Impossible!

4^th Sunday of Advent

Luke 1:26-38; 46-55

December 18, 2011

8:00 a.m. only

Impossible!

Good morning! It is good to be back with y’all again. I apologize for missing last week; it was my intention to be here with y’all, until my flight didn’t arrive til after midnight on Saturday night. I spent the previous week in El Salvador, helping to teach a class on preaching. There’s a small group out of Duke Divinity School that goes about every six months to teach Course of Study to Methodist pastors in Central America. Since this time included a course on preaching, they needed extra people to lead the small groups and evaluate the sermons, which is how I got tapped to go. Besides running a small group, listening to sermons, running errands, I also graded papers. One day, to change things up, the other teaching assistant and I left the school and went to a café to grade papers. As we were leaving the café, I noticed the name: Café El Imposible; The Impossible Café. And I wondered, why would you name a café that? Was it a lifelong dream, one you thought impossible, to own and run a café? Was it a reference to the verse we read this morning, that with God nothing is impossible, and so meant as an encouragement? Sadly, I didn’t have a chance to ask.

Then, later in the week, one of the pastors in my small group preached on the story of the rich young man.[1] It’s the guy who goes to Jesus and asks what he must do to inherit eternal life. Jesus rattles off some of the commandments. The guy says he’s done those his entire life. So, Jesus tells him to go and sell everything he owns and the man walks away sad, since he’s pretty rich and owns a lot. The disciples are present for this whole conversation and are astounded by Jesus’ answer and ask him, “so, who, then, can be saved?” and Jesus tells them, “para los hombres es imposible, pero no para Dios, para Dios todo es posible.” Sorry, “for mortals it is impossible, but for God all things are possible.” Everything is possible with God. God can do anything. And that’s good news, especially with regards to this morning’s readings. God can satisfy the hungry. God can save. God can extend mercy and lift up the lowly. God can feed thousands of people with five loaves and two fish. God can do the impossible.

The first impossible thing I want to look at from our text is what happens in the interaction between the angel Gabriel and the young woman, Mary. Angels appearing and talking with humans isn’t that uncommon in the bible. In fact, it’s already happened earlier in this same chapter when Gabriel conversed with Zechariah. However, this time is different. This time it’s not telling a childless old couple that they will finally have a child, it’s telling a young virgin, who probably doesn’t want a child at this point in her life, that she is going to have a baby. Unlike Zechariah and Elizabeth, this time “the Holy Spirit will come upon Mary, and the power of the Most High will overshadow her.” Mary is a virgin and she is to have a baby. Impossible, right? In fact, I know a few Christians who simply cannot accept this. They insist that no, Mary must have been a wayward teenager or sneaking around with Joseph. There is no way a virgin can conceive and give birth to a baby. It’s impossible! But God is bigger than what we can imagine or conceive of. “Nothing will be impossible with God.” With God there are infinite possibilities, and that includes a virgin birth. Don’t box God in and limit what God can do. God can do more than we can ever imagine.

What’s interesting here is the verb tense. Some versions read that “nothing is impossible with God.” The version we read this morning says that “nothing will be impossible with God.” It’s like when God gave Moses his name back at the burning bush. Remember the name? Most often it’s translated as “I AM who I AM.” But in the Hebrew, the verb tense could also be translated as “I will be who I will be.” God is not to be confined by verb tense! God has acted in the past and is acting now and will be in the future. Remember the mystery of faith we declare at communion? “Christ has died; Christ is risen; Christ will come again” – all at the same time! God is bigger than verbs. Impossible? Not with God.

The last impossibility I want to look at from today’s reading is the content of the Song of Mary, or the Magnificat. It begins great, right? “My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.” This sounds good; we can go along with that. We all have times of feeling low and insignificant. But then Mary says, “He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.” What?! God is dethroning the mighty and lifting up the lowly. God is upsetting the balance of power in the world. Is that possible? Isn’t God just going to make a new power balance by replacing the previously powerful with the previously lowly? No! You see, the purpose of God upsetting the power balance is not to dethrone rich and powerful so that the lowly can have their positions! What’s going on here is God is working in individual lives and in the social order in order to undermine the structure of a society that supports and perpetuates such distinctions. Is it possible to get rid of class distinctions and oppression? God says yes! God dethroning the mighty is also God acting graciously on behalf of the lowly. Positions of power and privilege are also positions that oppress. If someone is rich and powerful it means that someone else is poor and weak. Rich and powerful and poor and weak are relative terms. To know one is rich and powerful means that others must have less power and wealth.

