Caught Between God And Disbelief

"Caught Between God And Disbelief"
Luke 1:26-38

What would you have done if you were Mary’s parents?

We read about people in the Bible, particularly in respect to the Christmas story, and we forget they are human beings like us.  We think, because they made it into the Bible, they must be amazing human beings.  But they face the same hassles of daily living.  Mary is a case in point.  She has been deified by the Catholic Church.  We in the Protestant tradition don’t know exactly what to do with her.

Part of the problem is that we know so little about Mary.  All we know about Mary is what’s written here and in a couple of other meager places in the Bible.  Since we know so little, we get to make stuff up about her, based on information we know about young women in that culture.

I want to push out into those waters of storytelling, and look at Mary from a bit different perspective.  I want to look at Mary by taking a look at the terrible difficulty God had gotten her into.  I want to see if we can figure out how Mary ever stood up under all that pressure of being the God chosen one.

So, back to my original question:  What would you have done if you were Mary’s parents?  What would you have done if your young teenaged daughter came to you with this story?

Wouldn’t you, as Mary’s parents, been crunched with a pile of mixed feelings?  They say ambivalence is defined as that time when your teenaged daughter comes home at 3 a.m. clutching a Gideon’s Bible.  That’s what you’re facing as Mary’s parents.  Only worse.

Can’t you just picture yourselves?  Mary comes into your room, somewhat sheepishly.  With her eyes staring at the floor, she tells you she is going to have a baby.  Since Joseph was the only man who was supposed to be in her life, if you’re Mary’s father you are reaching for your shotgun, and Handbook on Stoning a Person.

Mary tries to calm you down by telling you that they don’t have to worry, Joseph isn’t the father of her baby.  Which makes you worry all the more!  Then, if you’re Mary’s mother, you go into hysterical mode, because you assume Mary must be sleeping around.  By doing that, Mary has shamed you as her parents, shamed her whole family.  As her parents you are thumbing through that Handbook, figuring out the steps to have your daughter killed by stoning.

As your cloud of hysteria is building into hurricane proportions, Mary unloads on you the unbelievable bombshell.

“I know who the father is,” she half yells above your shrieks and wailing and tearing of clothing.
“Who is this man?” you demand as her father.  “Who is this man who defiles our daughter and our family!?  Who is this man?  He too will share the punishment of your folly.  It says so right here in chapter 3 of the Handbook On Stoning A Person!”

Finally, with her voice quivering and cracking, tears welling up and overflowing down her cheeks, because the implausibility of her situation is finally dawning on her, Mary squeaks out, “God.  God will be the father of this child.”

As her parents, you are suddenly silent, as if you had just both been shot in the chest.  You look at Mary and then at each other with the same look.  It is a look that is sculpted on your faces by the thought that not only has your daughter committed debauchery, but she has also gone stark raving mad.

Also, just as suddenly, you realize that Mary is only a teenager.  Assuming teenagers haven’t changed much over the last couple of thousand years, as her parents you jump on the hope that this is one of those wild stories kids tell to cover up some lesser misdeed.  And this one is a whopper.

“Come on, Mary,” you bellow as her father.  “You’ll have to think of a better one than that.  Your story is craziness—not to mention you are also dancing with blasphemy.”
“But it’s true!”  Now it is your daughter who is screaming.  Only she knew the truth or falsity of her words.  In her mind she is caught between God and disbelief.  “It is true!” she sobs, slumping on to the floor.  “An angel told me.”

As Mary’s father, you put your face close to Mary’s and speak to her as if she were a little child playing make-believe.  “Ohhhh, an angel told you.  Right,” you say.  Turning to your wife, you ask, “How long has it been since you saw an angel, wife?”
“Oh, let me see,” you as Mary’s mother says, playing along with the absurdity of your daughter’s story, “I think it was just last week when I was picking rutabaga’s in the garden.”

You, Mary’s father, turn abruptly and quickly swinging at your daughter with the back of your hand up the side of her head, knocking her flat on the floor.  “What do you take us for?” you scream at her.  “Fools!?  What kind of demon has possessed you?”

With her face and her heart aching, Mary runs from the room, quickly packing some things and runs out of the house, maybe forever.  But where could she go?  If she went to Joseph, she would have to go through the same story and reap, possibly, the same reaction, suffering his abuse.  Instead, she headed south on a road that would take her to the hill country of Judea, to the house of Aunt Elizabeth.  Elizabeth, at this point, is the only relative Mary feels she can trust.

As Mary walks away from her home, her home town, she hears her own words ringing in her ears, spoken excitedly to the angel:  “I am the Lord’s servant; may it happen to me as you have said.”  How foolish those words seem now.

