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Century Christian
Church 1301 Tamarack Road, Owensboro, KY 42301, (270) 684-0286, Pastor: Rev. Jim Westmoreland |
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The Sound of Your Voice We remember sounds of voices of people that we care about, people we love. We know the sound of the voice of our husband or wife, the voice of our mother, our father, our children, people close to us. These voices give us warmth, intimacy, comfort and security. Imagine that day as Mary, the soon-to-be mother of Jesus, went to visit her much older cousin, Elizabeth, who was soon-to-be the mother of John the Baptizer. Only Luke and Matthew give us birth narratives or stories about the birth of Jesus. But here is a brief story about Jesus' mother, Mary. She had made a trip to visit Elizabeth. Remember, they walked to where they were going. They didn't ride. Mary and Joseph had both come from Galilee, up north. Our text tells us that Elizabeth lived in Judea, which was South of Galilee with Samaria in between. That, in itself was quite a journey. Luke also tells us that Elizabeth lived in the hill country. How would you like to be pregnant and traveling by foot for several days across hills and mountains? Apparently, they had done this before because they knew the sound of their voices. They were quite different, but they also had some things in common. Elizabeth was much older. She was married and had not been able to have children. She and her husband had asked God many times to give them a child. Mary was not married. She was young and was not thinking about having a child any time soon. They were cousins. They both had an experience with an angel to get assurance about the child they were conceiving. There was a special bond between them, a bond shared by women who are pregnant together as they share their dreams, concerns, plans and their day-to-day progress in their pregnancy. There was also a bond of purpose. Both were told by the angel messenger of the special purposes of their babies as servants of God. What a sense of both blessing and responsibility they must have felt. I'm glad that Mary and Elizabeth had each other with whom to share their experiences. As Mary had come to visit Elizabeth, God used Mary's voice to stir excitement and religious awareness in Elizabeth. Elizabeth had to have been the source of this story for Luke. She passed on what happened to her that day that Mary came to visit. As soon as Elizabeth heard Mary's voice, she felt her baby, John, do some strong kicking in her womb. And, she was filled with the presence of the Holy Spirit and she exclaimed, "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb." The reason these words may sound very familiar to us is that they are the core of the first part of The Hail Mary prayer of Catholics. "Hail Mary, Full of Grace, The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus." These are the words of Elizabeth, Mary's cousin. They are Elizabeth's voice speaking the words of blessing on Mary and on Mary's unborn baby, Jesus. With our own voices we have the power to bless others or curse them, to build them up or put them down. Mary and Elizabeth chose to be willing and obedient servants. They chose to be channels of God's love and blessing. Through Mary, God became a man and lived among us. He became flesh in the form of a baby and lived as a human being as what we call the Incarnation of God, which means the in-fleshing of God. God continues to use our voices to stir hearts with the Holy Spirit and to bless us. Music and carols speak to us during the Advent and Christmas Season. "O Little Town of Bethlehem" is one of the favorite and cherished hymns of Christmas. Though it has been around since 1868, it wasn't formally used in churches until 1892. It is a hymn which is packed with emotion, a song about the Christ Child, born to Mary, a song filled with the creative power of God intervening in history with the gift of a savior. "O Little Town of Bethlehem" tells the Christmas story as a story of hope, a story where the divine and the human come together in an amazing but humble way. It is also an invitation for both the non-believer and the believer to see what God as done and to discover the difference that living our faith in Jesus will make in our lives. This hymn was written by Phillips Brooks, an Episcopal priest. Brooks was serving the Holy Trinity Church in the City of Brotherly Love (Philadelphia, PA). He had just returned from a trip to The Holy Land which inspired him to write the words. Brooks gave the words to his organist, Lewis Redner, and asked him to create a tune for the upcoming Christmas celebration. Redner procrastinated and struggled with the creation of a tune until the night before the celebration when he got inspired in the middle of the night and created the song as we know it. The following day a group of 36 children and 6 Sunday school teachers introduced the song created by the Phillips Brooks and Lewis Redner, who were both bachelors. That was on December 27th, 1868. It wasn't published as an official hymn of the Episcopal Church until 1892. The following January, Phillips Brooks died, never