Sermons

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The Possibilities Are Endless
December 23, 2001
Pastor Dan Baumgartner

Luke 1:26-38

Last week we looked at the story of Joseph, the silent man of the New Testament who became the adoptive father of Jesus. This morning we get a glimpse at Mary, the mother of Jesus. And, as with Joseph, God’s revelation to Mary comes through an angel, Gabriel.

Angels are big right now, you know. Hallmark stores are filled with cards and trinkets and statues of angels. Playwrights write plays, TV shows are produced, books are written. We are fascinated with angels. But I’m not preaching today about angels . . . but about possibilities.

These two topics come together in a movie our kids have watched at least 100 times: “Angels in the Outfield.” The title is a wordplay, because the movie is about the Angels baseball team in California . . . but also about an angel who appears to help two little boys in foster care who are fans. The reason I thought of it this week is the line that one of the little boys keeps repeating at different times through the movie. Whenever an impossible situation faces them, he dreams up an ideal solution and says “Hey . . . it could happen!” Sometimes it does. Enough to keep him hoping.

It’s the question that comes through the scripture this morning for me: “Can it happen?” Is God really able to do things that are impossible?

We’ll have to start with Mary. Because she was faced with the question in a most amazing way. The angel Gabriel shows up, and by the way, far more important than the individual personalities or wild speculations that we might make . . . is the meaning of the word “angel.” It means “messenger.” An angel is a messenger from God: “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” “Greetings” used to be translated “Hail,” as in “Hail, Mary,” and it became a prayer . . . Not like the fans say when the Seahawks quarterback throws a pass up for grabs . . . though that IS a prayer!

This prayer is very familiar to those who were raised in the Catholic church. The first part of the “Hail Mary” prayer comes from this scripture: “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus . . . ” And it goes on from there. Or the song we hear so often at this time of year, “Ave Maria” is the Latin for “Hail, Mary.”

Greetings, favored one, Gabriel says. Mary is perplexed, confused . . . and downright scared by the appearance of God’s messenger. And so Gabriel communicates what is perhaps God’s most frequent communication to His people throughout scripture: “Don’t be afraid . . . I am with you.”

And Gabriel then proceeds to tell Mary essentially the same thing revealed to Joseph in the dream we looked at last week: She will have a son, his name is to be Jesus (which means “God saves), he would be a son of David AND Son of Most High God.

Mary, though, is quite a bit more articulate than Joseph was, and asks the question that Joseph surely had in his mind but couldn’t stammer out: “How can this be?” For Mary is a virgin. And the angel tells her, as Joseph also had been told . . . it will happen through the Holy Spirit.

And so Joseph and Mary receive the same essential information about the sanctity of their relationship, the mode of conception and the identity of their Son. God is very gracious in giving both parties in this marriage relationship the same confirming message.

There is a valuable word for marriages here. It’s something I often talk with couples about. While I cannot say it never happens in a different way . . . my experience in my own marriage, and in listening to others . . . is that God normally communicates with both people. It is not the usual pattern that one marriage partner hears that they are to ship off to Africa as missionaries . . . and the other hears nothing of the sort.

When Anne and I first began to talk and pray about the idea of leaving business and heading for full-time ministry, we had a period of time where we were both intrigued by the idea, and how it kept coming up. But just about the time that I began to get really excited by the idea . . . Anne got very cold feet. She wasn’t sure I was being called to be a pastor, and she was pretty sure she wasn’t being called to be married to one!

And so for many months, we just dropped the subject, and I pretty much gave up on the idea. And then one night up at Whidbey Island, interestingly in a dream . . . God spoke very clearly to Anne, and assured her of his presence. And the next day, Anne said “I think we need to start talking about full-time ministry again,” and I almost keeled over!

It was important that we both heard. I can’t say it always happens that way, but I believe it is God’s normal mode of communicating with couples.

Gabriel goes still further, however. He tells Mary that her relative Elizabeth, though she is too old for such a thing to happen . . . has also become pregnant. Much like Abraham and Sarah in the Old Testament . . . a miracle has happened, and she is six months along already . . . though she was said to be “barren.” This is a miracle of a different kind.

Elizabeth is fully married to Zechariah, and apparently has been for a long time. And somehow in the course of their natural relations, God has healed or unblocked or set something right to allow conception. But with Mary . . . God has done something far more remarkable. It was not a healing, nor a miracle using human processes . . . but something utterly new.

When it says that “the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you” . . . it is not a healing of barrenness. And linguistically it is apparent that God is not somehow acting as the human male, like some tale of Greek mythology. No, this is something different . . . more like the creation of the world. An utterly new thing. The spirit of God hovering over the waters in the moments of creation in Genesis. God creating a child within Mary’s womb. And it was . . . Impossible.

Or at least God WILL create the child, for Mary is being told in advance what is to happen. . . . We are not told what is going through Mary’s mind, though she must certainly be reeling, wondering if this could be true, wondering how it could be and what she should do. We are not told specifically what she thought, nor even if she had some choice . . . yet there is this very pregnant pause after Gabriel says “For nothing will be impossible with God.”

The pause is long enough to allow our imaginations to work. This story, in scripture, is called “The Annunciation.” It has been one of the most captivating moments in history for artists and poets and writers, down through the ages. One of the more famous Annunciation paintings is from the great Italian artist Botticelli, from the 15th century. It shows, of course, the angel Gabriel appearing to Mary. In the last decade, the American Andrew Hudgins wrote a poem about Botticelli’s painting. Listen to some of the lines as Gabriel appears to Mary:

“He kneels. He’s come in all unearthly innocence
to tell her of glory -- not knowing, not remembering
how terrible it is. And Botticelli
gives her eternity to turn, look out the doorway, where
on a far hill floats a castle, and halfway across
the river toward it just a bridge, not completed
and neither is the touch, angel to virgin . . .
. . . her whole body pulls away.
Only her head, already haloed, bows,
acquiescing. And though she will, she’s not yet said,
Behold, I am the handmaid of the lord,
as Botticelli, in his great pity,
lets her refuse, accept, refuse, and think again.”

