I received a unique Christmas card from a Clergy friend this past week. It was a plain white card with these words printed on it: "Blessed are those who celebrate Christmas as a way of life."

If we take the Christmas story very seriously, Christmas is not just a once a year event. It launches us into a new way of living that lasts our whole life long. It challenges us to practice living in what God has done in Christ. That's what it meant for Mary, in our story from Luke this morning.

When Mary showed up at her cousin Elizabeth's door, the old woman cried out; "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb." In response, Mary rejoiced in the hope that " all generations will call me blessed; … for the Mighty One has done great things for me." Blessed are people like Mary. Blessed are those who respond to God's invitation and live and celebrate Christmas and Hope as a way of life.

You don't have to be Catholic to be fascinated with Mary. She has intrigued scholars and disciples for years. Today fascination with Mary has grown by leaps and bounds, Inspired in part by Dan Brown's bestseller The DaVinci Code (a fun read that is about as believable as flying reindeer. In the last four years every major magazine has carried cover stories on the role of women in the Gospels and particularly the role of Mary in the ongoing story of God's relationship with Humankind. No less than six books have come out in the last two years focusing on the role of Mary in the early years of the church, most of not written by Catholics, who venerate Mary to almost god-like status, but by Protestants and Pentecostals, who see in her a model for modern discipleship.

Mary is often seen in movies and art as an ethereal, otherworldly figure we can neither touch nor understand because she is so far removed from us. By contrast many of today's scholars, particularly women, see in her a young woman who chose to be obedient to the Spirit of God, even in the face of real and immanent death for an unwed girl. And that is way that Luke portrays her in his gospel.

It's a simple story, simply told and simply beautiful. "In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a young woman, (some texts say virgin) engaged to a man named Joseph of the house of David. The young girl's name was Mary.

Mary was not chosen because she was the most intelligent, the most attractive, or the most religious debutante of the year. She was just like the rest of us. She didn't earn the angelic visit; she didn't ask for it and she certainly wasn't expecting it. The angel was sent by the sheer, loving, unadulterated, surprising initiative of God.

Luke says that when Gabriel showed up with the ominous greeting, "Hail, O favored one, the Lord is with you!" Mary had enough good sense to be "perplexed by his words." Perhaps she knew the stories from her Jewish heritage enough to know that to be "blessed" is not the same as winning the Publisher's Clearinghouse Sweepstakes or the Powerball Lottery. Through out God's interaction with humankind in history, being blessed was usually more dangerous than it is delightful. To be blessed is to be used by God to bless the world. If she knew the scriptures at all, Mary had more than enough reasons to wonder what all this might mean.

And then Gabriel said what angels always say, when standing before mere mortals, "Do not be afraid!" He announced that Mary would bear a son who would be called the son of the Most High God and would reign forever. In that moment, in that announcement, Mary was being invited to have a part in the fulfillment of God's saving purpose in history. It would be through the tangible, physical realities of her life, and the life she would carry within her, that the realm of God would become a tangible reality in this world. And for a moment, all eternity waited with bated breath to see what she would say.

Mary was a no-nonsense, down-to earth, practical kind of girl. There is no sappy spirituality here. There is no meek am mild acquiescence to a power stronger than she. She understood the implications of what was being asked of her, the risk she was being asked to take. She knew that it takes two to make a baby. And she responded, as I would hope every young woman would: "How can that be, since I am a Virgin?"

Mary knew from a human point of view that none of this was remotely possible. And so the angel answered her question, "The Holy spirit will overshadow you; there for the child to be born will be holy; he will be called "Son of God:" Emmanuel, God with us. And as if to say, "If you don't believe this can happen, get a load of this!" "Your cousin Elizabeth in her old age had also conceived a son… for nothing will be impossible for God.

There is no way round it; the gospel story is the story of the God who makes impossible things possible by demonstrating his extraordinary power in the lives of ordinary people. It's the story of the way God intersects our human limitations with unlimited grace. When it comes to our salvation, nothing is impossible with God.

