Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Lauren got me so good when she found out she was pregnant.

There was this crawfish boil coming up for her work and we were planning to attend.

She insisted on ordering some silly “cute” crawfish shirt to the party.

She ordered it online and made jokes about us both wearing one.

All week I told her there was no way.

never going to happen.

Well the day of the party I got home from a work event and she told me to go check out what came in the mail…and I immediately went to the shirt thing.

Lauren, I am not wearing a crawfish shirt and we are not going to match at your work party.

Finally she ushered me into the room and there on the bed was a shirt that says “Baby daddy.”

Oh man that was awesome and marked the beginning of months of expectations and fears and all the above.

As I reflect back on that time I began to realize as much as I experienced in the expectation for Luke to arrive it could not have compared to what Lauren might have felt as he was growing inside of her.

Facebook this weekend:

two questions: biggest fear and biggest expectation:

Biggest fear:

Not being good enough

failure

not being able to provide

fear of not having control

fear of losing the baby, miscarriage

fear of not being able to keep them safe

One mom shared that she felt he was safer inside rather than all the dangers of this world

Not knowing what to do

Fear that I would be my mother

Biggest exciting expectation:

Teaching them about God (great answer....parents you want to talk about discipleship)

Just seeing her/him for the first time

discovering their personalities....so getting to know them

snuggles

who they would look like

so many of you talked about the expectation of boy or girl…yeah there was a day when you couldnt find out in like the 3rd hours after conception

to hold my little one for the first time

Man one story of adoption came forward....talk about a whole different experience.

They got a call at 10:30am saying they had been selected and then they met their son at 4pm.

Not 9 months....6 hours.

Another fun one, the expectation (and prayer) that dad would make it home from deployment in time.

To see them grow and learn

Incredible answers and probably still only a small insight into the journey.

Mom’s yall are amazing.

Now take all of that and now consider what Mary might have felt like....Instead of a pregnancy test—Gabriel one of Yahwehs great angel messengers.

Instead of a gender reveal— the reality that God’s son, the messiah of the world was in her stomach.

Wow, talk about pressure.

Unfortunately, we do not know a lot about what this time was like with Mary.

We do not get her prayer journal…we cant go back and check her twitter account during that time period.

In fact, most of what we know about Mary are from these birth narratives.

We get an interesting look into the gospel’s perspective of her in the narrative of Luke here.

I want us to consider what it might have been like for the mother of Jesus…to consider the responsibility of literally bearing the hope of the world might be like.

Do you think she had some similar fears and hopes....do you think she wondered what he might look like.... yeah figure that one out haha.

Background and context for this story

Tell the story:

The birth narrative for Luke begins, not with Mary and Joseph, but with Zechariah and Elizabeth.

I love telling different parts of the Christmas story every year.

Elizabeth is a relative of Mary, believed to be a distant relative, not because of anything stated but some practical inferences.

Elizabeth is married to Zechariah and both were in the line of Aaron.

The priestly line established in Exodus.

So an angel appears to Zechariah while he is serving in the temple and tells of his wife’s baby.

John the Baptist.

Interestingly there are some historical markers here that Luke drops in.

Zechariah serving in the division of Abijah.

Abijah as we know from Levitical divisions served in the 8th week of the year.

That is the time of year that Elizabeth conceives.

Then 6 months later, the angel of the Lord appears to Mary and reveals to her the coming responsibility.

Mary goes to see Elizabeth in the scene that we read about today.

The women take a prominent role in this text.

This is part of the great reversal in the gospel of Luke.

The Lukan birth stories focus on the perspective of the women, Elizabeth and Mary, not their men Zechariah and Joseph.

In fact, Zechariah is not seen to be a model of faith for Luke’s audience in the same way that Elizabeth and Mary are.

Here we see the first of many examples in Luke’s Gospels of a reversal of ordinary expectations—the women, not Zechariah, properly respond to the initiatives of God in (cf.

).

Elizabeth and Mary, not Zechariah and Joseph, first receive the message of the coming Christ, first respond in full faith to that news, first are praised and blessed by God’s angels, and first sing and prophesy about the Christ child.

Witherington, B., III.

(1992).

Elizabeth (Person).

In D. N. Freedman (Ed.),

The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary (Vol.

2, p. 474).

New York: Doubleday.

This hymn is a typical hebrew hymn with parallelism.

It is poetry or a canticle with intentional parallels and repetition in from line to line

There is scripture mirrored all through out.

4-5 Psalms drawn out of this.

1 Samuel 2:

Mary did not just go full shakesperian here…this is a text that probably predates her and Luke attributes this hymn to her response.

So if you are reading this historically as we are prone to do and think wow that is really an odd or rough thing to happen in all of this…yes.

it is not meant to be a historical minute by minute account.

The Magnificat is attributed to Mary as the response of Israel to the coming of Jesus and we can learn from this hymn.

We can see ourselves in it.

As we consider our own response to the truth that the light of the world has come.

As we consider our own response to the truth that the light of the world has come.

Worship and gratitude:

Luke 1:

Elizabeth in our text praises Mary and Mary transfers the praise to God in this canticle.

How often to we begin our conversations with God in worship and gratitude?

How often do we stop and bask in who God is?

How often do we give thanks to what God has done in our lives…or do we take the credit.

When we understand the hope of God in Jesus Christ has come into the world…it should wreck our sensibilities and it should do it repeatedly.

For me, there was no one single point in my life that I can point to....like a Salvation birth date as some point to…but there are moments in time where the assurance that Jesus Christ, the messiah has come, not only did he die for the world but me included and I am invited into that redemption story.

Friends, it is not wonder that many of us do not carry this message of hope very far or with any force, because we have not reached an encounter with the holy God.

The opening of this hymn is the passionate worship of a person that has found themselves utterly empty apart from the God who has created them.

Humility:

Secondly, we can learn from the humility in this hymn and it builds on the worship and gratitude.

Through the hymn Mary asks, Who am i, that God should invite me into this story.