What DID Mary think about? The words of Gabriel are still ringing in her ears: “For nothing will be impossible with God.”

I confess I have not been able to get that sentence out of my mind these last weeks. I have asked myself dozens of times: “Do I really believe that?” Perhaps that what Mary asked as well. Do I really believe that God does the impossible?

Philosophically, of course, it is fairly easy to say “Yes” to a slightly different question: CAN God do the impossible? Of course, if God is real, if He is truly God, then He can do anything he wishes. Or if we asked, HAS God done the impossible? Even that question is easier to affirm. A Virgin Birth, the Incarnation, God coming to earth 2000 years ago . . . intellectually, we may well affirm this, shrouded in mystery though it is.

But often the more difficult question: DOES God do the impossible? Does God STILL do the impossible? In the power of a Risen Christ, in the power of the present and active Holy Spirit . . . dare we believe . . . that God is today, right now, in a sin-filled world . . . the God of the Impossible?

It is a moment of decision . . . for us. Is God a god of history, but ONLY of history?

Or something different? Can we live . . . believing that God might act in ways that are utterly profound and shocking?

Years ago on a healing prayer team, I prayed with a partner for someone for the healing of their child from a severe allergic reaction. We received a call several days later saying they were at a loss for words . . . because the allergy had disappeared.

I have seen or heard about enough of these physical healings to believe that God does work miracles in the physical realm. In fact, the question which I will have first on my list when I come face to face with Christ is not “Why did you heal in these circumstances?” but rather “Why NOT in these others?” God seems to strenuously avoid being locked into a formula or box which somehow obligates Him to do something if we just pray the right way, or hold our head at a certain angle. Yet I will not say God does not do these miracles in the physical realm, because He does . . . just not always when and where I might ask for them.

And still the words of God through Gabriel ring in my ears: “For nothing will be impossible with God.” Are there other places and ways in which God can be seen doing the impossible? I have asked the question to many people in these last weeks. The answers truly have been amazing:

I had coffee with a friend this week who recently returned from a mission trip to Argentina. While he was there, he visited what is called The Church Behind Bars, in Olmos. You may have read about it in these last years. But my friend was absolutely flabbergasted. Olmos has a prison with roughly 2700 inmates in it. And the only way to describe what he observed is that God’s Spirit has brought revival to that prison. 1700 of the 2700 inmates have become Christians. There is a church, and a Bible school now located inside of the walls. The Bible school trains pastors who can go start or minister to new churches when they are released. Even the prison officials will not stop the prayers, the school, the meetings . . . because the effect on the prison population has been so phenomenal.

In the general prison population, some 40% of those released will be sent back to prison for repeat offenses. In the prison block where new Christians stay . . . that number hovers around 1%. Who could have imagined this? Who could have pulled such a thing off? Only God. ONLY God.

I spoke with another friend, Scott Jackson, who works with World Vision. World Vision has been heavily involved in the New York area since the terrorist attacks. Right now, there are over 1700 churches working together in the New York area to provide relief, counseling, manpower, evangelism, money. If you’ve been around churches at all, you know that 1700 churches working together is an incredible miracle. 1700 churches of every possible denomination, ethnic background, big, little, liberal, conservative. Incredible. “For nothing will be impossible with God.”

Anne and I had the privilege of speaking at a Christian gathering on the Eastside this summer. We talked about the difference between living a Christian lifestyle . . . and being in a relationship with God. The next day, some friends of ours came to town, long-time friends that we have always wanted to talk about Christ with. We wondered and prayed: “Is this the night to do this, Lord. How can we avoid it being awkward?” And as we sat down to dinner that night, our friends said “Now, tell us exactly what you talked about at this meeting last night.” A wide open invitation.

Jobs, healings in marriages and other relationships, God’s leading in small and large ways. “For nothing will be impossible with God.”

Nowhere is the power of God’s spirit more evident as present and active in the world today . . . than in people’s hearts when they are drawn to know Him.

I don’t know each one of your stories of faith . . . but I know quite a few. And I could have any number of you stand up and talk about how in the most surprising ways . . . God has drawn you into relationship in Christ. Some when you were just children. Some when you were adults, some when you were totally closed to things of faith. Some when you were actively opposed to anything “religious.” It may be the case that some of you sitting here today have felt God tugging at your heart in these last months, and though you can barely admit that you are thinking it . . . you are wondering what it would be like to become a follower of Jesus. You would NEVER have guessed it.

Or maybe you’ve followed Christ for years . . . but recently you’ve been living as though God were just a God of history . . . not the present. Maybe you’ve prayed, and didn’t feel like God answered . . . so you’ve quit asking. Or maybe you’ve thought the problem too big for God. There’s not a formula I can give you that will make it easy or better or make everything you pray for come true . . . I can only tell you that our hope is in a God who is in the impossible business.

Perhaps this is your time. Perhaps this is that long silence like Mary had, overwhelmed, and knowing that life would be very different if she said “yes” to God.

What would God call you to do? Follow Him? Trust Him? Forgive someone? Pray for the impossible?

Mary didn’t yell or faint or scream. She merely said, as in the poem about Botticelli’s painting. “Yes. Here I am, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” For nothing will be impossible with God.