In December 1996, a water stain, sixty feet high and twenty feet wide, appeared on the plate glass windows of an office building in Clearwater, Florida. Many people believed it was the image of the Virgin Mary. They came from across the country to stand or kneel in prayer in the parking lot beside it. Hundreds of candles crowded the sidewalk beneath it. Obviously ignoring the oxymoron in the title, the city formed a "Miracle Management Task Force to deal with the crush of unexpected visitors. When the holiday season ended that year, police estimated that more than 400,000 people had visited the site. The veneration continued for five years until a disturbed young adult shattered the window with slingshot propelled ball bearings.

Jim Harnish, a local pastor in Clearwater writes: " I had to agree with a friend who said, "I have a near Catholic veneration of Mary, but I can't for the life of me figure out why she's want to show up on a Mortgage finance office.

About two months after the windows were broken, a professor from the University of Miami (Florida) published in the newspaper and explanation of what had happened to cause the image to appear on the window: "the moisture on the exterior of the window combined with the air conditioning blowing on the inside to cause the glass to be discolored." But he said in conclusion, that after watching all the people responding to the phenomenon , it reminded him that there are some things in this world that science can't explain."

Back in the modern era, we assumed that the scientific method would explain everything. But in the postmodern era, people know that the scientific method cannot explain every hunger in the human soul. The widespread fascination with things like stains on an office window demonstrated as deep spiritual hunger for things that are possible only with God. There are ways in which God works through human experience that go beyond our human capacities to explain or understand. The poet Madeline L'Engle captured that truth in the poem, the Annunciation. "Had Mary been filled with reason? There would have been no room for the child." (The Weather of the Heart, p. 45)

The thing that sets Mary apart is that Mary actually believed that nothing was impossible with God. She believed it so deeply that she was willing to give herself body and soul, to be a part of the fulfillment of what God was doing in this world. We have here a story of an ordinary young girl who, in an extraordinary way, allowed her life, her body, her whole being to be the channel through which God could make God's presence a reality in this world. And still today, impossible things become possible when obedient people say yes to God and allow the power of the most high to be at work through them.

Mary said, "Here I am, the servant of the Lord, let it be with me according to your word." As J.B. Phillips translates it "I belong to the Lord, body and soul… let it happen as you say." As a result of that radical obeidience, she got to sing one of the most beautiful and powerful hymns in all of scripture. Luke 1: 41-55

The Magnificat as this passage is called, declares the truth about your life and mine. The proud do get lost in imagining their own greatness. The rich are easily possessed of their riches. The powerful become intoxicated with their power. People whose hands are full can never receive the gift. Mary shows us that only the lowly can be lifted up; only those with empty hands can receive; only those who are hungry can be fed; only those who acknowledge their weakness can experience the power of God.

Mary and her song, upends the world's and our assumptions of strength, power and might. It celebrated the God who brings down the high and mighty and who lifts up the poor and lowly. It defines a new way of life that is radically different from the way the world is. A way of life that can only be called "Blessed."

The Archbishop of Canterbury Rev. Dr.. Rowan Williams, reflects on this when he writes about his experience at Bethlehm Hospital in London, where he cradeled an abandoned new born in his arms when he asked the director why the standard of care was so high inspite of the desperate economic condition the child was in. The director replied: "The poorest deserve the best because they are human like you and me. That is what Christ came to bring. The best and brightest hope for all humanity. "I wonder if you can take in just how revolutionary this is. They do not deserve what is left over when the most prosperous have had their fill or what can be patched together on a minimal budget as some sort of damage limitation. And they don't deserve the best because they've earned it. The deserve it simply because their need is what it is and because where human dignity is least obvious it's most important to make a fuss about it.

All generation call Mary blessed not because of what she had, but what she was given. Through her obedience the blessing was given to the world. Mary shows us the way to be blessed is to be obedient. Blessed are those whose lives become a blessing to others. Amen.

Rev. Bill Westmoreland
December 9, 2007