The Shepherd’s Voice

The other day I was visiting a nursing home. I saw an elderly lady and as she walked up and down the halls she would lift her nightgown saying “supersex.” I thought that was a little unusual. Well, she walked up to an elderly man in a wheelchair flipped her nightgown and again said “supersex.” He sat silently for a moment or two and said, “I think I’ll take the soup.”

Mary wasn’t offered the option of soup or sex. The angel Gabriel comes to Mary and says, Mary, God likes you and God has chosen you to have a baby. Mary says, well I’m not ready to have a baby, but the angel says you will conceive and a baby will be born and his name will be Jesus.

If you are a teenager this might come as quite a shock, but Mary somehow gathers herself and responds.

Would you consider this a call from God? We can certainly put our own spin on it can’t we.

How does God call us in the 21st century?

A couple weeks ago I spoke about how God speaks to us. God speaks through the Holy Spirit, through scripture, through other Christians, and occasionally through circumstances.

God spoke through an angel to Mary, she didn’t believe what she was hearing.

I don’t know about you, but I’m very skeptical about stories I hear from people when they’ve seen a vision or I hear about a miracle. Perhaps it’s the engineer in me or the need to validate the world around me based on science I’ve been taught in college.

However, about 10 years ago I had an acquaintance tell me a story. His background was in the Jewish faith. He was sleeping and one night he was awaken rather abruptly by a noise and light shining down the hallway. He popped up and started to walk down the hall only to be blinded by this very bright light. In the light there was a voice that told him his life was going to change. He feared he was dead and this was just the entrance into the life after.

He, also being quite skeptical did not believe what he was being told. The voice from the light told him to go to a Christian church, a specific Christian church on a certain corner and he would be told more about the coming of a Messiah. When he woke up the next morning he did not believe his own encounter, but he reluctantly went to this Christian church that had been told to him by the light in the night. It happened to be Sunday the next day.

As he entered this church there was a service going on and the pastor was talking about a Savior being born, a Messiah, Yeshua another name for Jesus in Hebrew. This man of Jewish tradition could not believe what he was hearing because it was just as the voice from the light had told him. On the spot he committed his life to this Christian Messiah after that encounter with the light.

Most of us will never have this kind of experience, but he did. No matter how much I questioned him he clung to that story of what transformed his life. God called and he responded. For most of us our encounter with the Messiah, the God of the Bible will never be that dramatic.

Mary, a teenager, was told she would become pregnant, with child and this child she was going to carry would be different. This child would be Holy, the Son of God.

Mary was afraid, but listened. When God speaks to you, do you listen? Are you fearful of how God may be speaking to you right now? God has you here for a reason. This message is an encounter with the God of all creation, the God of the universe. How will you respond?

The surprising part of this story for me is not that Mary was approached by the angel Gabriel, but it is by her positive response.

Let’s look at this what might be called a teachable moment. What can we learn as we see how Mary responds to God in this story?

Yes, Mary was fearful at first, but she listened. God is calling you to listen today. When God calls us what does God expect from us? In Micah 6:8 it says, “what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God”?

Mary subjected herself to ridicule, to mockery, to scorn, to becoming an outcast because she believed what God was telling her. Mary showed fear, but Gabriel said it’s ok, you have found favor with God. Mary’s response we heard it this morning in the Magnificat – “My soul magnifies the Lord, 47 and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.

We have all found favor with God, that’s the really good news about the Gospel. However, when we see ourselves in this world, we don’t measure up, we fail, we often are afraid to fully follow God’s favor, but God tells us it’s ok to be human because he has a plan.

Our secular world looks at Christians and what does it say? You’re a fool if you believe some story that took place 2000 years ago. A virgin can’t have a baby, it makes no sense logically. Angels don’t visit us here on earth. These religious ideas are myths, they enslave you, they encourage rigid thinking that’s not in the mainstream.

When God called Mary she responded albeit fearfully and reluctantly at first, but she responded to become the mother of Jesus. Not everyone who responds to God is given Mary’s level of honor.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German Lutheran pastor and theologian who was involved in the German resistance movement against Hitler and the Nazis during World War II. In April 1943, Bonhoeffer was arrested. Thirteen months later, still in prison, he wrote a letter to his friends, saying: I believe that nothing that happens to me is meaningless. . . . As I see it, I’m here for some purpose, and I only hope I may fulfill it. In the light of the great purpose all our privations and disappointments are trivial.

Eleven months later, Bonhoeffer was hanged in Flossenburg Concentration Camp, only weeks before the camp was liberated. Because of his convictions, he became one of the great Christian martyrs of the 20th century. His words from prison will never be forgotten: “I’m here for some purpose, and I only hope I may fulfill it.” Earlier in his career, Bonhoeffer wrote a book called the Cost of Discipleship, where he described God’s call on each of our lives. He said, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die”.

OK, let’s bring this whole story home.
Maybe you’re saying to yourself, I’m not the mother of Jesus, I’m not Mary, I’m not Dietrich Bonhoeffer I just live a simple life, keeping to myself, doing my job and I’m okay with that.

Let me be very very clear – God has called each of us in our own way. God’s call on our life is crystal clear. Luther teaches us that we can’t do it on our own. He wrote – I cannot believe in Jesus Christ or come to him, but the Holy Spirit calls me, enlightens me and sanctifies me in the true faith. This call is ongoing. This call will cut through your heart like a hot knife through butter.

When Peter, a first hand witness of Jesus life, death and resurrection talked about God’s call and our response he said God gives us hope, God calls us to a life of Holy living, and then in 1 Peter 2:21 he says “For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps.”

Maybe, you’re still not convinced about how to respond to God’s call on your life? Back quite a few years ago, when railroads were in their glory days, Grand Central Station in New York was one of the busiest places on the planet. Ralston Young, was a baggage handler. Ralston did his job in an unusual way in Grand Central Station.

He would often say, “You know, everybody going through Grand Central isn’t going on a honeymoon, or going to a party. Many are going to funerals, the hospital or even prison.” He began to serve the people whose bags he carried by showing concern for not only the bags he carried for people, but for the burdens they carried as well. Ralston witnessed to the people whose bags he handled and later to groups that gathered for prayer in a car placed in a siding, on Track 13, at Grand Central station.

Ralston, better know as Red Cap 42 became so popular that countless stories have emerged about the way he helped people carry their “personal baggage” as he carried their luggage to waiting trains. Ralston was know as “The Bishop of Grand Central Station.” Reader’s Digest featured him as one of the “most unforgettable characters.” It’s said that this simple man, a baggage handler affected the lives of thousands of people because he cared, and it showed. God blesses us for the job we do, not the job we have.

The amazing story of Mary, of God entered into this world, interrupting life is unforgettable. Rich or poor, young or old, black or white God calls, we respond. We know we can’t do it on our own, we might be afraid, but God says ‘Do not fear you have found favor with God.”

God’s grace penetrates our hearts. God’s grace permeates our minds. God through Gabriel told Mary, “nothing will be impossible with God.” Do you believe that? God encourages us to live out the difference grace makes in each of our lives.

Nothing is impossible with God – so the ball is now in your court, what will your response be today to God’s call? Amen.