Say Yes

Luke 1:26-38

When was the last time someone asked you to do something that scared you?
Did you say, “Yes”?

Mary said yes.

But did you notice that Mary argues about it, first?

She’s not at all pleased when Gabriel appears in her life with what can sound like a bad pickup line: “Hello, beautiful! You’re the luckiest of women! God’s got an eye on you!”

That’s a fairly free translation from the Greek, but that’s how it might have sounded to Mary.  Or possibly it sounded more ominous, since Luke reports that she’s very upset about this.

That, by the way, is a perfectly natural reaction to an angelic visitation. 
Despite the fact that they are charming and bright on Christmas cards and some TV shows, in the Bible angels are pretty universally scary. They always have to exclaim “Don’t be afraid!” before anyone listens to them. Gabriel eventually remembers to say that to Mary before going on to explain that she’s going to have a baby for God.

When Mary hears God’s plan for her life, her response is also right in line with centuries of Biblical tradition.  Hearing what God has in mind for her, she promptly protests that she’s not the right one, and maybe God should check the number before dialing again.

“How can this be?” sounds mild enough in translation, but Mary clearly knows enough about God and angels – and about the world she lives in - to know that this is definitely not going to be a nice idea for her.

Getting pregnant without a husband’s help is social and possibly real suicide.  They had stoning back then. 

And walking around telling people “this is God’s baby!” won’t sound a lot more convincing to her first-century family and neighbors than it would to you and me used to modern ultrasounds and DNA testing.

So Mary, in the strong tradition of Moses and the best of God’s prophets and leaders, is denying that she’s up to the job, and offering the best reasoning she can to get out of this.

Wouldn’t you?
If you were asked to do something you knew would be at the very least highly awkward, nerve-wracking, and probably completely disruptive, wouldn't you try to gracefully decline? Or suggest that there must be hundreds of people better qualified for something you don’t know how to do and never particularly wanted to learn?

I do.

I’ve probably done it recently, too. 

It’s easy enough to forget the challenges we say “No,” to.

It’s the challenges you say “Yes,” to that stick around, mess with your heart and mind and comfort, leave you different than you used to be, and sometimes - just sometimes - change the world.

Not every challenge we face is a gospel challenge.

Some are just life. And some are my own damn fault.

And the gospel ones are sometimes only clear in hindsight. 

I feel that way about the emergency room.

One of the training requirements for priests in the Episcopal Church is to spend a few months working as a student chaplain in a hospital or similar institution.  This was fine with me until the orientation tour of the hospital, when it became very clear to me that I had never wanted nothing to do with the emergency room.

I’d only watched a couple of seasons of ER, with its high drama of life-and-death hanging by a thread, but I’d somehow absorbed the conviction that if I so much as entered a trauma room, I’d trip over an essential wire or tool and kill somebody.

So every single hour on the on-call pager terrified me.

Turned out I had the fewest emergency calls of anyone in my group that summer, and never unplugged anything. (Thank God!)

That didn’t make me any more enthusiastic about uninvited challenges than I ever was, but I’m more comfortable in hospitals now, and I learned something else in spite of myself.

It’s something that Gabriel says to Mary, after she points out that there must be thousands of women better equipped to be having God’s baby.

“The Holy Spirit will come upon you; God’s power will engulf you.” And that’s when Mary agrees.

Being overwhelmed by the Holy Spirit isn’t any easier than tackling many challenges on your own, but it’s the nature and promise of a gospel challenge.

The very last night I was on call, the pager never stopped beeping.  There was a child hit by a car, a deadly motorcycle accident, an infant being taken off life-support, and a few other odds and ends. 

I didn’t sit down for eight hours, and for eight hours it suddenly did not matter that I had no idea what to say most of the time or that critical wires and tubes were constantly in my way.

All I knew that night was that wherever I went in the hospital,

God was already there.

When you say “Yes,” to God, you’re never agreeing to do it alone.

The Holy Spirit finds you the words, or the skill, or the time, or the power that God needs to get the job done right.

That doesn’t mean God won’t stretch you and work you and pull you much further than you ever meant to go, but it does mean that miracles might happen, and that God most certainly will act.

So this Sunday, will you take a moment to open your heart to the challenges around you, and find one where you’ll take a chance on saying “Yes,” to God, and making room for the Holy Spirit to come over you?

The “Christmas season” can offer plenty of relationship and family challenges; disappointments and grief that feel too hard to face, or expectations you’d hate to try to meet.

And maybe there are not-so-seasonal challenges that God’s been offering you for a while; at work or at home;  to your creativity, for your health, to your confidence; to new tasks or relationships.

It’s very likely there’s a challenge, great or small, quiet or obvious, in your life right now. Accept it - say “yes!” - or just offer it, and let the Holy Spirit in.

And if you’re not quite ready to say “yes,” you can just offer the challenge itself as a gift to God.

Mary said yes. But she didn’t do it blindly.  She accepted God’s crazy challenge fully aware of how risky it would be.

Then she kept saying yes long after Jesus was born. 

And the whole rest of the story is full of the Holy Spirit, vivid in Mary, in Jesus, and in us.

God might not ask you to mother the Messiah, (once should have been enough for that task!) but soon or late, God is going to call you to something that scares you, something you know someone else could do better, but God is asking you.

It’s okay to argue, if you have to,

but listen carefully to God’s challenges,

listen for the Holy Spirit,

and make the effort to say, “Yes!” at least once.

Because the Holy Spirit is waiting for you to open that door,
and you never know when you’re going to be the one to change the world.