Who Will Be Your Angel? Whose Angel Will You Be?

Who Will Be Your Angel? Whose Angel Will You Be?

Sardis Baptist Church
November 12^th, 2023
Rev. Becky Proctor
Isaiah 7:14-15, Luke 1:26-38, Romans 1:6-7

 

Yes, I have three texts today! But I promise, only one sermon!  I don’t preach very often, but when I do, things usually fall into a certain pattern as I prepare. Sometimes weeks before the event I get the germ of an idea, either through a Bible passage, a book I’m studying, or simply listening to God in prayer.  Then I pray hard, check the Lectionary readings for the day, read Bible commentaries or other helpful resources to better understand the passage I’m using. I pray some more. I think of illustrations to use to make the message clearer. I pray some more, write a rough draft, and the words come together on paper.  Not this time!

For a long time I didn’t even have a germ of an idea.  I finally came up with an idea that was timely and appropriate, so I sat down and typed it up and rewrote and edited and rearranged and edited some more, but somehow it just didn’t feel right.  Oh, I had the idea; I had a thoughtful, intelligent manuscript that I was prepared to deliver to you but they weren’t the words God wanted me to share. The answer came last week, as our Worship Team gathered to begin preparations for the season of Advent, which will begin in just a few weeks. I began to read ahead in my Bibles, and soon I had a new perspective as I read through Mary’s experience with the angel. Mary is described as doing whatever 13-year-olds did in Nazareth in those days, when she glanced up and saw in front of her an… angel!  Gabriel, in fact! Maybe he had fluffy white wings and a halo.  Maybe not. But I suspect that he spoke with a tone of authority that reached down inside her and said, “Pay Attention! This person speaks for God!” It must have been hard for her to imagine that God would send an angel with a message for her.  Of course, she had heard about angels appearing to people in days gone by, but to prophets and kings, not to people like her – a girl barely thirteen years old, promised in marriage to Joseph the carpenter. Of course, she knew that she could trust God no matter what, and she had learned Scripture passages like the one we read from Isaiah. But the words were troubling, and she was confused and disturbed, according to Luke. She was full of questions. “How can I have a baby?  I am a virgin! I will be stoned if the neighbors see that I am pregnant before marriage!” It is so easy for us to believe the pictures of Mary we have seen in painting from across the centuries – a peaceful, serene, woman, expressionless or with a tiny smile like Mona Lisa’s, usually dressed in blue or white robes, with the ever-present halo above hear head, barely noticing the angels hovering around or the kings kneeling at her feet. And perhaps that is the woman she became. But at the moment she was like every other teenaged girl, and as you parents know, a teenaged girl is Not the person we would send an angel to with an important message! So inside she  asks the same kind of question we ask when God or one of God’s messengers speaks to us… “Okay, what’s the catch?  Is this a joke? Can I trust these people – this place? What would they think if they knew who and what I’m really like?  What mistakes I’ve made? Do I even want to be graced?”  Yet she answered in faith, “May it be to me as you have said.”

I was a somewhat precocious child raised in a devoutly Christian home. My grandfather, when asked once, “When do you think she became a Christian?” answered, “When she was born.” That may have been a stretch, but I had always felt close to God and loved.  When I was eight years old I walked down the aisle of my church to publicly declare that I had given my heart to Christ . Eight years later I walked that same aisle to surrender my life to Christian service in a church related vocation. That was what at that time I understood God’s plan for me to be. Of course, at age 19 I was much wiser and more mature. I fell in love, and three months later I was married! I assured myself that this was OK with God, because this man was a Christian. Two years later I was a mother and three years after that my marriage was over. The divorce papers weren’t signed for another 14 years, after many trips to Christian counselors, many attempts to “fix things” – we kept up the pretense of being the perfect couple, because we couldn’t admit to the failure of our marriage and because I was afraid. I was afraid that the God who had held me gently but firmly in his loving hand all my life would turn that hand upside down and let me fall if I committed the sin of divorce. I was sure that there would never be a place for me in God’s plan. I was sure that I had missed the one chance I had had to have a home centered in God’s will and dedicated to his glory. I ran circles around everybody I knew and volunteered for every task, trying to do things to earn my way back into his love, and at a moment when I was at the very end of my strength, a messenger from God told me that my efforts were useless – I’d never be good enough for God; because God never stopped loving me, and his grace meant I didn’t have to be! What I had to do was to accept myself as a graced person. I had to respond by accepting a free gift of love, and I had made it harder than you could ever imagine… Or maybe you can imagine it after all! Maybe you’ve been afraid to accept that gift of grace too. Why do you suppose we make it so hard? And what happens if we let go of our fears and hurts and accept this gift? What will take the place of our fears? At least we know what it is to deal with the familiar fears; we understand what it means to be, for example, the child of an alcoholic… A failure in business… An abused wife… Or to be excluded because of our color, age, looks, gender, abilities… Just fill in the blanks for yourselves. What does God have in store for us that will replace our pain if we do let go?

