have seen this Advent that sometimes God’s work within us can take away our disappointment, and sometimes it, at least temporarily, can just add to it. The Christmas miracle comes often, not initially with answers, but with great questions. God is doing something holy, something new, something mysterious in our lives. It may be the answer to your life-long prayer. Or it may be a great interruption to the life you expected. But whatever God is creating in you, you can be sure that is there to draw you into the presence of Christ where you find that the only thing you ever really wanted for Christmas, the only thing you ever desired, was Him. And when His presence finally comes into your presence, when I meets Thou, when you know that it His presence that will never leave you – then you can receive everything that God is doing in your life to bring His salvation.
In the last days of World War II, Dietrich Bonhoeffer found himself imprisoned by the Nazis and awaiting a certain death. He had been an outspoken minister and theologian of the German Resistance against Hitler’s horrific reign in Germany, and he was arrested for his writings and protest. Facing death in the new year, from his prison cell on December 19, 1944, he wrote one of his last letters to his wife Maria. Here is a portion:
My dearest Maria, I know our home will be very quiet this Christmas. In solitude the body develops organs of which we are hardly aware of in every day life. So I haven’t for an instant felt lonely or forlorn. Your prayers and your kind thoughts, and passages from the Bible, long forgotten conversation, pieces of music, books . . . they all are invested with life and reality as never before. We have been waiting for each other for almost two years, Maria. But whatever happens, do not lose heart. In life and in death, we belong to God. Here are a few verses that have occurred to me on recent nights. They are my Christmas greeting to you:
Although the old year still our hearts oppresses,
And still of evil times we bear the weight.
O Lord, bestow upon us that salvation for which our troubled souls Thou didst create.
The candles brought by Thee into our darkness, let them today burn clear, and warm and bright.
And bring us, if Thou wilt, once more together.
Thy light, we know it well, shines in the night.
By gracious powers so wonderfully protected,
We wait with confidence, befall what may.
We are with God, at night and in the morning,
And certainly on each new day.
We are with God, at night and in the morning. The message of the Christmas angels is that God is now with us, and that His appearing is nigh. As you wait for His glorious appearing, every day your heart grows fonder for Him. Every day the old questions seem to fade away into an indescribable peace. You start to see the signs that His coming in your life is not far off. His redemption is close at hand. A joy begins to well up within you that you can only feel when it is His presence that you realize you have longed for all along.
In life and in death, The Lord is near. Can you feel your heart leaping?
Merry Christmas!
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