Luke 01 26-38
LADY DAY: The Annunciation to our Lord to the Blessed Virgin Mary
Isa 7:10-14 – The sign of Immanuel / Ps 40:5-11 – I love to do your will / Heb 10:4-10 – I have come to do your will / Luke 1:26-38 – The angel’s message
The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favour with God”.
(Luke 1:30)
Fear
As I was thinking about today’s service, I did a Google search on the word fear, it came up with just under 21 and a half million websites with the word fear in them… one of them contained something called The Phobia List… containing all sorts of weird phobias. See if you know what these are…
Anthrophobia or Anthophobia- Fear of flowers.
Barophobia - Fear of gravity.
Dentophobia- Fear of dentists.
Ecclesiophobia-the fear of church.
Ecophobia- Fear of home.
Geniophobia- Fear of chins.
And I’m just hoping no one’s suffering from this last one… Homilophobia - the fear of sermons!
The angel's words
This all goes to prove one thing… there’s lots to be afraid of… Perhaps that’s exactly why Gabriel was sent to Mary… … Imagine for a moment… an angel suddenly appearing to you, in your kitchen and gave you a message… would you remember what the message was? Or would you be so shocked at what had happened that you'd forget what was said? That would be a pity, because when an angel brings a message it's bound to be important. Let's look at those words of Gabriel again… …
Greetings, favoured one! The Lord is with you ... Do not be afraid Mary, for you have found favour with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him will Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end ... The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.
Now, on the face of it, this command sounds perfectly absurd. Mary had every reason to be afraid. Just imagine an angel, no less, with word of an unexpected, unplanned and let’s face it, in Mary’s position, an unwanted pregnancy. For the moment, put yourself in the place of a first century - unwed teenager who hears the word, "You're going to have a baby." Feel the emotions.. the shock… the fear!
And of course, if Mary is listening, it's even more troubling than that. This isn’t to be an ordinary pregnancy… an ordinary baby. This baby’s to be the Son of God!
And if she's still listening, there’s even more… this child is coming for nothing less than to challenge the powers of the day… to confront the values and standards of his day… to bring in the kingdom of God… … All of a sudden this angelic visitation doesn't look and sound so much like a sentimental Hallmark greeting, rather it sounds like an overwhelming challenge of a lifetime. Mary has every right to be afraid, and so she was. Grace
Gabriel's first words were 'Greetings, favoured one! The Lord is with you.' A second later he said, 'for you have found favour with God'. 'Highly favoured' means that God, in his mercy, has been very gracious to Mary, and given her a privilege which nobody could have deserved. The Latin Bible mistranslated these words as `full of grace'. This led some people to think that Mary had an inexhaustible supply of a magic substance called 'grace', which she would give to those who pray to her. We should obviously honour her very highly because she was chosen by God. But it's wrong to suggest that God won't answer our prayers until Mary persuades him to. God's love is unconditional, and he's 'more eager to hear than we to pray'.
Be not afraid
‘Do not be afraid’, or ‘Be not afraid’, said the archangel. These words occur more than fifty times in the Bible. Mary, don't be afraid, because the Lord is with you." It's so simple isn’t it… so profound. "The Lord is with you." The antidote to fear begins with faith in the God of the ages and the conviction that God is actively involved in the lives of his people… He’s a God who is present, a God who is with us… a God who loves us…
You might have heard the story about the man who hated his wife's cat? He hated it with a vengeance, but his wife loved the cat. One day, it disappeared and his wife was grief-stricken… so the man put an notice in his local newspaper: "£500 for information on this missing cat." His friend saw the notice and said to him: "Wow! £500 for word on a cat that you hated… that's pretty risky, isn't it?" With a sly, knowing twinkle in his eye, the man said - "It's not so risky when you know what you know."
We know the end of the story. Life isn’t so scary when you know what you know. We know God keeps his promises we know He’s sent us a Savior. We know Jesus comes and his name’s Emmanuel…"God With Us." We know the word became flesh and dwelt among us full of grace and truth and we’ve beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten of the Father. And better still, we know God promises that one day swords will be beaten into plowshares and spears will be turned into pruning hooks…
We know that one day God's kingdom will come on earth as it is in heaven; that one day every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. Life isn’t so scary when you know what you know… when you know how the story ends.
None of us need be afraid that we won’t be able to cope with the future… because God will give his grace to us, as he did to Mary… Response
Would you remember the words of an angel in your kitchen? Fortunately Mary did… and those words can give us comfort too… as can Mary's response: 'Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.' May that be our response too, whatever life throws at us… for we know that all things are possible with God and so we shall not be afraid. Amen.