knowing the magnitude of the hymn that he created. For some reason the 4th stanza has been dropped from the original score. "Where children pure and happy Pray to the blessed Child, Where misery cries out to thee, Son of the mother mild; Where charity stands watching And faith holds wide the door, The dark night wakes, the glory breaks, And Christmas comes once more." The stanza includes the line, "And faith holds wide the door." This hymn, like the story of the annunciation of Mary in the gospel of Luke, is a story about faith, about voices spoken that God uses to excite and reveal Himself. It is not a story about how Mary God pregnant or a story explaining the virgin birth. It is a story about the faith God calls us to have in lieu of what God has done for us. God wants us to believe in God's abiding presence, in God's prevailing forgiveness, in God's intervention into the world through ordinary people. It is a story solely for the purpose of giving us hope to a world where desperation, loneliness, and hopelessness overwhelm us. God gives to us the voices that we need to hear, and he calls us to be the voice that someone else needs to hear. Every year, it seems, that people are nearly trampled to death in the mad rush to get the hottest Christmas toys or electronic game stations. Imagining that kind of scene where people can trample over and walk on by another human being who is hurt is more than I can imagine. This illustrates the desperate attitude of our society. We rush to buy stuff that we believe will make us happy, and, in the process, we ignore those around us who have need. It's a sad commentary on the values of our society, its no wonder people are losing hope. Where is God today? Is God no longer creating hope in our midst? Or, are we blind and deaf to God's continuing ways of giving us hope in the midst of our despair? Just as God used two bachelors to give birth to one of our great Christmas carols, God used two women to inject love into a world which has lost all joy and hope. First, there was Mary, an unlikely teenage girl who would soon give birth to Jesus. In a culture where women had virtually no rights, a young woman became God's agent of love and grace. Rarely do we look to the powerless people in society to be bearers of hope. We generally assign that responsibility to the rich and famous. But God works through ordinary people. I believe that God continues to impregnate us with love and hope just as God did with the birth of Jesus. Unfortunately we fail to see that God works through ordinary people. We also fail to understand that God wants us to live in faith, not fear. Keith Wagner tells the story about Jane Adams, who was only seven years old when she visited a shabby street in a nearby town, and seeing ragged children there, announced that she wanted to build a big house so that poor children would have a place to play. As a young adult, Jane and a friend visited Toynbee Hall in London, where they saw educated people helping the poor by living among them. She and her friend returned to Chicago, restored an old mansion, and moved in. There they cared for children of working mothers and held sewing and cooking classes. Older boys and girls had clubs at the mansion. An art gallery and public music, reading, and craft rooms were created in the mansion. Jane didn't stop there. She spoke up for people who couldn't speak for themselves. She was eventually awarded an honorary degree from Yale. President Theodore Roosevelt dubbed her "American's most useful citizen," and she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. No matter how famous she became, Jane Adams remained a resident of Hull House, where she eventually died. (from God's Lessons of Life for Mom, Honor Books) As long as there are ordinary people, like Jane Adams, who are willing to give love to the ills of society there will always be hope. Jane Adams said "Yes" to faith and trusted in God to be with her. Phillip Brooks and Lewis Redner said "Yes" to faith and created one of our greatest Christmas carols. Mary and Elizabeth said "Yes" to faith and brought forth a savior. "God used their voices to make a difference. May God use the sound of your voice stir the Holy Spirit in someone else. May we all say "Yes" to faith and allow God to make us instruments of hope and love.(1) With our voices and how we live our lives we can create warmth and intimacy. We can choose to be transparent with our faith. We can open the windows of our soul to let others see that there is something going on. Jesus …the life within Mary… is the answer. Why do you think Elizabeth wanted Mary around? Yes, she was a cousin, and yes, they enjoyed talking with each other, but it was the life within them that was the answer. Don Francisco wrote the following lyrics: The answer is in Jesus. Getting closer to Jesus. That's what Christmas is about. Not the activity, but the intimacy. And let us let our voices share the warmth of our faith and the intimacy of a real relationship. Amen. Century Christian Church, December 24, 2006 - Sermon by Jim Westmoreland 1. Dr. Keith Wagner, St. Paul's United Church of Christ, Sidney, Ohio |
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