“God finds favor with you!”
Highlands Presbyterian church
December 1, 2013
The theologian Walter
Bruegemann told a group of pastors, "Few of our people imagine God to be
an active character in the story of their lives." How about you? Do you
think of God as playing an active role in the events of your life or do you see
God as standing in the corner watching what might happen as you go through
life?
Bette Midler once sang a
song titled “From a Distance.”
“From
a distance We all have enough And no one is in need And there are no guns, no
bombs and no disease No hungry mouths to feed From a Distance We are
instruments Marching in a common band Playing songs of hope Playing songs of
peace They are the songs of every man
“God
is watching us God is watching us God is watching us From a distance.”
So…when
you think of God, is God an active participant in your life or just watching
from a distance?
A
God off in the corner simply watching and keeping score is not, of course, the
biblical picture of God. Yeah, God watches. But God also gets involved - God does
things, all kinds of things -- great and small, mighty, mundane, or miraculous,
God is constantly at work. More than that, God partners with people to tell
others about what God is doing and to do the doing as well.
Take
today's Gospel reading for instance. The angel of the Lord appears to
Zechariah. God doesn’t just
answer Zechariah’s prayer. God sends an angel to tell Zechariah that his prayer has been heard; that his wife Elizabeth will
bear a son, and is specific. The baby’s name will be name John. Zechariah and Elizabeth will have joy and
gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, John will be great in the sight
of the Lord. The angel instructs that John must never drink wine or strong
drink; and that even before his birth he will be filled with the Holy Spirit. John,
the angel says, will turn many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. With the spirit and power of Elijah he will go before
him, to turn the hearts of parents to their children, and the disobedient to
the wisdom of the righteous, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”
How’s that for being an active God.
Next,
the angel Gabriel explodes into the life of an unsuspecting, unwed teenager
named Mary. Through this angel, God tells her that she has found favor of God
and will conceive, carry, and bear the Son of God. Whew – God can’t get anymore
active than that!
Can
you imagine God being so involved in your life that God finds favor in you and
promises to do important work through you? My guess is that God already has.
As
I look around at the people in our congregation I see people who are favored by
God and through whom God plans to do marvelous things. Perhaps not conceive and
bear the Son of God, but so what -- that one's been done already anyway!
But
think how many other wonderful things there are that God wants to accomplish
through us, so many that you and I couldn't begin to count them all. And each
of you are in all kinds of places and positions with gifts and talents to do
those wonderful things.
Just
as God found favor with Mary and Elizabeth, God finds favor with you. Finding
favor with Elizabeth meant she would be remembered forever as the mother of
John the Baptist. Finding favor with Mary meant she would be remembered forever
as the mother of Jesus.
And
so the Advent question is not whether God has found favor with you; God has. So
the question is rather what marvelous work will God do through you?
When
the angel Gabriel came to Mary and said,
“Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you” Luke says Mary pondered what it
all meant. That’s what I hope you will do during Advent. Ponder.
Advent is our time of anticipation…a time to anticipate that God
will find favor with you. A time to ponder what that means, what great power is
bestowed on us by the favor God finds in each of us.
It's
an incredible thing to be noticed, to be recognized, to have those around us
believe that we have the ability, the talent to do something that matters in
our neighborhood, our community, the world. How much more awesome is it to have
the God of the universe notice and to invite us to join in the important work
on God’s agenda?
During Advent we wait for
God…and learn that God is waiting for us
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