Sermon: “Be Born In Us”
December 20th, 2020 Rev. Betsy Perkins
Scripture passage: Luke 1:26-45 First Baptist Church, Delavan WI
Do you remember back when people would mail out birth announcements after the arrival of a new baby? When I worked as a labor and delivery nurse in Chicago, new parents could order cards with the baby’s first picture on it. Unfortunately those first pictures were not always the cutest ones. I remember our daughter Anna’s hospital picture – it looked like she had gotten into a brawl in the nursery, fought her way out of the blanket, her face a little bruised, the t-shirt hanging off of one shoulder. Dave and I passed on that birth announcement card. Nowadays it seems like birth announcements are simply a post on Facebook or a 10-second image on Snapchat. It’s more important to do a big gender-reveal announcement with an exploding box of pink or blue confetti, or some other creative way of announcing the expected birth.
By the way, I really should announce the new babies connected to our church family – Kiara Kumar, born to Amanda and Sathish on November 21st, Kiara is Patti Arntz’ grandchild; Elaine August welcomed another great-grandchild, Chloe Rose, on November 17th; Rocky and Wayne are expecting a new grandchild on January 26th.
Birth announcements invite us to open our arms to welcome a new human being, to create a space in our hearts for more love. That’s one of the miracles of new life, I believe, that somehow our hearts enlarge a little more with the arrival of each new family member – each child, grandchild, great-grandchild, niece or nephew. When I was the mother of just one child, expecting a second, I remember wondering how I might possibly be able to contain as much love for the coming baby as I had for the first. And then Lisa came, and I could, I did, love her every bit as much without the least diminishment of love for Anna. It happened again with Kara’s arrival. It happens again and again and again for large families. Yet tragically, for some children, they do not find that love in their birth families due to trauma or addictions or other challenges. That love comes instead from adoptive parents, or a teacher, or a neighbor whose heart opens to receive and give love. However it comes, each new life carries the potential for new love, new hopes and dreams, new possibilities.
Today we read the birth announcement of Jesus. It is sandwiched in middle of the birth announcement of his cousin John, as if one miracle is somehow giving birth to another miracle. Both announcements are delivered by the angel Gabriel who first appears to Zechariah, John’s father, and later to Mary, Jesus’ mother. Both announcements are also gender reveals, and each carry surprising new possibilities – or rather what seem as impossibilities. John is born to parents who despite trying have been unable to conceive for decades. Jesus is born to Mary who while engaged has not had sexual relations at all. But as Gabriel says to Mary, “Nothing is impossible with God!”
Mary is also told that she has “found favor with God”. What an honor was hers in bearing the life and love of God within her. Yet this “favor”, this honor of God’s being pleased with her, does not bring with it the kind of favor or privileges that we would normally expect. Her favor did not bring prosperity rather it brought even more hardship. It did not bring popularity, at least not in her lifetime, it brought social disgrace and it put her and Joseph in grave danger. Mary is not afforded the favor of an easy life, or what the world might define as a blessed life, yet she is given the favor of carrying God within her. Mary made room in her heart for a new expression of love coming into the world, and a new space for love within her. She made room in her life for God’s new possibilities and impossibilities. And Mary made room for something else, too. As she made that commitment, “May it happen to me just as you have said. I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary made room in her life for service, for setting herself aside in many ways, on behalf of the new life and on behalf of God’s plan.
For all of you who have carried a child, you know those many ways you have to set yourself aside to allow the growing baby to have physical space in your body. A pregnant woman gives up space for air in her lungs and room in her bladder to serve the new life. She may give up certain foods or drink for the benefit of the baby. She sacrifices uninterrupted sleep for at least a year or often much longer. Of course the mother isn’t the only one setting herself aside on behalf of a new life, a new love. Fathers sacrifice sleep, too, as do other helpers. There are costs, financial sacrifices to be made. The whole family has to make room for the new life, sharing time and attention and love.
For several months after our second daughter, Lisa, was born, we would put her down to sleep in a bassinette in our bedroom with a child-gate at the open doorway to protect her from her 18 month-old sister. One morning I hear some loud thuds and found Anna standing at the doorway of the bedroom hurling those hard, children’s board books toward the bassinette. “What are you doing, Anna?” I asked. With a big scowl, she said, “I’m sharing!” Even siblings of a new baby have to set themselves aside to some degree, to share, even to serve another in new ways.
There are risks that come with opening space in our lives and in our hearts for a newborn. For Mary, making room in her body for Jesus and making room in her heart for God’s love and God’s plan, also meant accepting the fear that must have gripped her when Jesus went missing for a few days as a pre-teen, the confusion when she thought he must have lost his mind during his preaching ministry, the agony as she watched him die as a criminal on a cross. There are risks in opening your heart and your life to love.
In her memoir, When the Heart Waits, author Sue Monk Kidd shares a story from when she was a young teen. She happened to be visiting a monastery a few weeks before Christmas and as she walked by the chapel, she passed a monk and greeted him, saying, “Merry Christmas.” He replied, “May Christ be born in you.” The response caught her off guard; the words seemed strange and peculiar. What did he mean, “May Christ be born in you”? But the words haunted her, and made her consider what it might have felt like for young Mary to hear Gabriel’s greeting that Christ would be born in her. Sue Monk Kidd continued reflecting on the monk’s greeting as the years went by, and she discovered those words gave a special meaning to Christmas preparations as she sought to let Christ be born in her waiting heart.
I wonder on this final Sunday in Advent, as we light the candle of love, if this is the greeting we should take to heart: may Christ be born in you. That’s what we sing in the last verse of “O Little Town of Bethlehem”: O Holy Child of Bethlehem descend to us, we pray, cast out our sin and enter in, be born in us today… What does it mean to allow Christ to be born in us today? I believe it is not unlike the things I’ve just been describing about welcoming a new child into a family and Mary welcoming Jesus.
When Christ is born in us, we open up new space in our hearts for love – with all the joys and risks that come with it. Having Christ born in us means opening up our lives to new possibilities, even impossibilities, as we embrace God’s plan and God’s purposes for us. Having Christ born in us means we set ourselves aside to make room for service, serving God and serving others, a willingness to share, to sacrifice if necessary. Having Christ born in us means new priorities: making Jesus, His life in us, our priority. Having Christ born in us is being willing for our hearts to be broken by the things that break His heart. Having Christ be born in us requires the kind of trusting obedience that Mary modeled: let it be to me as you have said.
The reward, the “favor” that God bestows is priceless – the honor of carrying God within us, and the love that fills our very being! That intense love that exists in the community of God – the Triune Creator, Christ, Spirit – is birthed into our lives, and then through us that love is birthed yet again into the world.
May Christ be born in you! Pray with me: O Holy Child of Bethlehem descend to us, we pray, cast out our sin and enter in, be born in us today. Amen.
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