At the same time Mary thought about life before the angel’s visit—how everything had been carefree and happy, the marriage to Joseph coming soon.  Now all of that is violently disrupted.  If anyone on the road were to see her face, she would not have been able to conceal her shame; nor would she be able to conceal the growing bewilderment with God who had placed her in such a situation.



Now, we don’t know how Mary’s parents actually reacted to her story.  I can only make guesses based on what little I know of middle eastern culture at that time, and my own personal feelings if my daughter Kristin came home with the story she was pregnant and that somehow it was God who made her so.  Even as a Pastor I would have raised three skeptical eyebrows, and I only have two.

But poor Mary.  What if her story is true?  And here is my point:  Life changes when God encounters us with a plan for our lives that is not our own.  Gods plan is not a choice we would have made for ourselves.  It may sound grand, but the consequences are a bit too steep.  It didn't appear that Mary may have had much choice in her being selected to give birth to the Savior of the world.  It was a mission created out of shame, embarrassment, misunderstanding; not to mention just plain disbelief from those closest to her.

I think of others in the Bible who were given a plan by God that was just as equally life changing.  Plans that had been thrust upon them which put to rest all other plans they may have had for their own future.  Noah, for example, who was instructed to build a huge ark.  I mean, really.  What would we all think of  Mark Shoup, or Nick Squires, or Mark Graber if one of them started building a huge ark the size of two football fields.  And they told everyone God told him to do that.  We'd all wonder if the hospital at Larned had a bed open.

Or what about David, a simple shepherd boy, the youngest son, another teenager chosen by God.  He was chosen to be king of Israel.  Imagine how his life changed, one day singing to the sheep, the next a curious old man comes up to him, pours oil over his head, saying God has chosen him to be king of the land.

Or Moses, who has a comfortable life in Pharaoh's palace.  He beats up an Egyptian soldier for abusing a Hebrew slave.  Moses has to run away.  He finds another comfortable life, sitting around the hill country tending his father-in-law's sheep.  But then he is jerked out of his doldrums by God in a burning bush, to go back to Egypt and demand Pharaoh let all the Hebrew slaves go.  I'm sure Moses had other plans, and he tried to convince God of that.

And Joseph, whom we're studying in Men's Bible Study, who was sold as a slave by his own brothers.  Joseph ended up in Egypt where he was sold, then imprisoned.  I'm sure he wondered what God was up to.

There are so many others whom God encountered with a plan, creating an abrupt change, not entirely to their own liking.  But also, in each and every instance, all the plans worked out in amazing ways.

Picture the expressions on the faces of the people gathered around Noah's ark.  The rain had been falling.  Noah's family went into the zoo-filled ark, and floated away.  The rains just kept falling.  The waters rising higher and higher.

Think of the Egyptian army, stuck in the middle of the Red Sea, walls of water on each side, the Hebrew slaves, lead by Moses safe on the other side.  Then the Egyptians faces collapse just like the walls of water.

Think of the faces of the Philistine armies as they watch a boy throw a rock with a sling at a giant in armor.  The giant goes down with a well aimed rock stuck in his forehead.  Then that boy, David, walks over and cuts Goliath's head off.

Imagine, as we have in Men's Bible Study, the faces of Joseph's brothers.  Standing before the second most powerful man in one of the most powerful empires in the world at the time, the brothers have come begging for food because of widespread famine.  Egypt is the only country that has food, thanks to this second in command leader.  Imagine those brothers faces when that leader says, "I am your brother Joseph, whom you sold into slavery."



God's acts of salvation have an uncanny way of coming true.  No matter how incredible they seem to our ears, God's purpose to free His people from a world of sin and hurt will not be turned back.  Not even by Mary's parents.  God's plans seem to be met with constant and unending reaction of, "this is insanity!".  But what appears to us as such, we who are living out the role of Mary's parents, God always changes into the purest sanity.

Time to get personal.  God may not come to us with plans to become parents of the Savior of the world, or build an ark.  It may be that God simply lets us know, in no uncertain terms that we are loved--and God wants us to let others hear that message also.  God makes it as clear to us as if He had sent an angel to tell us.  That God is full of pleasure to make that love known to us.  That God wants His best for us.

And yet, God's plans do not come change-free.  Our lives will be changed.  Maybe, drastically.  But God's plans do come with a guarantee:  that what God says He will do, He does.  We may not think God's plans are in our own best interest, but just wait and watch how they turn out.

This is one of the themes of Christmas.  God is presenting us with a plan of how we can be free from our sin and ourselves--which may be one and the same thing.  God is presenting himself in a vulnerable and loving way, hoping we might be drawn to him.  "Here is the plan," God is saying.  "As incredible as it all sounds," God asks, "do you want to be a part of it?"