CALVARY BAPTIST CHURCH
Rev. Fred Weimert
December 21, 2008
“The Possibility of
God”
The
other day
as I was driving across Putty Hill Avenue
I got stopped by
the light at
and as I sat at the
light,
near the intersection…
Right
across from Evans Funeral Home…
I looked over to my right
and I noticed a sign on a
fence…
by a garage…
The sign
was blue and white…
It
looked like one of those home security signs…
but
it had too many words on it…
so
I read it…
It
said:
“Is there anything God cannot do?”
For a
person of faith
It would appear to
be
one of those
rhetorical questions…
If
you believe God to be God…
then the obvious answer is no...
there
is nothing God can’t do.
But as I sat there at that light
I thought about where I had
just come from…
the
where I
had seen Irv Hoyer…
who
had just had his leg amputated…
now
both of his feet and knees are gone.
And I thought about that
question:
“Is there anything God cannot do?”
and while the answer
was still
affirmative for me…
It was now
of
necessity
accompanied by
another question:
“Why?”
Why
if God can do anything…
Why
doesn’t God do
what would appear
to be
the right thing?
As I sat at that light on the corner
of Harford and Putty Hill…
I was on my way over to Dan
and Lucy Moore’s house…
to cut some greens
for the sanctuary,
But we were also going to Dan
and Lucy’s after caroling,
and I thought about
Saturday Night…
about who
we would be singing for…
And I thought about
Lynette Earles,
our last
stop before the
Lynette
who has had Cerebral Palsy
all
of the 40+ years of her life…
a
condition probably caused
by
jaundice at birth
which
went unaddressed
in the hospital.
And I thought about
the words on that sign”
“Is there anything God cannot do?”
and
while my answer remained yes…
I
remained haunted by those other
very
earthly questions…
Why?
Why
not?
When?
How
long?
In
a way
these
are Advent questions.
They
all still remain…
and
continue to wait
God’s
final answer.
Today’s
Gospel reading
Is the story of Gabriel’s annunciation
to Mary…
the Virgin…
One
interesting line in today’s reading
parallels the question on that fence…
“For nothing will be impossible with God."
What’s interesting
is that line isn’t spoken
to answer Mary’s
question
about a virgin
conceiving…
rather it is spoken
about
and old
woman…
conceiving.
We
aren’t impressed with old women conceiving anymore…
We see that all the time in the
papers…
I think I just about a woman
in
in her 70’s
having a
baby.
Our scientific advancements have made
conception
late in life possible…
and it doesn’t
appear to have any thing to do with God…
Medical
science can do these things…
But
scientific advancement
Especially in the area genetics…
and the study of
DNA
Has made a simplistic embracing of
this story
about a virgin
birth problematic…
but I don’t really
care how you feel
about the Virgin
Birth…
Mark’s
Gospel never speaks of it…
John’s
Gospel has other
pre-existent
notions…
For me the author’s
concern
is to
convey to us the idea
that
God was in Christ…
which
for me is true…
and
true in a way
which
is far more than mere biology.
I
have told you many times
that every year for Advent I read
W.H. Auden’s lengthy Poem
“For the Time
Being”
it is
about 40 pages long…
it takes
some time
but
it is time well spent…
because
the poem is so full of brilliant moments.
In “For the Time Being” Auden speaks of gardens…
the
which may
only exist in his mind…
and the Garden of
Eden…
Eve’s
garden…
I want you to hear 3 sections
from Auden’s
exchange between Gabriel and Mary…
all three
are excerpts from Gabriel’s speeches…
“Hear,
child, what I am sent to tell:
love
wills your dream to happen, so
Love’s
will on earth may be, through you,
No
longer a pretend but true…”
and later…
“When
Eve, in love with her own will,
Denied
the will of Love and fell,
She
turned the flesh Love knew so well
To
knowledge of her love until
Both
love and knowledge were of sin”
What
her negation wounded, may
Your
affirmation heal today;”
And
Gabriel’s final words to Mary:
Today
the Unknown seeks the known;
What
I am willed to ask, your own
Will
has to answer; child, it lies
Within
your power of choosing to
Conceive
the Child who chooses you.