God is reminding us here that he is the one who is all-powerful, and he uses his power to lift up the lowly and to fill the hungry with good things. God is remembering the covenant he made with Israel and is acting out of his mercy. Is it really impossible to so completely buck the system and get rid of distinctions of wealth and power? Not for God. If everyone gets enough to eat, won’t we run out of food? No. For as many studies that I’ve seen that say we are facing a food shortage, I’ve seen just as many saying that if we redistributed food better, everyone would have enough to eat. It’s not impossible. There is enough, if we don’t abuse our privileges and wealth but use them show mercy and lift up the lowly and satisfy the hungry. This past week I delivered over 400 cans of food to the IFC Food Pantry in Carrboro. Those 400 cans were about half of the total number that were donated by nine guys. Nine gamers came together for a tournament and donated a total of 750 cans. That’s kinda like God feed thousands of people with five loaves and two fish. It is possible. God can and does satisfy the hungry. God can and does save. God can and does extend mercy and lift up the lowly. God can and does feed thousands of people with five loaves and two fish. A virgin can get pregnant. Social structures can be overturned and oppression can end. It’s not impossible. That’s the Good News of Christmas. The Good News that came from the impossibility of a virgin mother, the birth of a child who impossibly is fully human and fully God. This is the God we worship, one who can’t be defined with our words, one who can’t be limited by our imagination, one who shows us, that with him, nothing is impossible. And thank God for that Good News. Amen.

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[1] Mark 10:17-27

The Church Is Like an Old Schoolbus

Last week I experienced a different sort of intersection with the Methodist Church in Central America. There is a small group based out of Duke Divinity School that goes to El Salvador every six months to teach Course of Study. (Course of Study is the sanctioned alternative to seminary for Methodist pastors.) This time one of the classes was preaching, and so more small group leaders (a.k.a., TA’s or preceptors) were needed, which is why I was tapped to go.

The 40 students came from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. Of the four countries, Methodism has the longest history in Guatemala, where the Primitive Methodist Church was founded over 100 years ago. It speaks volumes that those pastors are willing and wanting to come participate in this Course of Study where not all women wear skirts and some are in positions of authority. When I visited a Primitive Methodist Church in Guatemala two years ago, we ladies had to wear skirts, preferably long skirts, could not wear make-up, and the women sat on one side of the church while the men sat on the other side. The pastor of this church and his son were among the students in this Course of Study.

There were eight students in my small group, three pastors and five lay people. (Assignments were made at random; next time we/they will be more careful.) Three of those lay folks had never preached before. I had an exciting and loving small group, as we carefully affirmed and praised what each preacher did well in their sermon and gave suggestions on how to improve.

In addition to the classes, there were two other events happening earlier in the week. One was ordination interviews of the pastors from El Salvador. Six interviewed; two were clearly ready and will be ordained in February, the first Methodist ordinations ever in El Salvador! The second concurrent event was a roundtable discussion with the heads of the Methodist church in Central America as well as a Duke professor and UMC elder, a District Superintendent from Mexico City, a caballero from Argentina representing the General Board of Global Ministries, a señor from Colombia whose role or title I never figured out, and an Englishman representing British Methodism. They all met to discuss how to support the Methodist Church in Central America. How exciting is that!

The theme that I saw throughout the week was one family. We celebrated communion at the opening worship. To hear “because there is one bread, we who are many, are one body” took on a deeper meaning because I looked around at the 50 or so of us standing in one huge circle and representing El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras, Canada, Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, England and the U.S. places of North Carolina, Oklahoma, Seattle, and Puerto Rico. One of the songs we sang later in the week was “Somos el Pueblo de Dios” – “We Are the People of God.” We are the people of God, one people, not the many peoples of God but the one people of God. These (and you) are my brothers and sisters, not just my brothers and sisters in Christ but my brothers and sisters. Period.

One of the Duke professors commented that his vision of church is like the bus ride. During the course of the week, students and teachers always take a field trip. This bus is an old school bus from the U.S. and it is crammed full with everyone. At some point on the trip, this same professor always starts the singing and the group sings their way to whatever site they’re going to visit. Probably 60 people on a bus, including kids, singing out praise songs in Spanish. Sometimes off-key, sometimes with harmony, always clapping, and always happy. We are all interspersed on the bus, on any given seat are at least two people who are not from the same country. And we’re praising God together. One God. One people. Gloria a Dios.