MARY

The following is mainly taken from Paul Chandler’s book Songs in Waiting: Spiritual ref;ections on Christ’s Birth

Paul servred many years in the Middle-East and North Africa as a missionary

Luke 1:26-38; 46-55

Martin Luther, the fifteenth-century reformer, once said, “There are three miracles of the Nativity. That God became man, that a virgin conceived, and that Mary believed. And the greatest of these was the last

it is proper to hold her in very high esteem, for in this young Middle Eastern girl there was great faith. At the same time, we diminish her greatness if we put her on too high a pedestal. She was just a young girl from an ordinary little town from the back of beyond; yet she believed it all

Mary quietly and simply believed. She didn’t fully understand the angel’s message, but she understood who God was, and she remembered the last thing the angel Gabriel said to her: “For nothing is impossible with God.” Her “yes” turned the course of history

The Christmas story is one of impossibilities, for almost each event goes against human logic. Yet each is matched with ordinary individuals in the story who choose to believe. All of them, although with tremendous hesitancy at times, choose to believe the incredible. Mary understood the greatness of God’s power to transform her ordinary human life.

It is a wonderful thing to see individuals today who, like Mary, do not attempt to put God into the box of their predetermined understanding of who God is and what God does or does not do, but who simply instead choose to “believe.” The promise from Mary in her song is that those who do not restrict God’s activity in their lives will never be the same

And Mary clearly knows how to receive from God, regardless of any feeling on her part of “undeservedness”

Mary’s song demonstrates that she also knew how to receive, and that she didn’t let all her “background” or “baggage” get in the way of embracing the good gifts God had for her

We often hear it is better to give than to receive, but this is a season about receiving from God. Mary reminds us that regardless of our abilities or inabilities, our background and past mistakes, our weaknesses, struggles, and doubts, nothing limits or prevents God from giving to us

Mary’s challenge to us in this season is to come with open hands and let God give God’s gifts to each of us

In calling herself “the Lord’s servant,” she is meaning literally a “bonded servant” to God. Submitting to God’s way of doing things.

When Mary said yes to God, she put herself at great risk. She would be open to shame and ridicule. Her reputation would be tarnished. She could lose the man she was to marry. Her family may have turned against her. She could face the death penalty of being stoned to death.

Mary not only becomes the first disciple, she becomes the first disciple to pay the cost of following the one she is carrying within her.

Luke in his gospel portrays her as the ultimate example of following God, for she expresses her complete commitment, which at its core entails total trust in God.

While the Magnificat is lovely, it is extraordinarily powerful because it speaks of total trust in God, which often quite naturally leads to following an unfamiliar way

Thinking about the revolutionary note in Mary’s song about following Christ’s new way, Paul Chandler was reminded of a worshiper he met during a Thursday evening gathering, a young garbage collector’s son named Yusuf. A number of years ago, at a Cairo construction site, an American executive lost his gold Rolex watch. Not long after, the young Yusuf, who was at that time an apprentice to his father, learning how best to collect garbage, found that gold watch. Because he was a follower of Christ, through Father Samaan’s ministry among them, Yusuf felt led to find the watch’s owner in order to return it. This was obviously a difficult decision, as that Rolex watch was worth more money than Yusuf would ever earn during his lifetime: more than twenty thousand dollars on the Cairo black market.

It took several months of looking and asking questions for Yusuf to discover the true owner of the Rolex watch. He learned that the owner was staying in a luxury apartment building in Cairo. As a poor garbage collector, wearing very dirty clothes, he would never have been let into this apartment de luxe through the lobby; he would have looked completely out of place. So Yusuf figured out a way to get in through a back exit door used for garbage removal. He climbed the stairs to the floor where the American executive was staying, and knocked on his door.

The American answered the door, somewhat astonished to see someone in the hallway dressed as shabbily as Yusuf. “You lost something?” Yusuf nervously blurted out in his minimal English. Several months had gone by since the man had lost his Rolex watch, so it didn’t come to the man’s mind. “Did you lose this watch?” Yusuf asked, as he took the watch out of the pocket in his dirty robe. When he saw his watch, the stunned American invited Yusuf into his apartment.

When they were sitting down, he asked, “Tell me, why you didn’t keep it yourself?”

Yusuf replied, “Christ taught in the gospels to give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.”

“But why didn’t you take it and sell it?” the American persisted.

“It’s not mine. It’s not my right. I must be honest—it’s not my watch. Christ said not to steal.”

The American asked him, “Are you a Christian?”

“Yes,” Yusuf replied.

Miraculously, that American, who described himself as an agnostic, renewed his faith in God because of this example of the revolutionary teaching of Christ being followed by that garbage collector’s son. He wrote in his diary, “I came back to God because of a poor Egyptian Christian garbage collector in Cairo.” Just as the life of Yusuf the garbage collector, transformed by Christ’s teaching, had its own transforming impact on the life of another, so Mary’s song proclaims the transformative dimension of God’s mercy that fills the hungry and gives strength to those who are without power in this world.