Creekside Church Sermon of December 21, 2003 "A Welcome Intrusion " Luke 1:39-45	Rev. David Bibbee
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On Christmas Eve morning in 1989 the doorbell rang. I was in the middle of something, and before I got to the door a heard a car leaving the driveway. When I opened the door there was a big, beautifully wrapped Christmas basket on the porch. I brought it inside and opened the card to see who it was from. It was signed, "Anonymous."

Anonymous had gone all out in filling the basket. It contained mega-sized oranges and apples, avocados, Koinonia Farms smoked pecans, Swiss chocolate, imported cheeses, a beef log, a small ham, Christmas cookies, and a smoked salmon fillet. What a feast! There were so many things in the basket I barely noticed a paper-back book-- The Best Christmas Pageant Ever.

Along with books like The Christmas Box, A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, and films like, "It's a Wonderful Life," " "Miracle on 34th Street," and "A Christmas Story", this little book is becoming a Christmas classic.

The horrible Herdman kids somehow got themselves into the church's annual Christmas pageant. The Herdman's were the worst kids in the history of the world. They lied and stole, and even the girls smoked cigars. They talked dirty and hit little kids and cussed their teachers. Their presence in the pageant was an unwelcome intrusion. The Herdmans had never even heard the Christmas story.

". . . Joseph and Mary, his espoused wife, being great with child. . . ." "PREGNANT!" yelled Ralph Herdman. Well. That stirred things up. All the kids began to giggled and all the little kids wanted to know what was so funny, and Mother had to hammer on the floor with a blackboard pointer. "That's enough, Ralph," she said, and went on with the story.

"I don't think it's very nice to say Mary was pregnant," Alice Wendleken whispered to me. "But she was," I pointed out. In a way, though, I agreed with her. It sounded too ordinary. Anybody could be pregnant. "Great with child," sounded better for Mary.

"I'm not supposed to talk about people being pregnant." Alice folded her hands in her lap and pinched her lips together. "I'd better tell my mother." "Tell her what?" "That your mother is talking about things like that in church. My mother might not want me to be here." I was pretty sure she would do it. She wanted to be Mary, and she was mad at Mother. . . Mrs. Wendleken didn't even want cats to have kittens or birds to lay eggs, and she wouldn't let Alice play with anybody who had two rabbits.

Reading the first two chapters of Luke, you get the feeling you are in the waiting room of an OB/GYN clinic, not the Bible. Gabriel came to earth on great, gilded wings, more like the stork carrying birth announcements. He visited the priest Zechariah. He and his wife, Elizabeth, were beyond the Geritol years. He was serving in the Temple when Gabriel appeared and said the couple was going to have a son named John. "You expect me to believe this?" Zechariah replied. Since he couldn't swallow the news without choking, Gabriel took his ability to speak-- until John was born.

Six months into Elizabeth's pregnancy that God had blessed through "conventional" means, Mary conceived in an thoroughly unconventional manner. "Hail O favored one! You will conceive and bear a son named Jesus. It will be the Holy Spirit's doing," Gabriel said. No wonder Mary asked, "How can this be?"

MATTHEW emphasizes Joseph's role in Jesus' birth. MARK ignores the birth altogether. JOHN'S gospel begins with lofty theological concepts. LUKE begins with talk about conception, pregnancy, trimesters, and birth. Maybe its because Luke was a physician. You can understand why he would get caught up in medical details.

But something else is at work here, and that is the "peculiarly particular" way God chose to enter the world. A young virgin was minding her own matters, planning her wedding, assembling a guest list, anticipating life as a carpenter's wife and one day, a mother. Then along comes a smooth-talking angel who tells Mary she has found favor with God-- tells her she will give birth to the Most High, minus input from her betrothed. Talk about an intrusion!

God could have come to earth in a myriad of ways, but the extraordinary God chose an ordinary way. God didn't come to a girl named Margaret, Mabel, or Myrtle, but a particular girl named Mary./ God didn't come to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, but to a particular Bethlehem in Judea.He didn't arrive on the throne of nobility, but in the poverty of a stable. God came at a particular TIME in a particular PLACE through a particular set of CIRCUMSTANCES through a particular LIFE, and he was killed, not for the way he was born, but because of the particular things he said about what matters most in life and who is really in charge.

Luke says the shepherds "went with haste" through the hill country around Bethlehem to see what had been revealed to them. In today's passage, says that Mary rose and "went with haste" to the hill country to Judah to see her cousin Elizabeth. Their meeting would make great opera. At the sound of Mary's voice, Elizabeth's baby did cart wheels in her womb. In a Metropolitan Opera voice, Elizabeth sang to Mary, "Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb. . . blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord."

Christmas card depictions of Jesus' birth don't even remotely hint at the drama and scandalous nature of God's condescending behavior. He is sweet little Jesus boy. Bring him out of the closet in December. Unwrap the swaddling packing tissue, lay him in the ceramic stable, nestle the nativity scene on the coffee table and get in touch with the warm feelings that cute babies engender. Then its back into the box till next Christmas.

This kind of admiration doesn't ask anything of us. I heard a pastor relate a conversation he had with a skeptical individual after worship. "I don't buy it," he said. "Buy what?" the pastor asked. "I don't buy the birth of Jesus. Not the way the Bible tells it. Its a quaint story, that's all. Its like the rest of the Bible. . . . a collection of legends. God is a human projection-- an Almighty Father figure to hold our hands when we're afraid to live. The Bible is a false security blanket people suck on because they can't cope with the finality of death."