I really don’t know what will fill that spot for you. The most liberating thing about this message, I believe, is that we don’t have to know what will fill the empty spot. But I can tell you that we, like Mary, can trust the promises God has made and continues to make to God’s people to do a brand new thing in us and through us. And I can also promise that it is truly worth letting go of the known so that we can allow the creative spirit of God’s love for us and our own creative imaginations to build within us a place that is safe and full of joy.

That doesn’t mean that God will pat us on our heads and send us merrily on our way. Mary had to endure humiliation, fear, disbelief, heartache, and the pain and agony of giving birth to a child in a barn full of animals in the middle of the night a long way from home. I had to face some very unpleasant facts about myself and my family and begin to work very hard at accepting a reality I thought I’d never have to deal with. Worse yet I had to tell my GRANDMOTHER about the impending divorce! Then I had to get honest with God and talk about a Plan B. God’s plan A for my life had gotten very messed up in my hands, and I didn’t know if there would be another chance to be a part of his Kingdom, especially through a church related vocation. And do you know what? There was a Plan B! He always has a plan even if and when we do mess up. I believe I’m probably on plan Q by now…God knows we’ll fail, we’ll miss the mark, we’ll stumble and fall. God never promises to protect us from pain and mistakes; God does promise to be with us through deep waters and great trouble and to love us no matter what. And to surprise us! I was enabled to go to seminary, 18 years after I had planned to go there in the first place! He sent an amazing, wonderful man into my life to provide a second chance for me to have a Christ centered home; he sent a wonderful church family to offer me a place to use my gifts and my love for God’s glory.

Along the way there have been twists and turns, and being a woman in ministry, I have heard those words that every woman in ministry hears at one time or another… “Who does she think she is?”  Well, after hours weeks months and years of prayer and discovery, I will tell you exactly who I am. I am Rebecca Crush Proctor, child of God, gifted and graced and called to serve him. And do you know what?  I’m going to tell you exactly who you are! You are a child of God, gifted and graced and called to serve him. No matter what your age or gifts or education or talent or color or gender, he loves you, he treasures you, and he has work for you to do.

And so it is that we must also be willing to allow God to create and move us outside the boundaries we have come to expect in our lives. Who would have believed that God would have chosen an unwed peasant girl to be the mother of the Christ child? Who would have believed that I would marry Rick Proctor of all people? God seldom takes the shape that we expect him to, and he rarely conforms to our expectations of what God should do and whom God should use to do his will; so we would do well to look for him in unexpected places within our lives, as well as outside our lives. That means being vulnerable, open minded, and willing to share God’s spirit with each other – to make that telephone call or send a note or pay a visit to go to someone we’ve hurt and ask for forgiveness, to forgive someone we’ve been nursing a grudge against. And it means accepting the gift of God’s spirit in other people. We must realize that God has messengers other than heavenly angels. Just as he uses you and me, he uses our neighbors and family members to speak his words to us, words that we may not expect. Just a few weeks ago he used a child from our neighborhood to remind me of the wonder and power of the love of this community called church and the miracle of the message we have to share. And in turn, it means that we must ultimately help to create the very atmosphere we seek for ourselves – an atmosphere of acceptance and inclusion; an atmosphere that is anything but judgmental and suspicious. The world is desperately in need of a people who struggle with what it means to truly be God’s graced ones. What must you do, what must I do, what must our church family do to prepare a way for God to come to us, work through us, walk with us until we become the ones he wants us to be? Today, as in Isaiah’s day, as in Mary’s day, as it will be tomorrow, God is saying to us, “I am about to do a brand new thing; See I have already begun!” For Mary it required the willingness to give birth to the son of God. What is within you and me today waiting to be born on this beautiful November day?