God

"God"
Luke 1:46-55


When I used to teach Confirmation Class, there was one final assignment that I’d ask the class to do.  I would meet with the 8th graders from September to the following March.  We would cover all the basics of the faith:  Who is God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit?  What is the church?  What is a Christian?  What is the Bible?  They are huge questions.  Trying to get this kind of material across to 8th graders is like marching in where angels fear to tread.  My son, Ryan’s class, was a case in point.  It was one of the largest classes I’ve taught, and they were all clowns and goof-offs.  I don’t know if I got anything across to any of those kids.  It’s for that reason that many of my pastor friends think we should teach Confirmation class to students right after they graduate from college.  We might have better luck.

Anyway, the final assignment, after having spent months on all these heady theological topics, was for each eighth grader to write a statement of faith.  The kids worked on these statements for a couple of weeks.  After a special meal, with the parents in attendance, all would gather in the sanctuary.  Each confirmand, in turn would stand in the pulpit and read their Statement of Faith.  They would describe as 14 and 15 year olds what they’ve come to believe.  All of their years of Sunday School, all of the times they sat through worship, all the Youth Group meetings, all that “faith stuff” got distilled down into a statement of what they believed.

It’s probably one of the hardest tasks the class members had to do.  Each class struggled, wondered, fretted, sweat bullets.  Most felt inadequate to the task.  They asked, “Is this good enough?”  Or, “Is this what you want?”  All I said was, “It’s your statement.  Do you feel it’s good enough?  Is it what you want to say?”  It’s a much more difficult task than most realize.  When my son stood in the pulpit for his turn, he talked about what he didn’t believe rather than what he did. It was the most creative of his class, coming at his belief by talking about unbelief.

Maybe I should give each of you that assignment.  All of the adults in our congregation could be required to write out a statement of faith.  As an adult, what would you write?  What would you say in writing out what you believe?  How often do you really contemplate what it is, exactly, that you believe or don’t believe?  And how would you state it if you were forced to write it down to be read in front of the rest of the people in this congregation?

I think it would be a good Christmas tradition for all believers.  Sit down in a quiet place.  Take out your journal if you use one.  If you don’t, get one.  You can call it your Christmas Statement of Faith Journal.  Look back over this year of your life.  Based on the experiences of this past year, write a statement of what you believe.  How have the experiences of the year shaped your faith?  As you have come to worship or Sunday School, what has caught your attention?  How has your faith in God shined brighter in your life?  Or has it dimmed?  How have you noticed the hand of God in your life in this past year?  What is it that you believe?  Or what, about our Christian belief have you had a hard time believing?  Think about those kinds of questions and then write a statement of faith.

If you follow through on this suggestion, and you want to take the further risk of letting me read it over, I’d be happy to do that, and talk it over with you.  I won’t make you read it in front of the congregation.

Mary gave us her statement of faith to read.  She looked back over the recent events of her life and wrote a statement of what she believed specifically about God.  She realized the central character of her story is God.  We look at the story and sing about shepherds and wise men and angels and Joseph and Mary.  But in and through and around the whole story is God.

Mary wrote her statement of faith in the form of a song.  It’s a piece of compact poetry that is full of the images of what she has come to believe about God.  I think some of the meanings of the imagery is known only to her.  But I found a few points of her faith statement that were important for me that I’d like to lift out for our attention this Christmas morning.

First, the first word in each of the lines of Mary’s faith song is, “God:”
God is my Savior…
God cares for me…
God has blessed me…
God All-Powerful has done great things…
God always shows mercy…
God has used his powerful arm…
God drags strong rulers…
God gives the hungry good things…
God helps his servant…
God made this promise…

Even though each of our faith statements are our own, and come from our own hearts and experiences, they are not ultimately about us.  They are about God.  Who God is.  How we have come to understand God.  We can’t discover who we are until we first discover who God is.  Not the other way around.

The message of Christmas is that God revealed himself ultimately and fully in Jesus.  It is that revelation that we must grapple with most in our own statements of faith.  Only by understanding God in the revelation of himself in Jesus Christ will we then come to a clearer revelation of who we are in God’s eyes and purpose.