The pastor had a great response. "That just shows how dumb you are! If God is our projection, don't you think we could have come up with a God a lot better than the one we've got? We could have made a God who's a lot easier on us than the one we get in the Bible. Why bother putting hard demands on ourselves with projections?

If we were to script for God's advent, it wouldn't be like the one in Luke. It wouldn't rely upon human agents-- shepherds, wise men and adolescent mother, who, someone said, ". . . had precious little experience with men or angels or the world."

If we learn nothing else from the Christmas story, we at least know that God is full of divine surprises. God is an intrusive chap from whom the unexpected is to be expected. Dallas Willard says our contemporary mind-set is in conflict with the good news of Jesus because there is a lack of understanding about how space is inhabited by God. At one extreme God is viewed as a remote, Sistine Chapel being. The universe is:

". . . a vast empty space with a humanoid God with a few angels rattling around in it, while several billion human beings crawl through the tiny cosmic interval of human history on an over- sized clod of dirt circling an insignificant star."

Its hard to see ourselves connected to such a God. This then leads to another extreme which says God is not "out there" in space or "up there" in heaven, but "in our hearts." The language of our hymns reflects this idea: "Into my heart, into my heart, come into my heart, Lord Jesus." It sounds nice. But Dallas Willard says:

"This makes matters worse. "In my heart" easily becomes "in my imagination." If God is not in space at all, he is not in human life that is lived in space. All that empty space just sits there, glowering at the human "heart" realm where God has, supposedly, taken refuge from science and the real world."

Theologians speak of God in terms of transcendence and immanence. The transcendent God is beyond us; outside the realm of time and space; inaccessible and beyond the capacity of language to describe. The language of our hymns reflects this idea also -- "Immortal, invisible, God only wise, in light inaccessible, hid from our eyes. . . " The immanent God is accessible-- not "OUT THERE," but "DOWN HERE." God is everywhere INCOGNITO, in all and through all. The language if another hymn reflects this idea: "This is my Father's world, he shines in all that's fair. In the rustling grass I hear him pass, he speaks to me EVERYWHERE."

God is not one or the other. God is inaccessible and accessible. In Jesus, these diverse aspects come together. Flesh and spirit were no longer distinct for each other. God who is beyond time took up residence within time.

In film, "Junior," Arnold Schwarzenegger is the first man in history to become pregnant and give birth. The only thing more far-fetched is Arnold Schwarzenager becoming the governor of California. The issue raised in the film was not just what a baby born of a man would be like. The bigger question was what impact the baby's intrusion would have upon his life.

The message of the incarnation is that in Jesus, God flooded the world with his presence. Think of the times we talk about God being "with us." In our prayers we emphasize that God is with us. Consider the times we tell people in tough circumstances, "Just hang in there. God is with you." The incarnation means more than "God is with us." God is more than in the area, or close by you. It's a nice thought, but just being with us isn't enough. "Come on, God. Don't just be there-- DO SOMETHING!"

The good news of Christmas is that God is "specifically" with us. . . with us in an intruder named Jesus. Will his intrusions bode well for us? From out of no where, Gabriel said to Mary, "Hail, O favored one, the Lord is with you!" Given the circumstances, Mary's response was appropriate. Luke says, "She was greatly troubled, and considered what sort of greeting this might be." What would become of the intrusion? The only way Mary could know was to say yes and see what happened.

It was Christmas Eve. The curtain was about to rise on the church pageant that had been infiltrated by the horrible Herdmans. Cigar smoking Imogene was Mary. Her brother Ralph, was Joseph. Everyone turned out just to see what the Herdmans would do.

The angels were humming, waiting for Mary and Joseph, but the Holy Family didn't come out on cue. The little angels hummed and hummed till they turned blue. Finally Mary and Joseph appeared, looking untidy as ever. Imogene wasn't cradling the baby doll Jesus in her arms as she was told. He was slung over her shoulder. Before she put him in the manger she thumped him twice on the back. Alice Wendleken whispered, "I don't think it's very nice to burp the baby Jesus." Gladys Herdman, an angel, was the only kid that had a speaking part. She shoved the little angels aside and shouted, "Hey! Unto you a child is born!"

Leroy, Claude, and Ollie Herdman were the Wise men. Instead of bearing gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, they hauled in a ham. It came from the Christmas basket the church had given their family. It was impressive because the only things the Herdmans gave were lumps on the head. They were supposed to offer their gift and leave, but for some reason they sat down, and no one was going to budge them. Everyone expected the Herdmans to do something unexpected, and they did, but not in the way everyone thought.

The pageant closed with the congregation singing "Silent Night." On the last verse, the part that said, "Son of God, Love's pure light," the unimaginable happened. In the candle light tears could be seen streaming down mean Imogene's cheeks. She didn't try wiping them.

As people were leaving many commented that it was the best Christmas pageant the church ever had. Imogene walked into the corner of the choir-robe cabinet in a daze, like she had just caught on to the idea of God and the meaning of Christmas. Because of the Herdman's, the mystery of Jesus' birth didn't seem so mysterious after all. Christmas had come over Imogene all at once, like a case of chills and fever. And so she was crying, and walking into the furniture.

A God who would intrude upon a poor peasant girl to birth himself into the world, is a God you had better keep an eye on. Beginning with Mary, God has been intruding, stirring things up, altering long-range plans, changing people's lives. On his great, gilded wings Gabriel still brings messages. . . to us.

"Hail, O favored ones, the Lord is with you!" As you ponder what kind of intrusion this could be, remember-- the only way to know is to say yes, and wait to see what happens.

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