W.H. Auden, Collected Poems, pgs.
278-279
For
me those words capture the mystery
of what Luke is telling in his story…
That power to conceive Jesus…
as Christ…
remains
even today…
a
matter of our will and choosing.
Hear
the story:
Luke 1: 26-38
In the sixth month
the angel Gabriel
was sent by God
to a town in
called
to a virgin engaged
to a man
whose name was
Joseph,
of the house of David.
The virgin's name
was Mary.
And he came to her
and said,
"Greetings,
favored one!
The Lord is with you."
But she was much
perplexed by his words
and pondered what
sort of greeting this might be.
The angel said to
her,
"Do not be
afraid, Mary,
for you have found favor with God.
And now,
you will conceive in your womb
and bear a son,
and you will name him 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."
Mary said to the
angel,
"How can this
be,
since I am a virgin?"
The angel said to
her,
"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
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."
Then Mary said,
"Here am I,
the servant of the Lord;
let it be with me according to your word."
Then the angel departed from her.
Here ends the reading.
In
his book Ethics
Dietrich Bonhoeffer begins his chapter
“History and Good”
by saying that we cannot look
at ethical decisions
as if they were
made by isolated individuals
with an absolute
criterion… pg. 219
What he is saying is that
when we have to decide…
what is right
for me to do
in this moment…
That decisive moment…
That moment of decision…
does not happen to
us…
when we
are standing all alone…
in
some “clean room”
with
no germs
or
dust
or
foul odors…
and
in those moments of choosing
we are not choosing
from a table
with only two objects
say a loaf of bread
and a serpent.
No,
when we make ethical choices
we are in a crowded world
with pushing and pulling…
bombarded by the voices of friends and
enemies…
claims of healing
and cries for help…
And the choices have all been picked
over…
they aren’t pristine and
pure…
I
love the way that Auden
pictures this annunciation
as not a divine imperative…
but as a choice
to open
oneself to God’s will
a choice to be made
in a world which
prefers
it’s willfulness
to God’s will.
A world
which is continually asking us
“How can you be so sure
what
you are doing is really
God’s
will?”
Could Mary have
said no…
and chosen
to be “Holy virgin” in the world’s eyes…
pristine
pure and childless…
but then where would the world be…
if she or we was unwilling to
conceive of God.
Auden
wrote of the way in which
Eve had twisted love…
“until Both love and
knowledge were of sin”
And how Mary could choose to heal
this deformation of
love…
When
Bonhoeffer wrote of choosing good…
it was all wrapped up in the
incarnation…
it was initiated by God’s
desire to dwell with humanity
in human flesh…
to choose
in this world
and for this world
as we have to…
Like
Auden, Bonhoeffer speaks of love:
“--Love—as
understood by the gospel in contrast to all philosophy—is not a method for
dealing with people. Instead, it is the
reality of being drawn and drawing others into an event, namely, into God’s
community with the world, which has already been accomplished in Jesus
Christ. “Love” does not exist as an
abstract attribute of God but only in God’s actual loving of human beings and
the world. Again, “love” does not exist as a human
attribute but only as a real belonging-together and being-together of people
with other human beings and with the world, based on God’s love that is
extended to me and to them. Just as
God’s love entered the world, thereby submitting to the misunderstanding and
ambiguity that characterize everything worldly, so also Christian love does not
exist anywhere but in the worldly, in the infinite variety of concrete worldly
action, and subject to misunderstanding and condemnation. Every attempt to portray a Christianity of
“Pure” love purged of worldly “impurities” is a false purism and perfectionism
that scorns God’s becoming human and falls prey to the fate of all
ideologies. God was not too pure to
enter the world.” pgs. 241-242
John’s
gospel puts the same notion in these
words from his 1st chapter
“He came to what was his own,
and his own people did not accept him.
But to all who
received him,
who believed in his name,
he gave power to become children of God, “ John 1: 11-12
Mary’s
choice
has given us the opportunity to choose
as well.
She did this by simply
saying:
"Here
am I,
the servant of the Lord;
let it be with me according to your word."
Those are the words with the
power to change the world.
may we be willing
to speak them as well.
Amen.