That’s what Mary concentrates on most in her song:  What God has done.  Not what she thinks God is like.  But what God has done.  God reveals his nature by what he does.  We can’t just sit around and think about what we think God might be like.  We must, as Mary does, concentrate on what God actually does.  God is constantly revealing himself in the world.  Only by keeping our eyes open do we see those acts of revelation and how God is behind what’s going on.  In all things, through all things, above all things, GOD.

Secondly, Mary believes that God is a God who is personally involved in the world and in her individual life.  Several times she used the personal pronoun as a direct object of God’s activity.  God is not only the Savior; God is MY Savior.

By claiming God as Savior, Mary is highlighting her belief that God is behind the saving, redeeming, forgiving acts in people’s lives and in world history.  God is the one who is involved in personal and historical salvation in all its forms.  Wherever there is some form of salvation, forgiveness, reconciliation, God is somehow intimately involved in that act.

In our American culture we know how to go after guilt and shame.  We know how to prosecute and judge, even before any trial happens.  We know how to run people through the legal ringer.  We dot all the “j’s” and cross all the “t’s” in judgement.  We know how to pronounce the moral verdict and hand down the sentence.

But we don’t know what to do afterwards.  Once we’ve run someone through the gauntlet of humiliation and judgement, then what?  Where and how are the equal, and maybe more powerful forces of forgiveness and salvation and ultimately, reconciliation brought to bear?  There is no due process for forgiveness and salvation, except by God.

That’s the message of Christmas, and the faith statement of Mary:

With all my heart I praise the Lord,
and I am glad because of God my Savior.

Praise God, Mary is saying in her statement of faith, that in God, I can finally find a place of salvation, rescue and forgiveness.  Because it can’t be found anywhere else.  There is no where else in the world that Mary found a Savior, except in God.  Neither will we.  Life doesn’t revolve around the judgements of rulers.  Nor does life revolve even around the real and unavoidable consequences of our actions.  Life revolves around God the Savior, God the forgiver, God the one who sees imperfections and reconciles us not only to God, but to each other, and to ourselves.

That’s Mary’s message to us about Christmas.  Christmas is a time to celebrate God’s Good News of how God is bringing ultimate reconciliation, love, and embrace into the world through Jesus Christ.

There are so many other important statements Mary makes in her faith statement about God.  Things like God uses surprising people to accomplish God’s work.  All through the stories about God in the Bible, God seems to delight in choosing people we wouldn’t choose if we were in charge.  The author of the book about Samson that Men’s Bible Study just finished up this week made that point about Samson.  In the Epilogue of the book, the author wrote:
I stand in awe of a God who is gracious enough to tolerate a guy like Samson, let alone use him.  If I had been calling the shots, I probably would have blown Samson off somewhere around his twenty-fifth birthday.  I would have grown completely frustrated and found another person to work through.  Someone who would take the Nazarite vow seriously.  Someone who would follow orders.  But God stuck by Samson…

Mary has come to believe that God values people and things differently than the world does.  We think power and personality and celebrity and athleticism and authority is what’s important.  God turns all that on its ear.  Makes it disappear in a poof.  At the same time, God elevates what in God’s eyes is really important.  The humble are given authority.  The hungry are fed.

Just look at the Christmas story.  Shepherds who are completely despised as human beings had angels singing to them.  Those smelly outcast shepherds, children and adolescents mostly, were the first to see the Savior.  Wise men--foreigners--were shown to be the ones who understood who Jesus was, traveling great distance just to see him.  Mary saw how God was, and how God acted.  Thus she came to make a statement of faith based on what she saw happening, and the way God worked be uplifting those we’d pass by.



For Mary, God is a stunning and awesome God.  But as powerful as her statement of faith is, she still doesn’t know the half of it.  God has some surprise revelations for her yet.  Little does she comprehend who the child is whom she carried and now has given birth to.  That revelation, and a fuller understanding of God, is yet to come.  For now, sitting in a cattle stall, holding a baby, listening to shepherds jabber about angels singing--this is enough.


So, are you ready to write your statement of faith, this Christmas Day?